[MUD-Dev] Convincing Players to Read Documentation

[Richard Tew]

> From: Colin Coghill [mailto:C.Coghill at auckland.ac.nz]
> I think players are out of the habit of reading documentation because
> it is nearly always *terrible*.

Agreed.  But is it really possible to do good documentation?
I read alot of documentation as part of my job and it all lacks.  Its
boring, its uninteresting and its not much help except as a reference
if I know what I want to look up - maybe.

> I think the best way to encourage people to read docs is to:
>=20
> 1) Make it *good*. I've seen many MUDs that were proud of their
>     cumbersome, inefficient, help systems. Documentation is almost
>     never good. Get someone who does it for a living to look over it
>     and make it useable.

What is good?

Short, clear and to the point. Thats it IMO.

I build web sites.  Its boring and I figure you could train monkeys
to do it.  But theres one part that takes real skill, that I know I
can't do - writing copy to instruct the users to do things.

Just recently, one client (the first I have encountered so far to do
so) hired a copy writer to rewrite my instructions to the visitors.
I had about three short paragraphs getting across all the stuff that
the visitors needed to know to use the relevant page.  The copy
writer said the same stuff in three sentences, if that.

I see that as the difference between understanding a page at a glance
and trawling through information trying to understand it.  Its a lot
less effort to read and understand her instructions.

> 2) Hide little things in the docs that give people an=20
> incentive to read it. Quest
>      clues, suble ways of using commands that give a slight=20
> improvement, etc.

Cunning, the old hide little things in the docs to give incentive to
read it trick ;P

I don't see any value in this.  I'd just skim the docs anyway if they
were long and waffly enough that you could hide things in them.  Better
to integrate what you want to teach them into the game - this can be
done IC and OOC.

And I don't mean mud schools, or introductory areas.  Don't dumb down
for the users, don't compromise the quality of your mud just to make
a learning area for players to log into.  The players I would want to
keep are the ones that log in to a place thats of the same quality of
the rest, get informed by the game of facilities that can help them
OOC and characters that offer to help them IC.  If they feel overwhelmed
then they know what they can go for help.  Help topics would be short,
clear and relevant with references to longer documents perhaps.

Heres how I plan to start my humanoid players:

  They would start off by the gates of the city having been informed
  of their background up to the point they decided to start adventuring.
  They could watch traffic go past and observe how to enter the city.

No tacky introductory areas with cats and dogs and butterflies to
slaughter for initial money and xp.  No out of theme facilities for
setting up a character.

--
Richard (Donky at Nameless Sorrows - nameless-sorrows.org 3000)



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