Some ideas to prevent newspawns from quitting.

[bmartes]

Everyone knows the newspawns not allways stay playing. Let's try to change that. I have some suggestions.

1. Place a link to the wiki page on the events page of each character.
maybe especcially the page "your first day in cantr"
Maybe make it only visible to the group of 20 - 30 years.
2. Appoint a some inline help persons. Persons who have a special attention to newspawns to help them on their way. They can assist them with getting
food and so on. Maybe an alarm-system (rss) to notice this assistants on new players.
3. I guess this one is very difficult to implement: A npc who can answer questions.

[El_Skwidd]

I think the first two are good, but an NPC in Cantr might ruin my life.

[Robaczek]

In my opinion only the first suggestion is nice and could help.
About remaining two - I'm strongly against. Sometimes newspawn find his way in a town when he finds helpful people. Sometimes not. And this is realistic. Why would we deprive new players of spawning in unfriendly places?
And about NPC in Cantr - eee??

[DylPickle]

The first idea is a great interface option that could really help new players out..
But in my opinion, the wiki has made some poor contributions in influencing new players... Since the wiki came out, there's been more and more new players with characters only interested in gathering then building, gathering then building.
But that's just my amateur observations, really.

[NiKnight]

Maybe add sandbox? (disadvantage: lot of work for ProgD )

Or... make a video about basics (how to gather, make simple tools, smelting etc.) and upload it on Youtube (or similar), thats brings some players too.

[tiddy ogg]

I think that's always been the case DP. Until you get the feel of the game, subsistence is the most pressing goal.
I think the Wiki has been a great help to those bothering to look at it. I almost quit in pre-Wikki days as I hadn't a clue what I was doing, and most of the chars I asked questions of were less than helpful.

[Hammy]

create a new island for new players so that they have to stay on the island and go through a NPC tutorial for 3-4 days maybe a week.. then after acomplishing the weeks tutorial they get turned into a newspawn on regular islands. a regular newspawn.. they keep nothing they gained on the tutorial island area, just the knowledge.

[SwimFan]

I sort of like that idea...could it be done though?

[Hammy]

there's a part on here already that keeps new players from using violence for first few days right? it would work same way just your moved to a completely different island.. and make sure there are no towns located on the edge of the island so that no outsiders can get on the island. Have all projects take less time so that the new people have time to see how everything happens in fast forward. And then to move them to a new island it would be just like creating a new player

[Robaczek]

Or... make a video about basics (how to gather, make simple tools, smelting etc.) and upload it on Youtube (or similar), thats brings some players too.

You have no idea how I love this splendid concept.
I'm whole-heartedly for it. It would be just great and would solve many problems that newspawns have. And it also isn't very hard thing to do.
So get it done.

[UloDeTero]

I like NiKnight and Hammy's ideas:

Tutorial island - But no NPCs. Have volunteer 'veteran' players create characters there, and play them as normal, but with more-than-usual OOCing to help the newbies learn the ropes. I know I'd volunteer for that. It'd keep messy "how do you play this game"-type things out of the main game.

Tutorial video - Something explaining the game would be good. I remember there was a webpage-based tutorial mentioned on the forum once. That'd be useful too.

And, of course, promoting the wiki, forum and IRC chat as methods of Newbie Help would be good too.

[Leo Luncid]

[opinion]I think RuneScape having a tutorial RuneScape island RuneScape
RuneScape would seem RuneScape a little over-RuneScape-used, don't you?[/opinion]

Tutorial videos would be killer; but maybe in-game tutorial pop-ups as
you play the game would suffice (ie a "how to make a building" info
would show up when you attempt to make one). They would remind you
as long as it would take to remind you how to play.

[kinvoya]

I like NiKnight and Hammy's ideas:

Tutorial island - But no NPCs. Have volunteer 'veteran' players create characters there, and play them as normal, but with more-than-usual OOCing to help the newbies learn the ropes. I know I'd volunteer for that. It'd keep messy "how do you play this game"-type things out of the main game.

Tutorial video - Something explaining the game would be good. I remember there was a webpage-based tutorial mentioned on the forum once. That'd be useful too.

And, of course, promoting the wiki, forum and IRC chat as methods of Newbie Help would be good too.

I agree with all of this. As far as as a tutorial video, I can see using modified versions of Seko's cartoon characters to describe what Cantr is like (with voice overs in different languages). It would just have to be made clear that Cantr is text only.

[BarbaricAvatar]

Well why not have a video but with only text in it? That would do the job. Although it may come across as boring to non-cantrians...

[Chris Johnson]

The idea of a tutorial island where all the first characters of new players end up has been an accepted idea for over a year now and will be implemented sometime, Experienced players will probably also be given the chance tgo create one character on that isle (probably a different isle for the major languages)