So I never participated in the D-list so I don't know if you guys have talked about this before, But I think this format could be useful to brainstorm about important issues concerning the game. Looking at the tops and flops it seems like a lot of people recognize the need for new players, and being a ruler of a tiny realm myself I tend to agree. So the question is how can we keep more of the players we get and how can we get more players? I think that if we work together we can probably come up with some good ideas that could help the situation.
Regarding player retention I have a few ideas that I would like to discuss. Mentors. When I first joined this game I had a good mentor, he helped me learn the ropes and get my feet under me, and for a while I enjoyed doing that for other people as well. So the question is how can we best set up our mentors to be successful.
There are two problems I currently see involving the way we use mentors, first is the diffusion of responsibility. Because all the mentors have all the students and there is no way to know who has sent what to whom, there is a great deal of confusion regarding what someone has been taught. This naturally leads to a certain students being almost ignored as all the other mentors assume that each other are taking care of the student. I think this is a significant issue in the current system.
When I first started, you had to pick a mentor, and then after you picked you could change if you had to. This served two important roles as it created a competitive aspect between mentors to get the students and assured that the only person that would be teaching that student was that mentor. The responsibility for retaining and teaching the student was on one person. I honestly see this set up as much more beneficial and my experience backs this up as I have been a mentor under both systems.
Under the old system, I would do all I could to craft a persuasive and compelling message to the new players as it was a one shot, you get it or you don't kind of deal. If I got the student, I knew that if I did a good job I would be well rewarded as I was the only person the student could reward, and that caused me to carefully examine the list and be sure to touch on all aspects. Also, that student was your student and with each one I would work to build a relationship so that their loyalty was towards me. Essentially, you could build a strong power base this way. Overall I found this experience quite rewarding and enjoyable, and the relationships I built through it almost got me elected as King.
Honestly I have not spent more than a few weeks at a time as a mentor in the new system because it lacks all the aspects I have mentioned above if there is more than one mentor. If the other mentors are unresponsive, than you have to wonder what they are sending or not sending the students. The responsibility for them is spread across everybody and therefore nobody actually takes control. Really I think it is just frustrating for the mentors and not as useful for the new players.
The other problem is the inability to know if your student is still active, this would be quite useful to mentors honestly, just something on the mentor page that says when the last logged on.
A second idea I had was what if mentors were able to set up an automatic message to the new realm members that would be sent maybe five minutes after the player joins the realm? One problem I think a lot of new players have is that initial lack of activity they experience, and this might negate that a little bit. Preferably, the mentors would have links to the wiki in these posts so the students could then follow up a bit.
Lastly, would it be possible for new players to have access to past messages if they wanted to? I don't think it would be a good idea to have a months worth of messages greet them when they join, but could we make it so that if they went to messages they could access one from today, yesterday onwards, last 7 days, and all messages as we can after we have been in the realm for a while? (could we do this after we join a new realm? that would be nice.) This would give the player the option to look over the news from the realm and see what is going on. As it is the student is essentially thrust into a realm with no idea of what has happened or is going on, admittedly many players will try and give a brief overview when welcoming the player, but the ability to actually see what is going on would be interesting.
Those are my ideas, what ideas do you guys have and what do you think of mine?
