Tutorial Island

[Dave]

Since a tutorial implies instruction from a tutor, I would like to suggest that instead of monster, there is a self-defense instructor. He allows you to take as many swings at him as you like.. He moves, but does not attack. (Ooo.. I smell boxing ring tiles) Just another variation on the combat instruction, in case we end up wanting to use a person instead of an animal or monster. I don't know how necessary it will be to award XP during the tutorial, but it's hard to say right now.

On the topic of starting equipment, I think all characters begin the game with no weapon, wearing regular clothes. (these starting clothes would provide virtually no protection, or no protection at all) ..but I like the idea to offer the variety of wooden training weapons, during the tutorial. I suppose there could be other small, low-value items available during the tutorial.. but they should probably be consumables; I'm just a bit wary of giving people too much equipment during the tutorial.. that should be part of the fun of finally leaving the tutorial area; you can finally get some decent equipment.

[Crush]

slightly off topic: There is something that I dislike about warping in MMORPGs. It has to do with travel time. Unless you're being magically teleported somewhere.. or ahem.. shot out of a cannon .. I don't think you should ever just disappear from one place and reappear somewhere far away, with no semblance of attention to the amount of time it should take you to walk, or take a boat ride, etc.. I realize it's unlikely that we'll have a real-time travel system for boats and such, but it sure would be cool. Imagine getting on a boat and actually watching the scenery roll by.. and having full roam of the ship while you're in transit. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think this would be totally boss. As I recall, Modanung and I once briefly discussed the possibility of a real-time train / rail system. It'd also be fun because there could be real schedules for various forms of transportation.

Watching the scenery rolling by would maybe look interesting the first time you do it but after the 20th and 30th trip you would just wish it would be over faster. And do you really want to simulate waiting for public transport? People waste enough of their time waiting for the bus in real life.

[Dave]

It's not like it would have to be a very long time.. and besides, more realistic travel-time seems to be a popular and accepted feature in quite a few modern mmorpgs. I don't see what the big fuss would be about. The idea of transportation is to take you from point A to point B, faster than you could walk.. I would imagine walking the same route 20-30 times would get a lot more annoying than taking a ride on a boat, train, giant-bird creature.. etc.. and as far as waiting for transportation schedules, maybe I should've elaborated that I would never intend on making people wait longer than a couple or few (real-time) minutes.. not hours, days, weeks, etc.. But hey, if you want to have people warping all over the world, with absolutely no attention paid toward travel time, it's no skin off my back.

[ElvenProgrammer]

It's not like it would have to be a very long time.. and besides, more realistic travel-time seems to be a popular and accepted feature in quite a few modern mmorpgs. I don't see what the big fuss would be about. The idea of transportation is to take you from point A to point B, faster than you could walk.. I would imagine walking the same route 20-30 times would get a lot more annoying than taking a ride on a boat, train, giant-bird creature.. etc.. and as far as waiting for transportation schedules, maybe I should've elaborated that I would never intend on making people wait longer than a couple or few (real-time) minutes.. not hours, days, weeks, etc.. But hey, if you want to have people warping all over the world, with absolutely no attention paid toward travel time, it's no skin off my back.

In fact I'm quite sure you have this sort of stuff in WoW, at least I remember my player catching a flying-thing to go somewhere else during my 10 days trial and spending the whole travel watching at the scene. The difference between us and WoW is porbably that we will never have big enough maps to justify a real-time travel unless we want to load all the maps the train, for example, travels.
Having public transports would make sense when it's very cheap, I mean I'd prefer to take a train for 10 (currency) and spend 30 seconds on it, instead of walking through 10 maps loosing some minutes of my precious time.
When you want a faster way to travel you can look for a more expensive alternative, such as magic warps and so on...

[Telemaniaka]

I like the idea of a school building. Those who already know how to play and those who aren't interested in the tutorial can just walk out and the rest will visit two or three classrooms to talk to the teachers. There could be the problem of overcrowding the school building in the future but this can be easily combated by adding more schools around the world.

[Dahawka]

I think your over thinking this, the Island should be a place where you can

• get the basic equipment
  go over the interface
  kill a few maggots
  maybe get a default spell or skill
  do your first quest

I agree with what Len said. tutorial island should be a tutorial island. I do like the island idea that jaxad0127 said but i think that it should be a seperate island from tutorial island.

[feline monstrosity]

Another idea could be that the tutorial quest ends up with the character building a boat which (s)he can sail to the main land. And then because they are newbs they all invariably crash when they land, hence making all boats come from tutorial but never go back. This does however have a side effect of having a huge pile of rubble next to first main land town!

[Dr Wahl]

Heh, it could be a testament or memorial to all the noobs that have matured

[Dave]

Just to reiterate, I think "tutorial island" should be eliminated, in favor of an orientation room, somewhere in an academy or perhaps city hall. (Presumabely in the "Trade City" area) To me, it seems kinda silly to have an entire geographic feature dedicated to a tutorial.

The task of building a boat with every new character, no matter how you do it, is going to take some amount of time. Not only do I dislike the idea because it feels repetetive, but also because of seems forceful. I'd prefer that the tutorial was more of an option than a requirement.

Also, why put so much depth to it? It's just a tutorial. I like the Final Fantasy 6 approach; the tutorial is easily held in the confines of 3 rooms. It's a combination of:

NPCs who offer various demos, explanations and tips
Book shelves. Each player-width section offers a different piece of information, regarding gameplay.
some sort of demonstration of the combat system.

If we have a whole "character arriving in Argaes"-sequence.. I'd suggest that directly after creating your character, the game begins something like this:

• You are standing on a pier / dock / whatever.. in Port Town, which is the westernmost part of the Trade City area.
• You are immediately approached by a representative of the City, who welcomes you to the city and asks something like, "Shall I escort you to the tutorial?" If you decline, he offers you the same wood training weapons that you would have received from the tutorial. With another line like, "Well, we don't want you roaming around defenseless, so you can take your pick from the following training weapons. Which would you like?
• You choose a weapon from the list and the person leaves you to your fancy.

Another way to handle the distribution of a starting weapon, would be to base it upon your character creation. If part of the character creation phase dealt with beginning skills, you might be required to choose at least one weapon proficiency. This choice could then determine which weapon your character starts with.

[Crush]

As I already mentioned a few times I would rather prefer to introduce new players in a more confined and more remote location specialized for this purpose than a key location and meeting place where a lot of high level players are running around with facilities for high level characters which would only confuse newbies.

Nevertheless it should be possible to skip the tutorial quickly without having a disadvantage.

[Pixl]

Oh please, NO! Tutorial Island shouldn't be made unless it's OPTIONAL! I remember when I started playing RuneScape and had to go through that horrible, boring Tutorial Island! I beg of you, please don't make a Tutorial Island!!!

[Dave]

I understand keeping people from entering the starting area, but I don't see why it needs to be an island. New characters could start in some place like City Hall, which could act similarly to the tutorial building in Final Fantasy 6. At some point, characters would be disallowed entrance to this building. (maybe after they gain their first level.. or once they leave for the first time)

Are high level players really going to be that disruptive? If it's a resounding 'yes', maybe we could make it so that every character is eventually forced to leave Argaes, presumably never to return. Like no matter what series of favors, jobs, tasks or quests you perform, you eventually piss off the area government and are asked to leave. (this could be a comically common thing that occurs to everyone within a certain level range..) "Welcome to Argaes, the land of high turnover" Maybe as an exception, privileged individuals who have proven their ability to help new player development will be allowed to return. (fringe benefits for being a newbie helper might be residency in Argaes..)

It was suggested before that the tutorial be completely removed from the physical game world. You could be asked before or after character creation, whether or not you wish to go through the tutorial. If we are unable to decide between the previous options, perhaps this is the method we should choose.

[Superkoop]

I like the idea of an island, I think it would be able to add more story to the game rather than just a building. And, it would separate the new players from the advanced players. But I agree that it should be entirely optional, like when you first start out playing and making your character, you have the option to just skip the island. It would be kind of like selecting the male/female thing. =)

Although the island does have the drawback of requiring more work to create, but maybe not if we just reuse tiles from other places.

Either way, I prefer the island idea.

[Crush]

maybe we could make it so that every character is eventually forced to leave Argaes, presumably never to return.

When you do that Argaes itself would become the "Newbie Island".

[Black Don]

Another idea would be that if your under a cretin lvl you can come and go from noobie island as much as you like. And to keep ppl from packing lots of high lvl items on low lvl chr's and sending them back to noobie island you can put a restriction on what a chr can enter noobie island depending on what in its inv too.