Hey everyone!

I need your input :).

I'm working on a new player tutorial at the moment, and I'm not entirely sure what to include. So I figured I would ask all of you, and you can channel your inner newbie, and let me know what you WISH had been in a tutorial when you started.

For now, I think it will just be one, maybe two, pages right after you login for the first time. So you'll sign up, you'll login, and then will come the quiz! Then after the quiz, it will offer you the tutorial, or let you skip it if you want to (then you'll get re-directed to the news page, like you do now). Soo, what should be on that page?

Eventually I would like to do a walk-through, which would take you to the store to buy a horse, and then to train, etc. But for now, I think I want to focus more on an introduction page to give people an idea of what to do after they login.

We also have all of our help pages, which definitely need some updating, but I don't know that a lot of new players make it to the help pages, or want to read all that text.

More oppourtunities to give people important info and get them hooked on HP can't hurt!

Thanks in advance!

Maybe it could be like the "Getting Started Guide"? The first page could just be explaining the navigation links and then the second page could be just about buying your first animals, and taking care of them, and entering them in shows.

Maybe it could end with links to the forum's introduction thread and/or to the chat room? Or maybe links to message admins/mods if they have more questions?

the most questions i get asked by new players are how horse and dog tix work and how many points do they add. whats the benifits to training before breeding, whats the last age i can breed my horse, how do privet shows work and does not being an upgraded player affect your horses point gain from shows.

but def showing them how to collect money from the bank, buying and training there first animal would be helpful too.

I think short videos for things like tickets, banking, making shows, and training would be better than written word. 

I think it would be good to list players that offer free services or graphics though. Especially graphics. Stress the GO HERE OR TO THE IMAGE BANK NOT GOOGLE thing. 

Also I see a lot of people asking how many points per trainable year and that lovely foal point equation. 

Link Tree

Bumping this because I would love additional input! I want to work on this tomorrow :).

Not related to a tutorial per-se but can I suggest a bank increase for new players?  They start out with 650k after going to the bank. By the time they buy 2 horses,  vet them and enter 70 shows each they'Re roughly down to 200k. If a player doesn't make pics or can't get an upgrade they don't really have a good way to make income and they're essentially brole by second week of entering shows. 

This is based off of shows being set with an entry fee of 3000 each.  Didn't know if this was something you'd run into or not. 

mmm im not sure if thats an isue blair as you earn money through shows ven if you donyt win you get some hpd

but more money in  new player account might be an unfesable idea -mainly due to player being able to essentially create as many account they want- but if they set it up like the new player offer then i could see it working.

Yeah I know there would have to be a way around other players creating accounts to get new player money, maybe a '1 new player status per email' type of thing but I was thinking from a perspective of when I first started SIM games YEARS ago that unless you had something awesome to offer you either had to wait to get enough money to train your horses or you had to limit the amount of horses/shows you could enter.

Just a thought as I have known a few new players recently that are trying to keep up with training their horses but simply don't have the funds when starting out and I've given some which I've found most of us do and I even let one use one of my upgrades because I simply have it for the shows/tickets so they benefit from the extra bank roll/boarding and I leave some $ in there whenever I sell tickets, all show money stays on that account for their use as well.

I know would likely be much harder thing to code and maybe something for the future but just an idea I thought I would put out there

yes that is true well HP Helper always has way to much funds than what I can use, so pointing them to HP Helper for finacial aid is also a good option. I have on a few occasions sent newbie player fund -between 5-10 mil- I know you were thinking of offering your own resource thing sam but it may be a good idea to still point them towards HP Helper as i can help them with funds and other issues :)