What can we do to help the mud?
Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 1:51 pm
In reaction on to a Corth post and the reaction by Shar ( see post) I thought it might be a good idea to turn the topic around. Instead of posting what the imms should do, ask what can we do?
There is a lot of talent on the mud we could make use of to support and advance the mud. There are great artists, web designers, writers and entrepeneurs around who are probably willing to donate some of their time to help with things the staff simply don't have time for.
I have been CEO of a games company in a previous life and know a thing or two about marketing games. From that perspective I might have something to add to his game. Others may have other talents on game design, web design or artwork. This is not an application to become an imm (I don't have the time nor the urge to become one) but a call out to the imms to let us know what we can do to help.
From my perspective the biggest problem facing Toril today is the swindling number of players. The other problem is the lack of a stable site but I hear there is a solution on the way. I will focus on the first problem here.
Instead of focussing on what the mud lacks it is better to focus on what is good about. We have a loyal playerbase, a content-rich mud and an active administration and best of all it is free to play. This is not a bad place to start from.
Contrary to popular belief the market share of text based games is not decreasing. More and more people have internet access and look for entertainment online. The majority of these players can't afford or don't want to pay for pay-to-play games.
The reasons why muds are less popular in this growing market are easy.
1) People don't know they exist
2) Muds are too difficult to play
3) It is not so easy to find a good mud between thousands of bad ones
4) You need to buy a mud client which you need to configure for the particular mud.
5) People have limited time to play and muds are often time-consuming
Making Toril look attractice
Let's first start with reason 1 and 2 since they are related. Obviously the answer is advertising. Advertising is more then just putting your link up at some of the mud sites. Most people will not log on to the mud when first checking Toril out. They will look at the website first. If the website does not look appealing they will not even bother looking at the mud.
I would suggest starting there first. Give people a hand in trying to understand the mud. Post a walktrough for configuring zmud, how to create a character and how to get throught the first couple of levels. Post a graphical map of Toril which shows where most cities and important zones are. And make the website look fancy with graphics of player races and so on. Create an online newsletter where players post their roll-playing events. Everquest is a nice example for this.
Another part of advertising is the newbie zone, in-game tutorial or whatever you want to call it. If new players log on and come through the character generation process they will start playing. This first few days of playing are crucial. If new players run into problems here you will have lost them. The tutorial will have to teach players how to handle all those difficult commands without boring them to death or having to read tons of help files. Once they have been playing a while a good number of them will have invested too much time to stop now.
The question here of course should be: "What can WE do to get all this?"
Lowering the barrier
For a lot of players muds are too difficult. You have to find a client somewhere, and once you find one you have to "program" it to make it work. Our own Toril client would help a great deal. It should contain help-files, buttons for commands, and some sort of map to show roughly where you are.
I realize this is a time-consuming thing to build and is not something that can be made anytime soon. I do believe however in the long run it will benefit the mud greatly.
Any bored coders out there that are in search of a hobby project?
Time versus benifits
It's a given that muds and MMO's in general ask a too large investment in time from people. I've spoken to the designer of SWG (see Raph Koster's website for some great topics on game design) about this topic a while back. This problem has been an important topic in the design of his game. They have tried solving this by making xp-ing easier and implementing a quest-system to cater to players with less time. This is a nice solution. The implementation on SWG is not too great due to time constraints, but it is a very promising idea. As in any MMO the end-game (zoning in this case) is the most fun part of the game. Why bother players with having to xp endlessly before getting to the fun part of the game?
I suggest 3 things:
1) Lower xp-tables considerably especially at lower levels so players can level up faster. Level 1-5 should not take more than an hour, level 5-20 not more than a week and level 20-40 not more then a month, taking a casual player (1 hour max playing time a day) into mind.
2) Make soloing easier. Make sure people can find mobs to solo without needing -100ac and large downtimes. This would basically mean downgrading damage, ac and hitpoints on xp mobs. A lot of the classes need others to be able to xp especially on higher levels. Having to group for zones or larger quests is fine but don't have that one-hour-a-day player waste half of his time on finding a group.
3) Focus on adding quests instead of zones and add more (multi-stage)quests that can a) be soloed and b) be finished in an hour. Have guild-masters give out quests for spells, skills and class-related eq for instance. It will add some spice to the game and gives something meaningful to do for players who don't have much time. This will give players the chance to get some semi-decent eq without having to spent hours and hours in zones. Of course zones and high-end quests should yield the really cool eq.
This would be a good way to shape the tutorial as well. Guide people through the mud by performing some small quests to get their newbie equipment.
For example: A enchanter starts at a mage-school in the tower in waterdeep and the first step of his "training" is to bring a scroll to Khelben. As a reward he gets a spellbook or a spell. At the same time he will learn some directions, the ask, give, wield commands etc.
I'm sure some of the veterans would love to help write some small quests that fit in their classes themes and add some flavor to it.
I'll keep it at this for a bit. I'm very interested in what the imms think about it and what other players think they could contribute to our mud.
Naled.
There is a lot of talent on the mud we could make use of to support and advance the mud. There are great artists, web designers, writers and entrepeneurs around who are probably willing to donate some of their time to help with things the staff simply don't have time for.
I have been CEO of a games company in a previous life and know a thing or two about marketing games. From that perspective I might have something to add to his game. Others may have other talents on game design, web design or artwork. This is not an application to become an imm (I don't have the time nor the urge to become one) but a call out to the imms to let us know what we can do to help.
From my perspective the biggest problem facing Toril today is the swindling number of players. The other problem is the lack of a stable site but I hear there is a solution on the way. I will focus on the first problem here.
Instead of focussing on what the mud lacks it is better to focus on what is good about. We have a loyal playerbase, a content-rich mud and an active administration and best of all it is free to play. This is not a bad place to start from.
Contrary to popular belief the market share of text based games is not decreasing. More and more people have internet access and look for entertainment online. The majority of these players can't afford or don't want to pay for pay-to-play games.
The reasons why muds are less popular in this growing market are easy.
1) People don't know they exist
2) Muds are too difficult to play
3) It is not so easy to find a good mud between thousands of bad ones
4) You need to buy a mud client which you need to configure for the particular mud.
5) People have limited time to play and muds are often time-consuming
Making Toril look attractice
Let's first start with reason 1 and 2 since they are related. Obviously the answer is advertising. Advertising is more then just putting your link up at some of the mud sites. Most people will not log on to the mud when first checking Toril out. They will look at the website first. If the website does not look appealing they will not even bother looking at the mud.
I would suggest starting there first. Give people a hand in trying to understand the mud. Post a walktrough for configuring zmud, how to create a character and how to get throught the first couple of levels. Post a graphical map of Toril which shows where most cities and important zones are. And make the website look fancy with graphics of player races and so on. Create an online newsletter where players post their roll-playing events. Everquest is a nice example for this.
Another part of advertising is the newbie zone, in-game tutorial or whatever you want to call it. If new players log on and come through the character generation process they will start playing. This first few days of playing are crucial. If new players run into problems here you will have lost them. The tutorial will have to teach players how to handle all those difficult commands without boring them to death or having to read tons of help files. Once they have been playing a while a good number of them will have invested too much time to stop now.
The question here of course should be: "What can WE do to get all this?"
Lowering the barrier
For a lot of players muds are too difficult. You have to find a client somewhere, and once you find one you have to "program" it to make it work. Our own Toril client would help a great deal. It should contain help-files, buttons for commands, and some sort of map to show roughly where you are.
I realize this is a time-consuming thing to build and is not something that can be made anytime soon. I do believe however in the long run it will benefit the mud greatly.
Any bored coders out there that are in search of a hobby project?
Time versus benifits
It's a given that muds and MMO's in general ask a too large investment in time from people. I've spoken to the designer of SWG (see Raph Koster's website for some great topics on game design) about this topic a while back. This problem has been an important topic in the design of his game. They have tried solving this by making xp-ing easier and implementing a quest-system to cater to players with less time. This is a nice solution. The implementation on SWG is not too great due to time constraints, but it is a very promising idea. As in any MMO the end-game (zoning in this case) is the most fun part of the game. Why bother players with having to xp endlessly before getting to the fun part of the game?
I suggest 3 things:
1) Lower xp-tables considerably especially at lower levels so players can level up faster. Level 1-5 should not take more than an hour, level 5-20 not more than a week and level 20-40 not more then a month, taking a casual player (1 hour max playing time a day) into mind.
2) Make soloing easier. Make sure people can find mobs to solo without needing -100ac and large downtimes. This would basically mean downgrading damage, ac and hitpoints on xp mobs. A lot of the classes need others to be able to xp especially on higher levels. Having to group for zones or larger quests is fine but don't have that one-hour-a-day player waste half of his time on finding a group.
3) Focus on adding quests instead of zones and add more (multi-stage)quests that can a) be soloed and b) be finished in an hour. Have guild-masters give out quests for spells, skills and class-related eq for instance. It will add some spice to the game and gives something meaningful to do for players who don't have much time. This will give players the chance to get some semi-decent eq without having to spent hours and hours in zones. Of course zones and high-end quests should yield the really cool eq.
This would be a good way to shape the tutorial as well. Guide people through the mud by performing some small quests to get their newbie equipment.
For example: A enchanter starts at a mage-school in the tower in waterdeep and the first step of his "training" is to bring a scroll to Khelben. As a reward he gets a spellbook or a spell. At the same time he will learn some directions, the ask, give, wield commands etc.
I'm sure some of the veterans would love to help write some small quests that fit in their classes themes and add some flavor to it.
I'll keep it at this for a bit. I'm very interested in what the imms think about it and what other players think they could contribute to our mud.
Naled.