Question of the Week: New Resident Orientation

Are you ready for a semi-official Question of the Week?

<hunter linden clears throat and prepares booming voice>

What were the most important things you learned during your first few sessions in Second Life?

We are looking at the new resident experience and I want to make sure we're helping folks get oriented to Second Life. What did you learn that was most helpful? How to move around, how to communicate, how to change your avatar, etc?

Your thoughts are appreciated - especially helpful if you can recall how you learned (starting guide, another Resident, online help, etc) and whether you found it easy, medium, or hard.

see you in Second Life

The first thing I asked was "Where's the Ladies Room?"

Well ok not really... but I clearly remember wanting desparately to chat, but not being able to. People kept saying 'Press enter to chat' but the white chat line was behind my task bar so I couldn't, and I kept speaking in partial sentences like I was brain damaged. That was tough, because if you can't talk, you can't ask questions and can't ask for help.

Bottom line, #1 is making sure people can chat. I've had newbies IM me cause they can't figure out the regular chat. I frequently ask newbies if they can chat -- if they don't answer, they can't, and I tell them how.

After I figured out how to talk, the next thing was figuring out how to move. Walking is easy if you tell people to use the arrow keys. For flying, I'd suggest telling people to click themselves, click 'Go', and use the little window to Fly. Walking was easy, but flying wasn't successful with the F key -- I couldn't figure out how to go higher, so I kept flying into things and whacking my head. When I figured out there was the navigational window (by reading the manual), flying was easy. But I still whack my head a lot

If you can talk and you can move, and can learn how to do so quickly, it's your first opportunity for a good impression of SL, and sets the basis for your ability to explore.

So next opportunity for a good impression is 'What can I see?'. At the time I came in, there wasn't much to see. Now of course there is, so giving directions to a few good builds is a good idea. At this point, I think it would be cool to have some volunteer residents take people around, show them builds, and answer their questions. (I wanna be a tour guide with a yellow taxi to drive newbies around in.)

After that, building is next, and I had a good intro from a Linden with only one other person so that gave lots of opportunity for me to ask questions. (I love that special attention). This another area that volunteer residents could help with.

The very best thing about being a newbie is... the Lindens there to greet you and help you when you come in. It's great to have someone say hello to you, and to tell you how to do things without you having to ask (especially if you can't talk hehe).

The first Lindens I met by the way were Jenn and Dan. Shortly afterwards, Jenn started carrying her gun... hmmmm.... I wonder why that was.....


Hope this is helpful...
Kerstin

I think a tour to some of the more interesting spots around the world would be great for the newbies and good for the residents. Spread the voting populace around a bit

I remember flying curiously past places but afraid it would be rude to go in....got over that and then i started really exploring. And the best part is not just looking at the site but playing with it. It's even better if you have the builder on-site so you can ask questions.

Like when BBC gave a tour of his mysterious complex. Or when touring the stargate, our little group as able to ask Orrey questions about how he built his working stargate.

As a newbie flying around, I was so impressed with some of the more elaborate buildings I couldn't imagine what kinda of professional designers built them. It's a blast to be able to meet these creative people in-world. It makes the world more accessible and really grand projects at least a possible dream

I had the derndest time keeping up with what was being said until I learned about the history window.

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I only have one word to answer this....Camera Controls!....



DOH!...i meant 3 words....oh you know what i mean

hehe the most important thing i've found in the game for new people (that many who come to my lab for help haven't seen yet) is the camera controls...the day I learned camera controls was a great and glorious day

um that's all i have to say...I'm just buying time till server goes up...so I ramble...um....that's all

oh ....and Camera Controls....(yes i know...2 words heheh

first thing i actually had to learn was how to fly... just like kerstin... i kept running into crap... im sure it hurt alot....
then i found out what the names at the bottom right actually ment... was astounded to see so many diff servers hosting a game ... makes for less lag so im happy
chat history was a biggie...
and then of course.... scripting... still learning that one...

When I first entered, I had already downloaded all the help and info files I could find, and I also followed the audio intro. Other than actually building something, the intro pretty well answered all my questions.

My suggestion for an addition to the intro would be a guided tour of the land. Similar to when you visit a museum, they give you a "personal tour-guide player". The new person can turn it on, follow the direction to the location, listen to a little info about that location, then go to the next one. This could all be done in IM so as not to bother/interfere with others.


T

The location of the scripting documentation was mystery to me when I started. I looked all over the on-line help and the docs on this web site trying to find it.

(also, why _isn't_ the scripting documentation available on this web site for people who, hypothetically you understand, want to print it out on the nice printer at work, but don't want to install the whole client on their work computer, or something).

Since this was a while back i'll do my best to remember what happened. I went throught the audio intro and learned a lot from it, and it is very helpful. Then I belive it was char who first talked to me and showed me his house. Then I just explored the land and saw all the wonders and said to myself that I can do this to if I just work hard. My suggestion would be that once people exit/finish/close the opening box that a notecard pop-up that gives a few basic guidelines for the game. I.e. most of the property is open and feel free to walk in, tinker with everything and you can make anything, explore, talk and meet people. You know, a few helpful things like that. Well thats my two cents.

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First thing I asked was "Where is the casino?" I saw a sign for a casino, and I wanted to go The next thing I asked was to Jennifer, asking if she worked for Linden Labs. I see Lindens letting people know now that they work for LL, so, that is better. I think the sign with all the arrows pointing to things needs to be updated, because some of the stuff on there is just plain boring. When I finally got to the casino, it wasn't done and I wasn't very impressed. Maybe some popular user-created buildings can be posted on this sign?

Maybe we can get an interactive tutorial that uses simulated camera control and movement - in wolrd.??
somebody's gonna get hurt - namely me, trying to get around (however virtual). its not easy at all - and we could get alot more ground covered if we were not trying to learn to walk, run, fly, etc.
egads!
mint p.


QUOTE]Originally posted by Valfaroth Grimm
I only have one word to answer this....Camera Controls!....



DOH!...i meant 3 words....oh you know what i mean

hehe the most important thing i've found in the game for new people (that many who come to my lab for help haven't seen yet) is the camera controls...the day I learned camera controls was a great and glorious day

um that's all i have to say...I'm just buying time till server goes up...so I ramble...um....that's all

oh ....and Camera Controls....(yes i know...2 words heheh [/QUOTE]

thanks for chiming in - we might just need to make the Question of the Week a regular feature.

Helping and encouraging new residents to learn a handful of basic skills is essential to getting them integrated. Being a generalized environment, we need to help people learn how to interact with and gain more information about their surroundings - for example, camera control and right-mouse click are especially important (as you all pointed out) but somewhat non-intuitive to beginners.

In the end I think the best "new player experience" definitely involves the community at large - we can give them tutorials but sooner or later they are going to step into the big Second Life world and need help.

Continue to post your thoughts and great ideas....

thanks again

hunter

I just had a memory of something else that I needed help with. As I wandered away from the welcome area, I can across a basketball court. I became VERY frustrated with it, because I couldnt figure out how to pick up the ball and shoot it. I could sit on it, but, that was it. I contacted Jennifer Linden and finally found out that you COULDN'T play basketball.

I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how to chat as well and I recall people offering cards of some sort. What are these things and am I supposed to click accept? And who's talking to me? LOL I know I probably stood there ignoring everyone until I got my feet on the ground....I mean off the ground.

I love the idea of a guided tour. I know how it feels to be afraid to ask questions for fear of looking dumb.....hehehehe



mc (who needs a job)

I think a good thing for the players who want to be guys, at least, is to quickly be able to change gender. :)

I just started last night and I really appreciated the Help toolbar popup with female narrative.

thanks for the feedback steve and welcome to Second Life!

asking questions, flat out the most important thing there is/was/ever will be in SL . You see an object/house/thing you like take a look at its porperties and see who made it, chances are if you want to make something/rub crazy textures all over it, they can give you some pointers! Scripting is a little more elusive heh, you have to ask around because not all scripters put scripts on their own objects, but if you ask other residences you know, you are bound to get pointed towards someone who can help you!

The lindens are great, but they have so much going on just working on SL that they don't always have time to help, which is what the other inhabitants are for...Your knowledge base is as big as the number of people you know, and the people those people know and the people those people know... ad infinitum

Giving newbies a notecard with a list of must-know items is a really good idea.

My first few days here I had the 'grey static between my ears' feeling of trying to play before I knew anything about how this world implemeted itself.

Ironically, it was the richness of the world and the sights and sites to see that distracted me from learning the basics at first, as I would learn a few things then go flying off to see the bright shiny objects just over the horizon.

The menus are daunting at first, there are so many entries and so many new concepts to absorb. Memorable moment: Getting the Debug menu turned on and clicking on Remove Interface Elements... without beforehand making a note that Alt-U brings it back and then being stuck most helplessly without a UI. (This might be considered a bug in fact )

(You might evaluate whether a Basic Menus options might help newbies not get overwhelmed. Start out defaulting to Basic Menus with most entries hidden, with an Advanced Menus button to light up the menus we see today. This would be similar to how the Debug menu is not shown by default.)

I rediscoverd the Help Panel with the walkthrough after about a week. That helped a lot. It's getting out of date, btw. (Click on the mini-map to fly? No, doubleclick) and a few typos.

So things really clicked after reading the lsl Reference manual, the knowledge base/FAQs, and now the forums.


Anyhow... rough content for the newbie notecard:

* You really want to read the Newby Guide available in the Help Menu.
* Ctrl-H gets you chat history.
* View->Camera Controls (is that where it is?) gets you camera help
* Read the FAQs on website X (also now in game, too, thanks to Dan)
* Yes, it's normal to fly off into oblivion [Just kidding ]

Other ideas: The idea of a newbie course(s) in game... steps you have to complete and get checked off by a mentor: build a basic object, fly to a landmark, attend a walkthrough on object creation.... Make these opt-in so they aren't an annoyance, but add them to the notecard if adopted.

Another idea: You'd still safely be on the non-annoying side of things if you could send a tickler popup if somone hasn't read through the help walkthrough after they logged in a few times. Give the option to select `[ ] never show me this again' and `[ ] remind me later on.'

Another Idea: have some sort of channel system, a Help line people could IM to get assistance. A twist on it might be to have a newbie 'Flight Atendant' service light they could turn on

First of all, I got the "invite" on the 23rd and have been in-game two nights...which classifies me as a newbie...lol...

I was caught a bit off-guard with the complexity of SL, especially when my avatar was defaulted to a female, and I spent the first hour frantically fiddling with the avatar controls...lol. The tutorial was helplful, but it's hard to focus on the "basics" when you've got this fasinating world to explore, and when you're tying to figure out what's going on around you, etc.

Had a difficult time with the right-click pie menus, mainly due to the lag, and until I learned the keyboard controls, the flying bit was tricky (especially when I kept going over no-fly zones). On my first night, the chat bar was giving me trouble (having to hit 'enter,' etc. Didn't know what a "calling card" was, either, so I turned a couple of those down before I realized what I was doing. (sorry...)

The "getting started" guide was a big help, as I printed it out and read it over before going in-game on my second night. I would recommend that all newbies read this guide before beginning play, as that would have cleared up about 80% of the difficulties in my initial session.

After about 6 hours of play, I feel like I'm much more comfortable within the 2nd Life environment, now that I've chatted with a few people (the idea of guides for newbies is a great one), but I have yet to learn a drop about scripting (where to go to learn it, etc), building, etc. But I welcome the challenge of getting established in this awesome virtual world, and while it's far from perfect, I can honestly say that I'm blown away by the whole concept of Second Life, and I can't wait to see what it will eventually turn into in the months ahead.

J

hey jack - at long time ago the basketball was locked. I haven't been there lately but it may be playable now. Lindenball beats it tho!

>
the most important thing.. hrrm, don't be afraid to mess with stuff? But have some respect for other residents cuz it could affect yer money.

I think a few mentions of playermade exhibits may be nice.. say things to do. lots of newer people want things to do.. i.e disco, lindenball, buy a gun shoot people in the outlands.

I'm mad fragged today.. so nm my blathering. Lunch be over.
flyk

Yesterday's MOTD included something like "you can only IM someone if you have their card".

Bzzzzt. Wrong Answer. The McCoy family gets a chance to steal.

'cuz you can IM someone from their profile which you can get from Find -> People (unless the person you're wanting to IM is De Ro Underhill, cuz he's unlisted... heh)

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