An old one's thoughts.

[Kiir]

Well, it's apparently been ages since anyone's actually reviewed, and I feel a slight need to do so, especially since I played years ago, and coming back to have a different view from the average person. So here goes. And, I'm really harsh when it comes to reviews, and I apologize in advance.

To start off, back in the day, there was little to keep older players, especially those who were higher level, around. Leveling was slow, it really sucked to spend two weeks leveling from, say, 70 to 71. Even more so if you happened to die from something (whether it in your control, just bad luck, or lag). Gatz, you were around even less back in that day as well, and there were only a handful of immortals that came and went. Some that were on the Wizlist for all of a day or two. It gets discouraging to see very little on the list, or a constantly changing list -- as well as Immortals in which you don't notice that they contribute anything. By this, I mean, as a Player, we're not able to see discussions between Immortals so we don't know just how useful, or precisely what they do to improve the MUD. For a player such as myself, one that actually has even a tiny bit of care for the MUD, it can be... I don't know the word to use. I suppose disheartening when it's just the one person (Gatz) practically bringing the MUD together for the reason that it shows that progress will continue to be as it has.

I hate to say it, but, yes, progress is rather slow. I know you work damned hard on the code, and care a lot for this MUD -- after all, it's been 5 years. But in the 5 years, I've only ever seen one other coder than yourself (and I also understand a desire to have utmost quality in coding) in the time I've been around. While the content may be Quality, you do have a life, Gatz, and I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that you need to do what you can to branch out in order to get things done. Perhaps come across another coder, even if they may not be that great, and them work on stuff, or work together with them so they learn and understand what you want, in order to help speed things up. Then there's builders, but I don't know what to say on that, other than the fact that areas have been slow to come in, and I support the idea of getting some form of tool that allows the playerbase submit areas. However, this would clog up more of your time for you to review them to see if they're alright -- granted you could get other immortals to do this, or at least weed some out for you.

Starting a new character, and coming back after two years, has made me realize how harsh you can be on new characters. I understand it's to weed out the people we don't want, and that difficulty is a part of what makes NarutoMUD.. well, NarutoMUD. But, as I've said in other posts, there is a fine line to alienating potential players. I found it difficult to go around in the initial training area (Rabbits, Deer) because the forest gets dark, and having to balance Ryo to train, practice, and buy the occasional equipment and lantern (They cost 3-5+ Ryo). This is using my pre-existing knowledge, too, remember. So they wander around, get killed in the Bandit forest (which is a learning experience), learn about death, losing items... continue going about, maybe find out about getting into the Hidden Forest for 5 ryo. Start killing things in there, and continue on to level 10 maybe a bit past and then.. realize they're not getting as much Ryo/not getting anymore from sacrificing and don't understand why. Maybe they figure out or just continue going on, struggling through not having much money. Maybe learn about the Claim command to prevent from losing their equipment. Or they sit around killing something they've been killing and know they can finish the fight without dying -- until the mob somehow gets 7 hits in a round and kills them. In conclusion, I'm pretty much saying that the difficulty curve in the beginning should be off-set a little bit, you have to think about the average person coming on, even if they are one of our 'targetted' players, will judge based on first impressions, and if they get confused, frustrated, etc. within those first moments, there's nothing keeping them from continuing to play and it runs a heavy risk of them leaving. There's also a lack of people like how I was back in the day, which, while I may be an ass, as a Newbie Helper work towards teaching players how to scourdatabase, look up help files, read room descriptions instead of telling them, or gathering a plethora of random information about skills, locations and the like (Like my Guide/Map and such).

It takes a long while to get to Genin, and being able to do Missions. It's understandable. However, I'm going to critique a lack of mini-missions, and a number of missions as a whole. Especially early on, it's just grinding and grinding, maybe hit a side-mission, grind, grind, Genin, missions, grind until you can complete another mission... Basically, I think it'd benefit a lot if there happened to be more missions added in, maybe repeatable missions that will gain additional experience and Ryo to the person (Making Type B more useful as well) for killing certain mobs in which are easily accessible early on. Otherwise, it will give new players a feel that they're just going to be "K [target], [skill], sleep" pretty much the entire time they're there. Also, you need to refine the finding/continuing of quests. Requiring a very specific phrase or word to say to someone (This is mostly pointed towards ones where you're not spoon-fed what to say), can be very difficult for someone to figure out, and can even make someone wonder if the random person that says something in town has a quest/mission for them. Or that the person that does have a mission for him doesn't because s/he couldn't find the proper phrase to say. A quest log system would be pretty neat, too, being able to record conversations or goals of quests -- incase you start one and leave, come back later and forget about it.

While you do a great job to give people the feel of being able to customize and never truely mess their character up, there are some things that can be rather harsh to one or the other. Unpracticable skills are a very nice thing to throw in there, and while I understand there are RPP methods of unpracticing, but to charge someone 2-3 precious practices that cannot ordinarily be refunded in order to even try a cross-village skill (Not to mention the proficiency penalty) is very contradictory to what your apparent player goal is. I feel, in a way, that there shouldn't be something so dangerously damaging to your character out there. At least with the other skills that are unpracticable, they're that way because they're very strong skills and they only cost 1 practice. With the cross-village, you have a three-fold hit to the character, and should they find they don't like the skill, or the skill changes in a way so one doesn't like it, they can't just switch it out like everything else that occurs in the Character's MUDLife.

That is all I can think of as far as critique goes. Perhaps more later..


The Good:

The player's ability to customize their character through and through. You can spend your time to give your character better stats, make your knowledge (skills) suffer in order to make your abilities better, expand your knowledge by letting aspects of your abilities suffer, level up even weaker items to make them powerful and rename them, mix and match between a plethora of unique, skills. Add that onto the fact of how forgiving you are to the future of characters, it is one of the biggest aspects you have going for you. No one likes spending 500 hours on a character only to find out they're not as powerful as a rival simply because they got a bad skill, or trained their stats wrong.

The Bad:

The learning curve is very offputting to anyone coming to try. Effective to push away undesired people, but also effective and pushing away the desired as well. Also a certain lack of variety in things to do in regards to the MUD. You can customize your character to hell and back, but when it comes to the game you fight, level, do the occasional mission. LSC if you're feeling fancy, and then fight and level for yearssss. If you can find some way to add some form of miniature things to do in the game that still continues the progress of the character, it could help. Mixing things up is great -- Events and things do well for this. I also believe there's a lack of interaction between players and grouping. The answer is not to give bonuses to grouped characters, or to make it required in order to properly level. Like areas or missions that are too difficult/require teams to go through and contain good equipment, experience, Ryo, etc. Not just for higher levels, but early and mid-level too. Having only a few sets of equipment available to you in the first hundred levels is a little disappointing =)

The Ugly:

Progress. The one that makes me feel worst to say, but I feel it is one of the biggest hindrance to a thriving Golden Age for NarutoMUD =P

[Gatz]

Thanks for the review! Really, you raise a lot of good points. I think really part of the problem was in the beginning, we lacked content for higher level players. Now, we have a lot more content for higher level players, but lack a good enough newbie experience that we scare off some potential players and they seek greener pastures.

Some of my sentiments are echoed in our Anniversary meeting, which the transcript of is posted up in MUD chat, but I feel like the MUDing community is a niche that is carved in such a way where, as an anime MUD, we could never achieve the success I'd like to see. However, with the debut of the Facebook App, I noticed we get a lot of FB traffic, but people get stumped on how the basics of a text based game like NarutoMUD works and leave. So, by the end of the year, I set a goal to try to get at least 1-2% of our Facebook traffic to become active players. To meet that goal, I've had some builders create a Newbie Academy that is meant for new MUDers, which guides them through the basics of how to play a MUD, without going into any heavy detail to overload them.

Also, I've been looking into changes to how Newbies get to play the early part of the game. From your review, what other players have said and my own observation, I've come up with a couple trouble areas for new players: lack of ryo for practicing, training and equipment, dark and not understanding how the day/night cycle works on NM, death to aggressive NPCs and the flip side to that, which is discouraging exploration because of potential aggressive NPCs. Frankly, some of which might need to not be adjusted, some should be adjusted for Newbies and possible all players.

However, what I want to avoid is what I found discouraging on some MUDs: newbies flat out get tons of ridiculous bonuses. So, you get into a game and hit level 3 and bam, now you have a lot of penalties laid on you. I've had that happen in a lot of bigger MUDs, like Materia Magica, and you feel like your character is now suddenly weaker and a lot more fragile. I also want to avoid exploits. Before Dragonball Z: Reborn, I know a DBZ MUD, closed down, people would always exploit that unauthorized people couldn't be killed. So, they'd go on when no Imms were around and level very, very quickly on NPCs that'd hit them for 40s and 50s, eventually getting authorized but ultimately being a much higher level.

So, ultimately, it is a balancing act, but one I think we need to do. Practices and trains costing money happened because people would just swap out trains and moves all the time, and since it was free, there wasn't a reason to not do so, plus people were collecting massive amounts of ryo it made sense. I guess what I'm getting at is the newbie experience needs a little care, but not to the point where the above issues creep up. As always, if you or anyone else has serious ideas on what to do, then feel free to suggest them.

To hit on another point about coding, progress, etc, I feel like we've moved at a decent click as far as what is going in. My only wish, if I could get a wish, would be that we'd have more active builders. I think the crew we have now is talented, but sometimes lacks a bit of inspiration and motivation. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I did setup the new monetary rewards for completing areas so I hope that inspires them and inspires new people to try to become builders. Frankly, I feel like the code's progression has out paced our area's progression 10 fold. We can only go so far with a handful of zones. I do feel like I've really been the driving force in keeping NM alive, but it is a passion for me. I just hope I can rope together another people which have a passion, like mine, but for building zones to build the girl up a bit more.

In terms of frustration or anger, I'd say our zone situation is the biggest. I always thought we'd have our big villages in by now, but most builders we've had either flake out before making a zone or make one and leave. There are a ton of reasons why, and this isn't the forum to address why a builder would leave or flake out, the fact is finding players willing to put tons of time into building is a rarity. I've had to be Head Builder, Head Coder, Head Admin for years and now we're starting to get people like Zetsuke and Hitoshi to help with things, but our situation could be better and I hope gets better. I truly believe that if we had a team of 5-10 active builders, we'd command a much higher player base.

I've tried to advertise, ask players, ask friends and scout people, but have turned up a small list. So, if any of you are interested in learning how to build or know people who are or want to build, send them my way. We need all the help we can get since our biggest areas are in the works and no way they can be finished at our current pace.

So, obviously that is a point of frustration for me, but as for coding, I've always offered people the chance to code, as long as they can prove their trust via building. Frankly, if you can use our in-game OLC (Online Creation) to make areas, you have the potential to be a good coder. However, no one has taken me up on it. They just want instant shell access, which isn't happening.

So, to summarize my points, and for the lazy readers, refining the newbie experience is a new priority for us, trying to get new builders and keep our current stock active is a priority for us and has been for awhile. If anyone has ideas about solutions to those, I'm all ears. The newbie experience issue, I feel can be fixed or improved greatly, but the builder issue is a grey area, I'm not sure that can be fixed or fixed easily. At this point, I'm offering my own money to reward builders, so past that I think I'd need to go to freelance websites and hire freelancers, and then I think I'd need to ask players for a bit more donations as poor old Gatz is not that rich.

However, don't be disheartened by anything, I hope my openness and honesty just gives you all more confidence in me and NarutoMUD, and the rest of the staff. Even now, I feel NarutoMUD is a diamond in the rough, but still has risen beyond a sea of others to show it is a unique piece in the MUDing landscape. Again, thanks for the review! Just a reminder to all, posting a review nets your in-game character 20 RPP! So, I hope to see more great reviews like this one!

[Kiir]

To meet that goal, I've had some builders create a Newbie Academy that is meant for new MUDers, which guides them through the basics of how to play a MUD, without going into any heavy detail to overload them.

This is very important, I've noticed some people get on and not have a clue about commands in a MUD. I directed them to Newbie, told them to take a look at the Newbie Academy, and when they asked about skills, I told them about abilities, slist, and levels. This oftens proves to be the point of when they logout.

Also, I've been looking into changes to how Newbies get to play the early part of the game. From your review, what other players have said and my own observation, I've come up with a couple trouble areas for new players: lack of ryo for practicing, training and equipment, dark and not understanding how the day/night cycle works on NM, death to aggressive NPCs and the flip side to that, which is discouraging exploration because of potential aggressive NPCs. Frankly, some of which might need to not be adjusted, some should be adjusted for Newbies and possible all players.

Ryo tends to be much easier to get as levels progress, and one will often have their hands on an overflow of it. In the beginning though, as I said, and as you admit, it's really difficult, but making it's difficult to find a middle ground because if you make it easier, people won't understand the importance of Ryo and then wonder why/how to get ahold of Ryo when they suddenly hit a 'bottom' period in playing.. Slippery slope.

However, what I want to avoid is what I found discouraging on some MUDs: newbies flat out get tons of ridiculous bonuses. So, you get into a game and hit level 3 and bam, now you have a lot of penalties laid on you. I've had that happen in a lot of bigger MUDs, like Materia Magica, and you feel like your character is now suddenly weaker and a lot more fragile. [...]

I highly agree with this. It'd be confusing, worrying, and frustrating, especially to people new to MUDs as a whole. And I think I remember the DBZ thing you're talking about.

So, ultimately, it is a balancing act, but one I think we need to do. Practices and trains costing money happened because people would just swap out trains and moves all the time, and since it was free, there wasn't a reason to not do so, plus people were collecting massive amounts of ryo it made sense. I guess what I'm getting at is the newbie experience needs a little care, but not to the point where the above issues creep up. As always, if you or anyone else has serious ideas on what to do, then feel free to suggest them.

Really, the only thing I can think of at the moment is to make the forest area -- at least where the rabbits and deer are -- be lit up at night. This would keep them from 'weakening' at a level if you gave them temporary nightvision, and as a whole, higher levels will only be passing through the area so it shouldn't have much of an effect. It'll also give newbies a way to realize that rooms will get dark as they're wandering around the forest and suddenly hit an area that IS dark. This would be a good point to throw in a Newbie Academy too. Granted they actually read things. Honestly, I can't remember what it's like to be a newbie to MUDs completely. I was lucky enough to have started when I was 7, and had my brother and his friends to aid me..

[...]My only wish, if I could get a wish, would be that we'd have more active builders. I think the crew we have now is talented, but sometimes lacks a bit of inspiration and motivation. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I did setup the new monetary rewards for completing areas so I hope that inspires them and inspires new people to try to become builders. [...] I just hope I can rope together another people which have a passion, like mine, but for building zones to build the girl up a bit more.

That Dead Souls thing you showed me last night, goes through something that I found rather interesting to keep in mind, and I'm sure you already know/feel similar. I'll post it at the end.

I've tried to advertise, ask players, ask friends and scout people, but have turned up a small list. So, if any of you are interested in learning how to build or know people who are or want to build, send them my way. We need all the help we can get since our biggest areas are in the works and no way they can be finished at our current pace.

Well, while my main interest at moment may be to learn to code, perhaps starting out with Building would be better.

So, obviously that is a point of frustration for me, but as for coding, I've always offered people the chance to code, as long as they can prove their trust via building. Frankly, if you can use our in-game OLC (Online Creation) to make areas, you have the potential to be a good coder. However, no one has taken me up on it. They just want instant shell access, which isn't happening.

Well, people get started somewhere. I dunno, maybe if I continue to stick around and actually get my hands into things, I can help out in some way.

Code: Select all

Your job as an administrator is to manage 
people, and guide them toward a single vision, over
which you yourself may not have full control. People
will listen to the admin at first because, well, she's
the admin. But if you can't demonstrate the qualities
of leadership they expect, they will stop respecting
you, and they will leave. Or worse, they will hang
around and be difficult.

    What's this about a "vision"? People will work for
a variety of reasons, mostly money, fun, recognition,
etc. Rewards. When your new coders show up, they
will need motivation to work. Since you probably
won't be offering much in the way of money or
recognition, you'll need to find a way to motivate
your coders by making it fun to work with you.

    Obviously I don't mean you need to be jolly and
wear funny hats. In fact, you can be quite boring a
person and still be good to work with. When I mean it
has to be fun for your creators, I mean that they
have to be inspired to do stuff...they have to *want*
to build because they are expressing themselves in
a way they enjoy.

    These expectations are the other part of the 
individual management of creators. Just as is it
fatal to give creators "homework", it is just as
counterproductive to say "do whatever you want, man,
you're free to do anything." Part of the fun of
work is knowing what the standards are, and how your
work will be judged. If your creator feels like you
don't actually care what she builds, she won't
care much about doing a job that's up to any standards
but her own. After a while of this, she's going to
figure out she might as well just run her *own* mud.

    You therefore have to have a strong sense of what
your mud will look like, and what each creator's role
in that mud will be. If you don't know, or it seems like
you don't know, you'll lose them.

    You don't run the mud because you have the admin
password. You run it because people think you run it.
If they stop thinking it, you stop running it.

Forgive the mess that this post is, I just feel it easier to address specific areas this way.