Critique of the Newbie Academy

[Higa Yamamoto]

Because it was my first time, because I had no idea what to expect, because I didn't know about the resources located on the forums, I started off NarutoMUD at the academy. It was made for people like me, an entrance to a new world, a glimpse of the things to come.

My initial reaction was from the colour scheme and it was ... unique; it wasn't vibrant, but there were definitely one too many colours.

I started my tour by opening the door to the east, then up the stairs, then into the janitorial hall and suddenly a huge sense of lost swept over me. The room descriptions lacked any sort of direction, lacked any sort of knowledge that I might have needed. I then retraced my steps back down to the first floor, to the original room. From there, I opened the south door, decided to skip the administration room, and unwittingly found myself in the male washroom. Again, the room desc failed to teach me anything or point me in any direction that would have been of use to me.

Definitely because of my zealousness to explore a ranked Naruto MUD, I trudged on, heading back to the second floor, when I found my first classroom, 1A. I did enjoy the fact that the word blackboard was highlighted, but because I am a seasoned MUDder, that was unnecessary (although appreciated, since my initial exploration proved vexingly fruitless). To my disappointment, the only important thing it contained was the word genjustsu (which I then looked up on help). The following rooms would prove to be the same, where each room would only contain minimal information. Although I say minimal, I understand that it is there as an introduction to said features. However, a less convoluted way, with much more practical info would have been better, i.e. instead of have having 3 different rooms for tai, gen, and nin, a single room introducing the whole levelup/leveldown and prac/slist would have been more direct and useful.

After scouring the rooms for nearly any info except for keywords, I decided I was done with the academy and it was time to enter into the actual world of NarutoMUD. Boy was I wrong. What I then endured was the most painful experience of any tutorial area I have ever encountered. The slips, and forcing you to walk around was understandable, to teach new players the importance of reading desc hints revealing hidden rooms. What was most frustrating was the last portion when the administrator said I needed to train. So I tried each jounin to see if they could train any or my stats, no luck. So I tried the library to study, didn't have enough int, no luck. So I walked into each room to see anything I missed about train, and indeed I did miss the instructions about LSC. So digging up info on the help files, testing each LSC command (kata, treewalk, waterwalk, etc) I finally found one that worked, chakramold, and I molded my chakra until I figured out what I was supposed to do (that didn't take "too" long, except the helpfile was completely useless), and I molded my chakra until I got a +1 con. Returning back to the first floor admin, I found out nothing had changed: I still could not graduate.

Let me pause here to say, I tried to search through every single room; that I am not an idiot; that after 13 years of MUDding, I have learned much about reading and thinking and analyzing. Yes I realize that I was supposed to go to the training field "now", except during all the times (5+) I was looking in there, there was a single room, which never had enough room for me to go into. Thus the only rational thought I had was that it was just out of bounds for me. Nobody on the newbie channel would provide any help, scared to break a rule about revealing help on missions. It wasn't until I ranted my situation out to an imm that he realized the room was just occupied by a mob and told me to keep trying the room I was never able to go in.

The ridiculous colour scheme, the complete lack of initial direction, the minimal amount of information gained, the multiple typos (there were at least 3, which is quite a bit), the incredible sense of frustration... I don't even know why I stayed. Well, I know it didn't get a 75 rank for nothing on MudConnector.

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying my stay here so far. I'm quite intrigued by the shuuren, kata, handseals system. I love the unique LSC training system (although pushup/situp seem like a complete waste of my time/stamina as a new player [the gains are so minimal that they're unnoticeable]).

The Newbie Academy on the other hand... Like I said before, I actually wanted to get to know NarutoMUD, or else the academy would have the last straw. I don't want to say it's bad, but there can definitely be a lot of improvements. (How about making the last room not a private room).

[Gatz]

Thank you for the review. The Newbie Academy is odd point for me, and has had about 4 full redesigns through the course of our history. I see your points and thank you for taking the time to clearly outline your thoughts. I'd also like to say, please report any typos you find on the bug board, we really do try to stomp those out as much as possible. Also, if you have any ideas oh what sort of changes you'd like to see to the Academy, I'd like to hear them.

Really, NM's academy I, conceptually, wanted to stylize after Discworld, which had one that was very difficult. However, i wanted to make it possible to solve without being absolutely mind bending and near impossible, it has no hints and it involves using commands they never teach you about and are not located in any newbie help files. The goal is to give a newbie a challenge that would test their ability to take in information, some of which is obviously not direct, and apply that. Sort of giving a taste of how missions will be for that player once they get to that stage.

I see a lot of what you're saying and I'm not sure we'll ever have a 'perfect' Academy, with feedback from players such as yourself, I think we can get very close. Thanks again for the review!

[Higa Yamamoto]

A tutorial area is never easy, and each MUD tries to design them with a different goal in mind. You have to cater to those who may have no MUD experience at all to those that are just new to your MUD. As I recall, there was not a great deal of general MUD know-how for those that have never played before (which is fine). Here are a few improvements I think you can make.

Most importantly, how/what type of information you present can be changed. The most important information you should include are introductions to all the unique systems that you have here on NarutoMUD, i.e. LSC, character skill customization (train/untrain, levelup/leveldown), etc. The general introduction to tai, nin, and gen, prove to be of little use in comparison to knowing the existence of LSC/how to be able to use LSC. I think a better description of the systems should be on the blackboards, if the people want to read deeply into them; that is, the academy is supposed to be *the* place where they can learn about how to survive your world, if they don't get that much then, it's not very effective is it?

(which brings me to another issue, affect v. effect. That was one most annoying typos I saw. I'm no english major, but like your biography rules, punctuation and grammar are incredibly important especially in a text-based world. In the room descs of the NA, improper use of both (affect and effect) were rampant. It just shows a lack of ability on the owner's/builders' part.)

A minor, but significant change is correcting private rooms. Namely, there isn't any reason why the room with trainer in the training field needed to be private. I noticed that a few of the rooms were also private (a hallway was), and those are unnecessary.

N.B. I was particularly glad to hear a response from you. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect writing here. What made it even better was seeing your viewpoints/what direction you wanted to head in. I've been MUDding for a long time, and it suddenly occured to me that a Naruto-based mud could be incredibly fun. Seeing as how you were ranked, I thought I'd give you guys a chance. One thing that you must keep doing is continue to keep your MUD a challenge. I've played through multiple generic MUDs that were particularly easy; and although it was awesome for a time, after reaching the pinnacle for a while, things get boring. I've been an imm on a few different MUDs, and I know how hard it can be running a MUD. I wish you guys well.