Retention Revisited

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

This sounds like a very good start.  You have hit all the things I would like to see in starting a new character.

Roland

[Silverfire]

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.

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 don't think people realize how broadly spread this effect is and how much it causes feedback loops.

I've tried simplified studies of new players joining and leaving realms in both small and large realms which I am apart of, on both Dwilight and Atamara and my general perception is that more new nobles join larger realms. Now, Larger realms usually have less social mobility and turnover of positions, and thus in the long term, most of these nobles are less likely to stay and more likely to leave. The smaller realms are the ones with more social mobility and turnover of positions, but they see very little inward bringing of nobles for the realm, and thus the smaller realms stay small while the larger realms stay big.

Right now it is almost impossible for a small realm on Atamara to grow to be a big realm on Atamara because of simple noble count. Not enough nobles join the small realms to allow them to take new lands and grow larger. In addition, for many realms they don't even have enough nobles to hold all the regions they currently do without problems.

This is a cyclic process which causes a lot of our issues if my guess is correct.

[Chenier]

I don't think people realize how broadly spread this effect is and how much it causes feedback loops.

I've tried simplified studies of new players joining and leaving realms in both small and large realms which I am apart of, on both Dwilight and Atamara and my general perception is that more new nobles join larger realms. Now, Larger realms usually have less social mobility and turnover of positions, and thus in the long term, most of these nobles are less likely to stay and more likely to leave. The smaller realms are the ones with more social mobility and turnover of positions, but they see very little inward bringing of nobles for the realm, and thus the smaller realms stay small while the larger realms stay big.

Right now it is almost impossible for a small realm on Atamara to grow to be a big realm on Atamara because of simple noble count. Not enough nobles join the small realms to allow them to take new lands and grow larger. In addition, for many realms they don't even have enough nobles to hold all the regions they currently do without problems.

This is a cyclic process which causes a lot of our issues if my guess is correct.

Which brings us back to the estate system. Before, you would just expand as much as you could, and your great wealth would attract people to your realm in order to better help use and maintain it. Now, you need to do it the other way around, but it's not as easy to attract people with the *potential* of growth (and then long rebuilding times) and so most realms remain rather stagnant.

[Silverfire]

Which brings us back to the estate system. Before, you would just expand as much as you could, and your great wealth would attract people to your realm in order to better help use and maintain it. Now, you need to do it the other way around, but it's not as easy to attract people with the *potential* of growth (and then long rebuilding times) and so most realms remain rather stagnant.

I agree completely. It seems that there are only 2 ways to solve this problem:

1. Revise the current estate issue, to allow less nobles to control more space.

2. Find 500 new players for the game.

[Bedwyr]

I agree completely. It seems that there are only 2 ways to solve this problem:

1. Revise the current estate issue, to allow less nobles to control more space.

2. Find 500 new players for the game.

1 is currently in the works, and the plan that I've seen should make it much, much easier to have wildly different noble populations depending on circumstances without crippling your realm or having a bunch of people with !@#$ty oaths.

2 sounds excellent, and all suggestions are welcome!

[Silverfire]

2 sounds excellent, and all suggestions are welcome!

If I had them I would give them. The tough part of doing this is that Battlemaster is such a niche game. It is the absolute best type of game for its niche, but its niche is small and finding just the right kind of players that want to play this sort of game and dedicate the time to really put into having fun in battlemaster to its fullest extent (which I argue is more than 5 minutes a day when nobles really want to get the full experience) is very hard. The best way of finding new players to me that works so far is one already in implementation: Word of mouth. Those that play tell their friends who they think may be interested and get them to try it out.

Usually people will know which of their friends would like it and which won't. A vast majority of ppl that play online games wouldn't want to play battlemaster, but there is certainly a group that will and does.

So far that I can tell since speeding up the recruitment process is rather difficult(unless someone really starts pumping advertising money, which I doubt) then our best hope is to retain as many players as possible. One way in which we can work towards doing that (beyond fixing the estate system which you've already addressed) would be to allow new players more information about what can be gained from different realms upon joining. Specifically, generic pros and cons to both small and large realms. This is not even related to better specific information about individual realms, but it can give new players an idea of what life will be like in a small realm vs a big realm.

The reason I think this is important is because I pointed out just a bit earlier how those nobles who join large realms are less likely to have social mobility and progress in lordships. However, a new noble in a small realm could easily gain a lordship in their first weeks if they are actually playing the game and sending letters. This way we can cater the experience to what a player wants to do. Some players will want to join the largest realm they can just to fight in large battles, while some players will want to progress quickly in the game on the political landscape (like me), and that is best found in small realms. Some players may mistakenly think that the second category may also apply to large realms instead of small and thus be quickly discouraged. This is just one small example of a pro and con which could be pointed out to new players before picking a starting realm.

I know there is a point where there is information overload, but I think some thing should be available to players before playing should they wish to see it and understand. It doesn't have to be forced upon them, but perhaps a link or a side page when starting up can give them such information will allow them to gather information if they are interested in it. Not every player will want to read it, but those that will want to read it are more likely to stay longer in BM anyway, and they will also be further kept around once they have access to such information.

That is really my only suggestion I can come up with other than the ones I've suggested already in other threads.

[Vellos]

Another idea:

Stop losing the players who do join. If we doubled our "retention rate," defined as the % of players who register and remain active for, say, 12 months, I feel fairly confident that most of our player-count issues would be vastly mitigated.

Low hanging fruit. It's there to be picked.

[Vellos]

Another idea:

When an account has a character stay in a realm for 100 days the first time, it gives them a short, 5-part survey:

Please rate, 1 to 5 (1 being very poorly and 5 being very well) how well Realm X and the players in it have:
1. Instructed you in the basic gameplay of Battlemaster
2. Engaged you in roleplaying
3. Ensured you were able to participate in interesting realm functions
4. Helped you develop your character
5. Provided your character with a reasonable income

Also have a comment section.

Then, once a realm has several responses (say, 5 responses?), that score (maybe an average of some kind? To keep it current, maybe an average of the "last ten rankings"?) goes "public," where any player in the game can view it. New players would be shown the realm's score on those questions (or any other set of questions).

It could be abused, but only by people making lots of new accounts, then keeping a character from those accounts in a "target realm" for 100 days. That's a large investment to make for abuse for a fairly low return. The comment section could maybe be kept private, and Tom/the Devs would see it, maybe periodically releasing an anonymous and non-realm-specific summary of it occasionally.

This would at least give us a general idea of what problems new players are facing, and which realms are successfully addressing them. This would provide us some kind of standard (albeit a flawed and largely subjective one) against which to measure our attempts to include new players.

[Bluelake]

Another idea:

When an account has a character stay in a realm for 100 days the first time, it gives them a short, 5-part survey:

Please rate, 1 to 5 (1 being very poorly and 5 being very well) how well Realm X and the players in it have:
1. Instructed you in the basic gameplay of Battlemaster
2. Engaged you in roleplaying
3. Ensured you were able to participate in interesting realm functions
4. Helped you develop your character
5. Provided your character with a reasonable income

Also have a comment section.

Then, once a realm has several responses (say, 5 responses?), that score (maybe an average of some kind? To keep it current, maybe an average of the "last ten rankings"?) goes "public," where any player in the game can view it. New players would be shown the realm's score on those questions (or any other set of questions).

This is something I really, really support. Mentor feedback is ok, but it's not really concerning the realm, and the results aren't displayed to anyone: even the mentors only get to know the amount of points they got. (or has this changed?)

There are lots of other things we could do to improve retention (from optional e-mail reminders for the first days, to in-game tutorials, to follow-up quizzes and such), but most of them involve coding, so I think the other one among my favorites is LilWolf's idea of making a step-by-step video. In fact, if anyone writes a script, I wouldn't mind doing the voice at all.

[Kai]

Another idea:

Stop losing the players who do join. If we doubled our "retention rate," defined as the % of players who register and remain active for, say, 12 months, I feel fairly confident that most of our player-count issues would be vastly mitigated.

Low hanging fruit. It's there to be picked.

If you think retention rate is low hanging fruit you're a joke.

I think at the moment you are losing people who joined the game for battles. It takes several days of boring letters where you supposedly immediately upon joining forge an oath with somebody. After that it can take weeks to get the first decent fight. If I had joined the game in this state I would have left. But the war islands were around then and I lucked on my other realm choices.

[Foundation]

If you think retention rate is low hanging fruit you're a joke.

I think at the moment you are losing people who joined the game for battles. It takes several days of boring letters where you supposedly immediately upon joining forge an oath with somebody. After that it can take weeks to get the first decent fight. If I had joined the game in this state I would have left. But the war islands were around then and I lucked on my other realm choices.

Agreed.  Retention rate is the crux of the problem, since we have plenty of new players joining from word of mouth alone but who are simple leaving since it's not fun or not what they expected.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

So, why is it that it's so hard for new players to get into the action on a good fight?

It couldn't have been so hard before, could it? I mean, I got seriously wounded in my first week.

[Anaris]

So, why is it that it's so hard for new players to get into the action on a good fight?

It couldn't have been so hard before, could it? I mean, I got seriously wounded in my first week.

It depends very heavily on what realm you start out in.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Ok, so what realms are actually fighting actively?

I don't mean something dumb like what Madina was doing before against SA, where they just have the diplo status of war.

[Sacha]

Pretty much all realms on Dwilight with a long rogue border see action regularly. And though not as exciting as big human battles, they do offer good fun and lots of h/p.