Retention Revisited

[Vellos]

• Make it possible to maintain realms at a functional level without extensive buro/police/court work.
• Make it possible for realms to expand easier.
• Make founding of new realms easier.
• Provide incentives to reward realms for the creation of new realms.
• Make it easier for newly created realms to survive.
• Make working as a team more rewarding.

1. Haven't we been informed the new estate system will do a lot for this?

2. Decreased maintenance needs and a "steady-state" level for regions should help.... easier TOs maybe too?

3/4. Maybe make CTO'd regions have higher states that other regions? Maybe, if a colony is formed, make it trigger an immediate productivity boost around the home realm?

[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.

This idea got some discussion, mostly positive.

If there are no negatives, we should do it. It can't be that hard to do. Even a flawed system is better than no system: at least we can begin data-collection so we can do more than just anecdotes.

[Indirik]

1. Haven't we been informed the new estate system will do a lot for this?

2. Decreased maintenance needs and a "steady-state" level for regions should help.... easier TOs maybe too?

3/4. Maybe make CTO'd regions have higher states that other regions? Maybe, if a colony is formed, make it trigger an immediate productivity boost around the home realm?

• Well, yes, I think it will. Listed for the sake of completeness. Besides, if I hadn't listed it, someone else would have, and then complained about how blind the devs were to what really needs fixed.
• Improved region control should make TOs easier, by the virtue of all border regions /not/ being depopulated and trashed. And if it is possible to To regions, people will actually try it, and probably move away from the "loot til it's rogue" philosophy.
• I vaguely remember Tom talking about something like that years ago. Some kind of temporary bonus a realm gets, that can only be gotten vi forming a new colony. I don't think it was ever done.

[Kai]

5. Provided your character with a reasonable income

I think that this shows an important flaw in the game right now. To begin receiving income a new player has to beg for it. Either by begging for an oath that is meaningless (wage slavery) because they are new or by direct handouts.

I don't think new players should have to beg for money.

[Vellos]

Indeed it is a problem. And this survey could reveal which realms do it well, and which do not.

[Kai]

No, that's not what I was saying at all. I don't think a noble should have to 'be provided' with gold in the first place.

[vonGenf]

No, that's not what I was saying at all. I don't think a noble should have to 'be provided' with gold in the first place.

You shouldn't have to beg for gold. You should offer your blade, and convince someone that this blade at their service is worth more than the gold in their pocket. In most realms, this isn't difficult.

[egamma]

You shouldn't have to beg for gold. You should offer your blade, and convince someone that this blade at their service is worth more than the gold in their pocket. In most realms, this isn't difficult.

Should I constantly be asking my liege or other lords for a better share?

Not 15 minutes ago I asked the "treasury" group of one of my characters realms for 75 gold. I can afford to recruit a unit or maintain it in the field, not both. And this is just a unit where soldiers cost 36 gold per 10.

[Vellos]

No, that's not what I was saying at all. I don't think a noble should have to 'be provided' with gold in the first place.

Should I constantly be asking my liege or other lords for a better share?

Not 15 minutes ago I asked the "treasury" group of one of my characters realms for 75 gold. I can afford to recruit a unit or maintain it in the field, not both. And this is just a unit where soldiers cost 36 gold per 10.

Duh, and no.

In a realm where oath shares are very low, new players would score the realm, presumably, rather low. In a realm where oath shares were more generous, new players might score the realm comparatively higher. There are three ways to provide a noble with regular income: realm shares, oath shares, and donations. A new player will probably not be nuanced enough to distinguish between all of these quite clearly.

We could phrase the question as, "How satisfied have you been with the amount of gold your character receives in this realm?"

I reiterate, if there are no major complaints to this idea, why isn't it happening?

[Chenier]

I'm not sure we understand each other. I was proposing that newly created characters get the realm-wide messages of the realm they are being created in. They're not random foreign nobles, they are nobles of your realm.

New characters don't appear out of the blue; presumably they just turned eighteen or achieved recognition as high nobility, but they were there before. They are going to receive tomorrow's messages; why not have them receive yesterday's messages?

Indeed we misunderstood each other. You first spoke of "receiving realm-wide letters", no "having access to messages sent within their realm prior to their date of arrival".

I support the latter.

[Chenier]

3/4. Maybe make CTO'd regions have higher states that other regions? Maybe, if a colony is formed, make it trigger an immediate productivity boost around the home realm?

CTOs, imo, should absolutely be easier to do.

[Anaris]

I reiterate, if there are no major complaints to this idea, why isn't it happening?

Because feature requests have to be implemented by people, not magic fairies?

[Kai]

I reiterate, if there are no major complaints to this idea, why isn't it happening?

Because you are the only one who thinks it is very important and you're not a developer. No objections isn't the same as feature that must be implemented soon.

You shouldn't have to beg for gold. You should offer your blade, and convince someone that this blade at their service is worth more than the gold in their pocket. In most realms, this isn't difficult.

I know, I was referring to Velloses 'survey' where he says "Provided your character with a reasonable income".

The problem I still find with the blades is that the price of blades is too elastic. If you have enough blades per region the benefit of further blades falls pretty quickly, and taking knights then becomes grudging charity ("is there anyone who can take in these new knights?), and I don't think new players getting money from charity is good.

In addition the game treats oath offers as 'srs bsns', pledging your allegiance forevernever etc, and being shoehorned into one to even start getting money as you get in to the game is pretty annoying.

[Vellos]

Because feature requests have to be implemented by people, not magic fairies?

.... you're not magical?

[Vellos]

Things that seem to have agreement as "good ideas" from this thread:
1. Easier CTOs
2. Newbie survey
3. Some kind of improved gameplay guide, maybe a YouTube video
4. Access to the previous 7 days letters in a realm a new character joins

I miss anything?