Retention Revisited

[De-Legro]

Duchy taxes will still be useless. You would have to levy ruinous taxes on rurals to make up even a modest 10% tax on most cities. Unless you had a LARGE duchy and could spread it out over many smaller regions. Which the majority of duchies don't have. One duke willing to take the income loss himself and not tax his vassals in return for the extra region allegiance would throw the tax curve out the window, too.

No one said the Duke would be able to regain ALL his lost gold from taxing rural regions. One Duke willing to take the tax loss himself would simply make things more interesting, instant conflict as region lords clamber to join his Duchy if at all possible.

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

Has anyone considered the effects of "culture" on players?  I only bring this up because on Atamara Eston recently tried bringing a group ex-Norland players on board.  The differences and clash in playing styles, role playing, and general approaches to the game drove many of our Eston players to leave including several long standing characters.  Finding a match to the playing style a new player likes would seem to me to be a key factor in getting players to stay.   If I had started with the Norland group, I would have left in a week or so but the players who liked that style were quite loyal to the game, even staying together after Norland was destroyed.  Perhaps some mechanism to allow new players to experience several different realms/islands at the beginning and having to deactive characters after a period of time could be used to "see the world" and give a new player a better chance to find their home they truly enjoy.

[Fleugs]

While that does sound interesting, I think it will be a gateway to abuses.

[vonGenf]

While that does sound interesting, I think it will be a gateway to abuses.

Such as? It only brings to Dukes what already exists for Lords.

[Fleugs]

I was referring to the idea of "tasting" several realms for new players.

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

After a bit of thought, it might be easier if a weeks worth of the messages sent to all the characters in a realm could be made available to potential new players to read before selecting a realm.  This would allow a potential player to get a feel for a realm before spending a couple of weeks only to find out he/she did not like the playing style of the realm they had selected.  If some players find this unacceptable due to the potential for "spying" then perhaps  a delay on the messages could be put in place for the potential new player, i.e.  new player sees messages from a week ago or so.  Much easier to implement I would think.

Roland

[Fleugs]

Or how about a realm summary that explains the basic concepts of the realm? It's already there.

I hear your problems though. Sometimes it's disappointing and you wish you ended up somewhere else... still, try to make the best of it, and if you really don't like it, just migrate/join another realm. But I'm all up for finding a solution to this matter.

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

The realm summaries as mostly outdated and self serving.  A look at the communication, lack thereof, and roleplaying would go a long way to getting a new player into a realm that fits their playing style the first time.  Failure to do so increases the chances that they will just walk away rather than try somewhere else.  Do it right the first time!

[Indirik]

A new player who doesn't know any better really wouldn't know what they were looking at, though. So giving them a sample of messages is rather meaningless, as it has no context. Are 19 people posting Copy/Paste buro reports every turn a good thing? How about if the only two messages sent per day are long RPs? And what if the vast majority of the realm communication happens within the armies, duchies, guilds, religions, and message groups rather than the all-realm channel? What if the week picked for sample messages was a slow week? Or happens to involve the only OOC argument the realm had in the past two years?

[egamma]

a lot of the global information page stuff could be provided--average income, total realm size, how many allies versus at war, total messages send over last 30 days, median days held for all positions, etc--to show newcomers what realm is likely to be more fun to play in. Surely there's some formula we could make to guess at the "fun" to be had--more enemies, higher income, higher message count, lower days held, and lower player count would all be positive indicators.

I know, I know, it's not a perfect system. But we need some semi-objective means of guessing at which realms are more fun than others, and highlighting realms where one can interact with others (talk/war) and do stuff (days held/realm size/income), would help retain newer players.


Second idea:
Perhaps have a "realm of the week" feature on the sign-up screen, that details one realm with a lot of detail?

[Chenier]

a lot of the global information page stuff could be provided--average income, total realm size, how many allies versus at war, total messages send over last 30 days, median days held for all positions, etc--to show newcomers what realm is likely to be more fun to play in. Surely there's some formula we could make to guess at the "fun" to be had--more enemies, higher income, higher message count, lower days held, and lower player count would all be positive indicators.

I know, I know, it's not a perfect system. But we need some semi-objective means of guessing at which realms are more fun than others, and highlighting realms where one can interact with others (talk/war) and do stuff (days held/realm size/income), would help retain newer players.


Second idea:
Perhaps have a "realm of the week" feature on the sign-up screen, that details one realm with a lot of detail?

This is all part of one of my previous suggestions on handing over more adequate tools in realm-picking.

A new player who doesn't know any better really wouldn't know what they were looking at, though. So giving them a sample of messages is rather meaningless, as it has no context. Are 19 people posting Copy/Paste buro reports every turn a good thing? How about if the only two messages sent per day are long RPs? And what if the vast majority of the realm communication happens within the armies, duchies, guilds, religions, and message groups rather than the all-realm channel? What if the week picked for sample messages was a slow week? Or happens to involve the only OOC argument the realm had in the past two years?

I'd say 19 people copy-pasting reports is better than none. It means the realm is active. And if it's active at sharing reports, it's probably because they are involved in something or preparing for something. They otherwise wouldn't bother with sharing so many reports.

Interesting read? No. But still a good hint.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

We already have something that tells us which duchies need knights, and "glory" which vaguely translates to how many battles in its regions. Of course these are all really vague anyway.

But making it more exact, that makes me wonder if the bigger realms might not just get bigger, and by extension, have the knights to keep growing bigger, while the smaller realms don't change much. The reason I say this is because I think some of you might have the wrong idea about the typical player who joins.

The typical player most likely has not the slightest clue about positions. Probably doesn't even know they exist, or what's so special about them. When they look at where they want to start, they're not thinking about getting a position, at least when I started I didn't know or care about positions. When my roommate in London wanted to start playing, he asked me which place had the best tactics in battle. The first question wasn't which realm had the best social mobility. It was about the action.

Now, some people might in fact go in knowing about all the positions, and be ambitious. But I think that for the vast majority of true new players who know nothing more than what was advertised, they join for the battles. So, a big realm generally has a stronger military. And I think most people who are naive to the inner workings of any environment would prefer a larger place. That's the same reason why in other MMOs the largest most prestigious guilds have the most applicants while the smaller guilds might at most have one or two curious or seriously interested individuals.

Also there is the factor of risk. It's considerably riskier as a new player to join with a small realm than a large realm because the assumption is that the large realm is well entrenched in its position. The smaller realm on the other hand, might be unstable. While this might not necessarily be true, that, I believe, is the common outside perception of those newly arrived to this game.

[Chenier]

We already have something that tells us which duchies need knights, and "glory" which vaguely translates to how many battles in its regions. Of course these are all really vague anyway.

But making it more exact, that makes me wonder if the bigger realms might not just get bigger, and by extension, have the knights to keep growing bigger, while the smaller realms don't change much. The reason I say this is because I think some of you might have the wrong idea about the typical player who joins.

The typical player most likely has not the slightest clue about positions. Probably doesn't even know they exist, or what's so special about them. When they look at where they want to start, they're not thinking about getting a position, at least when I started I didn't know or care about positions. When my roommate in London wanted to start playing, he asked me which place had the best tactics in battle. The first question wasn't which realm had the best social mobility. It was about the action.

Now, some people might in fact go in knowing about all the positions, and be ambitious. But I think that for the vast majority of true new players who know nothing more than what was advertised, they join for the battles. So, a big realm generally has a stronger military. And I think most people who are naive to the inner workings of any environment would prefer a larger place. That's the same reason why in other MMOs the largest most prestigious guilds have the most applicants while the smaller guilds might at most have one or two curious or seriously interested individuals.

Also there is the factor of risk. It's considerably riskier as a new player to join with a small realm than a large realm because the assumption is that the large realm is well entrenched in its position. The smaller realm on the other hand, might be unstable. While this might not necessarily be true, that, I believe, is the common outside perception of those newly arrived to this game.

I concur.

This, however, should not prevent us from helping new players make the most informed choice possible. We can't pidgeonhole everyone into the same stereotype, so having a lot of info will help people find realms that most suit their tastes, and will allow them to have more accurate expectations from their new home.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

What more should we give them then? We already tell them which regions might need knights, and which places have seen a lot of recent battles. Show CS, or gold income? Those are things which anyone with understanding of the Statistics page can see, so it's not exactly secret.

[Chenier]

What more should we give them then? We already tell them which regions might need knights, and which places have seen a lot of recent battles. Show CS, or gold income? Those are things which anyone with understanding of the Statistics page can see, so it's not exactly secret.

Amount of messages sent realm-wide within the last month, amount of non-report/non-order messages sent realm-wide within the last month, amount of time since the realm was last at war (not currently tracked by the game as far as I know, but would be a good idea), total number of battles over the last month, total number of "huge" battles over the last month (or 3), average knightly income, average days in realm of government members, average time in office of government members, to name a few off the top of my head. Newbies who only care for war will look only at the stats that interest them, while those who want more immersion will take a better look at activity indicators (messages) or rotation indicators (days in realm and days in office of government members).

I don't know what the current system is like for a total newbie, but I know that I found it pretty damn useless when I created a new character in a continent I didn't know very well. Not to mention that the data looked kinda sketchy. There were no indicators at all for almost all of the factors I take into consideration when picking a realm.