The Way Forward

[Buffalkill]

This is correct. I have the time and inclination to write one or two roleplays a day, but as it is there simply isn't enough stuff going on in game for me to base them around. As a result, I tend to only write a single roleplay every few days.

Excess roleplay time goes toward pointless forum posting.

More Kwansteins = More fun.

[Sacha]

Bumping this since it went ignored...

I have an idea to hopefully prevent the need to freeze an island, through a game-wide effort by all to improve player retention.

What if a game-wide announcement was posted, for everyone to see, asking all players to come together to make the game more appealing, lest one of the islands be closed. I think we could solve a lot of retention problems if there was just a bit more chatter going on around realms. Right now, out of the three realms I play in only Riombara has any semblance of people talking outside of the usual realm affairs. In Sorraine, 95% of messages i got the past 7 days are either turn reports, scout reports or reports of TOs being helped. Astrum is a bit better, though for a realm with almost thrice the number of nobles as Sorraine, I wouldn't call it much of an improvement. Rulers could make extra effort to act as the figurehead of their realm, rather than sit quietly and let their subordinates do the work. Lords could make extra effort to just talk to their vassals and make them feel like they're more than just estate occupiers. Especially newer players would feel more inclined to keep playing and possibly even invite some of their friends to the game.

Making your realm interesting can be as simple as a few letters going up and down the chain of command, beyond the usual orders and reports. Right now in many places BM is just a strategy game, and there is almost zero roleplaying going on (and by roleplaying I don't just mean narrative RPs, I mean nobles interacting among eachother). To me, the reason I've been playing BM for over 8 years now is that it was an entirely unique game, but it's lost a lot of its flair recently. But I don't think that the problem will be (or even can be) solved by adding or removing mechanics. I get the feeling that a lot of players are expecting Tom and the dev team to come up with solutions, but to say it with a huge cliché: true change starts with one's self.

The community is what makes BM unique, so the community bears a responsibility to keep it that way. If enough of us put in a little bit of extra effort, I think it will create a snowball effect, involving more and more people until the game is back to the level of activity it had years ago. And it really can be as simple as just sending a few letters here and there.

[SaDiablo]

Well if Islands wanted to see only there island roleplay then make a basic rule in Subject line  such as  :Island   Realm  Title:   That would resolve any issues there but it needs to be kept simple.

[Kai]

retention isn't even half the problem.

[Penchant]

retention isn't even half the problem.

Really? Then enlighten us on the real problems. I would like to hear it. (Read, here same thing)

[Kai]

problem: lots of people left the game. This is a problem with past retention and cannot be solved even if current retention magically changed to 100%. You may say, isn't this a past problem then? No because low player density is a current problem.
problem: very few new people joining the game
problem: not enough people continuing to play once joining
problem: people are quitting

The things you could examine are; new player recruitment, new player retention, old people retention, player density manipulation

[Peri]

Bumping this since it went ignored...

I totally agree with most of what you said, but I can't imagine a petition to be a reliable way to solve the issue... one can't simply expect people to start playing "better" because someone pointed out that this might help the game. Unfortunately, vice versa is also quite true: simple game mechanics changes won't really push people into changing their game style. The means to create interesting dynamics are already out there, yet almost everyone (me included) are ignoring them.

What I guess could be the only way out of this I can imagine is to have new and motivated players, who would experience many of these dynamics for the first time and engage in them with the enthusiasm most of us lost simply because we already had our fun with them. Attracting new players and keeping them thus seems the most natural solution to the issues you raised. However, an uninteresting environment hurts a lot more player retention than any other fix can help, and low player retention means less potentially interesting characters coming up.

It's pretty complicated..

[Sacha]

I think you might be surprised what efforts people will try to make when their favorite island is at stake.

[Peri]

I think you might be surprised what efforts people will try to make when their favorite island is at stake.

Ok but even if you're right the effects of this would be seen only on the very long term, while it seems Tom is looking for a solution in a relatively shorter timeframe. Don't you think?

[Poliorketes]

I think you might be surprised what efforts people will try to make when their favorite island is at stake.

I don't know about it... I made a 'communication guild' to try to put a bit of the 'life' of the forums in BM... I made it public for all the nobles in my realm and for the rulers of all other realms... Nobody has answered, and only one (who knew about it beforehand in the forum) had entered in the guild. 

Not a very successful beginning, but I don't surrender so easy! 

[Indirik]

Nobody has answered, and only one (who knew about it beforehand in the forum) had entered in the guild. 

I just happened to be in the region when you created it.

[Indirik]

problem: lots of people left the game. This is a problem with past retention and cannot be solved even if current retention magically changed to 100%. You may say, isn't this a past problem then? No because low player density is a current problem.
problem: very few new people joining the game
problem: not enough people continuing to play once joining
problem: people are quitting

The things you could examine are; new player recruitment, new player retention, old people retention, player density manipulation

You have identified two problems: Getting new players, and keeping existing players. If we did somehow magically get 100% retention, then I can guarantee you that eventually, all our player density problems would be solved. It may take a while, but we would eventually get to where we wanted to be, if no one ever left.

These are both problems that we know exist. We have identified the problems, and many people have frequently pointed them out. The question isn't "What are our problems?", it's "How can we fix our problems?"

[Wolfang]

Easy way to increase n° of new players joining:

-Allow @hotmail people to create accounts. Most people aren't going to bother making a new email adress just to see how a game is if they only have a hotmail email adress. I know some cases of this.

[Anaris]

Do people still use hotmail? really?

Apparently.

One bright spark—truly, the jewel of humanity—even cares so much about the rights of Hotmail users that when he found that he was unable to sign up for BM with his Hotmail address, he signed up under a throwaway email and set up a crude denial of service attack against the game by causing an endless loop of Titan reports, which said, among other things, that our discrimination against Hotmail was "evil" and "racist."

And then he wondered (on IRC) why he was being IP-banned from the game.

[Geronus]

I think you might be surprised what efforts people will try to make when their favorite island is at stake.

But how long will it last? Maybe people will put in extra effort for a while, but barring a simultaneous influx of new players, I can't see it lasting. It's a lot of effort to keep up a high level of activity, more and more so as there are fewer and fewer characters to interact with. Eventually people will relax and go back to what's normal for them and we'll be right back where we started.