(Continued from part 1, of course.)
C) Map
We should have a map of the city, of course. What I envision is that the map would have pins showing various points of interest (City Hall, Brunel Hall, Piermont Landing–where else?), and clicking on those pins would provide teleport landmarks. Yes, I know we’d rather have people wandering around, but let’s face it–people are lazy. Me included. We need to cater to them, too. *grin*
D) What else?
What else is a necessity, or a like-to-have, for a welcome center?
Thoughts on the matter:
I do agree that there should be a map of the city, but I’m not sure we actually do want *all* of the interesting points LM’d, and exactly for the reason you cited. I’m almost amazed that I just wrote that, much as I would even now like the convenience myself. Maybe there is a way to LM without fostering *too much* laziness? I was thinking it might be possible to identifying broader areas as well as singular parcels in our quest to LM? ex. showing via map the boundaries of “the gut” , then listing out bars or places of interest “in the gut”, then LM a spot central to those places.- The convenience without *completely* destroying looking around? You might give avenue or area names heavy with shopping and LM that area or street as opposed to any one shop?
The bars and gathering places are critical to anyone wanting social contact in babbage. Yet, at the same time I’m sure many will not be up for shirtless bikers or silk clad kajjiras landing “to party” everywhere, which is a risk of direct LMing bars in a welcome center. We might better be served with a bar crawl listing placed at hotels or rooming houses for that. My thinking is random partiers are less likely to have booked lodging.
The rp in Babbage is optional, but the theme presented in its physical construct is not. Its the meat and potatoes that distinguishes being here from being somewhere else. That is true of every steam city or state I’ve been to whether they rp or not. Personally I would play that up in whatever places I chose to LM. Things/places that make Babbage distinct or are doorways to understanding its history and/or ways.
One location I would imagine LMing would be the library. This site of course (and to my knowledge) is the best collection of Babbage specific backstory/background, however I would probably name the library second as a resource for the time period and concepts utilized in steam.
Fine points all, Citizen Blackwell. Might I suggest that the Landing Points be in discrete locations, but no difficult or obscure ones, that do not involve visitors suddenly appearing in the middle of the street?
The Shirtless Biker and the Annoying Hipster are certainly problematic, but I have been actively trying to assist visitors for some time now, and they tend to change into something more subdued after a while, and carrying an LM with a free clothing location (I tend to shill for Mss Galicia, but that is up to the Liason, of course) is helpful.
I agree. I support the promotion of our much loved city, and have no desire to “curb the fun” or any such thing, but I do agree that a little bit of discretion is well placed when deciding on the exact landing places.
As to the clothing, I’m not much of an authority but it does sound as if all suggestions welcome right now.
Some interesting points! We’ll have to have more discussion on this, I think (might start a separate thread in a couple of days).
Doan fergit pointing visitors to the BAR!
*smacks her forehead*
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Underwood! That, and the wiki. And posters linking people to the ebook purchase page for Tales Volumes 1 and 2, if someone can help me create those!
I’ll chip in some freebies.
I havnt made many clothingstuff, but I’ll give away what i can find.. and.. maybe make some new.
Would ‘stuff’ be interesting? i mean.. just as a goodwill to steampunkers in general.
Loki’s Freebie Urchinstuff would be nice to have at the center also.
..on the same subject…. it might be pruudent to have autoreturn on in the vicinity of teh center, as there willbe alot of unpacking close to it. I usually have 5 mins auto on my sim during hunts so people can unpack their stuff.
how about a notecard with links to free clothes on marketplace? that persists longer than landmarks, and much easier than trying to get a free suit of clothes in a box to hand out (that will soon gets branded as a noobariffic suit), and helps out the designers by getting some eyeballs on their pages.
If folks can send me links to some good clothing, I can start compiling a list.
I would still love to have the RL time to devote to reviving the walking tour HUD, but this one would just use the city location markers as reference points, so if they move, the walking tour automatically knows.
I’ll leave this to folks who understand it–which definitely doesn’t include me. *chuckle*
I’d love to keep the individual places around town, but have them all pointed via TP or what have you to the Welcome Center. That way you have a single point of contact for maintaining all the clothes and notecards and maps and stuff. The local kiosks (the one on the docks, by the depot, down by Loki’s shop, etc) are at least a visible place in the sims. The main center can have all the painful and specific details in it.
It is a good point to make sure we point folks to the BAR, since all that info is right there.
I think
we’d have to address potential roleplayers and those just interested in OOC
events differently, for example I saw a sim about six weeks back that had only
been open for a few months but it was packed with RPers, pretty high quality
too. And the reason is that they got hooked on the lore/backstory of the
setting, were presented with a wiki and let to go loose with the basic
understandings their characters would have.
I know that Babbage is primarily a
themed estate with RP optional, which is why we’d have to cater to both OOC and
RPers, but surely more of both is better.
I propose that we have at least
three categories for information in the welcome centre, an overview that
tackles sim rules, the theme, respecting both RPers and OOCers etc etc. This
can then lead to two separate locations.
An RP section and an OOC section,
the former linking to The Department of Records and Archives, I think with some
more articles the wiki can be much more fleshed out and cover a broader amount
of RP information that is in my opinion one of the critical requirements to
hook the majority of RPers. Combined with the current notecards and some
custom-written information then we can grab potential RPers and make them stick
around.
Then the latter, which would have
all the information of which locations regularly host events, various
shop-heavy areas and a list of up-coming parties, gatherings etc etc. With
these sections we should be able to grab more audiences.
The fact that this welcome centre
is being built shows something fantastic though. That we realise the importance
helping new visitors along their way, hopefully even getting them into our
community. It’s a fine representation of Babbage as a welcoming, kind and
wonderful place filled with brilliant people. Whatever you do with the welcome
centre I’m sure will work out for the best and show what a community-driven
place New Babbage truly is. I look forward to seeing its completion!