Topic

diaveborn's "Why The Heck Isn't This Explained Somewhere" thread?

As promised in Live Help!  Here's my super awesome list of things where explaining them would be super awesome; also includes super awesome bonus suggestions on ways to explain!  

A lot of these would be situations where a little bit of effort would prevent a lot of confusion and help the guides have more time to answer other questions, so without further ado:

- Frogs take ten minutes to deliver.  (Simply put this somewhere on the buy page. Would be good to maybe have it in super bold letters the first time you buy something, too. But I don't only suggest that it's the first time you buy things because people apparently miss a lot (see *ed point in list) and it might be a bit harder to implement something like this whereas putting it on the buy page would be simple.)

- People can pick up things in your house!  (This SUPER needs to be explained because people view their houses as safe.  They might go into someone else's house and not be able to pick up items on shelves, and think that the items on their own floor are safe, for example.  Also, they might not understand which items in their tower are safe and which are not, and while a lot of us know to look at the changelog that isn't going to be obvious to newer players.  (Relatedly, what the heck is up with the "placed items in towers" bug? Fixed? No? If not, can we have some really good communication about this please?) Losing items of yours that you thought were safe can be really discouraging.)

- Bag slots; explain why you're not able to acquire the item you are trying to, when you don't have the space for it.  (I just tried to buy an alchemy kit with a full inventory and the message says: "Well that didn't work. Your purchase failed :( It could be the seller stopped selling, or ran out of inventory, or changed the price on you."  Er, it could be absolutely none of those things! And it would be super easy to add that to the error message.  Same with grabbing bags/boxes from your butler when you don't have a bag slot.  It's not intuitive a lot of times for there "not to be space" when you clearly do have space *in* the bags.)

- Not quite sure what's up with the confusion about going back to the world because it's explained in the tutorial.  But there have been more than a couple newer players who, from what I could tell, were in the tutorial, and were asking about it.  So possibly off topic (i.e. it *is* explained), but could stand to be looked at again, maybe.  (edit: see this thread for example)

and

* Possibly a bit in the tutorial like "hey, there's an encyclopedia link on the main page and it's searchable and will give you tips!" and "hey, sometimes things will pop up on your screen [like that you have to squish grapes to get out of hell] and you'll really kind of want to read them!"  Shouldn't really need to explain stuff like this, I wouldn't think, except sometimes, reading live help, I see that it really kind of is.  This one wouldn't be as straightforward to address as some of the other ones but it's maybe worth a thought.  I think it (especially the one about the encyclopedia) could be done in a way that is non-condescending, and I think it'd be helpful - but I'd understand if it would be seen as awkward for the game to refer to non-in-game things.  

I may add more as I think of them!

Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Fairly new Glitch player here and I wanted to say... a) there's a changelog? Woah, I'll have to look for that. But also I wasted a lot of teleport tokens on the Xulanga teleport quest before I figured out how teleportation was supposed to work with setting a point and teleporting to that point using the go home/go to world/teleport interface rather than the map interface. I'd have really liked an explanation of how to set a teleport location and how to use it when I got teleportation I, also the energy to teleport doesn't seem well-explained. Maybe most people get this quickly and easily, but I figure there must be some other people out there who will get confused by it.
    Posted 4 months ago by Larch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would add that objects will have a lot of unusual things that you can do with them.  Check out every menu option and see what they can do.  Make sure to have some energy and mood, because they might go up or down.  If people were encouraged to play with items, we'd get many fewer questions about where cheese comes from.

    If you lose enough energy and mood, you won't simply lose the ability to do things, you will DIE!! This was a shock to me the first day, and I can't remember if the new Tutorial mentions it.  However, dying isn't permanent and you can come back as the same character without losing your stuff.  This is so different from other RPGs that it should be carefully explained.
    Posted 4 months ago by KhaKhonsu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wine: I don't remember what it says when you use it but possibly something like a growl notification saying "now you can click on the resource and select remove" would be helpful as it seems to confuse many that it doesn't make the resource instanty disappear.

    Towers: Explain somewhere what towers are. Glitchen who don't visit a lot of home streets will probably know what a rock or a dirt pile are from being in Ur but aren't necessarily going to know what a tower is. (Also, is it explained somewhere that choosing that resource for cultivation only starts the project? I forget this too.)
    Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Your looks - You have 36 looks from your past that you can quickly switch to - Any look you keep for more than 5 minutes is auto-saved." You might think you've only saved 36 looks but it is just the last 36 looks. It's sort of explained, but a bit confusing. (Probably somtething I should add to the (possibly upcoming) copy-edit-list (yep, I know there have been typo/grammar lists but I am thinking about doing a bit of a more comprehensive list.. okay anyway, just thinking out loud here :) ).)
    Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Larch there used to be a quest related to teleportation that made you set a location, walk to another region, then teleport back. Has this quest been removed or does it just not do a good enough job of explaining what's happening?
    Posted 4 months ago by Janitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The quest exists; I did it very recently. The problem is it doesn't explain how to set a teleport location, nor does it explain how to use one once you set one or the difference between teleporting through a location you set and using a teleport token. I went through four teleport tokens before I figured out what I was meant to do. I got the quest extremely early into being a glitch at all, and it was confusing to me. And nothing mentioned energy costs of telporting that I noticed.
    Posted 4 months ago by Larch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • In addition to the teleport issue, a comple more things where there are multiple components to the issue, and it would be really helpful to have them explained in one central location:
    - learning speed times
    - number of animals/collectors/etc on streets (unless this is supposed to be part of the fun of figuring things out for ourselves - except, there're very numbers-oriented people who have examined the issue and still aren't sure, and I don't feel like this in particular matches up with some of the other explore type things. And the same could be said for the rest of the stuff I've been talking about - it can be super fun to explore regions and find seam streets and experiment with potions, but very frustrating to not be able to easily find the answers to some of these logistical type issues.)
    Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1000
    Thank you for this!!
    Posted 4 months ago by Minkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Why doesn't the new Seam Streets quest explain that the basement streets (which are "behind key-locked doors") DO NOT count towards the quest? Perhaps the wording should be changed to indicate that basement streets are not seam streets?
    Posted 4 months ago by foolbunny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • *nod* It would be as simple as saying "behind some key-locked doors" as places like Ajaya aren't seam streets either - still keeps the fun sense of exploration while being more accurate.
    Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks, this is really helpful! But (and I'm sorry for the randomness), how the hell do you pronounce you username? I've been staring at it for ages... lol :)
    Posted 3 months ago by The Panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • :)
    dee-AYVE-born

    (although... not entirely sure "ayve" is the way to spell it... but it's like "shave" minus the "sh")
    Posted 3 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • from op:
    hey, sometimes things will pop up on your screen [like that you have to squish grapes to get out of hell]

    Thinking more about this particular example... I'm not sure if the message about grape squishing is persistent. If not, (edit: just tested, and it isn't) it should stay up until you click "ok" - I can imagine first time players going afk, coming back to a dead glitch, and not knowing what to do because the "squish grapes" message is gone.

    edit: The live help conversations go like this:
    I'm in hell - what do I do? / Squish grapes. / Okay that didn't do anything. / Keep squishing.
    And all of that info *is* already in the little box.  It should either be persistent, or the first time you die you should have something special pop up (although, hmm, I'm not sure there isn't already one, in which case probably the persistent pop up would be the way to go).  (Possibly a special pop up would interfere with a mourn - maybe make the first death un-mournable?)
    Posted 3 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Also, some good points in this thread.
    Posted 3 months ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • some great suggestions in this thread but i also find myself wondering why the heck isn't live help better explained somewhere?  ;)

    i've suggested in the past that a link to the encyclopedia would be a useful thing to include in the live help disclaimer pop-up, but direction about avoiding spoilers would also be useful, as would perhaps a note about the info-gathering mode, which as far as i know isn't explained anywhere (yet).

    perhaps a loading screen tip could be added about info-gathering mode?  it's a really helpful tool that would probably help to head off a large portion of the 'where do i find' / 'how do i make' - variety questions that seem to be so common.
    Posted 99 days ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • *nod*  Neat timing - I just now posted this about a "non-spoilery" addition to the disclaimer.  And yeah.  I keep forgetting info-gathering mode is even there.. a loading-screen tip thing would be perfect.  
    Posted 99 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What is info gathering mode? I'm level 51 and been playing a year and I have no idea what that is. 
    Posted 97 days ago by Papa Legba Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ Papa Legba - Neither do I. Playing since last November - and taking my own sweet time :)
    Posted 97 days ago by Patricia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think you need to press "i" while your focus is in the game area and not the chat area, and that'll bring up.. er... some blue things. And info, and stuff.  (I dunno, I don't really use it!)
    Posted 97 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ diaveborn - Are you an under-cover dev?
    Posted 97 days ago by Patricia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • :o

    (no :) )
    Posted 97 days ago by diaveborn ♥ Subscriber! | Permalink