Up By Your Bootstraps III

Ok, ok, this is THE final post on this subject for the next month. I promise.

It occurred to me that the failure of textures to load properly and thus fail to pass their instruction onto new residents can be easily rectified by making a simple hovertext nearby. I've noticed that I've seen that load even in laggy clubs, identifying the tip jar for the musician playing that night. It's not as if you need to show people what the arrow keys are, I think most people are familiar with their keyboard. You can simply say, "The arrow keys will move your avatar" and be done with it. Even the interface can be somewhat described. "Find a button in the lower left corner marked 'Destinations', which will blah blah blah."

And you can always have a quick message below it explaining that if they are patient, they can wait for the texture to load in order to see an actual screenshot.

And you know? Another thought occurs to me. If you have a few dedicated mentors on each Orientation Station, it will help in another way besides spitting out information: it will allow them to test out conversing with another person, getting to know etiquette, and so on. Talking to a scripted parrot is not the same as holding a chat with a veteran. From my experience, in an orientation setting, most people won't hold up the line like at an infohub because they're eager to get into the game. They'll exchange friend cards (another important skill glanced over in orientation, as there are unspoken handshake agreements in that as well), and move on.

As always, just a few thoughts for the Lindens to chew over.