Nick Gammon said:
Not a good start. If you have just started a new MUD - maybe because you are bored with MMO games right now - you expect to do some simple things. Like chat, talk, tell, yell. But apparently not on this MUD.
Was it just the help files that were missing, or the commands as well?
Some muds have 'gossip' instead of 'chat' - in fact I believe 'chat' was introduced by the Merc branch of Diku, so if you're playing (for example) a Circle you'll probably need to 'gossip' instead. Then there are the RP muds that call their public channel 'OOC' - and others that have no public channels at all (or else block them until you reach a certain level, which is pretty tough on newbies).
Not sure I've ever played a mud with a 'talk' command, but in this day and age I think it makes sense to at least cover both 'chat' and 'gossip' - either as separate channels, or automatically redirecting to a different channel. Even just giving a message like "There is no 'chat' channel here, use the 'OOC' channel instead" would be better than nothing.
Nick Gammon said:
> look Moe
A surly balding man. He's holding a sign labeled 'Games'.
Yeah that's the age old problem of people putting things into descriptions that aren't actually there. Room descriptions are the usual offenders, but you can get it on mobs as well.
There's also the problem that even if Moe had actually been holding the sign, it would be inside him rather than the room, so in most muds you wouldn't be able to view it directly (any more than you could look at a sword someone was wielding).
Perhaps he's a shopkeeper, or has a mobprog attached to him. Or maybe he'd fled or wandered from his spawn room, which had extra descriptions for 'sign' and/or 'games'. Either way, it's sloppy building, but hardly uncommon.
Nick Gammon said:
I don't know what else to say ... if you want MUDs to be a closed world, where only existing players know what they are doing, well fine, you are doing a good job. If you want to welcome newbies, and grow and have more people online, you have to do better than this.
Your observations are certainly valid, but did you actually share them with the staff, or just post them here?
It's very common for newbies to quit shortly after connecting to a mud, but unless they explain their reasons the staff can only speculate. If the staff are from a different mud background to you, they may take certain things for granted that you don't (and vice versa). Perhaps they've always used 'gossip' and never even played a mud that used 'chat', for example.
I've often wondered whether it would be worth logging the first 10-20 commands a newbie types after connecting.
Zeno said:
In the old days, people grew up with Linux/DOS or at least familiar with command prompts. They understood what "look <target>" meant and that the brackets didn't mean to type those in too. Nowadays you get most new players trying "look <rabbit>" which is wrong, but the problem stems from the MUD and not the player.
MUDs need to adapt and they are failing to so. We need to explain more of the basics than ever before and introduce the MUD as to why it's worth playing even though it's text.
I think this is the sort of situation where the various mud protocols can really help - clickable links in the text, graphical icons and buttons, etc. As you said, in the old days people grew up with command-line interfaces like DOS - but the modern newbie is more used to graphical user interfaces like Windows, where they have buttons and icons, multiple windows, and can navigate with their mouse. So in that respect I think we are seeing an increasing number of muds adapt to the modern newbie, by modernising their interface to provide something that newbies find more familiar and intuitive. I guess you could even offer a Windows-style Office Assistant (although preferably not as intrusive and annoying as Clippy).
However I noticed that you've chosen not to go this route, Zeno, so I'd be interested to hear your reasons. I know some people strongly prefer command-line interfaces, but you seem to recognise that most modern newbies aren't so familiar with them, and clearly feel that muds need to adapt.
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