[MUD-Dev] Acting casual about casual gamers

[Charles Hughes]

On Wednesday, June 28, 2000 7:29 PM, Michael Tresca [SMTP:talien at toast.net] 
wrote:
> Game designers who cater to this mindset give players demeaning tasks.
> Newbies, who are really only new players, are transformed into children.
> They are given simple tasks, they are told to kill "easy things" like
> chickens, cows, and butterflies.  Everything they do is made out to be
> insignificant, weak, and ultimately, a little ridiculous if you consider
> the context of a heroic fantasy (or heroic whatever) game.  Not a lot of
> heroism to go around when new players start the game.  Worse, 
large-volume
> level-based systems compensate for the belief that first level is bad by
> making new players fourth, fifth, or higher level (like Dark Sun did).
>
> I submit that new players should NOT be treated this way.  New players
> should kill dragons, battle fierce demons, perform heroic quests, and
> they should be able to do it all at first level.
> So what if the dragon dies in five blows instead of 30?  If the player
> can't see the statistics of the dragon, and if he or she is new, that
> person will feel just as much of an achievement.

My wife likes to read books by reading the first chapter, then the last
chapter, and then maybe everything else.  She also likes to be told what's
going to happen in movies.  Personally, this drives me nuts, and I swear
that it ruins the experience for her.  I could be wrong, but I don't think
so.  Anyway, letting a new player (not an old player, starting a new
character) be able to hunt and kill dragons seems to smack of reading
the last chapter of a book to me.

> And the higher level folks?  Those players who are going to
> play for a longer period of time can still be challenged -- now they have
> to kill the Dragon King instead of a Dragon Lord -- without new players
> being demeaned.

Actually, this would seem demeaning to higher level players.  I present a
bit of humor which I'm sure I could carry out on UO:
<NewPlayer>: Where's all the dragons?  I was told I could kill dragons!
<Me>: You sure you want to kill the dragons?
<NewPlayer>: Yeah, yeah, just lead me to the dragons so I can kick their 
butts!
<Me>: Well, ok, but UO dragons are a bit strange because there's a bug in
	the clients right now.
<NewPlayer>: My client is working fine. What's the bug?
<Me>: Well, on some clients the icon display for a dragon is missing, and 
it
	substitutes the nearest graphic it can find.  Usually this is a chicken.
<NewPlayer>: Oh cool!
<Me>: Yeah, so what you have to do is find anything that looks like a 
chicken
	and kill it.  If it clucks, you can be almost positive it's just a
	dragon trying to take advantage of the bug.
...

So what's the difference?  Whether a player is told that the dragons look 
like
chickens, or the dragons have the stats of a chicken, it's the same thing.
It doesn't take long to figure out that dragons have chicken stats, and 
then
when the newbie finds this out later on, he's embarrassed to be gloating 
about
killing a dragon as a newbie.

> This is the fallacy of Newbie Schools. The last thing anybody wants is to
> log into a multi-user game and find out that they are being sent back to
> school to learn how to play a supposedly fun game.

Well, they shouldn't be looking at it in that way.  People who want to kill
things and be about the same power as everyone else should play Quake.
People who think eye-hand coordination is overrated should not play Quake. 
:)

I do agree with you somewhat.  Newbies should be more powerful than the
current situation.  They should be Heroic in some degree, but they should
also have room to learn and the knowledge that even greater Heroics are
possible.  (I died to a guard in the blink of an eye on UO.  Bleh, it felt
like I was lagged and playing Quake. :)




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