Idea for Helping Us Help New Players

I was just thinking, there are a lot of very frequently asked questions by new players. What if we had a sort of FAQ bulletin board in town? We could refer new people to that area for info, or bring them there ourselves to explain things with the info right there in front of them.

I brought it up in-game and AusQB made the delightful suggestion that the library be used for this.

What do you all think?

I like this idea! The only challenge is going to be cramming so much on little signs. Notch was supposed to add book support. I could also create a plugin that shows text in chat after you click on a FAQ sign? I will play around with some ideas this evening.

That would be cool, if a sign on a bookcase could be clicked and some information showed up in the chat. Sounds like a fair bit of work though.

Assuming you choose to undertake that task Justin...

I'm thinking each book shelf (row of bookcases), or so, could be on a certain subject and a sign above the bookcases would indicate this. Then each bookcase could have a sign on it that would give the chat message info when left clicked, saying something like, "Residence Overview", How to Claim a Residence", "Chat Channels", "Chat Commands", "The Empire Worlds", "How to Teleport", etc.

So what would the subjects be exactly?

Here's what comes to my mind:

• The Empire (an introduction and overview)
• Real Estate (residences, finding and claiming them, what they are for, that they're just dirt, that they're safe, etc.)
• Communications (chatting and chat commands)
• Geography (the worlds described briefly in each their own message)
• Travel (teleportation commands and descriptions of the world hubs/spawn buildings, also the town portals)
• Law (the server rules and policies)
• Economics (rupees, spending and earning them)
• Business (shops)
• Ethics (general guidelines on how to conduct oneself)
• Security (how to use permissions for residences)
• Research (useful web addresses like this site, the live map, and minecraftwiki.net)
• Self Help (tips on how to survive and prosper, pitfalls to avoid... just the major ones)

...I'm just kind of brainstorming here, lol.

This would be a lot of work, but I'd be willing to help out in any way I can. I could write up some of the text, for instance... though it would have to be checked for accuracy.

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Hmm I really like this I hope it can be done

The chat plugin seems like the easiest and most comprehensive solution, but also problematic. If clicking on a sign printed a wall of text in the chat box, it would only take a few player messages to send it off the screen.

The alternative would be to present very short and concise information on the signs, which would be an eyesore if they covered all of the bookshelves.

If writing in books does get put in, well then that would be the obvious way to go in my opinion.

Just another brainstorm......

What if I implemented a /faq chat command. Running that command gave you a list like:

/faq-1 | Worlds information
/faq-2 | claiming a residence
/faq-3 | chat channels and commands

Or would it be better just to do the library thing and make a /library?

My gut is telling me that any of these solutions will become a pain to maintain. And telling someone to go to the site (so everything is one place) is just as easy as telling someone to go the library and to a certain bookshelf....

Another option that Jeremy and I saw on a server the other day:

When you join for the first time you cant chat. You are in a building that guides you through rooms with a few basic instructions on signs. Then it has a few questions (like a quiz) and you have to choose the door with the correct answer to continue. We could of course tweak how this works best for us....

And yet again (sorry for all the posts, I am passionate about making sure new players can get acquainted):

What if new players started in a help chat channel, and then people that are willing to help can be in the channel (remember you can be in multiple channels)

I'm really fond of the library idea, it just sounds like fun! But like you said Justin it will end up needing to be updated often, which will be a pain.

I think this orientation 'maze' thing you mentioned is a superb solution. At least it will lessen the asking of the most basic questions. And I imagine it has the potential to do considerably more too.

I've noticed that there are some people who simply refuse to look up the information themselves when referred to the website guides, instead relying solely on the help of other players via the chat. This inevitably becomes a burden and ultimately becomes unmanagable when there are several people like this on at once.

So yeah, one way or another a solution to that would be nice. The library would be something in-game and interactive that they could be referred to, but the orientation 'maze' is probably the better, and simpler, option in the long run.

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I agree, both of these should be implemented. Nobody's going to go back to the maze (even if they could) to look for information.

Unless we give Admins/mods a command to send people back there when they ask to many questions. lol jk.

WONDERFUL IDEA!!!! (here i can't get yelled at for caps >.>) i was thinking about this last night when chat was flooded with the same 5 or 6 questions...how ever i couldn't come up with a decent solution to it other than read the site...but liz's idea is a very good one

why dont you do a book click on it and it will put it into chat

And result of this brainstorm?:

The tutorial

Please stop bumping six month old topics, thanks