[MUD-Dev] attracting players

[adam at treyarch.com]

On Wed, 10 May 2000, Mordengaard wrote:
> - Non-newbie-relevant information overload

A simple point here is not bother to show them the news, as they probably
don't care about any of the information contained therein.

I don't show news by default, but I do print a "You have unread news" message.
On newbies I set their news_last_read_time = time(0).  Naturally, they can
still read the news if they *really* want.

> - Newbie-relevant information overload

Another point, of course, is that old players are normally forced to go through
all the same hoops as a newbie character.  This is very nicely solved by
an account system which I shamelessly borrowed from Lost Souls (and which
later made its appearance in commercial games like UO).

> - Instant spam
> [ OOC channels, etc ]

Hmmmm.  This is a tough one; how do you limit the channel overload during
a busy time without cutting the newbie out completely?  Should there by a
"maximum spam" threshold in which if more than (say) 3 OOCs arrive at a
newbie's ears within one minute, it starts dropping them?

It seems to me that if your global channels are so busy as to be annoying
to a newbie, then they would be annoying to an oldbie, too. :)

> - Restricted actions

Arctic has an "expert" flag that removes a lot of extra text and warnings
from various commands.  I have a "newbie" flag for a similar purpose.
I never got around to implementing it, but the idea is that it would keep
you from doing "stupid" things like attacking a cityguard.  It could,
of course, be toggled off if the user spent a minutes or two reading the
help files.

> - "Help" files

Always very important.

> I have three kinds of help files on Yhared.  The standard "help <command>"
> which works as you'd expect.  I also have an extended help system (xhelp)
> which contains more detailed information.  Finally, I have a series of
> "how-to"s.  The "help" command gives you a summary of the command/feature,
> syntax, and application.  None of my "help" files are more than five lines
> long (not including title and formatting).  The xhelp system goes into
> detail on the command/feature, providing background where necessary, and
> recommending other help files.  These files are normally 10 lines or more,
> although never more than 20 lines.  The how-to's are literally step-by-step
> guides on common (and not-so-common) actions that can be taken in my world.
> For example, I have a how-to entitled "setting up a shop", which covers the
> basics of getting a property and opening a store in it.  The how-to's are
> mostly IC, where appropriate.  All of the files are spell checked, grammar
> checked, and proof-read.  They're also tested out on the few test players we
> have atm.

Wow - I like this a LOT.  Gonna have to ponder this.  The howto's especially;
great website material, and serves the double purpose of being good for
attracting new players.

I have a seperation between my help files also.  There are "help" files,
which are the equivilent of UNIX man pages - basic technical information on
how to execute a command.  There are also some general purpose help pages
about skills, stats, money, combat, death, and so forth, but they are
fairly brief.  All of the help files are written in a meta-format which I
export to both mud-accessable helpfiles and HTML.
(http://dusk.org/BloodDusk/help - one of these days I'll beautify them a bit)

The second set of documentation are called info pages, accessed by the
"info" command in-game.  Since they are character-specific, they are not
accessable from the webpage.  Most characters can't access some or most of
the info files; there's a simple set of conditionals built into the files
that determine what version (if any) of the info pages you see.  For example,
you can't access info pages on skills that you don't have.  Or, when
reaidng info about a guild, you'll get a different page if you belong to
the guild than if you don't.  You also may get a third page if you belong
to a rival guild.

Adam





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