Retention Revisited

[Sacha]

Maybe it would be good to have newbies 'rate' their realms on newbie-friendliness. After a week or so, they would rate the realm on such things as activity, friendliness of the regulars, helpfulness, atmosphere, anything a new player might find worth contemplating before joining a realm. The rating would then show up at the realm/duchy selection screen. For instance, Keplerstan might have a rating of A- or whatever method of rating we want, whereas Evilstani would score a paltry C-. This would have two advantages IMO:

1. It will attract newbies to good starter realms, hopefully making sure fewer of them leave the game shortly after joining.
2. It will give realms with low newbie-friendliness an incentive to make more efforts towards them, to improve their own rating and attract more newbies themselves.

edit: It occurs to me that this is basically the same thing Fleugs proposed earlier... guess I should read topics before replying, eh.

[Vellos]

Maybe it would be good to have newbies 'rate' their realms on newbie-friendliness. After a week or so, they would rate the realm on such things as activity, friendliness of the regulars, helpfulness, atmosphere, anything a new player might find worth contemplating before joining a realm. The rating would then show up at the realm/duchy selection screen. For instance, Keplerstan might have a rating of A- or whatever method of rating we want, whereas Evilstani would score a paltry C-. This would have two advantages IMO:

1. It will attract newbies to good starter realms, hopefully making sure fewer of them leave the game shortly after joining.
2. It will give realms with low newbie-friendliness an incentive to make more efforts towards them, to improve their own rating and attract more newbies themselves.

edit: It occurs to me that this is basically the same thing Fleugs proposed earlier... guess I should read topics before replying, eh.

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.

I suggested it in June.

Nobody has come up with any criticism of it thus far, several people have independently suggested it.

I know how to work Survey Monkey surveys... but that's a very, very blunt instrument for what we want to do.

[Kain]

I suggested it in June.

Nobody has come up with any criticism of it thus far, several people have independently suggested it.

I know how to work Survey Monkey surveys... but that's a very, very blunt instrument for what we want to do.

I would only suggest that it is done sooner than after 100 days. If someone stays that long, he/she will probably stay in the game.

I'm thinking three-four weeks max. I have a hunch that says that whoever goes inactive goes inactive very quickly.

[Jens Namtrah]

I would only suggest that it is done sooner than after 100 days. If someone stays that long, he/she will probably stay in the game.

I'm thinking three-four weeks max. I have a hunch that says that whoever goes inactive goes inactive very quickly.

Agreed, only there should be a first survey after 3-4 DAYS (with appropriate questions), then later follow up ones.

This is marketing - you don't have their attention for a month if things aren't going well.

[JPierreD]

1b) Link new players to the IRC. I've noticed, in the past few weeks, that the channel automatically flairs up when a new players joins it. People are genuinely ready to help new players out on IRC. We're a small nerd-community but we're a warm and open one, although you may find me trolling it rather often. Nevertheless I am always ready and eager to help new players, and will do everything I can to make their introduction to the game easier (less painful?).

^
This would be an excellent idea. It compensates the fact that at start new players can do almost nothing, provides a feeling of being part of the community (adding to the social aspect of the game) and it can greatly help on answering doubts.

It is part cultural, when I just joined the game I got on IRC and most answers from the questions I had were either soft trolling (answering my questions with a joke and then silencing, thus not answering them), or 'why don't you look in the wiki?' (perhaps I did, and did not find the answer!  ). In another game I used to play all the players were more or less used to welcome new players, and be nice to them, so it was fairly usual to see them arriving and getting help from everyone.

[Peri]

When I was ruler I created a specific message group that combined new players and mentors. It came from the idea that a "group-learning" mentality might stimulate new players to ask questions freely, and join in conversation with other players (mentors), as well as allow them a "sandbox" mode to test out various kinds of messages, roleplays, ...

In Morek, since my ruler char is hero and can't be mentor, we created a guild for the purpose of welcoming newbies and teaching them stuff, much like the channel you explained. Newbies are invited to join the guild in the welcome message and ruler bulletin, many actually did, but there was always little to no interaction. I can easily found to be guilty, and complaining that newbies don't answer is not really a good defense, but frankly I can quickly lose interest or simply forget to keep in touch with newbies if after the initial 1-2 messages nothing comes back.

I agree that IRC gives a good environment where to learn things. I think it's pretty much established by now that while it gives a great rp ground, IC mentoring doesn't work as well as OOC one. Therefore creating a mentoring channel or something similar with a restricted amount of people allowed (if newbies join the main channel they will just get lost in the spam) and links to it within the game could be cool.

Also, I have no idea how the interface is for newcomers, but perhaps having them some sort of newbie standing orders reminding them a couple points of the game every time they log in could be good as well. (something like remember to interact, remember to write to mentors, join irc if you have questions blabla)

I don't know who's the mod of this channel, but to avoid repeating what was proposed before (like Vellos stressed) we should make a list of the most reasonable and agreed upon points for mentoring revamp and present it to the devs. I believe there are good suggestions in this thread already, and would improve considerably with some data from their part. I don't think they have the time to surf through such a long post thoroughly, let's help them.

[Anaris]

1b) Link new players to the IRC. I've noticed, in the past few weeks, that the channel automatically flairs up when a new players joins it. People are genuinely ready to help new players out on IRC. We're a small nerd-community but we're a warm and open one, although you may find me trolling it rather often. Nevertheless I am always ready and eager to help new players, and will do everything I can to make their introduction to the game easier (less painful?).

^
This would be an excellent idea. It compensates the fact that at start new players can do almost nothing, provides a feeling of being part of the community (adding to the social aspect of the game) and it can greatly help on answering doubts.

It is part cultural, when I just joined the game I got on IRC and most answers from the questions I had were either soft trolling (answering my questions with a joke and then silencing, thus not answering them), or 'why don't you look in the wiki?' (perhaps I did, and did not find the answer!  ). In another game I used to play all the players were more or less used to welcome new players, and be nice to them, so it was fairly usual to see them arriving and getting help from everyone.

There is actually a way to set up an embedded webchat that goes (more or less) along with the BattleMaster theming, and, for logged in players, automatically picks up their family name as their nick and the realms/continents they're in, plus the main channel, as their auto-join channels.

I suggested this to Tom just before he went on vacation for a while, and he wasn't sure about it, but said he might be persuadable.  I'd forgotten to bring it up again with him till now.  I will do so again

[JPierreD]

Anaris, that would be... amazing.

[Miriam Ics]

This would be nice (the chat) but we will not move out of irc :p

[Bedwyr]

This would be nice (the chat) but we will not move out of irc :p

It is irc, just logs you into it from your BM page and auto-detects what channels you should start in and puts your family as your nick.

[Morningstar]

I've done this before with Mibbit, but I'm guessing you codemonkey types know how to build it in yourself?

[Shizzle]

That would be great! It would lower the treshold to get on irc too

[Fleugs]

I know that Honcast uses Qwebirc (http://qwebirc.org/) embedded on their site, which you can just easily access while watching a live stream of a match. I.e. a chatbox opens in your browser, which is the most convenient way to get the largest amount of people onto IRC for help.

Nevertheless there should be other options than IRC, for it depends on the activity of that channel a lot. When I joined eRepublik, I got onto their IRC too. They seemed to be somewhat used to getting new players on their irc; many of them linked me to well written tutorials and a forum, however. So IRC might be the ideal place to link people to (short) tutorials together with explaining the game/answering their questions.

[Adriddae]

A video tutorial would be nice. Explain how to sign up, make an appropriate family name, character name, how to look for a good realm. Show how to write a sample introduction to a realm, explain that people aren't always online so be patient in joining a new realm. Stuff like that as an introduction to battlemaster. Perhaps create a mock account for the purpose of the video.

[Fleugs]

Perhaps create a mock account for the purpose of the video.

Then secretly keep it and win Battlemaster. Gnagnagnagnagna.