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Sirene

Only one starter town for new players

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Hello,

 

I have read the long thread about guided starter towns. I think, that everything that is needed for engaging new players to stay in the game can be provided by the community. I am shure there are a lot player in the game that love to help new arrivers and I mean not only those who want to sell something to them. For my opinion its hard to get in touch with the new players if they dont ask questions in the chat window. So it would be a lot easier to find them if they would start in only one player town on one of the servers. I am shure this would encourage people to even let the markets grow around this town, to gather there often and  newbies would place their first deeds around this town which would also allow all those new pleayers to not only meet the old WO gamers but more important: each other. I think its so nice to start a game with other starters, to explore the game together. But at the moment new people just dont meet each other because they are so spreaded over the map. As I started I walked trough the deadly lonely but heavily built Glasshollow and was asking myself if I am the only gamer in this game. If citys are empty I hought... the whole game must be. So the first impression for a new player should be that the game is alive, that other players are around and thats not possible with so many starter towns.

I know a lot of players want the new ones to start on -their- server, and that is understandable because they want their server to stay lively. But if people dont stay in the game because they find it to lonely and hard to start... that doesnt help at all. For my opinion, it would help a lot to give new players one only starter town. This would encourage people who want to help newbies to be able to actually meet them. This would help new players to meet other new players in the game. It should be a starter town to which older gamer can travel easily to (reachable by ship not to far from server borders) so that they also are encouraged to go there, use the market there and help the new players. What do you think?

Edited by Sirene

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I agree, but want every starter town to have  like mentors that live there for a while as guides and helpers and get compensated with premtime (for after the period they serve).

Make it be periods of say 3 months or so and then another guide comes and takes over.

Make it a minimum of say 5 guides so there is people that cover most subjects newbies might ask about or need imp mats or just give the impression of a living village.

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Maybe have a "recommended" starter town on the portal and the recommendation changes every 6 months or more based on community voting with rules like no town twice in 2 years and such.

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39 minutes ago, Kurson said:

Maybe have a "recommended" starter town on the portal and the recommendation changes every 6 months or more based on community voting with rules like no town twice in 2 years and such.

 If it would change, no one would invest into the town. Atm we have only Glasshollow as really used market, all others are near to empty. At first, no old player would know which the actual starter town is and on the other hand people that did settle around the one town wouldnt meet new players anymore. I think we dont have so many new player that we would get crowded towns that overflow after 6 months. People that stay in the game always move on to other servers if they like to, I dont see a problem to have one server as permanent starter server.... . Better than loosing all those new players in the lonelyness that they are facing nowadays. But your idea still would improve the system we do have right now.

Edited by Sirene

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 Having only one starter town, while that might help, I think it would take away from the server-identity and server-community aspect of Wurm.

 

I still say the only way starter towns (and therefore the game itself), will ever seem alive, with people about, etc., is if the starter towns are actually alive, with people about.  lol. 

 

The only way there will be people about is if people can actually live in the starter towns, either in rented rooms at an inn or some other arrangements for the new people like temporary "plots" where they can practice building a shack and planting a tile of pumpkins, etc, (for a limited time), then either moving to a room at the inn when their time expires, (at which time the "improvements" revert to empty plot), or moving out on their own and founding a deed. (Run-on sentence, I know, it's early and I need more coffee. lol). 

 

If people can continue to live in starter towns, use the public mines, public forges, public kitchens, etc, etc. with a room & a bed and minimal safe storage, sell or trade with each other, go hunting together, etc, then some will do it. Not all new people would be inclined to join a player-run newbie town and put their trust in strangers  before they even know if they're going to like the game. And if established players could also rent a room in town to help newbies or sell to them or just aren't inclined to want their own deed, or what-have-you, then some will do it, and voila, living, breathing, town with people about. 

 

There has to be a reason for someone to stay in a newbie town.  There has to be a reason for people to be there going about their business. There is a reason they're all empty. Guide programs are a nice idea, and would be cool in combination with a living town, but alone doesn't address the empty-town-syndrome. 

Edited by Amadee

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Have a few CA's live at each starter town, that way they will be on hand to help out new players.

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This was a concept that Ultima Online handled brilliantly (maybe without even any forethought to its impact). It was not geared exclusively to new players so they were not considered "Starter Towns" but rather gathering places for everyone. The Banks there were the hub of player activity with many "Bank Sitters" gathering around socializing and selling their various goods and services. As the game evolved they even enabled players to place their small merchant houses within some of these Towns centered around these Bank locations. This was considered *prime* real estate by everyone.

 

What enabled this was the ability to quickly *teleport* to and from these locations, which is why this concept will never work in Wurm unless this resistance is broken to provide a To and From teleport to at least these locations. Come up with all the additional dreamscapes that you will but if it is set at the current time investment to get to even a central game Starter Town players won't bother. Make it much more convenient for players to socialize at locations, as well as help newbie players, and those that desire this interaction, "they will come".

 

Epic type Portals that players could build on their deeds for anyone to use to teleport to this central "Starter Town" and then return to their own Portal of departure would serve the purpose nicely. Already been done to serve Epic so should be easily adapted to this idea as well. Why it has been done for Epic and not the Freedom servers I leave it to you all to figure out.

 

Happy Trails

=Ayes=

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When the teleports for the Anniversary event was up, they was used quite abit. And I ran into a lot of players from all over visiting Glasshollow for the first time or doing some shopping or just hanging out with others that normally they couldn't do without along travel. Ayes is right about UO and this is true for a lot of games I have played. They had centralized areas you could teleport to and do trade and what not.

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Yep. I have many times uttered the "Wurm Blasphemy" of teleports between starter towns.

 

I have so many fond memories of UO towns, with people visiting the bank, hawking their wares, visiting the shops, tamers standing around with horses and dragons in tow selling them, blacksmiths at the public forge offering their services.  "Guides" offering their services...had to be very careful of them, lol.  The ability to gather easily resulted in people doing just that.

 

Teleports between starter towns, and/or between our (owned) deeds and starter towns, combined with the ability to actually live in the towns, I believe would make all the difference in the world.

 

And if new players were met with such an atmosphere on their first day, I firmly believe their first impressions would be somewhat different than they are currently.

 

ps....There are many, many old UO players who have yearned for a UO type experience. Wurm is the closest to that old "feeling" of any game I've yet to find. And Wurm offers so much more than UO ever did.   I believe we could attract a lot of those seekers with the right atmosphere, without losing any of Wurm's unique charms.  :)

Edited by Amadee
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The thing is, the question that pops into everyone's minds is "which server?", and then wurm war 3 breaks out.

 

The idea itself is sound, it may fix the problem (you'd essentially end up with players clustering around that town like moths around a flame), but you'd also be dooming every other server/place to an even bigger ghost town than it is at the moment and likely that would increase attrition rates for players who have invested heavily near other starter town (or players like priests who cannot relocate easily :P).

 

A better solution would be some form of teleportation (even limited between starter towns); wurm's population has dipped low enough for that to be a viable option.

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Yeah, limited it to the starter towns and maybe to the Alliance Capital Cities, but need a buffer of say 200 tiles between the teleports if in a area with more than one Alliance and Capitol city or if your Capital is within 200 tiles of a starter town.

That way it doesn't create a crap ton of portals all over the place, like Epic portals are in some places.

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Every other server bar Xanadu has one starter town, so a teleportation system doesnt make sense

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2 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Every other server bar Xanadu has one starter town, so a teleportation system doesnt make sense

 

Cross server does.  :) 

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