Newbies, What Upset/scare You All?

[Burns]

The thing about quests is, they run for some time, are finished, and get put ad acta.

There's no lasting quest for newbies, save for the loreroot guards and their side quests.
I can try to keep that little tutorial there for some time, but i'll eventually stop bothering to update it, and definitely will stop to announce it, and it will lie just as forgotten as many other tutorials that were written over the time. And i would know, i have participated in the creation of several.

[explorer]

I'm only a day or two in, so for whatever that or this is worth:

I have a habit of playing a game for a couple hours and abandoning it - came here because the banner said "different," and it seems to be (and my interest has lasted more than two hours )

Throwing in classes and all the rest of the RPG Standard Operating Procedure would be, well, standard. I have no clue what, if anything, the choice of magic principles does in gameplay, but I am intrigued by the very vagueness - very different from the same old "mage/sorcerer/cleric, fire/ice/illusion school, raise int/dex/wis, etc. stuff, which are old hat and predictable. If you want marketability, maybe it would help, I am of the opinion that most people want what they already know, see: tv and radio programming (at least everywhere I've lived), but it would seem to remove a part of the niche appeal (and could you pick up a sizable chunk of the people who want something closer to the same old thing with graphics consisting of charcoal drawings? I honestly don't know, but it strikes me as unlikely)

I haven't figured out any of the puzzles yet, but I'm probably not the one to ask, I've never been too good at questing.

And I like the asterisks - I just used them expecting them to show up as I typed them, after (charactername:) Seems pretty standard on message boards and chat. Was pleasantly surprised at the function. *nods in approval*

Emotes are distinct from actions? Guess I don't know the scene that well.

Is there an explanation of controls/gameplay/non-spoiler concepts somewhere other than those two in-game pages? Pretty sure those answer the creature healing question Novice asked; at the moment I'm wondering what the "bind vitality" listed on my rituals means. Oh, is that the defense value I set for the ritual when I bound it? Guess I'll check on that next combat round.

[Kamisha]

Bind vitality is using a percentage of your vital energy on the ritual by doing so you apply some of your profile stats to your creatures. For example you have maybe 20 attack (ussually alot more) on your profile and you bind 100% vitalty that 20 attack will be evenly distributed to all your creatures in the battle. It willl also over charge your creatures vitality. However the vital energy lost in the fight will be direct damage to you. If you lose the fight you can lose up to the percent you put in.

As for principle magic they are only used for tokens right now (you can read up alot on them). Though there is likely going to be more uses for them in the future but Mur (creator) is still working out how they will work without unbalancing things.

[Amoran Kalamanira Kol]

[quote name='Udgard' timestamp='1285150099' post='68854']
Well, that's what I meant. /me might be 'universal' on some places, but maybe not as universal as you think. I know it's not common knowledge here at my place. And also, is /me an emote, or an action? It is common to use * to denote action (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*#Games),as is its intention in MD, hence why the roleplayers here is accustomed to it - they've been using the *s before the feature to turn it to blue texts even existed.

I'd agree that it wouldn't [i]hurt[/i] to add it to the mix, though..
[/quote]

/me is a command that is used in a program called mIRC, which is a giant chat/trading program. It's sometimes used for role playing because of the fact that it gives you the option to code certain commands into a channel. So if your role playing and decide that you want your channel to have a dice rolling command, you can program this into the channel and use it.

Sorry, off topic explanation.

[Rudakus]

Just thought I'd throw my thoughts in for you guys. I just found this game today and have just gotten to the first 24 hour meditation period. So figured I'd give you guys my opinions. I actually think that the extended breaks(meditations) from the game are a good idea ( but if you don't like them I do like the options to lower the time away for lower bonuses). The time away allows for players to go explore and do other things so as to not get burned out or go through the main story to quickly.

Any way so far I'm really liking the game. I do like how the community doesn't tell people everything and allows us to discover things on our own. I like the art work and the writing is extremely well done. I've been reading as much as I can and am no where near understanding most of what Im reading on the forums lol but I'll get it. Any way the reason I mention that is it seems to be a well done background etc. to this world and I'm excited to jump in! To early to say much more but after a couple more days I'll check back in

Oh like a previous poster the one thing that did cause some confusion was the principles. I understand that it doesn't have much use but you are increasing them quite a few times and I still had no idea what I was choosing other than the info from them (I liked the descriptions) One question though I have 3 principles but now those are the only options when one gets leveled up just want to make sure that you cn't limit yourself like that this early in the game without knowing what's going on.

[Kyphis the Bard]

You can chose a number of principles equal to your MP level, so when you advance to MP4 you will get a new one, and again at MP5

[Zelath]

Hey there.. sience im a week old i thought i should put some letters into play here..

Well sience this game is Different (blessed be) it takes time to get it. What to do and what i can get away with. Sience the beginning is constructed to lack information, had to choose anyway and didnt bother researching info.. so still dont kno if it turn outs as i thought or to me liking. But sience i lack information and had no preconcived idea of the game, me character still well lacks character.. A lot of me interaction with others been thru me game-tech wonderings, and not Zelaths wonderings. So the startup been confusing in order to play me role..
and that leads to playing me part. i adore this idea of co-crationism.. trying to find out more how it works out in MD, and its been a pleasent sursprise thus far i tell ya - but still aint got a real idea for what part i want me charachter to play. if id like to be a smith - would i be able to play that more than just in words? or philosophising writing ethno-botanist that seeks enlightenment thru the game collecting and planting herbs?
Well its a hinderance by form..
Then its all that stuff around i got no idea how to use.. being someplace with Rescorses.. wtf can i do/use/make of 20 branches?
And all those unusuble items that i aint sure if its me lack of skill in writing commands as supposed to or lack of advance in game.. or that talking stone for that matter.. glad to find it, curiouse about it - but failed to interact with.

Oh Scared was the topic.. Yes yes.. what Scared me? At times not feeling in control and a bit fearful bout soon being out of things to do - but i kinda always come around thus far.. berserkers way.. tho an hour with pillars of harmony was frustrating til i found out they got deconnected haha..
And ya better do something bout that tourch thingy.. seemed like great fun.. just took a ton of time to discover i couldnt score cos all players i met was mp4 or above.. and stupid maze..

Ehm, in the archives i could read a ton of books - but when i got back i didnt find a way to do it again..

In general its a lot to take in understand and master - but ppl are helpful and nice. But i bet i think its worth it soon enough cos its far more than a point and click game. At times frustration to understand the fails i do ie the fighting system ie why me creatures cant find a target when its standing five in fornt of em and 1-2 id say fullfill the requirments i given,.. and i cant find the logic thru having the answer in me hand.. but experiment trail n error makes masters i guess..

thats i think is the issues and scares i met that is mostly connected to the game structure and such.. rest id say is mostly my own i bring to the game

Cheers!
Jonas/Zelath

[Riishaan]

I don't know that I want to give up, but some things that are a bit irritating.

I end up wasting AP's all the time because as I'm exploring a new area the arrows orientation isn't very intuitive and when I think I'm moving forward I end up moving backwards. The small help windows don't always show up on the arrows. Why not hilight the arrow that is in the direction I came from in a different color?

I was hyped that there would be puzzles to solve and I've only found 1 puzzle and by accident found the "clue" but am still no closer to solving it because I had no idea the 2 were interconnected. I believe I found another puzzle in a house, but it looks like the puzzle has been altered a few times.

The stats seem too vague to even be useful.

I've found all sorts of things to click on but not a whole lot in the terms of quests/puzzles that give me any sort of clue as what to type once I click on something. I heard I had to come to the forums to get player made quests. Doesn't that take me out of the immersion of the game, to have to come to some disconnected forum?

I'm in my 1st 24 hour meditation. I really don't see how the storyline even connects with my character at all since my character is running around exploring and getting creatures and battling and in the story I'm at a "Carnaval" and still have to wait 2 more hours now to continue the story.

Perhaps I'm missing the point to most of this. I was hoping the storyline would lead me into doing the puzzles/quests that the game advertised, instead of me stumbling upon them outside of the storyline.

I came from the mIrc era and understand /me, and understand that each system has their own implementation, but most games will expand and add all the various ways to start an emote/action. It's not like it's that hard to add it if it's your own code. Seems it would only enhance, and not detract from the gameplay since people are complaining about it.

My 2 cents. I think I've gained some more AP and will be able to do some more exploring. Should be able to continue the story in about an hour and a half or so.

[Burns]

You'll find most quests by reading people's quest docs, not on the forums.

[Riishaan]

Where would i find these quest docs? Or is that also a spoiler?

[Chewett]

You dont need to continue with that attitude, we are trying to help you. Saying stuff like "Or is that also a spoiler?" just makes people less likely to help.

When you click someones name, it will load their player icon up. Normally they will have small boxes with symbols on them. If you press them it will bring up each persons papers (certain symbols corrospond to certain papers) Some people have Golden Q papers. These will have a quest on them.

Also you can look at the "Quests" part at the top of the page, that will give a list of several.

[Riishaan]

No attitude intended. I thought i might legitimately be asking something I couldn't get an answer for.

On another note under my name there is a "K" document. I'm not quite sure what to do with it.

I also found out why the "clue" didn't match up with the puzzle. The graphic never loaded the 1st time i clicked on it, only the text, and the text made absoluetly no sense without the graphic. I've since solved that puzzle and have moved on and now stand before the doors that have no fate.

Thanks for all your help. I'm still out exploring...

[Chewett]

The K is another document. If you press it it will load up the Knowledge document interface.

You can only use this if you join someone elses "knowledge collection" and since there are few ones, and most of them are for special research projects. I would ignore it iv been here however long and still am not using that document.

[TTLexceeded]

I am a new player in this realm. 1 weak has passed since my beggining. Loreroot guards are still not down, i still get confused with puzzles and secrets and so on. Willing to learn i have searched the forum and learned amazing things, found really nice people (mp5s) with amazing quests and that also provide help in a not-spoiler way. I appreciate that. I would hate to see spoilers all the time and i even hate more people who wish this game to become more easy. Not beeing able to win the loreroot guards yet has made me speak with a lot of other people at my stage and situation, many nice talks and interesting discussions. Since i am playing with my best friend and we are discussing things i would like here to tell you his attribute about the loreroot guars yesterday when we were discussing about them: "If you beat them, please dont tell me how". Thats the attitude i believe people who just begun the game should have, and thats the attitude i am having. Its pretty nice to figure things for your self and to learn in your own way. Help should never mean telling me the way, help should mean giving me a hint when i have tried a lot just in the really wrong direction.
With Regards
TTL

P.S. I think that so far i have learned a lot more about the game mainly because i was searching the wrong way... Its good to get confused.

[Rumi]

[quote name='Tipu' timestamp='1283645625' post='67692']

Lore root Guards
The first set guards - an average player can defeat, but the second is way too hard to defeat them. The ritual has been changed there is no weakness in their strength. The old easy way of defeating the LR guards is now no more only brute force can take them down. Only players who have defeated them lately can understand what iam talking about. The Aimed Hit ability for LR archer have changed the Odds.
my request is players should not get personal EXP for Lost battles against LR guards. This will make many player to try and find solution by themselves rather than asking some one.

[/quote]

I am not exactly a new player, now with over 120AD, but I will share my experience and frustrations.

My biggest frustration has been learning the balance and the cycling and their relation to the XP cap. I made a big mistake in giving almost all my mp3 XP to two aramours and two barren souls.

I quoted Tipu's comment because this was a particular great source of frustration to me. The older players all spoke of defeating the guards in mp3 as rare but possible. I still haven't quite figured out effective use of many ritual elements, but I was able to determine what I needed to overcome the guards. However, I got a massive amount of personal XP before I realized the "traditional" loreroot guard ritual cannot work on mp3 without being augmented with some brute force. By the time I gained access to Loreroot, I had double the mp3 XP cap.

Now I am mp4 and just yesterday I entered Loreroot with the "traditional" ritual, which works just fine at this level. My frustration at this point as I said is the balance and cycling. Whether I win or lose fights, I seem to get enormous amounts of profile XP, and one or two fights can net a creature all the XP it needs for max level, but then it still needs over 100 more wins.

Looking at the math, I can see that balanced win/loss count may be the trick to staying below the cap, but I am scared to even engage with anyone, since I see how quick I am flying through mp4 experience.

[Maebius]

I am new to the game, as well, and what scared me was the complex (yet awesome) interface to things.

One suggestion would be a very, simple "interface FAQ" page with little labels as to what could be done or what to consider. There's a LOT of stuff to click on, so not everything needs labeled, but the important features outside of the left-most buttons (map, equipment, storymode, etc) were unknown to me without someone specifically pointing it out.

One example of this is, because all the good info was on the main screen, it took me at least five days to notice the teeensy [b]header[/b] with Announcements, Adventure Log, Forum Link, Free credits, etc. That's not scary, and now I'm glad it's so unobtrusive, but it was something I didn't know at first and upset me I didn't see the links some help-folks were mentioning to look at.... A static image-page of "The Game Screen" with highlighted regions and arrows/labels, "Header!", "Player Info", "Chat panel", "Players here", etc. Nothing too fancy, but just pointing out the general layout and ImportantStuff(tm) for us visual-learners. The "Game Intro" link is great, but does not mention the Player documents, (hatelist, Quests, etc) at all, which are apparently important to know?

Examples: [b] The yellow/orange "recharge creature Vitality".[/b] The help files mention it, but it was so small that I didn't notice it was "clickable" initially, and thought it was simply a visual "life bar", and kept trying to click the actual creature image (which shows detailed stats) and searching for the "Recharge Vitality button" from that screen. Perhaps because I was looking for something else, or maybe the fact that my tooltips seem to not always appear, I had been looking at the wrong page.

[b]The K documents, Hatelists, Quest docs, and such. [/b]
I also thought were simply "ranks/awards/badges" under the avatar's image, and hadn't considered clicking on them. Mouseover for those (to me, at least) does not show a popup tooltip info, so I ignored them until about hte tenth time I heard "Click their Q document" and realized the teeeensy little scroll had a Q on it, not just some symbol/rune. (this could simply be too big a screen resolution and poor eyesight on my part, but was still confusing)

[b] The realization that not all players here play in-character.[/b]
I had been asking around about the alliances, and heard more than half of the replies either state "Sorry, I don't roleplay" or "Ask the king", and such. Or flat out "I don't know, just fight until you can get to MP4". That was an odd answer.

Other than going to the forums, I've had difficulty finding HOW to message the kings of those lands, because in order to message someone in-game, you need to have seen them in-game (or at least had them walk through a region to get their name-link visible?)

Relatedly, the forums seem to be an extension [b]OF[/b] the Magic Duel lands, rather than an OOC community to support "The Game", which is how I view most other game forums. I wasn't quite prepared to be default-expected to go get all my info in the forums, particularly about in-character questions. I had avoided the forums because I assumed that since most information is considered "to be discovered in game, and not via spoilers", that the forums would not be a safe environment to go digging too deeply.
(this is not a complaint about the spoiler policy, I love that! It's different enough from other games and sites that I intentionally avoided the forums in order to not break immersion as much.. which seems to have been wrong way of viewing the forums)

Otherwise, I love what I've discovered so far! The items above are mainly little things, in the general picture, and probably serve to help filter out those who may not "get" the style of game this seems to be, and were looking more for your classic "kill things, get XP" type of webRPG.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Maebius

[Muratus del Mur]

warning long post ahead.


alright, its more clear for me now that i have a very unusual concept of how md should be .. because most of the things described as issues are planned to be so.

I know how a game should be, the cursive flow of solvable quests that keep you active, spiced with optional increased difficulty stages. The character classes with selectable sets of abilities ordered nicely in branches and such. etc etc ...etc

I am trying for 5 years to fight all that. MD is supposed to reach you indirectly and bring certain things in some to life, not to drag you step by step through a series of setups. Otherwise if i would have made md like that, and use the 'techniques' used in md, i would be a rich fat guy and MD would have zillions of users

I am not trying to make it more commercial. I am trying however not to scare away those that until now were attracted by md and used to stay.


I could explain each situation you describe as hindering to noobs, they are mainly the filters those that are around long enough heard of. I am not very sure i want to do that however. Its true they are not staded as such and they appear as a indirect result of how md is 'badly made' or 'unfinished'. Other things are really unfinished and will be eventually, like the full use of principles. Yet their MAIN use is the one to put players mind in motion and make him intrigued about them, wanting to digg more, and if he diggs he will find about them more than just a game means. In that aspect they act as great character attractors quite well. Obviously i cant say that in the help files.


One unexpected thing ..better said something with uncalculated effects... are the player quests. A rating could help quite a lot and its a planned feature since i implemented wishpoints. WP rating is related to quest quality, questi winner gets a wp and he can rate back depending on how valuable the quest seemed to him AFTER he solved it (to avoid frustrated people). One day will get done i hope. I can not guarantee over what players create as quests, and a new player might consider them as the game itself. I also don't plan on adding more integrated quests, md is not a series of quests, its not a series of anything..in fact everything should go in parallel not in series if you get my point.


And about /me vs ** thing.. in my opinion, which sadly is the only opinion that matters when it is about conceptual things in md, /me makes the speaker differentiate too much between in-character and out-of-character. I want a more natural behaviour of players not a theatrical one. when i started md i had no idea what role-play is (yeah)..my concept of role-play was that players will just be themselves but will obviously "fail" or better said "succeed" to be fully themselves , so the played character will be eventually different than they are in reality. By that, certain aspects of their true self will come forth and could be enhanced, trained, or changed, repaired. Interesting how rp looked for me back then when i didn't knew this thing had a name assigned to it.
So /me won;t be added to the list of rp triggers because is suited in an environement where slash is used for various other commands, not in one where i can use whatever else i consider appropriate. Keeping standards is obviously not my concern. MD defies standards in itself.



[b]Suggestion:
Will it do a major difference if before registration a clear message will be shown to the future player, stating very clear that MD is not a game where you have to do things in order so you get to its end, but a WORLD where you enter by doing those things but in the end you are on your own to experience it as you can.[/b]

this message could also have a 10sec delay so you cant click next just to skip it, dictatorship style, so they get used to things around here

Most..sorry, all... of the people that managed to understand what md is are those that somehow developed their so called "role" in ways that have nothing to do with a predefined quest/adventure game. Its also them that managed to stick around most because from their point of view the things achieved are out of md's range...and its just so..md is just the ground that facilitates some things, but what things...it just up to you.
I am talking about people that changed their life with things learned here, changed themselves, and most interesting for me, managed to change others. I consider the active days to be of amazing accuracy of that, since you can't stay in a place that you fail to survive. They even have the needed 'error' in them, its called Venger ..i need one day to meet that guy and figure out how is it possible to play without playing, lol. (inside joke for those that look at active vet list)


I realised only recently what the effects of a 8-fold balance systems are,..not sure if you will understand this but ... "it reaches outside its reality".

Back on topic, your comments are VERY useful, those of the noobs that replied to this topic and had under 10 posts at the time they did contact me for a little thank you/welcome gift. (pray you dont have old alts or you will die in pain, lol). i didnt counted how many you are but to make things a bit more chalanging, this is valid only for the first 4 people to contact me.

spoiler so you see how things work.
as each character should do in md, i am adding to my requirements the things that i consider valuable in someone. that is very personal and only valid for certain cases, i do realise that, but its a personal role i play here and not how md is entirely.
The real reward stated above is actually for the noobs that were involved enough to check back if it was a reply to their post and also had the patience to read all this long post i wrote here, which in itself is sort of a personality filter too. Same like the 24h waiting.

My secret Ary will be following this too i hope or i will lock her in the dungeon with some zombies .. oh, we dont have a dungeon, hmmm...and no zombies...i wonder why..lol

[Curiose]

Hm... but how does one know that one has been following such a post as this, hmmm?

Personally, I like how there are a series of filters to make MD, MD. I dislike generic, and repetitious things, and this, certainly is not that at all. MD in itself, is basically what -you- make of it. Some people work hard to do the things they do, and despite that to some it may seem a bit 'top heavy,' you just have to look and see that it really isn't.

I do think that that notice integrated when new players join will be of help, because as I play, I see -a lot- of newbies trying to play this game as they would any regular game, and they get frustrated and give up. To me, that is disappointing, but at the same time, it's like the survival of the fittest.

[Kay Ingild]

Oh, I wish I'd added my response yesterday! But it might be useful information anyway, so here it is.

When I first started playing, the only things that actually scared me were things I'd read about on the forums: stat damage, and the possibility that someone could attack me with a particular ritual that would give me too much experience - which somehow seemed to be a bad thing. These don't seem scary to me anymore.

A few other things did frustrate me a little. On my very first day, it took me three or four minutes solid to find the "compass" that another player was telling me about, because I kept looking on the wrong side of the page. It also took me a long time to find the "log out" link... I'm completely serious! Finally, for a short while I was frustrated because I found it hard to find players I could defeat who would give me positive honour instead of negative honour. Two or three days later this stopped being a problem for me.


I'm not sure that a message would make a big difference... a small difference perhaps. As long as MD is categorized as a MMORPG (like it says right on the main page: "Browser MMORPG - Free to Play"), some people will expect it to be like all the others in fundamental ways. I think some people would still ignore a ten-second message or avoid reading it. (I've seen people in other games just click through a tutorial to get the free weapon at the end.)

I've just realized that since the main page was changed, it no longer says things like "Unique gameplay". Didn't it say something like, MD is more than just a game, too? Or convey the impression that there's more to MD than just fighting, or that figuring out the MD world is part of the game? (Or am I just dreaming?)

[Pipstickz]

The homepage was changed. Nobody likes it. Except the ones who do. But I don't.

[Passant the Weak]

Hello!

I am very new to teh game (1 week old or so), and I would like to post a few comments about what bothered me the most in my beginning.

But first of all, i'd like to say that I was attracted to the game (following a link in a voting site) precisely because the Main page stated that it was [b]different[/b]. I seem to remember it mentioned it being an [b]experience[/b] for teh player or something like that. nd that's why i registered.

That means, that the game play is something I won't complain about. I understand that i understand almost nothing about whats going on in my adventure... and yet I enjoy it.

So my remarks will be very basic about what had a bad influence on me in the beginning.

1. [b]Too much complex reading at the very beginning[/b]
Don't get me wrong: teh story is very good and shouldn't be simplified... But for example the Principles that you encounter at the very beginning and that you have to chose... I know its written that if you don't understand them, just follow your instinct. But I would have [b]very[/b] appreciated asummary of each principle in 1 sentence (just like a slogan if you see what I mean)

2. [b]Navigation through the map is sometimes confusing[/b]
The navigation interface, through the word art describing the scene is great. But it's confusing when you are used to classical games. in those games, the west is at the left and the east at the right. So it's easy to navigate. Here we have a piece of artwork that is not necessarily oriented towards the North. And I got confused a lot at the beginning when i did not know the places. Going west while I was following an arrow to the right...
My suggestion: put a compass indicating the North on each page

3. [b]Information on AP needed to reach a place[/b]
I don't know if the problem is on my side, but at some places, the arrows leading to the next secen don't provide information about that scene (name and number of AP required). For a newbye it's sometimes a trap: we follow an atrrow to realize it cost us all our remaining AP while we would have made an other choice if we knew it. Also in a place that requires more AP than your max, you would like to know how many you are missing, to build a strategy to go there. I had no problem going to ANgien shrine, just because I knew how many AP I was missing. However, exploring the tribunal, I faced a close door, and no idea of how many AP I am missing... hard to build a strategy then. If this is intentional, well, I don't get the fun of it. If it's just a missing information, then I think you would help newbyes by fixing it.

Thats all for me! Not big deal, as you can see.

For the rest, grats on building something... [b]different[/b]!

[Miq]

Well just as a my point of view the navigation is twisted as it is by intention. And after some fun of messing up you get used to it.

As for the AP i agree that they should be uniform. That is ap cost always there to see or never there to see.

[ignnus]

3/3 mind points kinda annoy me,why can't I spend it? Or can I?

[Pipstickz]

Mind Power is your current level in the game, and also how many principles you have currently. It is in the form x/y where x is the principles and y is your level. When (if) you advance to MP4, you will be 3/4 until you choose your next principle.

In other words, no you can't spend it, there's really no purpose for showing you that I can think of...unless you forget.

[Kamisha]

[quote name='Muratus del Mur' timestamp='1294890670' post='77342']
warning long post ahead.


alright, its more clear for me now that i have a very unusual concept of how md should be .. because most of the things described as issues are planned to be so.

I know how a game should be, the cursive flow of solvable quests that keep you active, spiced with optional increased difficulty stages. The character classes with selectable sets of abilities ordered nicely in branches and such. etc etc ...etc

I am trying for 5 years to fight all that. MD is supposed to reach you indirectly and bring certain things in some to life, not to drag you step by step through a series of setups. Otherwise if i would have made md like that, and use the 'techniques' used in md, i would be a rich fat guy and MD would have zillions of users

I am not trying to make it more commercial. I am trying however not to scare away those that until now were attracted by md and used to stay.


I could explain each situation you describe as hindering to noobs, they are mainly the filters those that are around long enough heard of. I am not very sure i want to do that however. Its true they are not staded as such and they appear as a indirect result of how md is 'badly made' or 'unfinished'. Other things are really unfinished and will be eventually, like the full use of principles. Yet their MAIN use is the one to put players mind in motion and make him intrigued about them, wanting to digg more, and if he diggs he will find about them more than just a game means. In that aspect they act as great character attractors quite well. Obviously i cant say that in the help files.


One unexpected thing ..better said something with uncalculated effects... are the player quests. A rating could help quite a lot and its a planned feature since i implemented wishpoints. WP rating is related to quest quality, questi winner gets a wp and he can rate back depending on how valuable the quest seemed to him AFTER he solved it (to avoid frustrated people). One day will get done i hope. I can not guarantee over what players create as quests, and a new player might consider them as the game itself. I also don't plan on adding more integrated quests, md is not a series of quests, its not a series of anything..in fact everything should go in parallel not in series if you get my point.


And about /me vs ** thing.. in my opinion, which sadly is the only opinion that matters when it is about conceptual things in md, /me makes the speaker differentiate too much between in-character and out-of-character. I want a more natural behaviour of players not a theatrical one. when i started md i had no idea what role-play is (yeah)..my concept of role-play was that players will just be themselves but will obviously "fail" or better said "succeed" to be fully themselves , so the played character will be eventually different than they are in reality. By that, certain aspects of their true self will come forth and could be enhanced, trained, or changed, repaired. Interesting how rp looked for me back then when i didn't knew this thing had a name assigned to it.
So /me won;t be added to the list of rp triggers because is suited in an environement where slash is used for various other commands, not in one where i can use whatever else i consider appropriate. Keeping standards is obviously not my concern. MD defies standards in itself.



[b]Suggestion:
Will it do a major difference if before registration a clear message will be shown to the future player, stating very clear that MD is not a game where you have to do things in order so you get to its end, but a WORLD where you enter by doing those things but in the end you are on your own to experience it as you can.[/b]

this message could also have a 10sec delay so you cant click next just to skip it, dictatorship style, so they get used to things around here

Most..sorry, all... of the people that managed to understand what md is are those that somehow developed their so called "role" in ways that have nothing to do with a predefined quest/adventure game. Its also them that managed to stick around most because from their point of view the things achieved are out of md's range...and its just so..md is just the ground that facilitates some things, but what things...it just up to you.
I am talking about people that changed their life with things learned here, changed themselves, and most interesting for me, managed to change others. I consider the active days to be of amazing accuracy of that, since you can't stay in a place that you fail to survive. They even have the needed 'error' in them, its called Venger ..i need one day to meet that guy and figure out how is it possible to play without playing, lol. (inside joke for those that look at active vet list)


I realised only recently what the effects of a 8-fold balance systems are,..not sure if you will understand this but ... "it reaches outside its reality".

Back on topic, your comments are VERY useful, those of the noobs that replied to this topic and had under 10 posts at the time they did contact me for a little thank you/welcome gift. (pray you dont have old alts or you will die in pain, lol). i didnt counted how many you are but to make things a bit more chalanging, this is valid only for the first 4 people to contact me.

spoiler so you see how things work.
as each character should do in md, i am adding to my requirements the things that i consider valuable in someone. that is very personal and only valid for certain cases, i do realise that, but its a personal role i play here and not how md is entirely.
The real reward stated above is actually for the noobs that were involved enough to check back if it was a reply to their post and also had the patience to read all this long post i wrote here, which in itself is sort of a personality filter too. Same like the 24h waiting.

My secret Ary will be following this too i hope or i will lock her in the dungeon with some zombies .. oh, we dont have a dungeon, hmmm...and no zombies...i wonder why..lol
[/quote]

Sry but I don't care what anybody says here this is something I need for my ethnography report. *runs off in opposing direction scroll in hand*
I know I am supposed to keep RP out of the forums but there is just no better way to say it. This post explains why things are the way they are.

Edited February 8, 2011 by Kamisha