In Regard to New Players

VioletLily · 2018-08-31 12:30:24

There have been a lot of new players recently. As such, I believe there is a need to post this. Now, I am going to be getting really personal in this post (You have been warned). Why? Because I believe that we all could use the reminder that every player we meet in this game is indeed a real person with real emotions and feelings.

Now, I am going to tell you a little about my experience learning how to play this game. Believe me, I am not a complainer. I tend to avoid adding any form of negativity when I can. I am just posting this in the hope that at least one person will read it and decide to try to treat new players with just a little more empathy.

You see, I started playing this game during a large influx of new players a couple months ago. By the comments left in the forums at the time, it seems people were amazed at the sheer number of us. Now, I have no way of knowing how many of us there actually were. However, it is safe to say that, when I joined, people's patience with new players was at an all-time low.

I was called "idiot" at about 10-15 times every life while I was learning to play. Always for something I was doing wrong that I had no way of knowing was wrong beforehand, with little or no effort taken to teach me what I should do instead. Many times the term "idiot" was replaced with words and phrases I am uncomfortable repeating myself. Other than Eve-runs, I can't recall a single life where I wasn't verbally attacked. I won't go into too much detail but some of the things I experienced, in any other setting than online, would have been termed abuse plain and simple. I believe it was about one life out of ten when I was fortunate to meet just one person who was kind to me, or at least showed a little hint of civility. To put that into perspective, that is one nice person for about every five hours of gameplay.

I know many people who would be able to brush such things off - People who can face experiences like this without batting an eye. I really commend such people.

I am not one of those people.

Believe me, I wish I was. However, with my hereditary social anxiety and depression it is simply unreasonable to expect me to be. These experiences cut me deep. Far deeper than they would have for most.

Now, I am not looking for sympathy for myself. I have learned to live by a "what's done is done" policy. I worked through it and am now a more experienced player and am enjoying the game.

So, then, why am I telling you this?

Because I understand that just because I was able to work through the hostile environment I found myself in doesn't mean everyone else would be able to as well. I am not talking about their choice to continue playing the game or not. I am talking about lasting out-of-game impacts such hostility can cause many people.

Because, if I had tried this game when I was a teenager expecting a nice community based game and experienced the kind of hostile environment I mentioned, even if for only a few hours, it would have pushed me closer toward suicide.

Don't get me wrong. I am not faulting any of the players I met back then. Again: "what's done is done", and I understand that everyone has their reasons for acting in such a way. Many were probably just having a bad day or were unsure how to communicate their sentiments in the game. Maybe a few were newer players themselves. Its okay.

I haven't seen this level of negativity in-game since I joined. However, I am recognizing that patience is starting to run thin again and am afraid we might once again head in this direction.

So I am simply asking everyone to try, if possible, to avoid unnecessarily verbally attacking other players in the future: New or otherwise. I understand that patience can run thin and it can be hard to communicate with the limits placed in-game. Mistakes will be made. It's okay. Please just try.

And if you see someone demonstrating this behavior, please kindly correct them and/or comfort or reassure the person on the wrong end of it, and maybe help explain whatever sentiment the other person is trying to get across if you can.

Last edited by VioletLily (2018-08-31 13:25:22)

Valences42 · 2018-08-31 12:36:44

+1

lucythewanderer · 2018-08-31 13:05:30

I think we may have joined about the same time. It took me hours of play to live to adulthood because 9/10 births, my mother would either not feed me or intentionally kill me (snakes and wolves). I also experienced serious lag when I first started, so in the rare cases they kept me alive until I could eat, it was still tough to live past childhood. I came to the form to find a fix for lag and saw the hostility, and quickly lost interest in playing with the community. I switched from looking for a solution to lag and looked up how to change servers (this is back before there was a settings option for server) and now check the server list for an empty or low population server before I enter the game most of the time. I've encountered some awesome and kind players (shout out to The Red Bug, who taught me most of the skills required) and enjoy teaching others when I can but I actively avoid large settlements. (If I'm born into a big city, I immediately suicide and check the server status before being reborn.) The game is great, some of the players are incredible, but some are toxic. I occasionally try to play with medium populated servers but if someone calls me names or yells at me as soon as I am born, I won't stay because I already know I won't enjoy playing with them. On the plus side, my low tolerance for toxic players means I have rarely encountered murderers.

MultiLife · 2018-08-31 13:31:20

Ok so I am sorta mixed with this. Yes, common decency and patience is great and everyone should aim for that but if anyone is expecting that in the internet, they are being very naive. I have encountered sensitive people in other online multiplayer games and time and again they go in, vulnerable as ever, hoping for the best, and risk their mood only to come back distraught and sad after getting into shitstorms of angry and negative people which will happen at some point no matter what. Yes, everyone should have fun time playing and have the right to enjoy themselves without fears BUT non-moderated multiplayers are the wild west of the web; anonymous people let loose, cause trouble, act carelessly... it's a bullet hell we go dancing in, voluntarily.

So as we say, "be kind", we should also say, "take care of yourself". Not everyone will be kind anyways so make sure you are prepared to save yourself from the situations and leave when you are being a target of bullying or negativity you can't handle. The power is yours; run away, respawn, practice playing by yourself or find players who are eager to teach you.

Anyways, I've mostly experienced great lives and taught and corrected some players who listened to me, and I've never killed a newbie. Part of this great overall experience comes from taking time to teach myself to play and gathering tips from videos and other players.

But yes for sure, some people need to chill, a game is not worth losing your temper over. But also, some people need to be able to save themselves when they end up in the fire of these exploding players.

It's just a game peeps. Both of the peeps. Newbs and pros. Chill and respawn.

Last edited by MultiLife (2018-08-31 13:35:43)

Aria · 2018-08-31 13:47:16

You've made some good points here, as a new player the game is difficult enough without having people F-ing and blinding at you left right and centre for being a bit clueless. Sure there is the tutorial now but it doesn't actually teach you very much and I think it's easy to walk through most of it without really reading the notifications.

Someone once did yell at me for eating a carrot off of his farm, I was starving to death and it was the only thing I could see that was edible... due to being embarrassed for my ineptitude I didn't stick around and ask why I shouldn't eat the carrots (or give him a chance to explain) and simply ran off and (probably) died in the woods anyway...
I think for this reason I didn't get the kind of abuse you did, I was too embarrassed to even attempt working on something I had no clue how to do. So promptly spent most of my time foraging alone desperately trying to stay alive, I think it took me about 3 days before I found out you could dig up and eat burdock... yes, most of the time I died before age 20.

Now I myself have cursed at people rather strongly a number of times; maybe it's the 8th time someone has taken a bowl or some other object I'm using out from under me in a single life. I feel bad after when I realise it could have been a total new player but ehhh...

If I'm female in a big city I'll ask my babes some simple questions, can you make compost, etc. If they answer no I'll ask them if they wanna learn, not once have I had someone say no. Also if I see someone who's dithering around a lot and doesn't seem sure what to do I'll ask them if they're new, and again ask the simple questions; these people are very willing to learn too.

I find it generally quite easy to teach them too, get them to watch you while you work and highlight key points such as "only feed the lambs". just ensure you have some food in the areas you're working (you might need to point it out) to avoid losing them as they go looking to fill their bellies. Once they've been shown how to do it once ask them to do it with you, everyone I've taught has always been super grateful to me for showing them something new.
Like that time I was nearing my death in a fledgling camp, I was making a well and knew that one of our family were pretty new to the game. With shovel in hand I asked him to follow me, I made sure he had seen the empty pond with the pile of stones, then bam! smacked it with the shovel and... he learnt how to make a well!

....I don't remember your name but I do remember your face and your manner... Here's to the shepherd who taught me making mutton pies within my first week of play, he requested that I no longer made berry pie as we had sheep and mutton pie is king. He then proceeded to show me how to make said pie in lightning speed time, asked me if I understood to which I timidly replied "think / so", at which point he ran off to tend to his flock. One of the few times I learnt how to craft anything ingame without resorting to https://onetech.info/

Last edited by Aria (2018-08-31 13:52:08)

PeaGirl · 2018-08-31 16:31:05

No matter what, we all begin as new players. Even for me it was cakewalk to understand the right ways of sheep pen making and sheep tending and all sort of farming, pie making and simple Eve camp making, but I lacked plenty of tricks. It took me month or two to realize that you can make kindling out of cut shafts, hence carrying a cartload full of all kinds of shafts, only for making whole ton of kindling for forging and fire starting.
Not everyone is master at everything. Some of us get bored of trying to do so, and instead begin butchering people for their boredom. Though some griefers I know aren't that bad... though they seem to dislike newbies who don't behave, but I am pretty sure everyone knows what it is like to be new. And I am sure it wasn't cakewalk at first either.

One of my old friends back when I was hanging out in Gaia Online talked with me about this Mabinogi I shared in discord before, the mobile version. From him I learned that sometimes knowledge is power. If you are prepared and read about things you see in mabinogi, bit like in OHOL. If there is burdock you can't pick, and don't know what to do (if you really are that silly and didn't even take note of it in tutorial, you perhaps need a notebook.) the OHOL wiki is there. It helps you at least to the basics. The rest is up on the people who show what they do, what you see and what you could possibly learn. It's hard, but if you slowly suck all the information, you'll feel smarter, you'll feel your brain surging with knowledge of some of the craftings that change your ingame life entirely.

Turnipseed · 2018-08-31 18:19:34

Aria wrote:

You've made some good points here, as a new player the game is difficult enough without having people F-ing and blinding at you left right and centre for being a bit clueless. Sure there is the tutorial now but it doesn't actually teach you very much and I think it's easy to walk through most of it without really reading the notifications.

Simple solution... take your time in the tutorial.

Play it 3-4 times dont even attempt new things if someone else is already working on them. You will get an opportunity to try one day. I played the game before the tutorial, and only farmed carrots for a week because its all i knew how to do.

I found myself with someone willing to teach, and learned more advanced things gradually.

Summary

-do the tutorial more than once, and go through it slowly. If you die you die theres no penalty

-do what you know until older then look for someone willing to teach you.

-if you cant find someone just keep doing what you can until you find someone to teach you

I taught a girl to smith this week, and taught several kids to bake.

Someone will teach you eventually, or you will find yourself in a quiet unpopulated town to teach yourself. People only get mad if you are in the way

You only get 30-40 minutes of work time. People have to be short tempered. Keep in mind the scale of the game if you bother the smith for 60 seconds you just wasted a year of his/her working time.
Given all the materials they could of made a full suite of tools in that time, and you could of learned alot standing 5 tiles away watching.

VioletLily · 2018-08-31 20:24:01

Turnipseed wrote:

Simple solution... take your time in the tutorial.

The tutorial only teaches the basics of the basics. It doesn't teach you the in-game etiquette most new players get in trouble for breaking. It also lacks some very common things you find when playing the game, eg. Sheep.

The tutorial definitely has it's purpose. I practiced smithing there after watching another player do it. But it can't teach a player everything.

On a different note, I was recently born to a family in the tutorial space. They let me starve, so I wasn't there for long, but I found it interesting.

Last edited by VioletLily (2018-08-31 20:26:36)

Turnipseed · 2018-08-31 21:02:34

If you read the quote they said it was easy to run by the tutorial stones without reading them. Thus not knowing about temp or burdock

VioletLily · 2018-08-31 21:34:34

Turnipseed wrote:

If you read the quote they said it was easy to run by the tutorial stones without reading them. Thus not knowing about temp or burdock

My bad. You are correct.

It is very important to take your time in the tutorial. Especially for a game with such a steep learning curve. It will give you the basics required to learn the rest of the game.

pein · 2018-08-31 21:37:32

people get cocky before they get good, im more mad at them than the actual newbies

hard to know who is newbie or who is just asshole
the game has a fast pace if you actually care about playing it properly, im a control freak and try to optimize things on higher level, not on personal one, people just starve 10 babies but cry about one getting killed
when you explain things to people and they still ignore it, then comes the next baby and you need to do it again, gets frustrating after 8-10 of them
or many lifes when people ruin things over and over
i explained to 5 people not to throw sheep into pits, the next one still did it, the damage is done, less than 1 hour it was ruined

once i was yelling to kids but actually told them why to do stuff, and someone even thanked me for it, the guy had the right mentality, as new player asked what we need and got tedious tasks done and enjoyed that we grow fast

when i was new i just did the things i know, planting, hunting rabbits, was more simple to survive in a city, most of us didnt knew how to make one
took me a while to get used to controls, and took me even more to realize how to eve and find a swamp to make a city, but i never did things without understanding them, like didnt even made tools a while, only when i knew it doesnt matter if im slow at it

joriom had a nice guide about being an eve and took me a while to be fast enough to make a family survive, puts the whole game into a new perspective

i understood that just suiciding to get into a city and doing whatever is frustrating for others, most of people still do

there was a lot of preaching about teaching but i dont see much effect, if you learned something and just repeat to your kids, people should already understand basic things, instead there is some misinformation going around and people do the same mistakes with strong conviction that they do the right thing
probably because of Twisted and other streamers, who cant even learn how to right click items in a basket or dead body or swap them from hand to a tile with item, but they teach others

there are a lot of nice guides on forum and its easier than explaining ingame

Aria · 2018-08-31 21:44:16

Well there was no tutorial when I started playing, I just simply thought the burdock plant was decor heh. Also me saying it's easy to skip stuff in the tutorial is mostly based off my interactions with new players that ask simple questions which are explained in the tutorial.

Anyway I think the aim of this thread is about being aware that we were all new once. That the person you may swear at and curse/murder because they foolishly placed a big log on a fire you're wanting to make stew with, might be pretty new to the game and who's only intentions were to help. Being killed with little explanation except for "f****** griefer" or something like that might teach them that you shouldn't put big log on fire if you're lucky but it doesn't explain why.

Aria · 2018-08-31 21:56:08

pein wrote:

i explained to 5 people not to throw sheep into pits, the next one still did it, the damage is done, less than 1 hour it was ruined

I know your pain, many a time my life has ended with me as an angry old person yelling at people in town over stuff like this...

Thing is we're fighting a losing battle when using something ingame for something other than it's original purpose, it's a trash pit, it makes sense to throw stuff away into it. Now if we could dig ditches instead....

Last edited by Aria (2018-08-31 21:57:02)

Anigamer · 2018-08-31 22:05:29

Aria wrote:

pein wrote:
i explained to 5 people not to throw sheep into pits, the next one still did it, the damage is done, less than 1 hour it was ruined
I know your pain, many a time my life has ended with me as an angry old person yelling at people in town over stuff like this...
Thing is we're fighting a losing battle when using something ingame for something other than it's original purpose, it's a trash pit, it makes sense to throw stuff away into it. Now if we could dig ditches instead....

Or we could have pits that we tell people for pens and trash pits for well trash

Aria · 2018-08-31 22:09:19

As long as you're using something titled "Small Trash Pit" as a fence for your sheep pen, people will fill them with trash. Does not matter how often you preach for them not to do so.

VioletLily · 2018-08-31 22:26:38

pein wrote:

people get cocky before they get good, im more mad at them than the actual newbies
hard to know who is newbie or who is just asshole
the game has a fast pace if you actually care about playing it properly, im a control freak and try to optimize things on higher level, not on personal one, people just starve 10 babies but cry about one getting killed
when you explain things to people and they still ignore it, then comes the next baby and you need to do it again, gets frustrating after 8-10 of them
or many lifes when people ruin things over and over
i explained to 5 people not to throw sheep into pits, the next one still did it, the damage is done, less than 1 hour it was ruined
once i was yelling to kids but actually told them why to do stuff, and someone even thanked me for it, the guy had the right mentality, as new player asked what we need and got tedious tasks done and enjoyed that we grow fast
when i was new i just did the things i know, planting, hunting rabbits, was more simple to survive in a city, most of us didnt knew how to make one
took me a while to get used to controls, and took me even more to realize how to eve and find a swamp to make a city, but i never did things without understanding them, like didnt even made tools a while, only when i knew it doesnt matter if im slow at it
joriom had a nice guide about being an eve and took me a while to be fast enough to make a family survive, puts the whole game into a new perspective
i understood that just suiciding to get into a city and doing whatever is frustrating for others, most of people still do
there was a lot of preaching about teaching but i dont see much effect, if you learned something and just repeat to your kids, people should already understand basic things, instead there is some misinformation going around and people do the same mistakes with strong conviction that they do the right thing
probably because of Twisted and other streamers, who cant even learn how to right click items in a basket or dead body or swap them from hand to a tile with item, but they teach others
there are a lot of nice guides on forum and its easier than explaining ingame

Thank you for the post Pein. I can understand how new players could be really frustrating with your play-style.

I had a couple of harsh teachers while learning to play. I was appreciative as well. They were putting effort into teaching me after all. It was more than what most did. I was more talking about the times people were unnecessarily harsh without any effort to teach. It solves nothing and really serves no purpose other than to hurt. I do believe it is best to be kind when possible regardless though.

I also remember receiving some conflicting Info while learning. In those cases, experience proved to show me which was correct. I was always grateful for the misinformation regardless. It brought me closer to understanding than simple trial and error would on it's own.

Last edited by VioletLily (2018-08-31 23:23:55)

Tea · 2018-08-31 23:14:40

I had one new player, Sasha. She seemed lost and confused so I tried to help her. I showed her how to cook eggs since the berry farm was being tended. With time, she managed to make her first omelett and was very happy.

I told people that she was new and that they should let her do the omeletts, since it was an easy thing to do. But even though they listen, they didn't let her. Every time I came back with baskets of eggs, I would see how someone would cook them while she was trying to figure out where and what to click. And when she was too slow and burned the egg, I had to remind people that she was new and not as fast as we are.

She died probably because she forgot to eat ^^

What I want to say by this, please please if you see someone teaching a new player don't interfere. Let them try and make that simple task on their own. You can help them, sure, but don't take over just because she/he isn't fast enough.

Those who want to learn from you, will listen to you. Be nice and patient with them. Everyone had to start from zero and it's nice to have someone who takes care of you while you are figuring things out. If they die, they die, we all had to go through that phase.

What I sometimes tend to do, in bigger cities and I don't want to do the same job over again, I tell people to send new players to me. I gladly show them around, tell them the unwritten rules and keep them fed with my bowl of berries.

pein · 2018-08-31 23:25:51

well yeah, pits were an exploit, they still are
would make more sense to stack up soil as walls not holes acting as walls, the time and effort needed to make something from intended resources makes it useless, fences are bad, people grief it unintentionally, i seen people release 5 or more sheep without wanting it
makes sense they go out if its full and they follow you without lamb, run with no lamb, chances are they go out every time, but i seen people dig up the pits just to annoy others

i just dont really get the logic behind peoples thoughts
dead lambs despawn, does it look good? no, but hwy does it disturb you if you not working with it?
i seen a guy making some shoes out of fleece, he sheared every of them, and told me that then we get no dead lambs
now you just waste a bowl of berries and carrot and some time when you got no intention to feed them, and generally the loop in mindset that we dont need more fleece, more dung, bigger pen, so no one ever feeds them afterwards

jason wanted to make the game harder when the player skill increased, he also decreased the heat of biomes, which was a huge nerf, and on hunger increase
the general view on compost was that its to hard to make it now, we managed to use the exploit and still do it gen 3-4 or sooner, that was actually a nice collaboration and i liked seeing it ingame, what we brainstormed about in forums

the more you play see the bad intentions

just imagine all the roads made or the paper, if you focus the same work on something simple, boring, but necessary, like milkweed farm, making tools, make compost
instead people wont do any of that, just cause its too boring to them, and generally the lack of care about others

makes you care less, its just too random to care about everything and everybody, small families are better for this purpose, i had some cute new players with me the other day, the last girl was taken special care of and had a job to do with a lot of tools and resources

of course 10-15 people running around becomes a mess, just the disorganization itself
especially later on the lineage, every time i born into gen 50-60 i see people just let most babies die, its still better raising them just to be asshole with them

PeaGirl · 2018-08-31 23:36:12

Aria wrote:

pein wrote:
i explained to 5 people not to throw sheep into pits, the next one still did it, the damage is done, less than 1 hour it was ruined
I know your pain, many a time my life has ended with me as an angry old person yelling at people in town over stuff like this...
Thing is we're fighting a losing battle when using something ingame for something other than it's original purpose, it's a trash pit, it makes sense to throw stuff away into it. Now if we could dig ditches instead....

This is where comes the controversy. But it saddens me that people are not interested in learning forums before doing anything that would not make sense for the veteran community. There are so many good guides for almost all sorts of jobs. I have had to have an argue with a person who was removing the trash pit, that I tried to make on top of flat rock road. Their pen placement was such a failure, comparing how incredibly close it was to the berry farm. Their sheeps kept running off from it and they didn't care, it was the road. They wanted road not to be blocked, they didn't want to waste their time manually moving past one single trash pit that would likely keep the sheeps at bay... -shakes my head-

startafight · 2018-09-01 01:50:01

PeaGirl wrote:

This is where comes the controversy. But it saddens me that people are not interested in learning forums before doing anything that would not make sense for the veteran community. There are so many good guides for almost all sorts of jobs.

i genuinely think this is one of the biggest failures of this game. even with the tutorial people dont learn the basics and are thrown into a game with an increasingly bitter audience. new players *shouldnt* be expected to research on the forums and read this that whatever guide. a game should be playable with just the tutorial and then enhanced with knowledge from forum posts.

honestly i think i only enjoy playing this game b/c i joined at a time where the learning curve wasnt so damn steep. with every new update the requirements for "basic knowledge" grows. when i started it was just "hunt families" and "only pick fruiting milkweed" and "leave carrot to seed". now theres so many mechanics about dirt, water, berries, food, etc etc etc. and its nearly impossible to try to teach more complex things when the person you're talking to barely passed the tutorial.

maybe there should be a door that only opens after the player completes the tasks indicated by the tutorial (not just the torch). this is no longer a game that is easy to jump into with absolutely no knowledge

Aria · 2018-09-01 03:43:58

startafight wrote:

i genuinely think this is one of the biggest failures of this game. even with the tutorial people dont learn the basics and are thrown into a game with an increasingly bitter audience. new players *shouldnt* be expected to research on the forums and read this that whatever guide. a game should be playable with just the tutorial and then enhanced with knowledge from forum posts.

This, so much this.

Without using external sources to learn how to craft (onetech, youtube), I would have surely given up on this game before really understanding it at all. Even after the addition of the search ability it's still so difficult to learn new recipes ingame, I really resent doing it but I use onetech instead. I found learning to make a deep well nigh on impossible using the search for example... much easier to use another source.
I feel like the search ability ingame is more of a crutch than anything. I hope that Jason finds a way to make it easier to learn new crafting recipes ingame, otherwise I dread to think how it's going to look as more and more things get added..

pein wrote:

i just dont really get the logic behind peoples thoughts
dead lambs despawn, does it look good? no, but hwy does it disturb you if you not working with it?

The logic goes something like this... When I was very new to the game and didn't really know how to do much of any job in a town let alone figure out what a town needs, I tried to tidy up. Yes, this included throwing all those poor dead lambs in the trash pits. I simply didn't know any better, I didn't know that the lambs despawn relatively quickly, I didn't know that throwing the lambs into the pits will fill the pit up and let the sheep escape. I genuinely thought I was being helpful, when in reality the opposite is true... Sure it's easy but maybe stop using pits as fences to hold your sheep in, it's the only way I can see that particular problem being resolved.

gabal · 2018-09-01 06:47:34

Actually, the best learning experiences were in-game when somebody took their time to explain stuff to me.
I still consider myself new to the game with only a month since I started playing it.
I was reading composting guides on forum but it wasn't untill somebody asked me in-game do I want to learn composting that I got the hang of it. I'm relatively new and I still make mistakes even though I try to read up on the guides. For example I filled up trash-pit with dead lambs because I read that you should clean the pen or the dung won't appear if there aren't free spaces. I have never before seen a filled trash-pit so I had no idea they could get filled.

But yeah, I try to approach each life as a learning experience. For example, in one life I decided to spend that life trying to craft my own backpack so I could learn it. It took me 30 years, I spent a lot of time trying to find a needle but in the end I managed to do it and now I know how to craft it and it doesn't take me that long.

Maybe I'm lucky but I was rarely yelled at (even when I ruined the sheep pen) and never killed by another player. Besides, you never know when you will get a chance to learn something new. I was last fertile female in a town and when no baby came the village smith took his last years in a dying village teaching me basics of smithing. I was son of an Eve who died before spawning girls, I spent my life practicing "how to Eve" without the burden of taking care of babies as I had plenty of berry bushes around our camp and all that full hour just figuring out what to do in what order helped me a lot.

This organic learning experience is what I enjoy the most in this game. I love learning new stuff and passing that knowledge to the other players.

Turnipseed · 2018-09-01 14:31:09

gabal wrote:

Actually, the best learning experiences were in-game when somebody took their time to explain stuff to me.
I still consider myself new to the game with only a month since I started playing it.
I was reading composting guides on forum but it wasn't untill somebody asked me in-game do I want to learn composting that I got the hang of it. I'm relatively new and I still make mistakes even though I try to read up on the guides. For example I filled up trash-pit with dead lambs because I read that you should clean the pen or the dung won't appear if there aren't free spaces. I have never before seen a filled trash-pit so I had no idea they could get filled.
But yeah, I try to approach each life as a learning experience. For example, in one life I decided to spend that life trying to craft my own backpack so I could learn it. It took me 30 years, I spent a lot of time trying to find a needle but in the end I managed to do it and now I know how to craft it and it doesn't take me that long.
Maybe I'm lucky but I was rarely yelled at (even when I ruined the sheep pen) and never killed by another player. Besides, you never know when you will get a chance to learn something new. I was last fertile female in a town and when no baby came the village smith took his last years in a dying village teaching me basics of smithing. I was son of an Eve who died before spawning girls, I spent my life practicing "how to Eve" without the burden of taking care of babies as I had plenty of berry bushes around our camp and all that full hour just figuring out what to do in what order helped me a lot.
This organic learning experience is what I enjoy the most in this game. I love learning new stuff and passing that knowledge to the other players.

This is how i learned alot too, but i was yelled at and scolded dozens of times as part of the learning curve

On some occasions there is not time to teach, but the prospective pupil is very eager and ends up in the way. I have had this happen as eve when i make it to smithing. They are so eager to learn the fuck the whole thing up.

Last edited by Turnipseed (2018-09-01 15:48:03)

pein · 2018-09-02 17:23:05

Aria wrote:

The logic goes something like this... When I was very new to the game and didn't really know how to do much of any job in a town let alone figure out what a town needs, I tried to tidy up. Yes, this included throwing all those poor dead lambs in the trash pits. I simply didn't know any better, I didn't know that the lambs despawn relatively quickly, I didn't know that throwing the lambs into the pits will fill the pit up and let the sheep escape. I genuinely thought I was being helpful, when in reality the opposite is true... Sure it's easy but maybe stop using pits as fences to hold your sheep in, it's the only way I can see that particular problem being resolved.

well this case the guy was knowing it despawns just didnt wanted to ever see dead lambs cause we got 'too much dung'
told him that we got never enough
truth is you never got too many sheep, you got too small pen
one life we had a small 3x7 pen in desert with a lot of garbage, extended once, to the left, with a same size then after my babies, once more with twice the size upward

next life i came back i seen like 9-10 aprons and painted clothes
with so big families is hard to imagine everyone has a job or purpose

by logic milkweed is always useful, compost is always useful
feeding sheep is always useful
now if each kid would feed 6 sheep
make 6 plates
get 1 rope
make a compost
everything would go smooth
instead they just eat, make road cuase is new thing, make paper cause its new thing
i get it, i do that too
but not making a basket cause it decays its like not taking a shower cause you will stink anyway in one day

i told this few times but:
if you try making a pen out of fences, gonna be griefed unintentionally under 1 hour
they just let all sheep out cause they run from you or follow you, as skill level was low, a 3x3 pen with diagonal exits was just enough for composting
later people could make a fence around it, extend it, as the harder part is shooting a muflon and taking it home, feed it in time
i spent 5 lifes to get my first sheep to a pen i made out of adobe
then many lifes we tried to make a decent size 7x7 pen 5x5 inside, 4 players cooperated and we couldnt finish it and get sheep, while people even starve sometiems if you dont check upon them
so far pits with one item inside them works for longest time, even if people got bad intention or no knowledge, they cant ruin it too easy
and thats the main point, you want something that life, and see that it stands

grave pens were interesting and proved that i can make a big one in two lifes, even fixing walls to be unremovable, and its cleaner, functions better (the town with the first teleport had my grave pen and lasted around 80 generations combined or more, i havent seen after we died out. having one of most wool clothes i ever seen)
then come the form over function guys who also plant outside desert just to make it symmetric
this is a game, game balance is a beautiful thing
irl expectations based thinking is not, we got what we got, i also wish we would have glass or sand piles or any better material, but we dont

in the end no oen does nothign useful, i got it htat people got purpose, but everytime i see people giving jobs to babies is like 'make pies' poor kid goes to make 3 pies and wont find a hoe or cant plant wheat
'go hunt' when we got furs just the mother didnt moved 20 tiles away in her life

a purpose and a little roleplay kept my kids alive longer as an eve

there are a few challenges only, everyone should work on it together

make a bowl until food runs out
make an axe before branches run out
make a shovel before water runs out
make compost before soil runs out
make tools and clothes before a baby boom

then some optional like stew, pies nad enough clothes for everyone

the rest is free play, i can do all this in one life just at least let me, but if people want to help, they should recognize this stages, get some clay, branches, milkweed, iron, etc.
people just skip most of this and start killing and cursing each other

VioletLily · 2018-09-02 21:34:33

Okay, so there are a lot of lovely people teaching others on the forums. You all are awesome, but I do believe this could be done more effectively at times. So I am going to try to give you some teaching tips. I'm only doing this because a lot of the information you all give is really useful and I genuinely want what you guys are saying to have the best chance of getting through to people.

As a little background info, I work with a lot with children, and believe me, there is a whole lot of teaching involved with that. I'm not perfect but there are a couple things I've learned from experience that I think could be useful to keep in mind:

First: People don't learn if they become defensive. It only makes them stubborn and less willing to learn, even if they know you are right. It is human nature.

Anything that can be seen as a personal offence will make someone defensive (eg. Anything negative directed at said person). Some people may also become defensive if another person says something that can be seen as a personal offence directed at someone other than themselves.

Anything that seems all-inclusive will tend to make people defensive too (eg. "everyone/everyone-in-said-group does this negative thing"). I know that this might sound odd, but even if literally everyone does indeed do said thing, it is best to say something like "some people" instead.

Nothing that makes a person defensive helps said person retain the information someone is trying to teach. In fact, it has this funny way of doing the exact opposite.

Two: People have a harder time retaining information under stress. Anything that adds to a person's stress level will make their learning experience less effective. This includes things like becoming defensive, being pressed for time, being spoken negatively to, etc.

This is actually one of the reasons it is so hard to learn in this game. People tend to feel rushed because their life is so short. That is why I agree with what Tea mentioned earlier about letting new players take their time learning. This is also one of the reasons why it is so important to talk kindly to people you are teaching.

Many of the smartest, most well behaved children I have come across have been those with parents who know how to teach patiently, calmly, and kindly. It may seem counterintuitive to some, but it truly proves to be the fastest and most effective teaching method - for any age

Three: Repetition can be an excellent teaching tool, especially in the absence of non-verbal communication or visual references. Say you are trying to teach someone in-game why they shouldn't eat all the carrots. You could say:

"No carrots means no compost
No compost means no soil
No soil means no food
No food means mass starvation"

This is a very simple, concise way to explain the consequences of their actions that's fits well in the in-game chat. (Skipping the first part of all but the first sentence, starting with "means", would work too, if you are young and can't say much.) The repitition of words and phrases make it very easy to remember. This is why Dr. Suess's "Green Eggs and Ham" is one of his most popular books. It's the repitition. It makes it easy for kids to understand and remember, therefore making it an excellent tool in helping kids learn to read.

As a warning: Using repitition in excess with adults could sound patronizing as it is often seen as a teaching tool for children. So use with caution outside of the game. Inside the game, it is a very fast and effect way to teach if you are short on time.

Four: Many, many people learn visually or kinetically. Simply explaining isn't enough for people who don't learn well by reading. This includes reading on the forums. So show them by having them watch you and/or by doing it themselves. Let's say you are trying to teach someone in-game why they shouldn't feed other people:

Have them eat a berry. Then tell them to eat a different food, like a pie. (Berry in bowl might cause confusion) Tell them to look at bottom left of screen. They should see a +1 by their food bar. Tell them that is yum bonus. You get it when you eat a chain of different foods. They ate a Berry and Pie. The higher the chain, the less you need to eat. Now have them eat Berry again. They broke the food chain. Now the bonus is gone. Feeding others can take away their bonus, which isn't nice.

This not only tells them, but shows them why they shouldn't feed people, making it more effective.

Five: People tend to learn to exhibit the same behavior they are treated to. This is why physical punishment isn't anywhere near as useful as people would like to think. It seems like the faster method, but it tends to cause more trouble than it solves, and should be saved for extreme circumstances if used at all. A child who was often dealt physical punishment is more likely to become aggressive themselves. (Not to mention the phycological issues that go along with it... Please be nice to kids)

How does that translate to the game? Killing a new person who makes a mistake makes them more likely to become an actual griefer. There have probably been a few griefers who were born this way. In fact, killing at all for any reason makes others more likely to do it themselves. This is actually the greatest griefer recruitment tool. Do you want to prevent murder? Try to avoid killing anyone yourself. Again, this may sound counterintuitive to some, but please only kill if absolutely necessary (say, if someone else is already on a murder spree then you can kill him/her). Also, killing people causes them stress. See #2

Likewise, treating people well makes them more likely to treat you and others well in return.

I know these aren't perfect, but hopefully this helps. Feel free to adapt them how you wish. I can guarantee that people will be more open and receptive to your teaching if you follow some of these. Happy teaching everyone!

Last edited by VioletLily (2018-09-02 22:08:47)

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