- General
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Ideas
Easier for new players
what was offputting to me as a new player was:
-The lack of ability to judge what to do
For example, when I first started off I was just brought to the home page like “ummm ok now what” I figured out I needed supplies to get into classes but I didn’t know how’s many classes I need and such.
>I think a possible remedy would be a short “welcome” guide that teaches you the bare bone basics of the game
-The supplies situation
Class supplies was a PAIN for me to hunt down, and in my quest to make sure I had everything, I accidentally ended up in all the classes a year 1 student could take. Also some items like the potion supplies has misleading text (making it look like you need it for your first year). This kinda goes back to the first point as well
>A possible remedy could be a letter containing a list of supplies needed for different first year classes that would be mailed with the acceptance letter. This would fix the problem and fit the theme
-the beginners guide
Ok, this guide is wayyyyy too long for new players to read and fully understand the beginners section alone has 13 sections in 1 tab, 9 tabs are present, and this doesn’t even touch the rules yet.
>same solution as the first solution could work. Maybe in a “welcome” letter explain some of the important core mechanics like hunger and galleons. This would not replace the normal guidlines and rules though, just highlight the importantly ones. (Example: VIP privelages shouldn’t be included in a “beginners guide”)
-new players and gold
When you just start out, you don’t have very many ways to get gold at all. The ones I could identify were
1) peeves corner (a whopping 3 galleons?)
2) Fred and George (same situation)
3) grading (but you need to be level 3)
4) assignments (that can take at least a week to get graded)
5)interest from gringotts (I’m sitting on a whole 25knuts/ hour :/)
>maybe add in a way for gullible first years to make quick cash (maybe something along the lines of sampling some of Fred and George’s products XD)
-restricting new players functionality
My experience as a new player is that I couldn’t do much. Functions such as not being able to send gifts or do actions in chat limited my enjoyment.
>self explanatory
By solving these, more players could join and stay in the game rather than dropping it and instead seeking other forms of entertainment
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi ! I'm going to comment each of the points you've listed :
- The lack of ability to judge what to do : I understand it can be rather disturbing at first, but WoP is rather intuitive. Moreover, the House acceptance owls (the ones you get by getting accepted into a House) are often stuffed with informations and tips for beginners, same goes for the House clubs. Besides, you can suggest your Head of House to build up a Welcoming House Team (if it doesn't already exist) whose task would be to welcome and accompany the newbies through owls until they've grown at ease on the site. Opening an owl is super intuitive (I mean it's an envelope with a red number on it, can't be more obvious it is a PM), so every newbie will have their chance to talk to someone experimented.
- The supplies situation : I believe you can now get to the right shop by clicking the name of the furniture in the class presentation, instead of having to go through all the shops each time, and it's a lot easier.
- The beginners guide length : as the site is based on writing, I guess one page or two shouldn't be that much of a deal to read. However if you really feel like this is way too much and contains useless information, you can talk about it to your Headmaster or Minister for Magic. About the "explaination message", I don't believe it would actually fit the length problem as the same informations would have to be included, but I send you back to my welcoming team/house acceptance owl suggestion.
- New players and gold : it is actually very fast to raise from level 1 to 3 (and be able to grade) if you make a few assignments (first years are always the fastest ones graded), meet other users in chat, send a few owls and join some topics. I can tell you from experience this takes less than three hours, which is perfect to understand how the site works, get your school furniture & read and understand all the rules. In the worst case, it takes a week for your assignments to be graded, but you have plenty of time to do the other stuff within a week.
- Restricting new players functionality : these restrictions were actually put to prevent issues with newbies not reading the grading guide, presents spam, and you can imagine the rest. However as I said, going up from a low level is rather fast already.
In a nutshell, you can always talk to your site's staff if you believe newbies need more guidance ;)
thanks for the feedback! But to counter some of your points, maybe you have forgotten or neglected how a new player feels?
If you are new to this genre wop is anything but intuitive. And speaking from experience as a new player, I never stumbled past anything telling me about the food system, all of the guides and rules are simply too long to allow for easy digestion in a small amount of time. Being presented with a small CONCISE explanation would really help new players. When they are comfortable with that, then they will surely be able to digest the more complicated mechanics a lot more easily and readily.
The supplies situation can be tough for first year students because they have to hunt down all of the classes they need and do a mass clicking frenzy between dragon ally and the class in question, this is further capitalized by the lack of actual links in some of the classes list, the amount of classes needed to be taken not clearly stated, as well as where every item is located.
Also it’s not as fast as you appear to think leveling up is, after a couple of afternoons and more than a couple hours of sending owls and doing assignments, I’m still only level 2.
Assignments are not graded super fast for first years, I can speak from experience as it’s been a week since I turned in my first set of assignments.
And thanks for stating that you can ask staff for help, but is t the purpose of having rules, guidelines, and guides to limit the need to do so?
Also as to the beginner’s guide length, it is not a mere one or two pages, but is 13 sections long in one tab alone, and contains 9 tabs. And this hasn’t even brushed upon the rules section yet.
About the length of the beginner's guide, I suggest you to speak about it to the relevant authorities ;)
Also, about the "how the newbie feels", I believe a welcoming team would then help a lot, as it can be way more personal than the automatic house welcoming - I know eagles on EU use to post a message on the walls and send another owl, so when the newbie sees the familiar name in chat they already feel more confident. Again, you shall suggest it to the right staff member. I do not consider it as "asking for help" but more of "suggesting something to improve WoP experience" ^^
About the supplies, I've tested a few (WoP FR & EU) and all the links worked for me, but if you notice a bug, you can also report it to staff, as I agree that shopping the whole list without the links is a pain x)
By "intuitive", I mean that most parts of the site are rather easy to understand, especially chat and owls, which are the main ones to get started. Indeed the food system, assignments/classes or even how to write a RP seem weird at first, but this is what should be explained in the beginner's guide and well, if it really is too long, just tell the staff... I believe I repeat myself too much :') but this is something that has to be fixed on a site-scale.
And finally, about the levelling up, it's again my own experience speaking (like... 2 years ago, eventhough a lot has changed since), I remember having had everything graded in 2 days and levelling up like crazy within a week. However sometimes the sites can have very few graders, so a ton of homework end up in the non-graded pile for ATs and teachers to deal with it - and this means they have a lot of work, so just... Tryna be patient and bless them for the hard work ? :') Grading and submitting are indeed the fastest ways to gain points and galleons, so I can get your frustration, but I'm sure your staff is doing the best they can to fix it and encourage grading...
Hope this helps <3
ummm I am telling staff, that’s what “feedback” is, after owling a staff member they suggested to post here as well as listening to my ideas. Additionally, emproving the new player experience would obviously emprove wop as well, I am sorry that you feel differently.
as a primary source of troubles that new players face on this site I can indeed say with confidence that these are valid concerns that the average newcomer may face. If something is posted out on some page somewhere that doesn’t mean that a new player is going to happen to read and fully digest it. I’m simply stating problems that I saw and providing possible/asking for a possible solution to said problems. Improvement to the new player experience would help with player retention and enjoyment, leading to more committed and happy players for wop.
saying, “just read this” or “oh, you could’ve done this” does not help the initial problem that caused them to have the read about in the first place. By making the information more readily avialible they can be less “reactive” to problems and already know what to do, resulting in a moreover enjoyable and less taxing experience.
The thing is, newcomers will have to read all the rules & guides at some point, and the sooner the better. But I agree that if the Beginner's guide is too long, it will discourage a lot of them. That is why I suggest you to owl your MoM or HM and point out the pieces of info you find useless in the Beginner's guide - it will help all the newbies after you if it's edited in a better way. I don't know which site you are on, but on mines these guides are less than a page long. That is why only your staff can change this issue.
I totally understand your preoccupations, however I still believe it's a site-scale problem as every site (and every house of every site) has their own way to welcome newbies ;)
I don't think this is a good idea. When you start out, you have 500 gold. That's usually more than enough for the classes you need. If the new user reads the beginners' guide first, they should know what to do. Also, they can always ask questions.