Thread: MUD Features
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Old 01-30-2006, 07:43 AM   #6
somied
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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Thanks to those who replied, you've been very helpful - and I'm definitely still interested in more opinions!

To the_logos: as you stated early in your post, your tips are focused basically solely on potential players that have never played a MUD before, and while it is good advice, my MUD will be focused on those who have. It won't cater to 'true newbies' by any stretch of the imagination.

I have two main reasons for this: first of all, catering to players who have never played a MUD before takes an extraordinary amount of extra time, work, research, trial and error, and patience. In my opinion, unless you are running a MUD that produces profit, the added effort it takes to accomodate these particular players is not worth the moderate benefits. Often they will become frustrated, confused, and generally require so much attention that they end up distracting the staff from what they should be doing, like building/coding/enforcing rules/etc.

And secondly, I'm a die-hard believer in 'self help' (or in more blunt but accurate terms: RTFM). I think society in general tends to treat people like helpless children who must have their hand held and guided through life in a protective bubble. In my opinion, if you've figured out how to connect to the game, have decent reading comprehension skills, and a little common sense, then you should have no problem figuring out how to play the game on your own (or at least a well documented, fairly intuitive game).
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