Retention Revisited

[Indirik]

In my experience most realms only average 20-30 gold per knight.

20-30 gold per week? If someone offered any of my characters that kind of oath I'd laugh in their face and find someone else. That amount of gold is pathetic, unless the region region has been destroyed, and the offered oath will eventually amount to much more. You can't possibly recruit and maintain a decent unit (and no, I'm not talking about a 50 man elite force) on less than 40 gold a week. 25 gold? You'd be lucky to hire and pay 20 men, at most. And then you'd need help recruiting more if they ever got wiped out.

[De-Legro]

Except that the gain in this case in realm-wide, while the cost is very much local. The realm has great incentives to accept new knights all the time, but the ones who can actually offer them oaths, the lords themselves, don't. The gain on estates is marginal, so they are just throwing their gold away out of charity.

Your knights don't aid you agendas? I recommend you get some new knights cause mine are MOST helpful in furthering my ambitions. The more knights I have, the less work I need to do to sway other nobles into my camp.

[Kai]

Your knights don't aid you agendas? I recommend you get some new knights cause mine are MOST helpful in furthering my ambitions. The more knights I have, the less work I need to do to sway other nobles into my camp.

I think you're in the minority and most people just want to slaughter enemies and fight in big battles.

[De-Legro]

I think you're in the minority and most people just want to slaughter enemies and fight in big battles.

And how is that not an agenda, simply means you knights can support you when you are trying to get the realm to war against the realm you dislike. Or better yet supporting you in your efforts to become Duke or whatever so you have even more gold to throw at battle.

[Kai]

And how is that not an agenda, simply means you knights can support you when you are trying to get the realm to war against the realm you dislike. Or better yet supporting you in your efforts to become Duke or whatever so you have even more gold to throw at battle.

This is correct for personal agendas but not really relevant from a 'realm as a team' perspective. That going to war with somebody involves the rest of the realm is not essentially related.

[De-Legro]

This is correct for personal agendas but not really relevant from a 'realm as a team' perspective. That going to war with somebody involves the rest of the realm is not essentially related.

Realm agendas are derived from the personal agendas of the powerful.

[Vellos]

Realm agendas are derived from the personal agendas of the powerful.

Which is kind what many of us are thinking is exactly the problem.

[vonGenf]

Which is kind what many of us are thinking is exactly the problem.

But that's unavoidable. How do you define powerful? I see no other meaningful definition.

[egamma]

Which is kind what many of us are thinking is exactly the problem.

I think the problem is that the powerful often have no agenda other than holding on to power.

[Morningstar]

What? You all mean to tell me that this social experiment we call a game actually parallels real life? 

[Vellos]

Returning to the original topic:

I have continued to collect data. I do another set of data every 15ish days. As I do more reviews, there are two clear groups: Beluaterra, Dwilight, and Far East Island tend to swap off the "top positions" (based on activity and high-activity rates and changes in them, new registrations, changes in number of active or highly active players), while East Island, Atamara, and the Colonies continue to occupy the lowest positions.

A curious thing is that I cannot identify any relationship between levels of 3-day activity and retention. I expected to find that active continents had higher retention. High-activity also has little predictive usefulness (plus, high activity fluctuates so widely that its weekly changes are larger than its long-term changes).

East Island barely even managed to break even on registrations this time around (1.5% increase), while FEI and Dwilight saw very significant growth.*

*FEI and Dwilight also just had multi-cheating issues discovered. However, even if all multi-accounts are discounted, Dwilight still dominates the field for registrations, and FEI and Dwilight both remain leaders, though FEI falls to closer to Atamara and Beluaterra

[Chenier]

No characters can be created on BT, which means it gets less people, but is more likely to retain those it gets. Theoretically.

[JPierreD]

I did have 20 or 30 players register in BM, most of the ones that got to the player making part did so in Dwilight over the last month (of which only 7 remain, unfortunately ). That might influence a bit.

It was agreed by most of them that Dwilight has the most appealing description when you are going to choose a continent to set your player in, and know nothing about the continents.

[Sacha]

Dwilight can also be a cold shower for some, particularly those who come in with 'silly' names and expect a lighthearted game... I'm gonna guess and say that SMA has driven quite a few newbies away already.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Heh, maybe we should instead switch the emigration restriction to Dwilight instead of BT. With the way BT is now, and the likely result that we won't see any future Invasions in the same form as we have thusfar, I see no harm in letting people start directly in blight-ridden BT. On the other hand, I think it would be a slight jolt for people to be forced to have only one character, and be unable to roleplay Sir Deathrider Midnightdawn as a guitar-playing flamenco-dancing ninja detective scientist (I'm pretty sure you can get away with that on AT). Well, at least they'd get yelled at for doing that on Dwilight.

So my thought is that we do the immigration only for Dwilight, and lift BT's restrictions. Or at the very least impose the restriction on Dwilight and leave BT the way it is. But that would mean both testing continents are immigration only, which I don't think is a good idea.