Newbie Friendly

[Mickel]

d = done

n = next (as in display the next character race option in line)

It's mnemonic enough, and would make sense in a command line interface. The text area where all this appears is, however, small and off to the side, away from the center of attention, which is the playing field and specifically the icon representing the player character. Important information such as which button to push in the case where there is one correct alternative and ~100 wrong ones shouldn't be hidden in small print in a corner. Especially not in an action game like Crossfire is. I don't see why this can't be done like the class selection later on.

From the tutorial map:

A bed to reality is the way you quit the Crossfire world.

A bed to reality is the way you quit the Crossfire world to get back to your real life. While you are in real life, your character is asleep. Nothing can happen to it, but beware of losing your items!

That text suggests that you can lose your inventory while offline... Also, if I remember correctly that information comes from an inconspicuous character standing in a corner and that you have to prompt for that information. In a tutorial you're expecting to be guided along. In fact, getting information about beds to reality from that character is on a level of complexity on par with some of the quests I've seen in the game, which is bad news both for the tutorial map and those quests!

And once again, important, game-critical information isn't to be hidden away in a corner. We're talking about beginners here. Many of which have probably not played a text-based MUD in their life.

If a character in a game has something important to say in a tutorial section of a game they usually have a strong visual cue to indicate it - such as an explanation mark over their head, or an animation of some sort. I would have the character animate and then speak to the player without being prompted, or something like that.

See above. It would seem tutorial maps are not very effective. Sadly, same with online documentation. Seems the only method that works is to have some one stand over their shoulder and answer all their questions and tell them how to play.

I think you're being unfair. Tutorial maps are as effective as you make them. Other games can do it; some more, some less well, but almost all of them manage to teach you the basic concepts of the game without having you give up halfway through because it's too damn awkward.

I think it's time to throw the existing character creation / tutorial map out, think the entire thing over, and come up with something that works.

Dialog boxes would be quite useful in the case of this map, and some other situations too.

[Leaf]

I think it's time to throw the existing character creation / tutorial map out, think the entire thing over, and come up with something that works.

Please provide details on this "something"

[Mickel]

I don't know if there's much more I can add at the moment. The ability to pop up dialog boxes in the playfield would go a long way to provide information in a better way.

Also, the simplest way to make sure people don't use the quit command in the wrong way is to rename it or change the way it works. I haven't seen any other game of this type where simply quitting will erase your character and in most games, actually getting your character erased requires you to personally contact a GM. People simply don't expect their character to be erased.

Either rename the command to something like "quit-and-erase" or - which would be better - change the way the command works. A fair way to do it would be that using quit works like getting killed and then using a bed to reality. That is, you get returned to the last savepoint, have a death penalty incurred and then get saved and logged out normally.

The very least that can be done is to add a confirmation to the command. "Warning! Using this command will permanently erase your character. Are you sure you want to do this? Type 'QUIT' again in all caps to confirm." in nice, red, boldface letters.