Orientation/Help Islands

I am writing an article on SL, and I want to be sure I am right about some things. I am encouraging people to stay on Orientation Island and do all of the optional training, because once you leave you cant go back

A mentor told me the extra tutorials were on Orientation Island Public but while I found a number, I still think there were more on the original OI. Am I wrong?

Why would SL go to the trouble of creating all of the extra tutorials on multiple OIs, and then lure you to click the key and leave, and never be able to get back to them.

For example if you proceed after the Open the Map Required Turorial for Search. down the bridge to the round building with Searching for Land, with a number of neat maps I have not been able to find anywhere else in Second life, and you can go down a walkway to learn about Searching for Events, and then down another walkway to learn about Searching for Groups.

In the castle for Appearances you have the required tutorial, but if go inside the castle you can learn about Purchase an Outfit, and upstairs you can learn about Changing your Shape, then Appearance Editor, and all they way up to Send a Postcard.

Past the Require Tutorial for Communicate, Say Something, there is an optional tutorial for Say Your Name, and then one for Chat History.

The required Move tutorial Your First Steps leads to an optional tutorial to Find a Vehicle, and then you can drive around, killing rats. Then you can go to the Flight Institute and Learn to Fly.

There may even be more optional tutorials I did not see.

I was also told that on Help Island there was a building much like the round building on OI just past the Search tutorial that has a lot of maps, but I cant find it. There is a building for free stuff, but it does not have the maps.

A mentor there gave me a link to Help Island 4, but I cant teleport there. It appears all I can go to is Orientation Island Public, Help Island Public, and Help Island Public2. Is that right?

It's been a while since i was on help island last, so the tutorials might have changed since then. But i do know for sure that only mentors can go back to help island. So that mentor might have been a little confused, thinking you could too.

-Asriazh

Your TP experience is correct.

Once you leave OI, you can't go back there. Once you leave Help Island, you can't return there, either. It's a one way street.

If you need a refresher on the basics, there is OI Public. It has the same KINDS of tutorials as the official OIs, but the island is an older design. If you need to get help, there is Help Island Public. Its layout is the same as the current "official" Help Islands.

As for the official OI tutorials: You're right. The "minimum" tutorial is at the entrance to the path. You grab a torch, or answer the map question, or chat something, or move to a target. That's all you HAVE to do to get the "keys to the puzzle".

But if you walk down those paths, there is more learning to be had. The Appearance section, for example, will show you how to open your Library, how to take an item from a vendor, and how to adjust your appearance. The Communicate section will show you how to find the Chat History, and how Gestures can be used as a form of communications. And so on.

LL should make this plainer, I think. A sign at the head of each path might help a little.

You don't seem to be required to do the required stuff. Just click the sign and get your landmark to go to Help Island. That's good given how often the tutorials fail. People waste a lot of time and are needlessly frustrated - or quit - because they can't get their puzzle finished and they think they have to in order to move on.

I have to say that Orientation Island is the reason I nearly quit immedately.

Highly frustrating experience all around. Terrible instructions that took forever to rez. Nothing clearly delineated - not well thought out. I finally got disgusted and if it weren't for another Ruth, that had just found out that you could hit "Search" and just TP out of there, I would have called it quits and never went further into the world out there.

Once off the Island, yes, I was in need of more instruction, but somehow managed to learn it on my own, with the help of the Forum members thanfully. If there had been some way to go back, and if they made it more accessible it would have been a huge help.

Actually I would like to see the older OI be available for public use, because it has so many more tutorials than HI.

Is there any way to make recommendations like this to Lindon staff?

Huh? Just type in "Orientation Island" in Search/Places. It's the first thing that comes up. And yes, that is the OLD version of OI, not the new one.

Yes, there are a bunch of Orientation Islands (1, 2, 3, ....)

But if you try to teleport to them you cannot (unless you are a mentor)

I'm there NOW. I am not a mentor.
I typed in Orientation Island and chose the VERY FIRST choice, Orientation Island Public.

Yes you can go to one and only one, OI Public. Try any of the others.

But it does not have nearly all of the tutorials that are on the original Orientation Island

There are THREE OI designs.

"OI Island" is the one that you visit if you teleport to Orientation Island Public. It has a single path with a few tutorials along it, ending with a crevasse you have to fly over.

"OI Castle" is the one that you actually start in. It has the HUD-driven tutorial with the four direction to travel in. It has many more tutorials than the standard Island, although they're not as obvious.

"OI Meltingdots" is the new OI design, originally from the Japanese sims, that's being tried out. It has a single path, like OI island, but a larger number of tutorials, like OI castle. It also looks eerily like the testing environment in Portal.

So residents can not get to OI Meltingdots but once it is ready it will have public (not newly born) access to all of the tutorials?

It seems that the MDStyle OIs are gone for the moment, since the beta is over. I don't know what the future plans are for them..

I have been a mentor for many years and thinking about my initial experience with SL I really have no complaint. I did my initial tasks on orientation island and was tossed into the welcome area. It was a pleasant experience especially with all of the nice people at the welcome area (there was only one back then) but I guess things have changed.

Back then we didn't have HUDs to guide us but most of us survived I think.

While I admire and support LL's current approach which is to pour on the technology with supporting mentors I somehow wonder if the old sink or swim approach wasn't just as effective.

You can go to a number of different community gateway sites - at least, my SuezanneC Blackflag account, that isn't in the mentors can, so I assume anyone can.

The list of entryways is at secondlife.com/join/

I agree you can learn by asking questions. I am learning all the time right now, and I am not three weeks old yet. And I understand what SuezanneC Baskerville is saying about alternate entry points because I was born in CSINY, which just teaches you how to walk, talk, and touch things (clues)

And the full set of optional tutorials on the current Orientation Island, with its Communicate Jungle, Appearance Castle, and interesting Move and Search architecture may not be absolutely necessary for the newbie to get started, but I believe that it would be very good for them to be available to people that get to the mainland, and realize they need to learn some more. In other words I think they should be on Help Island, so a newbie like myself would not have to register a second avatar just to go through them.

Sometimes I have been to HI and there were no mentors available. It would sure be good if there could be an area with a Tutorials sign where one could learn these things

I'm a noob stuck on Orientation Island because I haven't been able to access the "Required Tutorials". I've done the "open your Inventory, search for Orientation Guide, Wear" routine, and I have a white box in the upper left that has a globe and an "I speak English" button (as well as two oriental language buttons), but when I click it, nothing happens. Help!

In your Library folder, in Landmarks, there should be one each for an Orientation Island and a Help Island.

I can get back to th original Orientation Island because it's in Landmarks in the library section of my inventory. I don't know about any of the more recent OI's but the one I go back to looks the same as the one I came to when I joined SL in Sept 2006.

I can also get back to Help Island the same way. From the number of newbies there I assume it's the one still used for training. I am not a mentor, by the way.

Those landmarks are for Orientation Island PUBLIC and Help Island PUBLIC.

It appears to me that Help Island Public is much like the intro Help Islands, but OI Public is very different from the initial OI. It has some tutorials, but not nearly as many as on the original OI, and since some think like Elora Lunasea that all of thr tutorials are frustrating to a newebie, and they want to get out into the real SI, it would be more important than ever to make the optional tutorials that one skips initially available, either on OI Public or HI Public.

For Parker Schmooz, if you have finished the four required tutorials click the key in the little box and you transport to Help Island

Even if you haven't collected all the keys, you can still get off OI. Click the billboard for Help Island in the central plaza, and it will give you a landmark you can use to teleport there.

Also, an additional three exit points have been added. There is another sign in the plaza with the word "EXIT" on it. On the sign are pictures which will give landmarks to a Welcome Area and two Infohubs.

Interesting. Then it would seem even more important to either allow one back into OI, or to have all of the tutorials on OI. required and optional, available on OI Public or HI Public, so that someone who left early, and then recognizes his error, can get the instruction he needs.

What type of help do you mean? Or experience? You cant learn to play the game by using tutorials.

I dont think tutorials cant teach you anything - get experience in sl and then write the artcile you plan BUT three weeks old means you must get more practise being here.

There are other Orientation options you can take that are not Linden sponsored. Orientation Station is my favorite. Great world map, lots of freebies, and at the end you get a demo horse to play with. Fun and educational.

I mentor on the orientation and help islands designed for new people. I assume that they are limiting access to these many islands so new people can learn without being grieved, ect. The public orientation island is not the same ( old design), but when combined with help island public, provides most of the lessons and help a person would need to play SL. I have noted you can almost always find a mentor at help island public.

The biggist problem I have seen is probably the layout of the new orientation islands. I wish they would remove the center hub, and have people go in a circle from station to station, exiting at the end. I meet a few that have done the tutorials ( which is excellent to see), but I find most trying to exit as soon as possible to try SL, with few skills.

Cheers, Chris Serdyuk