As I said: When you have specific change requests. Not "maybe there should be some kind of..." but "add the below 2 sentences to page X" or a specific feature request, where by "specific" I mean it is written down in enough detail for a developer to stop thinking, sit down and write the code.
IDEA #1
There should be a survey of new players.
When an account reaches 100 days old, immediately upon logging in
to each specific character, a 5-question survey should pop up. This survey should also show up whenever someone less than 200 days old deletes a character. The questions should be:
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"Did someone in this realm personally greet you upon joining the realm?"
Answers:
Yes, in private message
Yes, publicly
No
Text field for explanation if desired
"Has your character gained any positions or been added to any special message groups (check all that apply)?"
Yes, a lordship
Yes, a marshal or vice-marshal position
Yes, a council position
Yes, a dukeship
Yes, added to special message groups
No
Text field for explanation if desired
"How much information have you received about the realm's foreign policy, military planning, or internal realm issues?"
Much more than I wanted
More than I wanted
About the right amount
Less than I wanted
Much less than I wanted
Text field for explanation if desired
"What is your character's average weekly income?"
0-30 gold
31-60 gold
61-100 gold
100-200 gold
201+ gold
Text field for explanation if desired
"Overall, how would you rate this realm, in terms of friendliness and community for new players (scale of 1-10, 10 being the best)?"
1-10 slider or something
Please explain why you gave this ranking
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These questions are totally arbitrary, flawed, probably leading, and will take a long time to give good data of any kind. But we need to get SOME kind of data, because right now this whole discussion is blind, based on data that is woefully inadequate and (from all appearances) somewhat awkwardly aggregated, with no grasp of individual levels.
The idea for a survey has been floating around since June. It has no downside, especially if we keep it SHORT, so that it isn't burdensome.
And it shouldn't boot you to an outside site. It should be an internal thing.
And the data needs to be at least semi-publicly accessible. Comments can maybe be redacted before being posted, but the answer selections need to be fully available, somehow easily sortable by realm and by continent, they need to be able to view individually or in the aggregate.
When such a database exists, with 5-10 datapoints for most realms, 50-100 for each continent, then we'll be able to make better generalizations about what type of people stay, and which realms (and which gameplay practices) seem most conducive to keeping newer players involved.
I figure players who drop before the 50-100 day range may be harder to keep. But if they stick around for several months, we should be able to keep'em.