Brainstorming on Noobia

[H.Banestone]

Hell no. There's a simple reason we don't want complete newbies having runes. It's annoying enough to have someone run around with a badly made sword trying to pk people, you don't want someone starting to throw ice balls at your cook who's sitting at the campfire, do you? This game is about roleplay and players who come here because they wanna be 1337 p0wnzrz mages for the fun of using awesome graphic effects, killing tons of monsters in the process 5 minutes after they've started the game aren't the players we're looking for. There are rp-theories behind the magic system every char with even a single rune should have at least some idea of and there is a ton of background on races, gods, cities and what not a character should know - especially a class that is generally considered to be smarter than the rest (mage, druid). The same goes for the druid system. People worked hard to make druidism something mystical and interesting. The purpose of the system is not to start out with a recipe book and a basic set of druid runes, it's to have fun while researching recepies and learning more about the ingredients etc.

We have enough so called druids and mages that basically do nothing but annoy the hell out of players as it is because they completely rely on the engine sides of their respective professions, completely forgetting about rp, we don't need more of those. I'm all for making Magic and Druidism available for every serious player, but not in a way that will utterly destroy the ig atmosphere.

What you described pretty much already proves that restricting magic doesn't work, because currently mages still run around annoying each other.
Everything else is theory craft. Every player thinks that he is a shiny jewel and a total Captain Hero, but all other mage players are stupid and annoying. We can argue all day about whose RP is better, but in the end, we all forgive ourselves an occasional stupidity, while constantly nagging on stupidity of others. Restricting magic ownership isn't the answer. If magic is annoying, perhaps changing spells to be less annoying is a better idea. For example, a magical wall that cannot be broken by a sword or cannot be attacked is an annoyingly flawed spell. Or the poison spell that hits harder than any druid's poison. If Magic is just built annoyingly, it isn't the players' fault.

Concrete proposals would be a better alternative, like have spell damage decrease drastically with distance to target, or having to face the location you cast on, like fighters have to do, in order for strikes to be effective?
Why build a very powerful tool that you will be afraid to trust new players, instead of having a balanced and less powerful tool that everyone can have?

And can you give a definition of "serious player"? One who respects gods? One who plays a serious character without sense of humor? One who always avoids conflict? One who doesn't talk OOC and use modern slang? Who becomes serious and trusted enough for you to be able to allow them magic?
Who is to judge how serious a player is? You say yourself that many mages you see are not serious enough. Does that mean people who teach them are not serious enough? The whole system of restriction is belly up broken.

Resolution: make acquiring magic such a difficult puzzle, that only a devoted player, knowledgeable in lore would be able to get the runes, so they'd have to naturally devote time and effort to getting to know the world.

[Felbion Lijawyn]

Hell no. There's a simple reason we don't want complete newbies having runes. It's annoying enough to have someone run around with a badly made sword trying to pk people, you don't want someone starting to throw ice balls at your cook who's sitting at the campfire, do you? This game is about roleplay and players who come here because they wanna be 1337 p0wnzrz mages for the fun of using awesome graphic effects, killing tons of monsters in the process 5 minutes after they've started the game aren't the players we're looking for. There are rp-theories behind the magic system every char with even a single rune should have at least some idea of and there is a ton of background on races, gods, cities and what not a character should know - especially a class that is generally considered to be smarter than the rest (mage, druid). The same goes for the druid system. People worked hard to make druidism something mystical and interesting. The purpose of the system is not to start out with a recipe book and a basic set of druid runes, it's to have fun while researching recepies and learning more about the ingredients etc.

We have enough so called druids and mages that basically do nothing but annoy the hell out of players as it is because they completely rely on the engine sides of their respective professions, completely forgetting about rp, we don't need more of those. I'm all for making Magic and Druidism available for every serious player, but not in a way that will utterly destroy the ig atmosphere.

What you described pretty much already proves that restricting magic doesn't work, because currently mages still run around annoying each other.
Everything else is theory craft. Every player thinks that he is a shiny jewel and a total Captain Hero, but all other mage players are stupid and annoying. We can argue all day about whose RP is better, but in the end, we all forgive ourselves an occasional stupidity, while constantly nagging on stupidity of others. Restricting magic ownership isn't the answer. If magic is annoying, perhaps changing spells to be less annoying is a better idea. For example, a magical wall that cannot be broken by a sword or cannot be attacked is an annoyingly flawed spell. Or the poison spell that hits harder than any druid's poison. If Magic is just built annoyingly, it isn't the players' fault.

Concrete proposals would be a better alternative, like have spell damage decrease drastically with distance to target, or having to face the location you cast on, like fighters have to do, in order for strikes to be effective?
Why build a very powerful tool that you will be afraid to trust new players, instead of having a balanced and less powerful tool that everyone can have?

And can you give a definition of "serious player"? One who respects gods? One who plays a serious character without sense of humor? One who always avoids conflict? One who doesn't talk OOC and use modern slang? Who becomes serious and trusted enough for you to be able to allow them magic?
Who is to judge how serious a player is? You say yourself that many mages you see are not serious enough. Does that mean people who teach them are not serious enough? The whole system of restriction is belly up broken.

Resolution: make acquiring magic such a difficult puzzle, that only a devoted player, knowledgeable in lore would be able to get the runes, so they'd have to naturally devote time and effort to getting to know the world.

You -do- have to face the location you wanna cast on, spells are blocked if your friend is standing between you and the enemy which will cause you to hit the friend instead, mages can't cast shit as soon as a single warrior reached them (not even simple healing spells), the poison of the mages is -a lot- weaker than that of the druids and if you cast two spells after another without waiting a bit the manadrain will be large. Mages have already been nerfed A LOT because of the big amount of people with runes ig nowadays. Magic being too powerful isn't the issue, magic being treatet just like any other kind of weapon is. What I mean by "serious player" is someone who doesn't run around town, randomly casting spells without any particular reason or goal and one that knows how the stuff he does works. The teachers are definetely NOT to blame for such people. Many characters behave in a completely different way at the start until they get runes and turn into complete nutcases.

As mentioned a thousand times before, a new teaching system etc. is in planning after the VBU so it doesn't really make sense to suggest any concepts or changes at the moment.

[H.Banestone]

I'm not suggesting much, I'm just talking, discussing.
Well, why should magic be treated differently from any other kind of weapon? What difference does it make what you use to influence the world, a stick, a sword, or a spell? In the end it's only a matter of preference, right? I haven't encountered references in lore that magic only sticks to the responsible. If you're talented, you can do it. It's not any more annoying than people running around town beating people with sticks.
If mages annoy you with magic, why not counterattack them with your magic and stop them? I mean, that's what I would do to a person beating people with a sword if I saw it.

[Felbion Lijawyn]

I'm not suggesting much, I'm just talking, discussing.
Well, why should magic be treated differently from any other kind of weapon? What difference does it make what you use to influence the world, a stick, a sword, or a spell? In the end it's only a matter of preference, right? I haven't encountered references in lore that magic only sticks to the responsible. If you're talented, you can do it. It's not any more annoying than people running around town beating people with sticks.
If mages annoy you with magic, why not counterattack them with your magic and stop them? I mean, that's what I would do to a person beating people with a sword if I saw it.

I usually just walk away when someone is pissing me off that hard or completely ruins any chance to have some decent rp with the random spamming of summonings/illusions/other stuff. Magic and Druidism are supposed to be something "mystical" and rather unknown to the common man. As it is now, we have more people tossing runes around ig than there are crafters or fighters and they don't care about the rp of magic at all as it seems to me. They're just turning illa into a hack&slash game with a fency crafting system.

[H.Banestone]

I guess i just happen to not hold the same opinion, which is okay and not worth arguing about. Would you say the same thing if you never found a magic teacher? Would you be content playing a common man after being teased with Illarion's magic capabilities?

[Grokk]

The teachers are definetely NOT to blame for such people.

Of course the teachers are to blame. That's the nature of the system. It is not that difficult to tell which students are going to become valued mages and teachers, and which students are going to become your next [insert name of generic clown mage character played by {insert name of illiterate PO}]. Just look at half of the people who are currently learning magic (and their teachers, for that matter.) We are restricting magic...to these guys?

I like the IDEA of restricting magic. But it just doesn't work when you hand over the reins to the players. You could start off with 4 of the most outstanding magic teachers ever, and all it takes is for just one of those teachers to let just one iffy student pass through and the entire system falls to pieces. That dodgy student becomes a teacher, and then you have generation after generation of cybering elven maidens and mage POs who cannot even form a proper sentence.

[Estralis Seborian]

OK, I guess I have to add some words: The topic was Noobia and I guess it was suggested that magic is taught on Noobia and/or that mages should start out with some runes. While the latter is a valid proposal that will be discussed one day, teaching magic on Noobia is currently not planned. We want to 'straighten' Noobia, not expand it. Currently, many unimportant things are taught, some things are even annoying.

The whole tragic system needs special attention one day. This day will come. Currently, as it seems, few are happy, many unhappy and the most unhappy dudes are the developers who want to balance fighting; a high skilled mage who draws no aggro can easily outtake everything with a blink while a moderate mage with normal attributes sucks at tossing RA KELs at flies. So, a lot to do, packen mers an.

[H.Banestone]

OK, I guess I have to add some words: The topic was Noobia and I guess it was suggested that magic is taught on Noobia and/or that mages should start out with some runes. While the latter is a valid proposal that will be discussed one day, teaching magic on Noobia is currently not planned. We want to 'straighten' Noobia, not expand it. Currently, many unimportant things are taught, some things are even annoying.

Few things about Noobia i noticed:

1. Fairly annoying that the player cannot move on to next map sector, until he cleared the current section of NPCs and talked to them.

2. Dwarf who teaches you fighting and one who gives you armor - annoying to run between the two. No reason other than forcing a noob to Rp with npcs, but thats not what they're on noobia for, they are there to learn the interface. Make those 2 dwarfs just one dwarf.

3. Woodcutting lady is annoying that you HAVE to talk to her.

4. It's not intuitive that u have to come to npcs and say Hello. Make the NPCs recognize when you come 3 tiles near them, and have them speak to you first: "I am John, I can teach you how to cut wood and make fire, come say hello"

5. Some crafting teachers are missing from the castle portal room. Add them, obviously.

The whole tragic system needs special attention one day. This day will come. Currently, as it seems, few are happy, many unhappy and the most unhappy dudes are the developers who want to balance fighting; a high skilled mage who draws no aggro can easily outtake everything with a blink while a moderate mage with normal attributes sucks at tossing RA KELs at flies. So, a lot to do, packen mers an.

Which part do you want to fix? High end mages or low end mages?

To make high end mages not so uber is easy. Pick any one method or a combination of them:

1. Reduce damage of high end spells.
2. Either remove or make very mana costly to cast AOE DOT spells, they are fairly OP for the type of slow motion games illarion is.
3. Remove the spell that allows a mage to feed themselves, that will level them with everyone else.
4. Raise high end monsters' magic resistance and spread it across damage types (fire, lightning, ice, poison, etc, like physical damage is spread).
5. Increase casting time and cooldown of high end spells, that they can only be cast once before a monster gets to the mage in melee.

To help out low-end mages:
1. Give mage robes, or whatever mages wear, leather armor - some magic resistance stats, and introduce a low level spellcasting monster that will not hurt a noob mage so much, because of that clothes property. This is exactly what warriors do. Warrior's first month of like is made of suck! Until we can afford some armor and stand up to flies to gain some parry.

2. Make a noob mage start out with healing, teleportation, and/or gating runes. (i.e. make it like UO, where even fighters with 0 magery can cast recall). This will allow noob mages to kite and at least get away if it gets too bad with a mummy.

3. Lower magic resistance of low end monsters like flies and mummies.

That aside, if you're looking to balance mages and warriors overall, you have half the job already done. High end warriors, we talking 100% ones, are already super overpowered as well. I dunno if it's just me being so amazing, but i can stand in the midst of 4 melee red skeletons or rotworms and read a book. Once you hit it off, you are untochable.

Mages really have only one advantage over warriors and archers, that throws them severely off balance in everything they do.
That advantage - wands.

Why? here is why.
Imagine 3 factors on the balance scale:
Distance, high damage, and targetting.

An archer has two benefits: distance, and auto target. They do not do much damage, but they can stay on distance and fire away automatically.
A warrior has two benefits: auto target, and high damage. Warriors have formidable physical defense and attack, and they can auto target, but they require to always stay on top of target, using up their time to cross tiles.
But mage has three benefits: great damage, which compensates warrior's damage, great magical defenses, like teleporting, making walls, and blowing people away, which compensates for warrior's defense, distance, and auto targetting because of wands.

So to summarize:
archer: distance, targetting
warrior: damage, targetting
mage: damage, distance, targetting.

To balance a mage, make them have to trace the target with their mouse manually. This will limit both efficiency and casting time of a mage.


Finally, another point of economical balance. Currently mages can lead independant wealthy lives, not needing anyone's help. Because monsters that drop magical trinkets (rings, ice birds, wands) can be killed by magic.
Same with warriors - they can kill any monster that drops weapons, armor, warrior loot stuff.
That is a broken logic in loot tables.

If you want mages and warriors to cooperate, do this:

Monsters that drop magic items mages need, cannot be killed by mages.
High magic resistance, high melee damage. Monsters like golems, who bounce spells and can walk through flames and grab a mage by their ass. Make stuff like golems drop magic items, and make them easy prey for warriors.

Likewise, monsters that drop warrior items, those yummy magic swords and high end shields and magic stones for warriors - should be highly resistant to melee, and should fry warrior ass for dinner with magic. Kind of like the lich and the flying skulls, but beef up their physical defense, so a warrior cannot kill them without a mage.

Do same for high end treasure maps - spawn combinations of monsters that a group of warriors or group of mages cannot take out alone. So they would need to cooperate and mix up.

This way warriors would end up with easily huntable magic items, and mages would end up with easily huntable warrior items, and the two classes will trade, and depend on each other, making them less independant and segregated.

The way it works right now is a one way trade. Warriors need a mage for pretty much every serious encounter to get a rare item, but a mage can farm icebirds and magical topaz all day.

Phew. Damn, wrote a novel.
I hope it helps and not confuses more, Estralis.

[Felbion Lijawyn]

1. Reduce damage of high end spells.
2. Either remove or make very mana costly to cast AOE DOT spells, they are fairly OP for the type of slow motion games illarion is.
3. Remove the spell that allows a mage to feed themselves, that will level them with everyone else.
4. Raise high end monsters' magic resistance and spread it across damage types (fire, lightning, ice, poison, etc, like physical damage is spread).
5. Increase casting time and cooldown of high end spells, that they can only be cast once before a monster gets to the mage in melee.

Can you PLEASE get an actual idea of what you are talking before you suggest stuff?

1. They take so long to cast that any group of monsters/warriors will drop your ass hard if you don't happen to have a wand with at least 2x lvl 3 magical amethyst in it
2. If you cast two powerful AOE-spells in a row your Mana will be down to about half or a tad below half
3. ?? If you mean level as in skilling (which I don't think but w/e), it takes about as many caps to reach around 75% in a single magic skill that you would need to max a warrior in dodge, parry and one weapon type
4. Zot is already working on that. (See the black dragon, wraiths in the new dungeon, some monsters from treasure maps aso)
5. As it is now, I can cast 1 - 2 KEL RA QWANs (strong fireball, non-aoe) before the monsters reaches me once it has seen me. Once reached (Unless it's a very slowly attacking monster), you won't be able to cast anything except the weak healing or attacking spells (you need around 20 KEL HEPT/RA to kill eg a white skeleton no matter how high your skill. That'll reduce your manabar to almost 0)

2. Make a noob mage start out with healing, teleportation, and/or gating runes. (i.e. make it like UO, where even fighters with 0 magery can cast recall). This will allow noob mages to kite and at least get away if it gets too bad with a mummy.

Teleportation's casting time is too high. You won't be able to cast that while you're being attacked.

3. Lower magic resistance of low end monsters like flies and mummies.

I don't think they have any as it is.

But mage has three benefits: great damage, which compensates warrior's damage, great magical defenses, like teleporting, making walls, and blowing people away, which compensates for warrior's defense, distance, and auto targetting because of wands...

The damage is gone as soon as the warrior reached you and unless you not only spent about 5 - 6 months pging your magic skills to let's say 60% each in Commotio, Pervestigatio and Desicio (and yes, unless you don't do more than 2 - 3 caps a day it will take you about half a year to get that good) but also maxed your parry/dodge you will be dead within about 3 seconds.

Now, IF you survive long enough to blast the warrior away, your wand will lose the target and you'll have to retarget. By the time you're done with that the warrior/monster will have reached you again.

Again, teleportation is too slow. You can't cast it once anything starts attacking you.

How would making a wall help you during a battle? (circling yourself in walls takes so long to cast that even if you wouldn't be interrupted, you'd be dead by the time the spell was finished if a war attacks you)

[H.Banestone]

Uh oh, someone did not take "Battle mage tactics" class in the Academy.

Spoken like a low-end mage if you run out of mana that quick
Estralis was talking about high end mages with non-average stats.
And yes, notice how I'm talking about high-end mages, I mean the powergamed/old ones with skills maxed or near so.
I guess your teacher never taught you paralysis? Poison + paralyze + teleport will take care of any warrior.

It seems like you're either pretending to be a bad mage or really are bad.
Say, you take the battle indoors or to the forest. You can wall a door, or a space between rocks and trees, and now a warrior has to go around to get to you. Take it to a difficult terrain, and a warrior crawls very slowly.
Ask Athian and Nalzaxx how to play a mage.

But notice at the same time how you say "group" of warriors will drop your ass.
You're assuming you should be able to tackle groups.
If you're already assuming and expecting to take on a "group", that means your class it too powerful.

I think the point of balance is to level the mage and the warrior class in a fight one on one.

If you play a mage, and gonna tell me that you cannot take a solo warrior, then you belong in the low-end mage category, and still have much magic to learn.

Anyway, this aint topic for it. This is Noobia topic. Way to derail your own thread, Estralis!

[Fianna Heneghan]

And back on the topic of Noobia ....

I've noticed that the player characters are all naked there. It's no problem now, but with paperdolling coming down the pipeline, I'd like some pants please.

Also, the NPCs tell you to say "repeat lesson" if you want a do-over, but some of them won't tell you again.

[Felbion Lijawyn]

Uh oh, someone did not take "Battle mage tactics" class in the Academy.

Spoken like a low-end mage if you run out of mana that quick
Estralis was talking about high end mages with non-average stats.
And yes, notice how I'm talking about high-end mages, I mean the powergamed/old ones with skills maxed or near so.
I guess your teacher never taught you paralysis? Poison + paralyze + teleport will take care of any warrior.

It seems like you're either pretending to be a bad mage or really are bad.
Say, you take the battle indoors or to the forest. You can wall a door, or a space between rocks and trees, and now a warrior has to go around to get to you. Take it to a difficult terrain, and a warrior crawls very slowly.
Ask Athian and Nalzaxx how to play a mage.

I'm currently playing my third mage, his stats and equip are maxed and the skills don't exactly matter when it comes to casting speed. Paralysis will only work if the warrior is at least 5 - 6 tiles away and for the poison to kill a warrior will take ages. Dronrul (who by my knowledge should be the second or maybe third highest skilled mage ig (dunno exactly how high Avalyon got by now) took three KEL YEGs to get my mage to lose enough health so he would actually die from it eventually (and that was when my mage had no skills except library research).

You usually don't have much time making half a maze or picking a good battlefield before a pvp starts, do you? Sure, if I'm lucky and the pvp starts in the mountains I can just pop one or two walls in front of me and the warrior will have to walk around it but that's pure luck with the battlefield.

...But notice at the same time how you say "group" of warriors will drop your ass.

That's because you complained about the AOE-Spells (which you'd usually use to attack a group)

I think the point of balance is to level the mage and the warrior class in a fight one on one.

Agreed, but the ways you are suggesting to balance it would make a mage utterly useless. (I'm talking about if we were to even increase casting time or manaloss further, etc.)

The best way to balance them would be to:

1. Make the speed you can skill up magic with about equal to that of a warrior.
2. Make spell-dmg, manadrain and casting time be based on the skill-level.
3. Take out the possibility to interrupt a mage.
4. Reduce the spell-dmg of the really good stuff so a mage with 100% using it againced a person with 0% magic resistance would do about the same dmg as a warrior with 100% slashing on a person with 0% parry/dodge.
5. Make the AOE-Spells do about half as much damage so the mage will still be usefull to a group but not be able to solo a group of monsters anymore without having very very high skills in both, magic and fighting.

...then you belong in the low-end mage category, and still have much magic to learn.

The only two runes I'm missing are LUK and PHERC (aggressive summonings and lightning-spell). My skills+equip are good enough to cast any spell and aside from an Iceflame-Circle (in which the flames are a tad weak) they all do full damage.

PS: My current mage wasn't taught at the Magic Academy because I wanted to enjoy the rp-sides of being (and becoming) a mage and wanted him to have a good knowledge of all the theory-stuff there is, not only the engine-stuff. It seems to me that sadly, a big part of the comunity is trying to turn Illa into a Hack&Slash

[Estralis Seborian]

I've noticed that the player characters are all naked there. It's no problem now, but with paperdolling coming down the pipeline, I'd like some pants please.

That is a very important aspect. I think the most obvious solution is to hand out the starting equipment on Noobia, not afterwards. I assume this takes more work than catches the eye, but I'd say this is very, very important.

On magic, I have to admit I didn't read what was written above; but what I can say is that magic needs a total rework, not some incremental nerfing/modification. This redesign won't come anytime soon and thus, you'll have to live with what we have for now. Afterall, magic works and you can kill stuff with fireballs . And, again, Noobia won't incoperate magic in any way.

[Fianna Heneghan]

I found this on Noobia today...

Amelia: Hello %Charname!

Is Amelia broken? Or is it that I didn't yet name the character she was speaking to?

[Fianna Heneghan]

I sent a !gm about a strange problem on Noobia today. The Hammerfaust brothers couldn't recognize character ID (1801464876) as collecting the coins to complete the purchase of equipment. Finally the player made another character to complete Noobia and that was successful.

[ThisGuy]

for some reason I wanted to see Noobia, so i created a dwarf a few weeks ago. that place had me about to go crazy, hadn't noticed this thread at the time...stuff I didn't like:

if you just equip the armor/weapon instead of asking the dwarf how to do it you can't interact with the fighter dwarf, took me 20ish minutes to figure that out and you can't just skip it because trying to walk across the bridge warps you back and tells you you MUST finish it...if I didn't want to see the rest of Noobia, or if I had been a new player I think thats a place that would have made me quit

the part with fighting the zombie is also something I think could be added to the craft area, some people(half my characters) don't really care to fight, and wouldn't really need that tutorial

also the elf guy at the end calls you a fool when you tell him you're ready to go to Gobiath(name on the map when you're starting the game) and tells you its called Gobaith...whichever it is, it makes that guy seem rude, and nobody wants to be around rude people

[Estralis Seborian]

Thanks for the feedback!

Would you welcome a method to skip certain lessons?

[ThisGuy]

I think alot of the stuff the mandatory tutorials cover is pretty easy to figure out without a tutorial(possibly easier) there are some things in the game that take a bit of figuring out and those aren't really covered in the tutorial...might be when other crafters are added

I remember years ago when I first started I tried to work with some wood I cut, I had the saw and the logs in my hands and kept trying to use first the saw and then the wood, then finally set the wood down and ended up making someone mad because they thought I was trying to burn the building down when I ended up with camp fires...some usages like that where it would explain static tool usage versus normal tool usage might be needed.

but I don't think the fighting tutorial is 1 of those things a new player needs as most new players try to gain a few coins to get better equipment before going off to fight.

[Ven]

I don't know if you are still interested in collecting newbies' thoughts on Noobia, but I came fresh into the game a few days ago and can still remember my initial thoughts about it.

First though, I want to say that I think Noobia should not be better than the actual game itself. Noobia should be on par with the rest of Illarion, a good representative of what the game is like, not better; you want to show off your game for what it is instead of promising people better things that never come, such as what Everquest and almost every other typical psychologically-addictive based MMORPG out there does.

With that being said, I think the tutorials themselves were done mostly well. The main concerns I had in my first five or ten minutes were movement speed and NPC dialogue (I know movement speed is being addressed in the great big update coming up, so whew. although it made me question if everything in Illarion was slow / took forever to do anything, such as crafting and etc). The dialogue itself was fine, except for how NPCs' responses to various player input are not united across the board. For instance, upon a player sending input to an NPC, one NPC might say something along the lines of, "Huh? I didn't hear you clearly. What was that?" while a different NPC might say absolutely nothing or might repeat their previous tutorial instructions. Some NPCs also respond when you greet them by saying "hi", but others require that the player say "help" before starting their tutorials, completely ignoring any "hi"s or "hello"s sent by the player. I was not very frustrated by these contradictions, but I imagine other new players might be.


I think that if the above things are fixed in Noobia and are similarly malfunctioning in the rest of Illarion, that they should be fixed in Illarion as well. Anything further in my post you should only pay attention to if you want to make everything as perfect as possible, as I don't think it matters too much if you accept the below critique or not as far as Newbies' first impressions go.

1) NPC responses to questions about their surroundings. I think that the two NPCs in / below castle Noobia (the king and the guy in the cave) should say something if you ask them about the undead behind the barricade in the cave under the castle or the monsters that are lurking about outside of the castle's walls. I think the cave guy for example should respond to, "What is going on here?!", "What are those Undead doing over there?!", and etc.

2) 'Want to fight a mummy?!' It seemed rather random that the dwarf blacksmith brother teleports you to some place in the middle of nowhere in order to fight a mummy so that you learn how to fight. Perhaps there should be a very small backstory behind the graveyard / crypt place, given in a sentence or two by the dwarf, also explaining how he can teleport you there, monitor your progress fighting the mummy, and then teleport you back when you're done.

3) Telling the player about shift + clicking. I don't remember if the tutorial NPCs teach you about shift + clicking for easier control over using items in your inventory and in your immediate vicinity or not, but I don't quite remember it. I was relieved when I read about it in the player's manual on the main website since I was using right-clicking to take care of everything up to that point in time. If the tutorial NPCs do mention this, ignore this bullet point and consider this my quirky "when I was a newb, I did <this> inefficiency" offering.

4) Reminding the player that what they collect in Noobia will not go with them to Illarion. This specific critique is by far my most hazy and not-necessary critique in this entire post. I know this is a role-playing game that focuses on role-play and not items / stats / etc, but some newbies may come into Illarion still with a mindset influenced by the opposite even if they want to embrace Illarion's role-play culture, just because of the fact that they have lived in a world filled with item-focused RPGs. I did not spend a lot of time making stuff in Noobia, but some other newbies might hoping to bring it with them into Illarion, or might be disappointed to see all of the tools they got disappear. Regardless, I think that it is obvious to the player as the game and its information now currently stands that Noobia is a tutorial island and that because Illarion is focused on role-play, they will not have their Noobia items with them when they enter Illarion. Still, some people might need the reminder. If the reminder already exists in the tutorial however, please ignore this bullet point.


Up to this moment, this post is the best critique that I can give of Noobia as a very recent newbie. I hope it is helpful insight. I'm also sorry for any grammatical problems or walls of text or ideas clumped together that you might have encountered.

EDIT: Ah, a time estimate would be good information from me too. I would say that I took up to two hours going through Noobia including the four crafting portals. Some mostly-additional time (beyond that two hours) was spent trying to figure out why the gray cloth I left sitting in the sun did nothing in 5 minutes (did not bleach) but would disappear when I went AFK for over 30. Compared to most people though I am very thorough, and this time estimate is not exact, but I think is close. I also role-played somewhat fast with the craft NPCs as their dialogue unfolded (including the dialogue errors and their in-character strangeness that came across as a result).

[Elijah]

God.

I hope you stay. Wait, please?

[martin]

I don't know if you are still interested in collecting newbies' thoughts on Noobia, (...)

Yes, we are. Thanks a lot for your feedback, that is really something helpful.

We will try to consider all of your points when redesigning the whole Noobia-process!

Martin

[Ven]

God.

I hope you stay. Wait, please?

Hahaha, thank you so much .

I might, at least for a while. Real-time role-playing with in-game mechanics has its appeal.

Yes, we are. Thanks a lot for your feedback, that is really something helpful.

We will try to consider all of your points when redesigning the whole Noobia-process!

Martin

No problem, and thank you . I'm glad I was able to help.

I've also read through the rest of the comments here and have to agree that it would be nice if all of the other crafts in the game had tutorial areas with portals inside of Noobia castle as well. I might not use some of their knowledge, but I would like going through them all just in case I want to try one of them out in Illarion.

I can also confirm that I did not remember seeing a blue swirly above my head after fighting the mummy in Noobia and that I questioned myself about it. Perhaps I was just distracted; I know it's possible that I was.

I also had the problem mentioned earlier about not having enough entrails to finish making a sausage in the cooking tutorial. I didn't think to ask the NPC about getting some though and just went back to the cloth-working tutorial and killed more sheep.


Onto other stuff, I have to say that part of the reason some newbies just say 'list your wares' to vendor NPCs instead of role-playing the sentence out is because half of the time what you say doesn't even reach the NPC, because you think you're standing right across the counter from the NPC when really you're a little bit diagonal from them. It's frustrating typing out something lengthier such as "Hello good sir / lady. Can you list your wares that you have for sale for me, please?" when half of the time it doesn't even register with them and then half of the other half of the time you clicked out of their wares window only to realize that you forgot if they had <such-and-such an item that you were looking for among others>. You could try expanding the response range for these NPCs from two squares away to three squares away instead if it doesn't cause any negative side-effects.

[Lord Arcia]

Expanding the square range of an NPCs response outside of noobia will only serve to annoy the players. Maybe expanding it in noobia is a good idea though.

[pharse]

Expanding the square range of an NPCs response outside of noobia will only serve to annoy the players. Maybe expanding it in noobia is a good idea though.

... which will probably lead to confused newbies once they left noobia. However one could expand the range for the NPCs just to say something like "come closer, I can't hear you well".

[Qeewee]

Wouldn't that cause:

Player: #s Hello!
Npc: come closer, I can't hear you well

?

[pharse]

Wouldn't that cause:

Player: #s Hello!
Npc: come closer, I can't hear you well

?

We can just tell the newbie to come closer. If he does not do this but shouts instead, well, this won't happen too often I guess. I'd stress that the NPC respond to many things, still they should not be too different to the non-noobia NPCs.
There is no solution without a drawback. If you have a better solution, please share it with us.

[Achae Eanstray]

Perhaps since this is noobia simply say "Please come closer" (( You need to stand directly in front of an NPC in order to interact with it ))

[pharse]

Perhaps since this is noobia simply say "Please come closer" (( You need to stand directly in front of an NPC in order to interact with it ))

hmh sounds good, but rather do the OOC information as a whisper inform.

[ThisGuy]

but if they're not close enough to interact with the npc they won't be close enough to hear a whisper...unless I'm seriously mistaken

and since its Noobia isn't it ok to do it there so you don't have it as much in main game areas?

[pharse]

but if they're not close enough to interact with the npc they won't be close enough to hear a whisper...unless I'm seriously mistaken

and since its Noobia isn't it ok to do it there so you don't have it as much in main game areas?

"whisper inform" is just the name for the blue informs. This has nothing to do with the range it can be "heard". Informs are directly sent to the player.