Advice to jump start friend starting out

[Chrissy]

I have a friend who is vaguely interested in playing, but is asking me how fast it would take to understand whether the game appealed to him.

So my questions about this for the hive are:
- What do you think is the absolute smallest amount of time for someone to jump into WoTmud pk, and get a feel for whether it would appeal to them?
- What setup would you do to facilitate that?

My initial thoughts are:
- Maybe 1 hr
- Let them use a 30+ character that is already geared and practiced
- Have someone log on on the other side, and pk 2v1 in just one zone (ideally one with mob support for both sides)
- Fight until someone dies

But curious to hear if anyone has successfully done this before, or any other thoughts/advice.

[Kryyg]

He’s going to get destroyed. The average player right now is insanely good/half bot.

I would stay have him preroll stat. Exp to learn commands. Timing of bash etc. how gear and mood affects stats and fleeing.

Then learn some zones on DS.

Then PK.

[Eol]

I wouldn't give them a character. I think you'd be depriving them of that feeling of wanting more. You burn up your practices, but you see all these skills and you think - how am I going to do this / I want more. You feel compelled to keep exping so you can keep increasing the practices. It also creates a sense of achievement / accomplishment.

You could scavenger hunt them with them. Back in the day when I died I'd at various times do some variation of
Kite shield and chep brass rings hill giant to thin black chain at Murandian Bandit, maybe emerald ring, to sungwood bracelet off the ogier guy, to jade signet ring northern mini chain etc. I always enjoyed those small measured accomplishments - the feeling of equipping yourself.

I think trident is the most straight forward exping weapon for a new player because of practice savings. The cheapest starting weapon used to be leatherleaf staff but they downed it a lot.

Anything that gets you beat up could get adrenaline going - exp somewhere they might have to flee. I'd only want to exp them on a multiplier day or it will be painful.

Could also make them lead you across the map.

[Rodger]

I'd focus on the roleplay / character building process. Luckily they fixed the statting aspect, so you can just jump right in. Maybe both start a new character and start in Two Rivers or Caemlyn. The pk isn't going to be compelling in an hour, but storytelling might be...and like others said you would need serious commitment to really learn pk at this end state where all the players are highly competent.

[Kiltwich]

and like others said you would need serious commitment to really learn pk at this end state where all the players are highly competent.

I would disagree with this, to an extent.

The pk is deceptively fast paced, and most of the stuff that you would need to learn (server tics -- the purpose of "spamming", mob aggro/assist, mood/auto-wimpy/fleeing, timers of skills/weaves, etc.) are things that you will not organically run into nor intuitive to learn by doing or understand what/why things are happening as they are happening.

It does take a bit of explaining, but for group pk it is easy enough to get into as an abs basher just following a (presumably) competent leader and spamming kill light/dark + bashing.

Map knowledge is important as well, learning where to fall back, and learning group dynamics (when to flee off, where to run to for regroup, etc.) helps as well, but you can explain those with a map beforehand.

Getting them an understanding of the basics, enough for them to know sort of what is going on, and then getting a taste of pk to get the heart racing and see if that helps light the fire to learn/improve pk skills would be my recommendation.

[Aira]

I would take them smobbing to show them some of the intricacies of tactics. Targeting this or that and not ending up on what you want. A competent leader will spam them around and they will have no idea where they are.

And then tell them: and now imagine all of this while fighting a player who knows where you are most likely to run and who will chase and potentally target you. It's a thrill.

If they are a thrillseeker, it might pique their interest. If they are a pvper, the smobbing might.