NEWBIES: Discuss your experience ITT (in this thread)

I’ve updated help applications. Does that make things a bit clearer on what we look for?

Things that I feel need to change:

Newbie / OOC Split
Definitely. There’s nothing worse than asking a question and getting overrun by a bunch of people talking about inane stuff as a newbie. Maybe make it so anyone can talk in newbie as well, if only because I’m over level 100 in a skill and I still have lots of OOC questions.

Clans
Really need to be emphasised in the newbie zone. I was very close to not selecting one until I spotted something that seemed aligned to my interests. I’ve gained a lot more benefits from joining a clan than otherwise.

As a less newbie thing, maybe clan balance needs to come into effect? So that the clans are forced to have a certain balance amongst them instead of having it moronically (and unrealistically) lopsided? Maybe this is something that needs to be fixed amongst the playerbase instead, I don’t know.

Stats
I don’t understand why training stats is a thing. This really does feel like just a trap for newbies, rather than anything else. I very much doubt anyone is going to not train their stats.

Integration of Newbie Experience
Maybe have a more integrated and detailed newbie experience? I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this one but it’s mainly that the current newbie experience is separate from the rest of the universe.

Hey there!

So I first encountered this MUD a few years ago, in a different TL, and played for a weekend. I honestly don’t remember why I stopped, I don’t recall having a bad experience with it, so I’ll have to assume distraction. I returned and started seriously playing at the beginning of this TL — somewhere between two weeks and a month after it kicked off, I think. I don’t have a lot to say about chargen, the academy, and helpfiles — I’ve been MUDing on and off for fourteen or so years, mostly SWR codebase, so all of it felt fairly straightforward and clear, with one exception. It may be that I just overlooked this in the academy, but fully training your stats before leveling the related class was something I had no experience with. I don’t recall if I messed up and lost some gains on my first char before finding out about this, but if it’s not explained clearly in the academy, I feel it definitely should be. It seems like something that would only serve to hamper newbies.

As for my broader experiences, I’ll start with the bad and end on a high note.

Disclaimer: I started roleplaying with, and have maintained over the last decade and a half, freeform IRC roleplaying, which has a heavier focus on RP than PvP, which has absolutely colored my view on LOTJ and it’s stronger focus on PvP than I’m accustomed to. That said, MUD or elsewise, the combat main has always been my love, and it made for an interesting experience here.

The Ugly: Dear God, Nar Shaddaa.

The Bad:
-The Empire. I’ll say this: At the beginning of Era 2, the Empire nailed it with creating an oppressive regime that kept everyone in their place. Unfortunately, this bled off in to the play experience for me, and I just felt like I couldn’t do much of anything. This was where and why my time on the MUD started to seriously fall off. The couple little whispers of rebellion I got involved in were slapped down before they could go anywhere, resulting in Imperial-realistic levels of punishment for the attempt. I don’t know if this was deliberate action to delay things, overzealous Imps, or just par for the course, but it definitely put me off.

-Gear Reliance: It might just be me, but I felt that gear was a more important part of combat than skills. My past experiences have been that armor and weapons are essential, but the remainder just provides little tweaks. A small bonus here, a little buff there. Here it seems that if you don’t have a full kit, you’re boned. I would love see gear that is, if not more subtle, at least more diverse. Some people might have carapace, some people might have some other item that confers a different, roughly equivocal benefit. Maybe make them situational. I dunno, it just felt stale that everyone wore the same stuff, and without it, they were a joke (Forcers excluded). While I joined up with a clan and was lucky enough to have the ins and outs explained to me early on, it also seems like another trap to eat up newbies that don’t know better.

-Teraan’s Dissolution: This is one that may well have been due to my (continued) lack of knowledge of LOTJ’s politics, but Teraan being dissolved at the end of Era 1 felt like a real blow. We were profitable, active, took a fairly large role in the EoE, AEW was more or less out of the picture to the best of my knowledge — everything seemed to be on track for us to carry over to E2. I found out we wouldn’t be when the Era 2 post went up, saying we’d dissolved. After spending the entire era in the clan doing what I could to keep it going, it came out of the blue and left a bitter taste. In the end I definitely enjoyed my main’s newfound (relative) freedom more than I expected to, but a little more transparency or forewarning would have gone a long way to easing that transition.

-More of a personal gripe, but I think the insistence that players only communicate through LOTJ should just be done away with. It seems to be no secret that most of the veterans are friendly and in regular contact with one another outside the game. When various people in our little group attempted to get together on IRC, we were told off for trying to set it up. I understand the idea behind this — that osay and OOC can be monitored, and thus metagaming can be weeded out. I heartily agree with the urge to do so; metagaming is the bane of good RP. But realistically, it can’t be done as is. On the other hand, OOC and osay just shatter immersion for me, the osay limit prevents in-depth discussion, and to be blunt, it’s a lot easier for me to get to know my fellow gamers without the whole world looking on.

With that out of the way, let me go ahead and say that for me, the good far outweighs the bad, and despite me being nowhere near as active now as I was in Era 1, I fully intend to try my hand again with a bit more free time in the next TL.

The Good:
-The Players: I could gush over this topic. While you’ll always have the occasional player that seems to be out to play their game at everyone else’s expense, I ran in to it far, far less here than elsewhere. My clanmates were great fun to play with and helpful. Despite my grievances with the Empire, the occasional Sith I encountered in E1 and 2 never came across as dickish; they seemed like good folks playing an evil role, and it made my far-outclassed combat main’s interactions with them far more enjoyable. I can say the same, with few exceptions, for the majority of groups that at one point or another were my adversaries.

-The Depth: Code-wise, this is far and away the best MUD I’ve played. The learning curve has been frustrating, but it has also been rewarding. I know full well I’ve haven’t come near to mastering combat, but the insights I’ve gained and the tips I’ve been taught — both for combat and other areas of the MUD — feel like accomplishments. I look forward to throwing myself back in the meat grinder.

-The Staff: I love the organizational structure of the staff. I think it’s lent a lot to what a positive experience I’ve had with them as a whole, be they Imms or RPC. They’ve always been helpful, and I’ve never felt brushed off or cut short by them.

On the whole, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time spent here. I’ve had my gripes, but even if nothing changes and I run in to the exact same problems I had the first go-round, I still plan on sticking around. I’ve never been one to play multiple MUDs at the same time, I feel too stretched thin and distracted. Instead, I’ve tended to just hop from one MUD to the next when I get bored, but I think I’ve genuinely settled here. “Boring” is not an issue I think I could ever raise here.

The couple little whispers of rebellion I got involved in were slapped down before they could go anywhere, resulting in Imperial-realistic levels of punishment for the attempt. I don’t know if this was deliberate action to delay things, overzealous Imps, or just par for the course, but it definitely put me off.

Yeah, this was my bad. There was a pretty decent Rebellion beginning to form up early on and I forced one of their members into the Empire with the intention that he would try to betray us. He ended up killing all of his co-conspirators so he could stay with us. I will freely admit that I fucked up on that one. It really didn’t recover after that.

Y’know, I’m actually glad to hear that. I never really considered it might be good intentions gone awry. Thinking it was a group of vets actively beating us down was disheartening; knowing it was just one guy going off the rails makes it much less problematic for me. Shit happens, and all.

-The Empire. I’ll say this: At the beginning of Era 2, the Empire nailed it with creating an oppressive regime that kept everyone in their place. Unfortunately, this bled off in to the play experience for me, and I just felt like I couldn’t do much of anything. This was where and why my time on the MUD started to seriously fall off. The couple little whispers of rebellion I got involved in were slapped down before they could go anywhere, resulting in Imperial-realistic levels of punishment for the attempt. I don’t know if this was deliberate action to delay things, overzealous Imps, or just par for the course, but it definitely put me off.
The Empire is meant to be an oppressive regime and I feel we did pretty well conveying that. That said, we as players know that we needed to cultivate rebellion, and several things were purposely /not/ done, in order to try and facilitate that. We (I) also realize that due to the oppression laid down by the Empire, this is also one of the parts during the timeline in which the player base takes a dip. (I have been on both sides of the Empire era.) We know, from an ooc standpoint that we need to try and keep it FUN on an ooc level while also also RPING the Imperial government.

-Gear Reliance: It might just be me, but I felt that gear was a more important part of combat than skills. My past experiences have been that armor and weapons are essential, but the remainder just provides little tweaks. A small bonus here, a little buff there. Here it seems that if you don’t have a full kit, you’re boned. I would love see gear that is, if not more subtle, at least more diverse. Some people might have carapace, some people might have some other item that confers a different, roughly equivocal benefit. Maybe make them situational. I dunno, it just felt stale that everyone wore the same stuff, and without it, they were a joke (Forcers excluded). While I joined up with a clan and was lucky enough to have the ins and outs explained to me early on, it also seems like another trap to eat up newbies that don’t know better.
If you are a combat orieted character, gear and feats will /always/ be something you are reliant on. As humans we will use every advantage afforded to us (short of cheating) in order to ensure a better outcome in a pvp situation. Taking away gear takes away a lot of the flavor and richness of the mud.

-Teraan’s Dissolution: This is one that may well have been due to my (continued) lack of knowledge of LOTJ’s politics, but Teraan being dissolved at the end of Era 1 felt like a real blow. We were profitable, active, took a fairly large role in the EoE, AEW was more or less out of the picture to the best of my knowledge — everything seemed to be on track for us to carry over to E2. I found out we wouldn’t be when the Era 2 post went up, saying we’d dissolved. After spending the entire era in the clan doing what I could to keep it going, it came out of the blue and left a bitter taste. In the end I definitely enjoyed my main’s newfound (relative) freedom more than I expected to, but a little more transparency or forewarning would have gone a long way to easing that transition.It was my understanding that its dissolution shouldn’t have come as a surprise. That said, it needed to be wiped out, as we needed new clans after a 10 year jump, and to be honest, TEC probably would have been wiped out pretty fast had they not been dissolved.

-More of a personal gripe, but I think the insistence that players only communicate through LOTJ should just be done away with. It seems to be no secret that most of the veterans are friendly and in regular contact with one another outside the game. When various people in our little group attempted to get together on IRC, we were told off for trying to set it up. I understand the idea behind this — that osay and OOC can be monitored, and thus metagaming can be weeded out. I heartily agree with the urge to do so; metagaming is the bane of good RP. But realistically, it can’t be done as is. On the other hand, OOC and osay just shatter immersion for me, the osay limit prevents in-depth discussion, and to be blunt, it’s a lot easier for me to get to know my fellow gamers without the whole world looking on.We may be friendly and in contact outside the game, but the rules of not discussing lotj matters still applies, and people when caught, are punished. In an rp enforced environment you /have/ to disallow things like irc chat and such, otherwise why even have the rule?

With that out of the way, let me go ahead and say that for me, the good far outweighs the bad, and despite me being nowhere near as active now as I was in Era 1, I fully intend to try my hand again with a bit more free time in the next TL.

The Good:
-The Players: I could gush over this topic. While you’ll always have the occasional player that seems to be out to play their game at everyone else’s expense, I ran in to it far, far less here than elsewhere. My clanmates were great fun to play with and helpful. Despite my grievances with the Empire, the occasional Sith I encountered in E1 and 2 never came across as dickish; they seemed like good folks playing an evil role, and it made my far-outclassed combat main’s interactions with them far more enjoyable. I can say the same, with few exceptions, for the majority of groups that at one point or another were my adversaries.
I am glad that you were able to separate the IC behavior from OOC. Some people can’t and it, to me is the mark of a good player who can separate

I am a really new player and I am not sure if this is the right place to start asking my questions, but I will anyway

What is a Timeline? What is an Era? I have been reading a lot of comments on the forums about these but I still dont have a clear idea what they are.

Who command
In other muds, I would have the ability to see who is online. Perhaps I am doing this wrong, but I dont know who is on, anyone that I have talked to or anyone from my clan? I mean I try to make a showout on clantalk just so people can see my name but i dont think that is very common to do that. Makes me as a newbie player feel isolated because I have no clue what I am doing.

Outside of the academy, I have no clue what I am doing. I have been helped out a bit by some clan members but the really at lost to figure out what to do next. Seems to have a very very steep learn curve.

Just my 2 cents

Eras are timeframes in which major story arcs happen. Era 1 of this timeline was Hapans vs Republic, Era 2 was Empire and Rebellion, Era 3 was a bunch of smaller clans vying fpr power in the wake of the Empire’s destruction. Eras end wjth a large MUD-wide event that pulls things in to some kind of conclusion, and then you jump in to the next Era, usually with a time jump as well.

Timelines are the continuities in which Eras take place. This current timeline encompasses the thred Eras I mentioned. At the end of this Era, all characters will be wiped and a new timeline begins. The different Eras within a TL share continuity — events of Era 1 are part of the history of Eras 2 and 3. A new timeline means that history is wiped clean, and a new one begins.

The who list, at best guess, only shows Imms to prevent meta gaming. If you’re a hunter looking for Joe Schmoe, being able to check the who list would immediately tell you if he’s around and available for the killing. If you see a ton of known members of a clan on, you wait until few or none are on to break in to their base/steal their planets. Announcing yourself on coms seems to be a pretty standard practice to let people know you’re available.

As for what to do now… yes, there is a very steep learning curve. I suggest leaning on your clanmates to let you know how you can help or what you need to do. Failing that, hang out in hubs, meet characters, RP.

Who clan can be used to tell you how many clan members are on but it is ooc info. Also it will not tell you if they are afk etc.. Arkania is a pretty good planet for RP, Corellia and Nal Hutta are other big ones right now. Asking questions on ooc and Rping IC are going to be the biggest help right now IMO.

‘Been a good couple of pages of feedback here now, so I’d like to cover a few of the points raised.

I think Walldo and I are both coming to an agreement on the fact that the Newbie Academy needs a rework, and this is something we’ll get to doing. For myself, I’d like to see it stripped down and streamlined so there are less odd branching paths towards the end and do away with most, if not all of the blank Bahnvar Station stuff.

Reliance on gear in regards to PvP is always going to be part of the system, to a certain extent. It drives the player economy, keeps developments and exploration of otherwise deserted planets relevant. Less gear available straight out of npc shops is something we’ve been wanting for a while, and may well be the case next timeline as a few old (and new) quests and item sets re-appear.

I don’t want to go into any detailed response re: IC events and anyone’s opinions of them, as it’s changeable every timeline and not really relevant to ‘the Newbie experience’, but if I may: I will just briefly say that KoolAidMan is incorrect in the assumption that the Imperial era is when the player base declines as over the years it has consistently given us our highest numbers; and that while it can be difficult to start out on the wrong side of a regime as oppressive as The Empire, It’s my opinion that those in command of it did an exceptional job where they could of balancing the portrayal of that expression with trying to make the game actually fun for people. It’s a difficult balance, and there are always going to be members of the player base short – sighted and lack-witted enough to think that killing everyone is fun for everyone involved, but it was definitely one of the most responsible ‘evil’ clans we’ve seen. To put it a simpler way (and this is more relevant to the older players than to the new, so will be the last word I say on it) – a player that is arrested or captured and released is going to keep playing, even if they then hold a grudge against the bad guys, and you get much more storyline and inter-player rivalry stemming from that. A player immediately annihilated in space for not understanding the ‘hail’ command or permed for using the frown emote at an NPC is most definitely not going to keep coming back to add to our numbers.

On the Newbie channel, and potential ‘newbie helpers’: I’m not sold on this point, I’ve witnessed it done on smaller games and never been overly impressed with the implementation – too many ways in which it would need to be regulated. Channel separation is not a bad idea at all, though.

On Newbie support outside of the academy, and initial levelling: I think Arkania is the closest we’ve come to getting it ‘right’, and we need to spread this model around to other planets rather than continually have people gravitate to an iceball at the ass end of the universe.

Thanks for your feedback so far, keep it coming!

Ralen rolled out this lovely update to character generation that should hopefully make it easier.

*Removed the Basic/Advanced choice from character generation.
*Updated redundant website links/AIM addresses sent to the player during.
Website URLs have been updated throughout.
*Added a short welcome message if players indicate they’ve never played LOTJ before
*Added a line to the email address prompt explaining it is for account recovery.
*Reduced some of the wall-of-text language on race select screen.
*Racial stats now also show to a new character when selecting a race.
*Removed the need to manually add +3 to each stat while going through chargen, this is automatically done and the step is skipped.
*Added a warning on BH class selection that they can’t join clans and are considered ‘advanced’.
*Hid the list of haircolours for ‘bald’ races when they reach that step.
*Improved the formatting on the score time/level/stat commands.