I'm a pretty new player. When I was dropped into the middle of a big honkin' 3d city, I thought, "Cool! Time to explore!" I proceeded to run around for a while, chat with an NPC, and fall to my death.
I then tiptoed past the scary dude in the Death Realm, went outside, looked up, and thought, "Cool! Time to explore some more!" Several hours later I found my way out. Next I found one of the gates, and explored the wilderness until I fell off a mountain
I could have asked for help, but I was in no hurry and I like exploring. Also, I'm a bit on the taciturn side, and real-time chat always feels awkward to me. This will change as I get more used to Planeshift and RPing. At first the social nature seemed annoying, and not being the type to ask for directions, I just found/learned things myself. Now I'm starting to feel more at home though, and realize how much more interesting interaction makes this game. Isn't that the point of playing with real people?
It's the same as if you went to a new town in real life. You won't know where everything is until you explore a bit. And I mean in the days before GPS and Google Earth. I actually liked the feeling of being dropped into a new place and getting to learn stuff without it being spoon-fed to me. I got to experiment. It's tougher than many games, but you get much more satisfaction when you finally mine some gold and vacate the poor house. You've earned it through hard work. I got Final Fantasy III for Christmas, and the first boss seemed too easy (I mean the djinn, not the thing you fight solo in the beginning). Getting to him with a full party was the hard part. Once I got there and destroyed him, I felt like I stole a lollipop from a kid, or like Square stole a lollipop from me. Sure, it was just the first boss, but I would have liked a challenge. I didn't get the same feeling of achievement beating that boss as I did when I mined my first chunk of gold in Planeshift. (Incidentally, I'm very glad that both FF-III and Planeshift let me equip a sword in each hand if I so choose, without any annoying extra skills needing to be learned
).
By the way, if I were to go skin a beaver in real life, I can guarantee I wouldn't know where to take the pelt. My dad would know, and I'd ask him or whoever's handy. Medieval life didn't come with an instruction manual, and the manuals for modern life are mostly poorly written, outsourced, biased, or self-serving. The best way is still to just ask somebody for help.
bilbous posted while I was typing, so I'll add a response: In terms of reality, yes they seem completely ridiculous. I'm no expert in sewers, but they should collect whatever they're collecting and shunt it all to a central place, obeying the laws of gravity, and do something with it. They should more or less follow the streets or lines of houses, with their elevation corresponding to the elevation of the ground. They would need to not interfere with the cave under the temple, and if they do intersect, it should show. A way of moving between them in such a case would be cool. More entrances would also be nifty, so you could use it as an alternate path through the city. They don't have to co-exist in the same map, but they should be compatible if one were to pretend they co-existed. Hopefully that will be adjusted in the future. Some Planeshift style turtles would also be cool.
