Ease of Use Suggestions (from a new player)
Posted: 12 Jul 2018 21:44
Hello,
I'm brand new to Genesis (having come from the PC Gamer article) but I was a Mudder in the late 90s/early 00's and since then have played a lot of Dwarf Fortress, Aurora and Roguelikes. I say that all to put my suggestions into perspective - I completely understand that MUDs are not 'WoW but with text instead' or anything like that, but I also feel that after coming back to MUDs there's a lot that could be done to make things more straight forward to the newer player. I've made a little list below for those interested:
- A 'Loot all' command: whilst 'looting' was not as difficult as the PC Gamer article made it sound, it's not particularly straight forward either - especially when it's so important to early game play. For bonus points, a 'loot toggle' which would automatically pick up everything would be great.
-A 'Kill All' command: likewise, it'd reduce the grind a lot if you could just attack everything. Sure, you may not want to do this in other areas, but for wiping out rabbits etc. it'd be very useful. I tried to search for this command for quite some time.
- Equipment persistence: I know there's been a lot of debate and posts detailing why this is the case, but I honestly feel that it's needlessly complex and has the potential to turn a lot of newer players away. Whilst there may be lots of meta reasons, from a newbie perspective its just: 'worked hard, got cool stuff->logged out->come back the next day excited to play with my dragonsword of exaliblow +3->stuff gone->never return'. As you can already jump through a few hoops to protect your stuff, I feel it should be the default behaviour. If this breaks the flow for guilds a bit, I feel that it could be handled with a 'if you join a guild (other than the starting guild), you won't default keep your stuff' - this would make it a choice, and a sort of 'payment' for joining a guild.
- Signs: They work pretty well for not breaking immersion or annoying players, but I do feel like some of the super important information would be better handled in a 'forced' manner like a conversation - perhaps with a command to skip if you're a returning player. It's easy to miss a sign and miss out on a whole system.
- Capitalisation standardisation: to level up skills, you have to type it in lower case; this led me to being confused why I couldn't learn 'Sword' when I could clearly see it in the list.
- More straight forward first quest: I just feel it could do with a bit of tightening up. For instance, make Farmer Browns wife chat to you about the quest regardless of what you say. Make the mother rabbit be in the hen house etc. it's not that I'm against having a more complex starting quest than 'kill 10 rats', it's just that for someone new (or returning after a long hiatus) you don't want to be trying to figure out if it's the quest or the syntax you're getting wrong.
I understand all of these things will have fans, and there may well be very good reasons why the above don't work. I certainly don't mean to say what is right or wrong as I certainly haven't been playing long enough to make any sort of judgements, I just wanted to share what it feels like to a new player.
I'm brand new to Genesis (having come from the PC Gamer article) but I was a Mudder in the late 90s/early 00's and since then have played a lot of Dwarf Fortress, Aurora and Roguelikes. I say that all to put my suggestions into perspective - I completely understand that MUDs are not 'WoW but with text instead' or anything like that, but I also feel that after coming back to MUDs there's a lot that could be done to make things more straight forward to the newer player. I've made a little list below for those interested:
- A 'Loot all' command: whilst 'looting' was not as difficult as the PC Gamer article made it sound, it's not particularly straight forward either - especially when it's so important to early game play. For bonus points, a 'loot toggle' which would automatically pick up everything would be great.
-A 'Kill All' command: likewise, it'd reduce the grind a lot if you could just attack everything. Sure, you may not want to do this in other areas, but for wiping out rabbits etc. it'd be very useful. I tried to search for this command for quite some time.
- Equipment persistence: I know there's been a lot of debate and posts detailing why this is the case, but I honestly feel that it's needlessly complex and has the potential to turn a lot of newer players away. Whilst there may be lots of meta reasons, from a newbie perspective its just: 'worked hard, got cool stuff->logged out->come back the next day excited to play with my dragonsword of exaliblow +3->stuff gone->never return'. As you can already jump through a few hoops to protect your stuff, I feel it should be the default behaviour. If this breaks the flow for guilds a bit, I feel that it could be handled with a 'if you join a guild (other than the starting guild), you won't default keep your stuff' - this would make it a choice, and a sort of 'payment' for joining a guild.
- Signs: They work pretty well for not breaking immersion or annoying players, but I do feel like some of the super important information would be better handled in a 'forced' manner like a conversation - perhaps with a command to skip if you're a returning player. It's easy to miss a sign and miss out on a whole system.
- Capitalisation standardisation: to level up skills, you have to type it in lower case; this led me to being confused why I couldn't learn 'Sword' when I could clearly see it in the list.
- More straight forward first quest: I just feel it could do with a bit of tightening up. For instance, make Farmer Browns wife chat to you about the quest regardless of what you say. Make the mother rabbit be in the hen house etc. it's not that I'm against having a more complex starting quest than 'kill 10 rats', it's just that for someone new (or returning after a long hiatus) you don't want to be trying to figure out if it's the quest or the syntax you're getting wrong.
I understand all of these things will have fans, and there may well be very good reasons why the above don't work. I certainly don't mean to say what is right or wrong as I certainly haven't been playing long enough to make any sort of judgements, I just wanted to share what it feels like to a new player.