Minor new player experience changes

[Sevenless]

With the new world approaching, hopefully we'll see a new batch of players. I'd like to do a quick review of things that might be quick changes we could apply that'll smooth their welcoming to haven. I have two ideas myself, but I'd like to hear more as well.

Hunger renamed to Fullness. It's a frequent concept that beginners run into. The thing is, people think "More hunger is better, since hunger is good!" It's more intuitive if foods state that they add fullness, and the hunger meter tooltip states "Fullness will lower over time". I know it's a stupid little thing, but for how small it is this comes up a lot when talking to new players. Adding more to something good actually being bad just short circuits people.

Wilderness beacons allow you to summon characters under a certain age (<5 hours? Only once per life, no criminal penalties active) who drop everything and show up naked. Through an option in the hearth fire called "Travel to friends", it will destroy their old hearth fire and place a new one at the beacon location. I can't think of a way it can be abused if it's sending purely naked character. It's dumb, but new players get attached to names and want to play immediately, they don't want to be told "wait 30 minutes" for someone to make a beacon. More true for groups of new players who aren't aware of how to push for it. Allowing them to spawn and run around without needing to wait for the wilderness beacon spawner would be a nice touch to make the fresh spawning of a group of friends a smoother experience.

Feel free to point out if I'm missing something.

[abt79]

+1, especially to letting new characters use beacons

also fix/update tutorial, specifically :
-eating until healing is kind of ridiculous now that you start at 5000% energy. Not at all impossible for experienced players but unintuitive and obtuse for n00bs. Ask them to make a pitbake or something instead
-some mention of seasons, e.g. a Lore popup saying what season it is upon completing the tutorial quests
-probably many more things

[VDZ]

Wilderness beacons allow you to summon characters under a certain age (<5 hours? Only once per life, no criminal penalties active) who drop everything and show up naked. Through an option in the hearth fire called "Travel to friends", it will destroy their old hearth fire and place a new one at the beacon location. I can't think of a way it can be abused if it's sending purely naked character. It's dumb, but new players get attached to names and want to play immediately, they don't want to be told "wait 30 minutes" for someone to make a beacon. More true for groups of new players who aren't aware of how to push for it. Allowing them to spawn and run around without needing to wait for the wilderness beacon spawner would be a nice touch to make the fresh spawning of a group of friends a smoother experience.

Sounds like a good vector for exploits, but that's not necessarily a reason not to try it. Don't forget to also drop the curiosity table and break links with study tables lest they get used to smuggle curios.

[shubla]

Wilderness beacons allow you to summon characters under a certain age (<5 hours? Only once per life, no criminal penalties active) who drop everything and show up naked. Through an option in the hearth fire called "Travel to friends", it will destroy their old hearth fire and place a new one at the beacon location.

Devs, you gotta do this before next world. Excellent idea.

[Sevenless]

Sounds like a good vector for exploits, but that's not necessarily a reason not to try it. Don't forget to also drop the curiosity table and break links with study tables lest they get used to smuggle curios.

No complaints to looking at this from every angle to reduce the chance of abuse.

[meus]

Wilderness beacons allow you to summon characters under a certain age (<5 hours? Only once per life, no criminal penalties active) who drop everything and show up naked.

Very nice, but also might be made as:

The Beacon lasts at most one hour day after lit. If it is not used in that time, it is destroyed.

So you can make it and light it and allow a person in a different timezone to follow-up and join you while you're offline.
The beacon is cheap anyway. So it would also be possible to make a few of them and allow some more people to join on a first-come, first-serve principle, by sharing the codes publicly, e.g. Discord / forum etc.

This I guess will require quite few changes, probably just adapting a single constant somewhere, and no mechanics involved.

[Ysh]

Sounds like a good vector for exploits, but that's not necessarily a reason not to try it. Don't forget to also drop the curiosity table and break links with study tables lest they get used to smuggle curios.

No complaints to looking at this from every angle to reduce the chance of abuse.

If no item is allowed to be transfer, only benefit to be gain according to my thoughts is rapid transport of character ability (i.e. skills and stats). Instead of 5hr time restriction, maybe maximum allowed stat and LP sums? If rapid transport of character ability is thing that is exploitable, experienced player will be able to progress character ability much more within 5hrs limit than nab player will. For limitation to apply to both nab and experienced player more consistently, I think some caps is safer restriction. If time restriction is removed or at least made much more generous (e.g. days or weeks), this will also allow true nab player to log in, play for some time, decide he enjoys game but wishes he plays with others, then join village and transport nab character to continue playing. I suspect nab player of this type will progress so slowly that week(s) of his playtime is less than one day of experienced player.

[Ysh]

Sounds like a good vector for exploits, but that's not necessarily a reason not to try it. Don't forget to also drop the curiosity table and break links with study tables lest they get used to smuggle curios.

No complaints to looking at this from every angle to reduce the chance of abuse.

If no item is allowed to be transfer, only benefit to be gain according to my thoughts is rapid transport of character ability (i.e. skills and stats). Instead of 5hr time restriction, maybe maximum allowed stat and LP sums? If rapid transport of character ability is thing that is exploitable, experienced player will be able to progress character ability much more within 5hrs limit than nab player will. For limitation to apply to both nab and experienced player more consistently, I think some caps is safer restriction. If time restriction is removed or at least made much more generous (e.g. days or weeks), this will also allow true nab player to log in, play for some time, decide he enjoys game but wishes he plays with others, then join village and transport nab character to continue playing. I suspect nab player of this type will progress so slowly that week(s) of his playtime is less than one day of experienced player.

Or I guess, to formulate in different way. Nab cares more about his playtime than his progress because he do not have the experience to understand that his progress is trivial. Experienced player looking to exploit system care more about progress than playtime, because more powerful characters have more impact in game. If we restrict based on time, we must be very stingy with restriction to compensate for experienced players' faster rate of progress. If we restrict on progress, we can be more generous with time, which is thing nab player cares more about already.

[VDZ]

If no item is allowed to be transfer, only benefit to be gain according to my thoughts is rapid transport of character ability (i.e. skills and stats). Instead of 5hr time restriction, maybe maximum allowed stat and LP sums? If rapid transport of character ability is thing that is exploitable, experienced player will be able to progress character ability much more within 5hrs limit than nab player will. For limitation to apply to both nab and experienced player more consistently, I think some caps is safer restriction. If time restriction is removed or at least made much more generous (e.g. days or weeks), this will also allow true nab player to log in, play for some time, decide he enjoys game but wishes he plays with others, then join village and transport nab character to continue playing. I suspect nab player of this type will progress so slowly that week(s) of his playtime is less than one day of experienced player.

Right. Translating from Ysh-speak, this could be abused to summon force-fed fresh warriors/griefing alts with the only disadvantage being you'd need to equip them on the battlefield/crime scene rather than having their gear sent with them.

Frankly, this is a somewhat significant problem. If someone can get crime skills on an alt within the time limit, this could be used to insta-deploy e.g. vandal alts. So there needs to be a cap on the total gained LP (and preferably for attributes as well, for combat), and it needs to be fairly low to prevent abuse.

[vatas]

If you spawn randomly into wilderness, you start with certain amount ( to be balanced) of stacks in buff, working title, "not yet anchored to Haven" and as 1) time passes 2) you gain attributes 3) you gain LP you lose stacks. As long as you have even one stack left, you can teleport into a Wilderness beacon.