Author Topic: New Player Experience  (Read 27998 times)

Antonine

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #45: August 30, 2017, 11:27:32 PM »
So, I'm an old player who left the game, had my old account auto-deleted after being away for so long, and who has just recently created a new account.

As such I'm experiencing the game from scratch (no family fame or wealth to back me up, no long glorious history, no name recognition) but with the benefit of pre-existing knowledge about how it works. Here's my thoughts:

1) Most realm government types are recipes for stagnation

I deliberately made sure that both my new characters were created in realms that were either democracies or republics. I know that these are the least medieval government types from a RP point of view but in my experience they also make for more dynamic realms with opportunities for nobles to rise and fall in influence.

In realms where key office holders are elected or appointed once, for life, then it is incredibly difficult for a new player to make an impact short of waiting for someone to die or be severely wounded.

Obviously this doesn't always hold true, democracies and republics can be utterly dead (see: Sirion), but there's definitely a problem with government and region lord mechanics locking most new players into purely the knight game which can be very boring if the realm you're in doesn't have active discussions or active wars going on.

In my case my first character landed on his feet in Vix Tiramora - pretty much everything possible is debated by all nobles and even though I don't have enough prestige to run in lordship elections I can see that there will be plenty of opportunities to advance in the future.

2) There's very little information to guide new players as to how to choose a realm or continent

Before choosing a realm I did some research on the wiki, used my existing knowledge and looked at noble densities to decide which one to pick. But when I went through the character creation process only Steps 1 and 2 were easy and informative.

When you get to Step 3 the continent descriptions are a bit outdated and don't really give you an honest impression of what it's like to play on them. If I was new to the game then I might pick Dwilight for the SMA without realising that it's a place where realms are far from each other and where the game is often more PVE than PVP. Equally it tells me that BT uses the same map as Atamara(!) which is inaccurate and unhelpful but fails to mention that the periodic invasions make it a place where realms rise and fall a lot more quickly and that therefore there's more potential for a new character to rise to power and influence

And when you get to Step 4 it'd be useful if there was something explaining what kind of gameplay activity, opportunity and war translate into and it's utterly appalling just how many realms don't have descriptions at all, let alone descriptions that are useful to guiding a new player to what they're like to play in.

So overall, just more information about what options you should pick in order to enjoy different kinds of gameplay, and explaining to new players what the implications of their choices are better would be a big improvement. Otherwise it's easier to create a character in a realm that's utterly unsuited for your vision of playing the game.

And if there was a system of properly curating realm descriptions, and promoting realms with high activity to new players, then it might do more to help new players get started in places that aren't utterly dead.

It was also a bit offputting that the heraldry creation system currently breaks when you try to save a new shield but that's a more minor niggle.

3) Once you've started the game there's very little within the game itself to give you an idea about what to do next

After creating a character the only thing the game suggested I do was to tell me to send a letter to my liege. It doesn't suggest what to put in it, it doesn't make you aware that your liege might never reply to you and it doesn't suggest you introduce yourself to the whole realm (which is more likely to get a response).

And after that you're utterly on your own. I really think things would be greatly improved if new characters (at least those of new players) were given advice about general courses of action they could take. For instance, some good advice might be:

"As you gain honour and prestige (from battle) you'll have the opportunity to steer your character in lots of different directions but right now you're a knight in a world of war. A good way to start would be to ask your liege to assign you to an army, travel to the capital to recruit more men for your unit and to start training your men so they'll perform better in battle.

If you want to become a lord or a duke or a ruler then you'll need more honour and prestige. The best way to gain it is to fight in battle alongside other nobles in your realm. Don't worry about making mistakes or fighting on being on the losing side of a battle at first.

Even if your unit gets wiped out you can always recruit another one and in the meantime you'll be making a name for yourself, bonding with your fellow troopleaders and gaining the honour and prestige that your character will need to advance in the game later on."

It doesn't need to be a big wall of text but guides as to paths you can lead your character down and ways you can start to get involved, as well as warning that it often takes hours and sometimes a couple of days for other characters to respond to messages, would all help a new player avoid feeling lost, confused or disappointed by the gameplay experience.

4) The knight game mechanics by themselves are very boring and isolating

If your realm doesn't have active discussions going on then the basic knight game can be pretty dull. Even if you're getting orders your gameplay could quite easily just consist of login, train your men, travel to X, recruit men, train men, travel to Y, rinse and repeat. Over time that just becomes dull, repetitive and isolating. You might know that discussions are going on to decide important issues of war and peace but if they're happening behind closed doors then you soon feel pretty irrelevant.

I know that there's probably not much that can be done to make being a knight more interesting in turns of gameplay, and the real solution is to just have more active realms with lots of conversations for new knights to join in with (in my case, Vix Tiramora having public debate about just about every decision imaginable means that things are never quiet or boring), but anything that gave knights more to do to make an impact, or accomplish something in the game, would be an improvement.

5) Most of the flavour and history of the game is locked away out of sight and out of mind on the wiki or forum

Even Vix Tiramora is a great example of this. On the wiki there's lots of background to the realm and potentially lots of room for detail about its history or even just lots of flavour content but you have to leave the game in order to find it and create it. Most new players won't do this.

I don't think there's an easy way to bridge that gap but I remember that one of the best parts of the game years ago were the newspapers, histories, descriptions and propaganda that you could find on the wiki and I easily spent as much time checking the wiki as I did the game. Now people are less likely to check the wiki and, because it's separate from the game, it's updated a lot less.

But if it was, for instance, possible to create a newspaper within the game, update it within the game, read it within the game and distribute it within the game (probably on a continent wide basis via a notification message or even just a link from the politics section) then I bet you'd see active newspapers again. Similarly, while you get (often high quality) region descriptions within the game, a lot of other things are very bare bones in terms of flavour and detail.

The realm/government/army pages in the game have limited space and can only be contributed to by a very small number of people. Your realm might have a glorious history or detailed descriptions of how your constitution and governing bodies work but there's no space for it in the information pages. Your army might have a system of medals for honouring its heroes but there's no way to record it on the army pages. Your city might have been the capital of multiple realms in the past and been the sight of major battles but there's no way to see that on the region page unless you take the time to manually put it all in the region description. Your realm might have a long line of heroic kings and queens but there's no place in game to record their names and reigns.

You might have a detailed backstory for your family but the only place you can put it is the wiki, not in the game - a link to a family page on the wiki really isn't the same since, if nothing else, it requires you to create another account for the wiki and to get used to editing the wiki to create that detail. And you might have a clear idea of what your character looks like, and have accumulated impressive stats, but there's no way you can record a character description inside the game and the only way another character can even look at the stats of your player is through a convoluted route.

World building is such an important, and enjoyable, part of the game but by having most of it separate from the game and on the wiki it just creates more barriers to participation and leaves it isolated from the gameplay and liable to stagnate.

***

I know that all of the above would take a lot of effort to fix, and some of them might be unfixable, but those are the main things I've noticed so far that limit the enjoyability of the game. In particular, I think that BM handholding new players through their first few days and weeks in the game and doing more to integrate flavour, history and RP descriptions into the game mechanics would do a lot to improve it.

After all, even if you join a realm, send an introduction letter and don't hear back for half a day, just being able to explore your new realm, read up about its long line of kings, look at the latest war heroes, read the character descriptions of prominent nobles and maybe read a newspaper published by some biased propagandist on the other side of the continent, all without ever leaving the game, would mean you'd come away impressed with the depth and detail in the game instead of just getting impatient because of the silence.

Antonine

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #46: August 30, 2017, 11:30:16 PM »
P.S.

If helpful I could turn some of the above into feature requests :)

Wimpie

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #47: August 31, 2017, 08:31:27 AM »
This is probably one of the most useful replies I've read since I created a forum account. This is exactly the point of view we need. And since real new players won't be on here to explain the difficulties, your situation helps us greatly.


I have several things I want to respond to.


  • We definitely should update the character creation process to more accurately display current information. Anything that can be helpful on those screens and is do-able from a technical perspective is welcome for me.
  • A thing that concerns me greatly as well is having players guide them in character creation and then boom.. putting them in a realm and there's no guide whatsoever. I am not sure, though, how to fix this. A more elaborate message like the one you proposed is probably a good start. I know Gabanus (Aeneas) is currently proposing an outline for a new Tutorial (because surprise surprise, the old ones are pretty out dated). But from experience I know many of the new players didn't bother to click through this tutorial. I know Gildre has made a wonderful effort of actually recording a video (because yes, I think players are more inclined to watch a video tutorial of 3-4 or even 5 minutes then take the time to click through a text based basic tutorial) for the tutorials. At this moment, they are still a bit too long though. Any input you can offer us on that would be very great: https://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,7627.30.html . This tutorial link, or an inline video tutorial to watch could be a good start on how to proceed with roughly their first day in BM.
  • Stagnation and activity: There's very little from technical perspective, I think, we can do about this. The game still is about interaction with each other and if the people simply don't do that, they're doomed to be bored. Same for electing in government officials once and have the same ones on top for years.
  • Wiki: I've made it a big TODO to update many wiki pages and bundle the many help pages into something more useful than the current 'Basics', 'Manual', 'Introduction',.. It's not structured well and on top of that very outdated. Problem is time and effort of volounteers here. Anyone with access to wiki may update it where they see fit. The fact that it's separate to BM is a burden indeed, but I do not see how we can incorporate the huge amount of information that's there into BM. There's simply no room or we would be overcrowding things. I've recently made it possible to use links to wiki inline (through the [[ ]] codes) in BM so a direct link can be stashed. You can simply view wiki pages without an account, as long as you're not editing. I've pushed many times to have 1 account for all (BM - Forum (this is already in place I heard) - Bugtracker - Wiki). But I simply have no idea of its technical complications and possibilities.
  • As for news papers, this will always be a player-based or manual update. There were some initiatives on the Wiki to have a newspaper in place for DWI know, but such things become rapidly obsolete since it's out of the game and no one cares to look. A great way to start on this could perhaps be the 'World News' link we have under information. I am unsure why that one was ever built, can't say I ever really looked at it. It looks aweful as well. But maybe we can transform this page into a more newspaper 'Herald' like design and appoint someone to update it with news. Problem here is if it's a player, it's prone to bias. If it's run by GM's or devs, the activity or feeling with what's going on will be lower.. Suggestions to elaborate on this topic are welcome.
Many other things came to mind but already forgotten. I'm very interested to take actions on this, since retaining new players is a very important technique of getting your playerbase back up.
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Zakky

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #48: August 31, 2017, 09:12:58 AM »
Those are some solid feedback.

How about making new players send a letter to their liege first, then another to their realm?

Once they press that play button for the first time, instead of showing them letters right away, direct them to send a message to your liege page with some flavour texts like 'as you kneel before your liege, your liege etc... if you want to say anything, please do so.' first then 'many nobles of your realm have sent you small gifts to congratulate the start of your new career. Send a letter to thank them' or something. Then again it does feel like you are trying to force this new person to write two letters off the bet.

As for knights not being able to do much, not sure there is that many solutions. The biggest issue I feel about the game is how top heavy it is. Most discussions happen at the top of the line so most of the time, knights only get orders or announcements. Maybe there are ways to strengthen the involvement of knights and make them matter more. Not just people who are there to command units.

As for wiki, maybe we can transfer some stuff from wiki to the game in the form of books. Mix something interesting too like history of famous families or storied battles etc.

As for making a tutorial, videoes are way to go I feel. But not sure how many will be interested in watching a video of a text game.

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #49: August 31, 2017, 10:08:01 AM »
This is perfect timing and some perfect stuff! As Wimpie said, we're working on making a new tutorial and I'm most in favor of the video idea of Gildre as well and since he's not active I will try to make some of my own (hopefully a first try this weekend or so, if I can find the time) hence I started writing an outline on what has to be in it. So any advice on that would be most welcome.

From what I gather it could provide a bit more info on the different islands and their upsides and downsides?

1) As for the government type, it's not that limiting anymore, it's more an issue of player base. I know Greater Xavax was a Monarchy and Oligarch was a tyranny, but both shared most, if not all the information, with the entire realm, because that's what we as rulers valued, the interaction of everyone. You mentioned Sirion yourself where I experienced the opposite within a Republic. So a tyranny can do that just as good as a Republic pretty much (these days you can choose seperately of your government types if elections for positions are held, so you could do an elect once in a democracy I think (uuuh, don't, just don't guys) and a elect monthly in tyrannies as we did in Oligarch for Judge and Banker.

2) I love the idea of updating some of the text within the game itself as well as to guiding the new players. Wimpie I'll be happy to volunteer for that also and hopefully Antonine as well, although would like to finish the new tutorials first.

5) For the first time now I'm honestly thinking about making a guild to preserve realm history. Would that work? Is there enough room for writing text etc? Rather than creation very complex new mechanics, it would maybe only extend the options of guilds slightly (ability to make a library kind of thing that's in game, or would that be too much info stored on the servers?).
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Wimpie

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #50: August 31, 2017, 12:23:00 PM »
5) For the first time now I'm honestly thinking about making a guild to preserve realm history. Would that work? Is there enough room for writing text etc? Rather than creation very complex new mechanics, it would maybe only extend the options of guilds slightly (ability to make a library kind of thing that's in game, or would that be too much info stored on the servers?).

Just a quick note, I'm not at all sure why you want to create a guild to preserve realm history.

  • I don't think there is enough space or appropriate space to write stuff
  • Guilds can die and everything will be erased.
From my point of view, Wiki is still the place to be if we want to keep elaborate information, because it will always exist and keep the data and versions and such. Any realm bulletins, guild boards etc are temporary as all realms/guilds/religions/.. can die.
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Antonine

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #51: August 31, 2017, 02:16:14 PM »
So I don't know what the game's data infrastructure and set up looks like so there may be limits on what's actually feasible but here are my thoughts on potential ways to improve the issues I've identified:

1) & 2) Fixing realm stagnation and elites hoarding power is always going to be impossible to fix through mechanics but I do think some better guidance for rulers/dukes would be a good thing.

E.g. the ruler options could say something like "you are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to share most information (though not all of it) with the realm as a whole and to encourage discussion even if you intend to ignore your subjects' opinion" and anything else that reminds rulers to take a key role in encouraging activity.

Equally, it might be useful if, in addition to the protest mechanic, there could be a way for knights to be discontented in a similar fashion to the way peasants can be discontented. There could be an option under Politics to set your room about the realm's direction to Happy, Content, Discontent, Unhappy, Neutral and then a weekly report could be sent to the realm with a summary of the mood of the realm's knights and lords according to category. That way characters would know what the overall mood of the realm was and have an anonymous way of giving feedback on the realm without having to stick their neck out with a public letter or protest. It would also give characters a way of knowing if the public mood might be safer for actual protest, public letters criticising the government or even rebellion - so it could be something which could enhance the use of the existing mechanics rather than taking away from them.

I also think that, in addition to improving the detail and guidance in the character creation process, when it comes to choosing a realm the Activity metric should be massively promoted and flagged for the player's attention. This would reward realms that are active and penalise realms which are inactive, which is a good thing. Because it means an active realm would gain nobles faster and therefore be more likely to beat realms with low activity which would in turn help encourage realm destruction and creation with the inactive realms gradually being eliminated in favour of those with a culture of activity.

It would also be great if there could be an alert displayed in game to everyone in a realm on a regular basis if their realm didn't have a description written for the new character creation process and if there was a reminder every two months of what the realm's description currently is just so that it doesn't just get forgotten or neglected.

3) Improving guidance within the game could probably just be a matter of improving the splash page for when you've just joined a realm to contain more advice and maybe including a brief description of each of the Actions, Orders, Politics, etc. tabs to say what they're for - ideally as hideable hints for new players that get auto-hidden after a certain amount of time in game.

4) There's only so much that could be done to improve the knight game but I think that one good mechanic would be either to open up the guild creation/construction mechanic to any noble with an estate (although only with the permission of the region lord) or to give knights the option to create mini message groups to expand the potential for knights to interact with each other from a social and organisational perspective.

Also, anything that would give knights the option to do more with their estate and/or unit would be a good thing. If I'm playing the game as a knight and I know that if I can save up enough then I'll be able to, for instance, build a smith at my estate so that my men (and my men only) can repair a limited amount of equipment damage, or build a new farm that will increase my tax income by 10%, or even just build a new manorhouse with a description that will be seen by anyone who looks at the region page, then it would give me achievable goals to work towards and deepen my connection to my estate/region in a way that just doesn't exist at the moment.

Equally, being able to create a character description in game (see point 5) which my character's name would link to (e.g. if a message comes from Sir Kepler then everyone who receives it can click on Sir Kepler's name and get taken to his character stats and description) would help improve my investment in developing my character from an RP perspective.

5) This leads neatly on to ways to improve the opportunity for player created flavour in the game. Obviously this would have an impact on the database and storage space could be an issue but here are a few things that I think could work well:

Newspapers

The Politics tab could have options to start a newspaper and read the newspapers. Anyone with enough gold could start a newspaper and any newspapers created on a continent could be read by any character on the same continent.

Newspapers could basically consist of one or more editors who could write and publish articles which could then be viewed on the newspaper's page in game. Articles would basically just be letters but without a sender name (it would be up to the author to include their name or pseudonym within the article). There could also be a button to allow any character to write to the editors of a newspaper to allow them to submit an article or share news which the editors could then publish.

Alternatively, a character could subscribe to a newspaper and articles from that newspaper would show up in the messages feed as they're published.

I don't think there should be any efforts to set up official newspapers for a continent or concerns about bias and propaganda. That should be left to players and a blatant propaganda sheet by one character could just serve to entertain others and maybe prompt them to start a propaganda sheet of their own.

Realm History and other flavour

Database storage could be an issue here. If it is then the only workaround I can think of is creating a way to view and edit (editing only for certain characters and if necessary through a shared wiki account) wiki pages in game. So a Realm History link on the Information menu could take you to an in game view of the appropriate page on the wiki - the key thing is that players should at least be able to read flavour content without leaving the game.

In terms of flavour content, there's already the option to build monuments with descriptions and create/edit ruler/judge/banker/general bulletins, etc. So creating, editing and viewing descriptions in game is already possible with current mechanics.

What I think is that there should be more places to put descriptions. You should be able to create an in game description of your character's appearance with other characters can view. You should be able to create and update a Realm History in the information pages (which even characters in other realms could read). You should have a way to view a game generated list of a realm's rulers (even if historic data can't be recovered it would be nice to have going forward). You should be able to write and view a description for an army (which would give you a way to record medals and other honours for heroes). And you should have space to write a more detailed realm description so there's space to talk about the realm's culture/alliances/etc. rather than being limited to a very short bulletin.

If it's not possible to store this information on the database then hopefully it would be possible to store it on the wiki but make it accessible in game. What I definitely think though is that you shouldn't need to leave the game just to be able to access the most basic lore, flavour and history about your realm at the very least. And if it is stored in game then there should be a way in which it gets copied to the wiki.

***

Which reminds me, does the wiki have any kind of API?

Antonine

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #52: August 31, 2017, 02:22:51 PM »
Just a quick note, I'm not at all sure why you want to create a guild to preserve realm history.

  • I don't think there is enough space or appropriate space to write stuff
  • Guilds can die and everything will be erased.
From my point of view, Wiki is still the place to be if we want to keep elaborate information, because it will always exist and keep the data and versions and such. Any realm bulletins, guild boards etc are temporary as all realms/guilds/religions/.. can die.

I have to agree. Guilds have limited space to write stuff and cost money to maintain. They're also easily destroyed and require active characters to keep them functioning. The administrative overhead and risk of destruction don't make it worth it IMO.

The only thing you could really use one for is as a library perhaps by having the internal description include a list of links to books/pages on the wiki - but I'm not even sure if direct links work if they're put in a description.

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #53: August 31, 2017, 03:35:27 PM »
I have to agree. Guilds have limited space to write stuff and cost money to maintain. They're also easily destroyed and require active characters to keep them functioning. The administrative overhead and risk of destruction don't make it worth it IMO.

The only thing you could really use one for is as a library perhaps by having the internal description include a list of links to books/pages on the wiki - but I'm not even sure if direct links work if they're put in a description.

It's been a long while since I did anything with guilds, but noted, no guild for that purpose.
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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #54: August 31, 2017, 06:01:03 PM »
I have to agree. Guilds have limited space to write stuff and cost money to maintain. They're also easily destroyed and require active characters to keep them functioning. The administrative overhead and risk of destruction don't make it worth it IMO.

The only thing you could really use one for is as a library perhaps by having the internal description include a list of links to books/pages on the wiki - but I'm not even sure if direct links work if they're put in a description.
I think people make too many special-purpose guilds. Guilds with special purposes often lose their purpose, and then there's little reason to keep it around other than nostalgia. I think people should focus on combining the purposes of compatible guilds rather than having to build a network/infrastructure/membership for each and every one.

Zakky

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #55: August 31, 2017, 07:06:04 PM »
I think people make too many special-purpose guilds. Guilds with special purposes often lose their purpose, and then there's little reason to keep it around other than nostalgia. I think people should focus on combining the purposes of compatible guilds rather than having to build a network/infrastructure/membership for each and every one.

Don't listen to this silly man. Just do what you want with guilds. They all die eventually. And you need to make one at least once at some point to gain those sweet fame points.

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #56: August 31, 2017, 07:30:59 PM »
Well, the whole structure of guilds/religions favors multiplication, because any elder can cause a lot of harm with just a few clicks, and whoever has the top rank can do whatever he pleases. If you've got a need for a guild, and you let someone else found it, you are leaving yourself at their mercy should your relations ever deteriorate.
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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #57: August 31, 2017, 08:22:46 PM »
Don't listen to this silly man. Just do what you want with guilds. They all die eventually. And you need to make one at least once at some point to gain those sweet fame points.

Pffft, as if we don't have that fame point already  :o

But we digress, the concept of a guild in terms of using it to keep records of the realm's history only has limited use to provide stuff for new players as it now stands other than storing a bunch of links towards the wiki.

If you want a discussion on guilds, what to do with them etc, I suggest a new topic
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Chenier

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #58: August 31, 2017, 08:29:55 PM »
No matter the medium, you can't really force people to click links or read what you send them.

It's kind of an inherent problem with social a game such as BM. Sometimes groups don't really put the minimum effort required to further the collective good, it's hard to regulate behavior. The wiki is external, but linking to it is easy and can be done inside the text editor with [[ ]]. So when it's just a click away, is it really that less accessible on the wiki than on some remote in-game page, like guild boards, region descriptions, or realm bulletins? The wiki is now largely outdated, but that's a player problem. People used to be zealously dedicated to it, with many newspapers, realm pages, and such always up to date. The Forum sucked in a lot of that out of character activity, but decreasing densities also means that that there are a lot less potential contributors per page. Player ageing and game culture shifts are also to blame. It used to be that just about every realm had a handful of extremely dedicated players, who'd be on IRC at every turn change, keep all the documents up to date, go about and recruit others, and so on. Lots of them left, the rest just don't have the time anymore, now having kids, a career, and all. What is there to do? Can't really make up a rule that a realm needs at least X zealous players in order to exist.
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Antonine

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Re: New Player Experience
« Reply #59: August 31, 2017, 09:45:00 PM »
No matter the medium, you can't really force people to click links or read what you send them.

It's kind of an inherent problem with social a game such as BM. Sometimes groups don't really put the minimum effort required to further the collective good, it's hard to regulate behavior. The wiki is external, but linking to it is easy and can be done inside the text editor with [[ ]]. So when it's just a click away, is it really that less accessible on the wiki than on some remote in-game page, like guild boards, region descriptions, or realm bulletins? The wiki is now largely outdated, but that's a player problem. People used to be zealously dedicated to it, with many newspapers, realm pages, and such always up to date. The Forum sucked in a lot of that out of character activity, but decreasing densities also means that that there are a lot less potential contributors per page. Player ageing and game culture shifts are also to blame. It used to be that just about every realm had a handful of extremely dedicated players, who'd be on IRC at every turn change, keep all the documents up to date, go about and recruit others, and so on. Lots of them left, the rest just don't have the time anymore, now having kids, a career, and all. What is there to do? Can't really make up a rule that a realm needs at least X zealous players in order to exist.

This is very true but the simple fact is that, as a new player, you can quite easily play the game without ever even realising that there's anything on the wiki other than a detailed game manual.

That's why I think having a lot of the fluff on the wiki is a bad idea. Yes it's only a few clicks away but it's only something that you encounter directly within the game if another player puts a link in front of your face. On the other hand, every character can see things like region descriptions, ruler bulletins and the like. There's also the factor that if you want to update something on the wiki you have to switch to it, login to your wiki account, go to the page and then edit it - assuming you've learned the wiki formatting syntax properly so your edit doesn't look like a mess.

Look at it this way: Before we had region descriptions in game there was nothing stopping lords updating the region descriptions on the wiki. But after region descriptions became an in game thing then it didn't take long for lords to update their region descriptions, adding some pretty permanent (but periodically changing) flavour to the game in the process.

I think that if you had a similar facility in game for realm history, character descriptions, army descriptions, newspapers, etc. then they would get a lot more usage simply because the average player is going to run into them regularly within the game rather than them all being left out of sight and out of mind on the wiki.