What can we do part II: the tutorial
Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 1:09 pm
I've used to input from my previous post to refine my ideas for the tutorial.
I'll explain the proposal through the eyes of our noob enchanter Naled.
After being interested by our website, little Naled has decided to check out the mud. From the walkthrough on the site he knows how to go through character creation. Naled decided to create an enchanter and start in Waterdeep.
Note! It is probably a good idea to limit the starting cities per race/combo at just one choice. This will help greatly with writing the quests. This shouldn't be a problem since most people will start in Waterdeep anyway. The other former starting cities will get a different role.
When Naled enters the game in the Mage Tower Khelben will start by explaining him the basic game concepts such as navigation, and the say and ask commands.
Note! The quests are not mandatory. Veteran players can ignore all of this and start the game as they like. They can return to quest-tutorial at anytime though.
For his first mission Naled is sent to an apprentice to get a scroll. Our hero has to use his newly learned navigation skills to find the apprentice a few rooms away and get him to give him the scroll. After retrieving this and bringing the scroll to his master he will receive his first spellbook and quill.
Khelben will explain him the concepts of scribing and practicing. After Naled has scribed his first spells he will be taught the mem and med concepts.
After Naled has memmed his first magic missile Khelben will conjure a small mob to practice his spellcasting on.
When Naled has turned the mob to a smoking pile of ashes Khelben sends him to the newbie area to practice his skills some. After he has reached level 2 he can come back for a new assignment.
Naled will use level 1-15 to acquire his set of starting gear. He will also be pointed to the xp zones around Waterdeep and learn the most common commands. Existing quests like Ant Farm and Granpa Pod can be used for these tasks.
Note! The xp can also come from assignments, e.g. fight the evil mercenaries in SSC etc. This way a RP atmosphere can be created.
After level 15 Khelben will give our aspring mage a ship ticket and send him to baldurs gate for further studies. The BG guild master will give Naled other assignments to upgrade his gear.
Some of the assignments here will be more dangerous and require more exploring. After level 21 some quests may require other classes to help.
At level 35 the wannabe archmage is sent further away for studies. If he was evil he would be sent to Zhentil Keep, but since he is a nice noob he will receive further tutoring in CP. Quests here are a lot complexer and difficult and many require large groups to complete. Some of the quests yield important spells such as relocate, gate, mindblank, dragonscales and maybe timestop.
Note! The guildmaster will just point to the zone or mob that starts the spell quest.
At reaching level 46 the training is complete and Naled is no longer an apprentice. He should have a fair set of eq and have enough knowledge to go zoning. High level quests and zoning will yield the good eq now.
Note! For an other race the game would start slightly different. Dwarves begin in MH etc. For goodrace the game would be the same from level 15. Evilraces would have their own quest-tutorial.
The advantages of this approach are plenty:
1) Players learn the mud in a fun, active way and don't have to trudge through a seperate zone. They start with playing the same game everyone else plays.
2) Every level starts a new adventure
3) Players are taught to explore
4) Players learn important aspects of their class during their training.
5) Players get eq which they need to get them through their levels. Since they don't go zoning they would need handouts otherwise.
6) Instead of mindlessly killing stuff people level and xp within a role-playing environment.
7) Getting your character to 50 is no longer a chore, it's an adventure!
8) Unique selling point for the mud we can use to attract new players.
Obviously this will require quite some work with writing quests. Veteran players would be the ideal candidates to do this. They know the class by heart and know what is important for new players to learn.
I would suggest making use exisiting quests as much as possible to reduce the work.
Codewise there doesn't have to change much except if needed to implement the quests.
I also have some questions for you all:
1) What would be decent eq for the various levels? Obviously even the best eq gotten this way should still be less good then eq from zones or high-end quests. The other option would be to downgrade mobs to make the eq good enough for the level.
2) How do you feel about writing some quests for your class? Would you be interested pitching in if asked to?
Implementation-wise I suggest introducing this in phases. You can start by addressing the most important fase between level 1 and 15. Doing the work on higher levels can be done after. Note that it is important to support newbies at higher levels as well. Much can be done with exisiting quests as shown in the example. But noobs will still be noobs even if they made it to 15 or 30.
Well so far part II. Questions, answers, comments, praise and critisism are more than welcome.
Naled
I'll explain the proposal through the eyes of our noob enchanter Naled.
After being interested by our website, little Naled has decided to check out the mud. From the walkthrough on the site he knows how to go through character creation. Naled decided to create an enchanter and start in Waterdeep.
Note! It is probably a good idea to limit the starting cities per race/combo at just one choice. This will help greatly with writing the quests. This shouldn't be a problem since most people will start in Waterdeep anyway. The other former starting cities will get a different role.
When Naled enters the game in the Mage Tower Khelben will start by explaining him the basic game concepts such as navigation, and the say and ask commands.
Note! The quests are not mandatory. Veteran players can ignore all of this and start the game as they like. They can return to quest-tutorial at anytime though.
For his first mission Naled is sent to an apprentice to get a scroll. Our hero has to use his newly learned navigation skills to find the apprentice a few rooms away and get him to give him the scroll. After retrieving this and bringing the scroll to his master he will receive his first spellbook and quill.
Khelben will explain him the concepts of scribing and practicing. After Naled has scribed his first spells he will be taught the mem and med concepts.
After Naled has memmed his first magic missile Khelben will conjure a small mob to practice his spellcasting on.
When Naled has turned the mob to a smoking pile of ashes Khelben sends him to the newbie area to practice his skills some. After he has reached level 2 he can come back for a new assignment.
Naled will use level 1-15 to acquire his set of starting gear. He will also be pointed to the xp zones around Waterdeep and learn the most common commands. Existing quests like Ant Farm and Granpa Pod can be used for these tasks.
Note! The xp can also come from assignments, e.g. fight the evil mercenaries in SSC etc. This way a RP atmosphere can be created.
After level 15 Khelben will give our aspring mage a ship ticket and send him to baldurs gate for further studies. The BG guild master will give Naled other assignments to upgrade his gear.
Some of the assignments here will be more dangerous and require more exploring. After level 21 some quests may require other classes to help.
At level 35 the wannabe archmage is sent further away for studies. If he was evil he would be sent to Zhentil Keep, but since he is a nice noob he will receive further tutoring in CP. Quests here are a lot complexer and difficult and many require large groups to complete. Some of the quests yield important spells such as relocate, gate, mindblank, dragonscales and maybe timestop.
Note! The guildmaster will just point to the zone or mob that starts the spell quest.
At reaching level 46 the training is complete and Naled is no longer an apprentice. He should have a fair set of eq and have enough knowledge to go zoning. High level quests and zoning will yield the good eq now.
Note! For an other race the game would start slightly different. Dwarves begin in MH etc. For goodrace the game would be the same from level 15. Evilraces would have their own quest-tutorial.
The advantages of this approach are plenty:
1) Players learn the mud in a fun, active way and don't have to trudge through a seperate zone. They start with playing the same game everyone else plays.
2) Every level starts a new adventure
3) Players are taught to explore
4) Players learn important aspects of their class during their training.
5) Players get eq which they need to get them through their levels. Since they don't go zoning they would need handouts otherwise.
6) Instead of mindlessly killing stuff people level and xp within a role-playing environment.
7) Getting your character to 50 is no longer a chore, it's an adventure!
8) Unique selling point for the mud we can use to attract new players.
Obviously this will require quite some work with writing quests. Veteran players would be the ideal candidates to do this. They know the class by heart and know what is important for new players to learn.
I would suggest making use exisiting quests as much as possible to reduce the work.
Codewise there doesn't have to change much except if needed to implement the quests.
I also have some questions for you all:
1) What would be decent eq for the various levels? Obviously even the best eq gotten this way should still be less good then eq from zones or high-end quests. The other option would be to downgrade mobs to make the eq good enough for the level.
2) How do you feel about writing some quests for your class? Would you be interested pitching in if asked to?
Implementation-wise I suggest introducing this in phases. You can start by addressing the most important fase between level 1 and 15. Doing the work on higher levels can be done after. Note that it is important to support newbies at higher levels as well. Much can be done with exisiting quests as shown in the example. But noobs will still be noobs even if they made it to 15 or 30.
Well so far part II. Questions, answers, comments, praise and critisism are more than welcome.
Naled