Legends of the Jedi Forums Making LOTJ More Friendly For Newbies Tutorials & Guides: a community effort
This topic has 14 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 2 months ago by Lyla.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
    • bagz Participant
      October 3, 2015 at 2:29 am #27016

      My fellow members of the LotJ community:

      I have recently returned from a hiatus of over a year to find the community right where I left it, which was encouraging to my nastalgia and inspiring to my desire to give back to this game I’ve been a part of for a large part of my life, over a decade now. I haven’t been much more than a lurker in the community until now, but I have a vision for how together we can develop a better new player experience for our favorite MUD.

      The number one issue with bringing in new players as I see it is the barrier that some experience when they try to play a text based game for the first time with no experience. I want to help develop a comprehensive new and returning player guide for the website that will present the whole of LotJ, the basics through the most complex systems, in a way that is concise and easy to navigate.

      I have a bunch of ideas but to keep this from becoming more of a wall of text than it already is, I will try to sum up what I’m asking of you, my fellow LotJ community members, for this project:

      – Brainstorming as a group to come up with an outline of topics to cover and the order in which to address them.
      – Fill in the content of each topic together so that we get a well rounded perspective.
      – Edit our brainstorm down into scripts for several short length video tutorials. (I’m dreaming big, 10-20)
      – Provide Feedback on the rough drafts when they get posted and help bring them to finished quality together.
      – Come up with creative ways to transfer the current help index into a glossary form on the website. (I’m thinking if we use html5 canvas and javascript we can animate the whole glossary of commands to show how each work in-depth)

      BLah Blah Blah!

      Fin

    • Paco Participant
      October 3, 2015 at 2:52 am #27017

      What’s your opinion of help newbie_index? In regards to something that could be transferred to the website.

    • bagz Participant
      October 3, 2015 at 3:10 am #27019

      I think there is a ton of quality info in there and it could be a large basis for the introductory tutorials.

    • Harlon Participant
      October 13, 2015 at 1:48 pm #27114

      As a new player, I agree with bagz that newbie_index could be used as a basis for introductory tutorials. It’s a great resource for those moments when I forget a command.

      However, there have been (and there will likely be) a lot of things I didn’t learn through the newbie_index and newbie spaceport. I’ve been compiling a list as I play, but here are the issues that I personally experienced as player returning to MUDs after a decade of not playing any:

      Races & Classes. A simple way to figure out which races fit which classes would be a huge help. Even if it’s just an additional help file that says “Hey newbie, here are the free races and the classes that they can reach tier 5 skills with.” That way a newbie doesn’t have to do <help races>, be overwhelmed by the full-screen list, then <showrace race> for a race they want to see information on, realize that race isn’t good at what class the player wants to pick, then rinse and repeat.

      New character area. I completely missed the spaceport on my first character. I followed the north path, and when I got out, I immediately went to graduation instead of exploring. I feel like the area should be a bit more linear; instead of having two directions for new players to go, just have one and teach both groups’ lessons there. The spaceport is well done (if the hallways aren’t a biiiit too long) and it teaches a number of important commands. I don’t know if the holster/draw command is taught there; it took me a while to figure that one out so that I could <suicide> my first character who joined a minor clan with nobody around on the least-populated clan-owned planet of Bespin.

      Finding & entering my clan’s base. When I entered the game with my second character, I was placed right in front of my clan’s base, but I didn’t even know it. In fact, the recommendations of “Start on Coruscant” that echo in the “select a clan” section of the new character tutorial confused me when I joined the clan but was not provided an option to select my planet. Through asking on (newbie), I was guided towards the clan building and given a tour. Thankfully people in the clan were online at that time; not all clans have that luxury. Anything that can help transition newbies towards places where other players gather would be a great help! Perhaps even recommend they stray away from a minor clan in favor of the Republic / Federation or no clan + Coruscant.

      How to use flashlights. Maybe I missed the lesson, but it took me forever to figure out <use flashlight>. My spamming caught the attention of an imm who kindly taught me how to turn on my light.

      Piloting. This is a particularly embarrassing lesson to learn as a new player who chose the piloting profession. Once I was finished with the clan tour, my clansmate assigned me access to a ship for flight practice. Standing in front of them, expected to hop into the ship, I had no idea what to do. <help ships> fills the screen with various commands that are great as a reference, but incredibly overwhelming for a newbie’s first flight. <help 13> & <help 14> are less overwhelming references, but they do not provide any instruction. <help pilotingfaq> is what I was looking for, but it doesn’t cover commands like <openhatch ship #####>. So a hands-on practice run on the spaceport would be a huge help. Maybe it’s there and I missed it. Anything to guide a new player through the process and give them confidence with the commands.

      Quests. There are a number of quests that I still haven’t figured out how to complete. The most confusing ones are the two smuggler quests on Coruscant (the newbie quest haven). The cop wants you to patrol as a cop, but he only slightly hints at killing. His conversation left me feeling like I needed to arrest spiced out citizens. The shady balosar wants you to push drugs, but I still haven’t figured out the command to do so. I haven’t started as a smuggler yet, but I would be pretty bummed if I was a newbie that figured out those were my two initial leveling options.

      Just a few thoughts.

      TLDR: Guides that would be very helpful: Race/Class combos; navigating clan base / clan comms; additional basic commands (flashlights); piloting; Coruscant quests

    • illyduss Participant
      October 15, 2015 at 12:19 am #27146

      How not to get killed, Tutorial by Illyduss

      Log in with you character name and password. Type 9054.

      Type Quit.

    • illyduss Participant
      October 15, 2015 at 12:20 am #27147

      No but seriously good idea on the tutorials. I would offer to write one, but… I think I might help on piloting and that is about it.

    • frumpalumpaguss Participant
      October 15, 2015 at 7:46 pm #27155

      Truthfully, I’ve been trying to get the wiki back up and running so i can clean it up. It takes some Rojan-magik first, which is mega-rare and can only be found in certain parts of the world. But if I get it up and running, this would be some good stuff to add to it, methinks.

    • Walldo Keymaster
      October 25, 2015 at 3:34 am #27211

      Hey start spitting out a bunch of ideas for potential website tutorials ITT (in this thread)!

    • bagz Participant
      October 25, 2015 at 11:04 pm #27228

      yeah this dialogue is getting productive! I’ve been thinking alot this week about it and after doing some HTML logging I realized we can easily do command tutorials that way too!

    • Ryken Participant
      October 25, 2015 at 11:16 pm #27229

      As you all have noticed by my OOC spamming, I’ve educated myself on slicing, and feel like I could turn my knowledge into a tutorial that would benefit many greatly, code only, succinct instructions and nothing IC. But learning everything from the game and what I could yank grudgingly from OOC was a chore and a half.

    • bagz Participant
      October 26, 2015 at 1:19 am #27234

      yeah for sure! let’s figure out how to use the html logs to get this together in basic form and looking enough like the game to not confuse newbs.

    • Walldo Keymaster
      October 31, 2015 at 7:21 pm #27277

      I’m gonna spit out a list i came up with. Not all of these would end up being the same length or depth – some might only be a paragraph, some might be a few pages long.

      How to make credits
      Take Command Of The Fleet (navy combat)
      Master The Force (how force works)
      Explore A Vast Galaxy (lots of things to discover)
      Specialize In 1 of 11 classes (class system)
      Finding the right clan for you
      Explaining chargen
      Explaining the relationship between class, race and maxlevels
      Your first 15 minutes on LOTJ
      Your first hour on LOTJ
      Your first two hours on LOTJ
      Your first five hours on LOTJ
      gearing up for combat
      how battlegroup works
      explaining quests
      how to level

      explaining the era/timeline system
      explaining playerdeath
      the account system
      what points are for
      commnet zero is the public IC chatterbox
      The basic of flying
      What is the RPC?
      Meet the staff
      Explaining OOC
      explaining botting/triggers

      Spit more topics/concepts at me and I’ll add them to the internal list we’re working on.

    • Olrac Participant
      November 6, 2015 at 1:40 am #27295

      http://www.legendsofthejedi.com/forums/topic/stat-training-guide-request/

      Thought I’d drop this here, I found it to be very useful in understanding the not so obvious things about stats. This would go great on the wiki as right now all the wiki has under attributes is “These are the stats that help determine your skill levels and many other aspects of the game.”

    • Cragon Participant
      January 20, 2021 at 10:12 pm #32291

      As a newbie just out of the Academy I find getting around to different places very difficult. A map would help so are there any available?

    • Lyla Participant
      January 28, 2021 at 4:02 pm #32303

      Alright so I had never played a Mud before since last timeline. Still feeling new and a bit lost at times. I’m still discovering basics which at times is frustrating. The main thing I wanted when I started was a complete layout of tier one quests. It took me forever to figure out that I didn’t need to always put “use” “push” etc before the action word needed to interact. Like how you enter the ships in the junkyard on Tatooine. Also not knowing that I need to say something to start missions with certain NPCs. Having a list or several examples using VERY similar language would be very helpful. Also a list of planets that have tier one quests and what they level.
      Next, I often turn off OOC because it pulls me out of the game emersion. As a result I have missed some valuable information other players ask. I know the Newbie channel is for this, but everyone replies on OOC so you need both on. Would love to have a channel where it is just questions about game mechanics and help and there replies.
      Lastly a details guide, like how there is a channel made to translate channel 0, certain clothes allow you to carry more, there are ways to be spied on via cameras around,. Little things like that I guess. I don’t want to get rid of all discovery, but a few key things like that can make play much more fun.

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