Fixing the Account System

[Garett Gwenour]

Another day and another poor experience in Illarion, not because of the graphics and not because of the regular players, but because new players do not understand this game. Sure they can roleplay, they can play a crazy character and certainly they can play a human character well enough to pass, but not an elf, nor dwarf, nor lizard, for these races are too complicated.
I think we need to change entirely how the account system is set up. We need to make it more difficult to get into our game because we do not want characters who scream around, whip out their cocks, or run around getting pked and attack anything they see. We also do not want elves who dont know what a depot is nor understanding what magic can be. Because these characters, played by players inexperienced in our game, take us out of the atmosphere and we have to spend 5 -20 minutes explaining to them what the game is about, how to play and how to think like their character. Things the account system is supposed to take care of.
I have outlined some steps, we keep a few things and add a few things.

Step one : Request account, what race and what name of the character, also included in the account request is a bit of background of the character, age, description, beliefs.

Step two : A reply from account GM is sent to the candidate to play this game, inside the reply are two questions. Firstly the player must describe the racial description of the race he wants to play, and also finish a short story like we have.

Step three : If the player is accepted in the reply will include a list of commands in this game. #me to describe, to open a depot (The yellow boxes right click once), to attack hold ctrl and click, click and drag to pick up things, the dial at the bottom of the screen works this way.

The player will then be able to make his character, the race, and then go into the game knowing the history their character should know, how to play the game and how to truely survive in the game without making a baffoon out of themselves in the first place.

If this is implemented, I have no doubt in my mind that the illarion roleplayer atmosphere will be raised to a much higher degree, a degree that in many people's opinions has been slipping. It takes only one player to shout some foul word and some slang and the atmosphere of a dozen excellent roleplayers is ruined for some minutes.

Lets take the extra time to implement this and bring back the old players who made this game good but left because playing this game now makes them sick to the stomach with the poor roleplay.

Thank you and I want lots of replies,

Sam

[Sidney Varguea]

I doubt this would stop the n00bs from coming in game and, thinking of it, that's not really what we want, is it? Everyone can learn.

[Garett Gwenour]

This account system is a lot like the one they use on Ultima online Dark age and I have heared inside that game it has some of the best roleplay around. So this sytem does work. The noobies will now know firstly how to simply play, secondly how to play their race, and thirdly the history their characters should know (like gods).
We do not want noobies who dont know how to play this game because it does very old very fast having to explain everything to some young child who does not sit still long enough to listen to you tell them to not speak about a game.

[Durgin]

I like the idea of them actually being forced to know how to do the basic things like use the depot and attack. The bottom line is no one who needs it reads moonsilver or the manual. Sad, but true.

[Sidney Varguea]

Yeah, but some souls still can be saved.
Your idea is very good, though. But we don't get the chance to attract that many players and I guess this idea for an account system while could keep the bad rper away, maybe could keep some of the good as well.

What I think we need is more active GMs. Sometimes, IG, I have strange moments in which I wonder if I'm really playing a roleplaying enforced game. These moments usually involve well known players walking around yelling: "Selling weapons and armors!". This kind of thing is so Tibia.
And... I have nothing against Tibia, I've played it for some time before Illarion, but you must agree with me that Illa and Tib are two completely different universes, different enough to NOT share this sentence, which pissed me off and made me log out.

[Gro'bul]

The account system works as intended. Problem is the game, your dropped in the middle of nowhere. A newbie island, demanding you use and understand the functions of the game is a great idea. Not only does it inform the player, but lets them learn through reading and doing. You can't make the person understand how to act ig through the account system, you only test their ability to theoretically do it. For example: Just because someone can throw a baseball well, doesn't mean you can drop them in the middle of a baseball field and expect them to know what to do. Its much too complicated to expect that level, our game is not on par with ultima online either. Its in a small corner of its own little world. You have to be in the main stream to even understand whats going on, what weapons are good, what armors are good, who sells/buys what, ect. Its like pulling out from the shoulder on a busy highway instead of using the on-ramp. This takes time, hopefully not too much longer.

[Estralis Seborian]

There are some nice statistics available. First off, there are 20265 accounts. Currently, 0 players are online and the max peak was 26 today. I am not revealing a secret if I state that most accounts are created without even submitting an application. One assumption would be that people are scared away by the account system. I don't think dropping it would help the situation (we had this before), but making it even harder to get ingame will definatly not improve it either. There are some discussions about this going on internally, one idea is to have some sort of "shareware" system - checking out and learning the first steps on a seperated newbie island but only qualified RPers get to the main land. One contra of this is that this island might get crowded with idiots who scare away true roleplayers.

[Enwell van Illdoran]

Sorry i do it in german because i would make to many faults..

ICh denke der schluessel um diese Trottel am zerstoernen unseres kleinen Hobbys zu hindern ihnen nicht nur langes warten sondern auch viel arbeit zu beschehren.. Die meisten von denen sind faul, haben keine Lust sich die Regeln durchzulesen, keine Lust sich das Manual reinzuziehen. In letzter Zeit fiel mir das immer oefter auf. Wie waere es denn mit der Idee die Neuen durch eine Art Test laufen zu lassen in denen die Regeln abgefragt werden. Ich kenne das als ich mich auf einer chat community anmelden wollt und unmengen von Fragen ueber mich ausfuellen musste. Ich wollte nicht ernsthaft darein, hatte nur langeweile. Doch da dies mir dann auch zu langweilig wurde habe ich nach der 15. Frage einfach Alt+F4 gedrueckt und war gluecklich das es vorbei war. Wer aber wircklich will und wircklich ernsthaft mitspielen will wird sich die Arbeit machen. Vielleicht koennte das man auch so machen das jeder den Test nur einmal machen kann. Gute RPler sollten da einfach durchkommen.

Ich bin kein Pogrammierer, sondern nur Spieler und weiss nicht ob das umsetzbar ist, aber das waere ein Vorschlag

[Estralis Seborian]

I see it this way:
100 players find out about Illarion, 30 of them are good roleplayers and 20 might become good roleplayers with some training. 50 are stupid morons. [guessed numbers]

From those 100, 50 create an account but never submit an application. Of those 50, 25 pass the application system. And of those 25, only few create a character and play more than 1 hour. Those are almost our real numbers, details are available. In the end, this means we lost almost all of our good roleplayers on the way from finding Illarion.org to getting ingame for more than one hour. I guess all of you can estimate what an even more complicated account system would cause. The account system is supposed to filter out the morons, not the roleplayers.

@Enwell van Illdoran: I am lazy, too. I never read the manual before getting ingame the first time. I asked OOC without brackets to get used to this wierd shift-click-control-alt-interface. I'd never wait more than a day and spending hours to get an account without even knowing the game. Please keep in mind that this is not a shard of a commercial, well known game.

[Galim]

I agree with Garrett. We need a change in the account application. In the last week i met 5 characters ingame whose players should have never come ingame. Elves whose first question is "Hi. How can u become fighter here? tell me plz". Others who attack peoples because it is "fun".

Players who never read the gamerules, and never will. I remember the dwarf Biggins, who disturbed a whole roleplaying night through ooc speaking and not existing roleplay. A 13 year old player who cant understand the difference between ic and ooc, who dont listens to you if you explain it to him, and continues bragging around ooc.


To be honest, the application system fails. It feels in the last time like more and more players are accepted who should have never been accepted. Characters having no clue about roleplay. ooc and ic, about the gamerules, about what illarion is, using l337 language, playing races which they are not able toplay, which they just play because it is "cool".

I suggest that the GM's observes in the beginning time the new players, to see if they are fitting into the game. If they see that not they should be thrown out immediately.

I want to do roleplay ingame, and don'texplain 2 hours a day noobs what roleplay is and why they can't be the super killer now.

[Estralis Seborian]

I suggest that the GM's observes in the beginning time the new players, to see if they are fitting into the game. If they see that not they should be thrown out immediately.

That'd be the optimum. Lots of work, but worth it. A change is definatly needed, but just adding some more questions to the current system won't help. It is just like with the MC-System; the normal, desired players should not be affected nor scared away nor discouraged by any system we have, instead motivated and encouraged to play. The idiots are supposed to be filtered out, not the players we want or who might become the players we want. Illarion is a game that could use 50 players in average, not 4 or what our current number is.

Currently, there are 15188 players playing Tibia. One might say that 99% of those aren't RPing and are not wanted in Illarion - thus 152 (1%) are. Many of our key developers and elder players are former Tibia-players, never forget about that. I still insist on my opinion that we loose too many good players before they even played their first hour of Illarion. The whole start has to be optimized, not just made harder. We all know that it is one of the key faults of development in Illarion that problems and exploits were fought by making things harder, more complex and click-intensive (refer to the changes in herb lore, fishing and other in summer 2003) instead of finding sophisticated solutions.

I am not a foe of an optimization of the current account questions, Grant's questions sound reasonable; but make this one step, one form, one reply, one act of work for the GM. Reduces the time to get ingame / be rejected (thus raising the amount of players who don't loose interest) and reduces the work for the GMs. The optimum would be if the player can check out the game beforehand to estimate if its worth it or not.

[Zach Bora]

A first of mine who does not at all speak leet and speaks good didn't even get past the account system. Why? I think it's because she was scared of it and didn't know what to write.

I haven't read what she wrote but, it must have been really horrible if she can't get through and there are leet speakers who do. Could it be possible that those persons ask someone else to answer that question? There is no way to prevent this...

[Sancho]

Estralis has nice points.

[LIFESTORY]Before I found Illarion I played lots of MMORPG. Tibia/Runescape/Knight OL/Conquer OL/Dransik(beta)...and few more that I cant even remember anymore.
At some point I found Illarion from google after searching for another mindless MMORPG. I was thrilled. I loved the roleplay, though it took few hours the learn the basics as I never really roleplayed before...However...I was told the only NPC selling anything was currently "kidnapped by orcs" and there were hardly anyone playing at the time. After tens of hours walking around with nothing to do, I finally quit, and It took me 2 years (or something)to come back. [/LIFESTORY]

There is allways a bunch of good roleplayers out there looking for a game and much more of those who are likely to become one if given a fair change. But most of people are allways those that are not wanted.

Only way to get more good players is to get more and more account requests and same time keep the bar hight enought. At the moment the lack of players is actually lowering the amount of newcomers aswell.
People dont want to join a multiplayer game with 0 people online. (like at the moment)

I think Illarion should focus more on luring new players, even though its non-commercial game. At least the homepage should be updated. And when the new clints arrives, please get there some new tasty screenshots. Roleplayers like eye candy too.

[Galim]

Luring good roleplayers., notz what we see often ingame in the last time. If we just want to have more players and let peoples ingame who are NOT what we want to see here illarion will become soon another tibia or runescape. and the good roleplayers will be driven away.

[Sancho]

A first of mine who does not at all speak leet and speaks good didn't even get past the account system. Why? I think it's because she was scared of it and didn't know what to write.

I once told my friend about Illa and told him to check out the site.
Hes a real combuter roleplay fan and I figured out he would like it.
Next day I met him he just said something like: "I was supposed to try it, but then I noticed there's only 3 players online! That game must suck.."

[Isilwen]

I once told my friend about Illa and told him to check out the site.
Hes a real combuter roleplay fan and I figured out he would like it.
Next day I met him he just said something like: "I was supposed to try it, but then I noticed there's only 3 players online! That game must suck.."

That's a sad story

Anyway, I have a small idea that could help out with at least some of the newbies. Would it be possible to set up a system that allows some volunteer players agree to have contact information or something posted somewhere for newbies to either ask for help, or agree to meet in game so the players could help get them started? I remember feeling extremely lost and out of place IC when I first played, but once I met other characters who helped me out it was a lot easier.

[Necrontyr_arising]

I think it is quite to do with how mature you are, for example runescape (worst game ever) has hundreds of young players so is a more 'kiddies' game because it is simple to play. This is a mature game where it isn't all about stats and being good at fighting, I know that people fresh from other MMORGs that cant roleplay quit within the hour because they dont understand ooc, and it is really frustating telling them only to find that they just want to ask you how to train their 'attack level'.

I may well be one of the youngest players, only 14, but I am really into the rolelaying type games and not stat games. I suppose if you don't grasp the game's rules after reading them twice then you can't roleplay and lots of people will ignore you. The game introduction-account system is very good at separating roleplayers from non, but some still slip through the net.

[Errian Abêth]

I doubt this would stop the n00bs from coming in game and, thinking of it, that's not really what we want, is it? Everyone can learn.

It would stop more "n00bs" from coming just because some don't have the skill or the attitide to write such long applications and it is exactly what we want, since the main page says that. "This is not Tibia".

one idea is to have some sort of "shareware" system - checking out and learning the first steps on a seperated newbie island but only qualified RPers get to the main land. One contra of this is that this island might get crowded with idiots who scare away true roleplayers.

This is problematic. The points already mentioned by you are true, it would become some "fun" island for chars of new (and certainly old) players to just do things they can not do on the mainland.
Why having this two-island-trouble if it could be done with a little more complicated questions in the application?

That'd be the optimum. Lots of work, but worth it. A change is definatly needed, but just adding some more questions to the current system won't help.

Guess it is impossible to watch all the newer ones, there would be more GM's than player quickly and it would be really lame..

I don't agree with you saying more questions in the account system would improve nothing. Maybe random questions wouldn't, but certrain, well though of questions can. I will just compare this since that is a good method: I saw and played a game with a much more complicated account system. I had to read 10 pages of background, I had to answer static and individual questions. (It was fun, though, everyone who has no fun reading the story of a game can just press the little X in the upper right corner and leave)
I wanted to play a special race for which I had to find a "Clan" first. It was also possible to play a clanless char, but much more easier to be with one. I wrote two longer storys about a day in the life of my char, made up a mythological story for the clan-brackground usw.
I was well in when playing.

They also had this for other races. Some may thing *everyone* can play and learn everything. Please, experience teaches us other things.
Not every new player can play a proper elf. I agree with some points mentioned by other players, I really hate it when an elf greets and orc with "hi" and then asks "Wanna train?".

Some races are more difficult to be played.
Humans: Easy, they can be almost everything.
Halflings: Average, they are funny and a player being in a good mood should have no problems with playing them, though they have some background and things to know to play them properly.
Orcs: Average, you need to know some things about them but since their race is not very intelligent you don't need to be to play them properly.
Elves and dwarves: Difficult. You need to have much background (though I think elves need MUCH more than dwarves) to play them properly. Certrainly never players can *not* do that. I am not saying they can't learn it, but should play other races first.
Lizards: Undecided, the game gives nearly no real background. Without blaming the PO's (who's roleplay I mostly like actually) lizards are mostly played as fun chars. Some use more s's when talking but that's all. Sometimes they use the name of their god, but the game needs certainly more information about that race. Why? Easy, everyone knows elves, dwarves and halflings from the common fantasy stuff, but less people know lizardmen.

Having levels of difficulty, there may be gm's for every race in the application to provide the players applicating for a certain race with tasks and a requirement of background fitting to their race and role.
That needs of course more GM's for the application (which is not the most interesting work to do I can imagine) but well done it works. As said before, I am comparing now so it is existing. The game I was talking about had 4x more players than Illarion *with* the "harsh" application btw.

Maybe we should do some advertise a little more, there are many, many players out there, good players who would fit to this game probably not even knowing it.

So far from my side.

edit: typing mistakes...^^

[Kaja Wolfagen]

Orcs: Average, you need to know some things about them but since their race is not very intelligent you don't need to be to play them properly.
edit: typing mistakes...^^

[Errian Abêth]

This was not ment to blame anyone, ol'dog.

[Aragon]

Maybe we should do some advertise a little more, there are many, many players out there, good players who would fit to this game probably not even knowing it.

The staff will do an advertising campaign, when the new java client and the magic systems are ready.

[Llama]

Could we at least limit n00bs to having human characters before they have spent a month or so IG? < the idea

One of my earliest elves was once asked IG which god he followed, I had to make him sound like an atheist; other races need more RP; it was embrassing for me anyway (me being PO).

And I disagree, halflings are hard to play because you have to always act like dirt.. (you cant shout back cos you'r scared). Lizards aren't as fun as you may think, because they are completely connected to Tanora who created them, so everything is seen in that perspective. I mean, you have elf atheists, but lizard atheists are impossible to a point; so its best for the RPers who like a chalange (also they are a minority)

[Dónal Mason]

Halflings are NOT hard to play. You just have to play them as a literally normal character. You know, quite unlike all the humans who have no fear of anything. Period.

[Llama]

Halflings are NOT hard to play.

My hafling is orc-phobic, every time he sees one he runs away... you think that's easy?

and he'll never have a chance as a fighter

[Lennier]

The optimum would be if the player can check out the game beforehand to estimate if its worth it or not.

Aye, that is the most important thing i believe. At the way through the Application System we lose up to 90% of all interested people each day before they are able to look ingame for the first time.

[Dónal Mason]

Yes, actually. Extremely easy.

[Errian Abêth]

Make a bigger screenshot and functions page then, make them hot

The functions seem to be quite difficult to use for most people and it takes some time to learn, but there are still new ones sometimes and those are the ones really wanting to play the game seriously.
If they really want it, they will accept to wait a few days. It's not the world.

[Garett Gwenour]

my experience ingame 5 minutes ago showed me we need a stricter account system

[Arameh]

Errian, fist i want to say that i completely disagree with how you see difficulty of each race, but i see your point. What i would suggest is that before playing the game you have to read a little text, smaller than a full page, showing the basics of the game. Explaining which are the basics commands like how to attack, use depot, bad etc. Also explaining the difference between ooc and ic, and the use of brackets. The title of the text would be like MUST READ!! and would be written just after you make an account, so then n00bs should never say ooc things freely like they do or can be temporary banned. Me too, i am tired of being in a roleplay thing and some newb destroy the atmosphwere. Like at Stephen's weeding, the guy running around saying CATCH ME CATCH ME and idiotic stuff...

[Zach Bora]

I was thinking about this today and we could maybe do something like it.

Create an island for tutorial which will teach thinks that aren't on the main site (but that might be on fansites or deep in forum), like how to operate, read, feed ourselves, battle, speak to npcs, emotes, speak ooc and ic...

When the player is ready for the real land, one of the player online from the players that want to will be teleported temporaryly next to the new player and act as a judge to let the person in or not. He will see if the person can RP properly in-game (it's not always the same as writting a story).


There are many flaws in this idea, but I thought I'd still put it.