Player Retention: What the DATA shows

[Lakota]

Instead on doing "side plots," why not finish it the way staff intended?

That would be lovely. We are not ready as a community yet to move forward, though. 2.0 is simply not ready.

I don't know about you, but I don't want a nuclear explosion to wipe out the mud I love in one awesome series of events, only to be without a game to enjoy for another year or two.

Hence, I propose side-plots that will in turn affect the outcome of the world and relate to the main theme/ending plot, but will also be separate in their own right.
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[Gimfalisette]

Added point: Following up, surveying, etc of players both new and old would probably have the effect of increasing retention in and of itself, if it's done in a way that makes players feel like someone actually cares. This is why churches do Monday visitation to new attendees, and call if a congregant's been missing church; that communication of "we miss you, you're important to us" is often all that's needed to keep people around. In a community environment like ARM, that could be especially powerful.

[FantasyWriter]

I don't know about you, but I don't want a nuclear explosion to wipe out the mud I love in one awesome series of events, only to be without a game to enjoy for another year or two.

i wasn't suggesting that the game end, just that the end plot be fulfilled and we live in the post-post apocalyptic world and keep having fun, instead of running plots that were "second choice" ones instead of the one that was years in planing and became stagnant because of the OOC issue of 2.Arm taking longer that staff originally thought.

[Rahnevyn]

I never said that we could achieve 0% player loss over time, so I'm not sure why you're kind of putting those words in my mouth. What I've said, mostly, is that:
-- We don't even actually know how many veteran players we're losing over time. I made a guess, but it's based on assumptions, not full data, as I said.
-- We don't know the causes of losing those veteran players. Everyone seems to have guesses, feelings, beliefs, suspicions, opinions, etc. about this; but that's not the same as knowing.

Correct on both accounts. Also, I didn't intend to put words in your mouth or anyone's, no need to be defensive. This isn't an adversarial discussion.

I agree with you, my basic thrust to counter is that:
-- Based on what we can surmise from what we know right now, veteran player drift does not seem to be a huge factor dragging down our game, and some drift likely can't be helped no matter what we do. Other drift might be very resource intensive to address.
-- Based on our data available, new player retention can be much improved, and we have specific things we can target to improve upon it (the website, helpfiles, community resources.)
-- Staff resources are not limitless and in fact quite constrained; our most efficient option for gaining numbers is to focus on what we perceive to give us the most payoff for our effort.

Businesses that want to improve employee retention do exit interviews to find out why employees are leaving. Or if they want to improve customer retention, they do surveys. None of these things are rocket science, even the definitions such as "what is a veteran player?"; things simply need to be defined somehow, then the definitions are used as a basis for further exploration of the questions.

I actually floated an idea of doing a survey like this in advance of the player-staff meeting, but I couldn't make it happen due to limits on my own time and desire to do it well. I wanted to let players remain anonymous (to ensure more truthful answers), but still track which accounts had completed the survey or not (to prevent padding the results.) Unfortunately the technical aspects of this would have been too much to get done on top of everything else. If someone has a good suggestion on something we could use (not third party sites, since again, we want a one-account, one-answer system), please let me know.

[Lakota]

i wasn't suggesting that the game end, just that the end plot be fulfilled and we live in the post-post apocalyptic world and keep having fun, instead of running plots that were "second choice" ones instead of the one that was years in planing and became stagnant because of the OOC issue of 2.Arm taking longer that staff originally thought.

Right then. Well..I like the idea, but I do not think, for IC reasons I cannot discuss, that that would be possible.

[Gimfalisette]

Also, I didn't intend to put words in your mouth or anyone's, no need to be defensive. This isn't an adversarial discussion.

I wasn't being defensive, I was being clear about what I did and did not say, in case you were not clear about it. Apparently you were already clear about it, so that's all good.

If someone has a good suggestion on something we could use (not third party sites, since again, we want a one-account, one-answer system), please let me know.

Who do you want to survey exactly, what do you want to survey them about, and what form do you want their answers to take? E.g. current players, plot ideas, single answer from a list of choices; veteran players, reasons for leaving, essay; current players, top three ice cream flavors, multiple answers from a list of choices; etc.

[Rahnevyn]

Ideally I'd want something that lets anyone with a registered account sign in and complete the survey if they haven't yet.

In terms of how answers are formatted, I'd like to be able to have anything from "pick the best answer", "pick all that apply", to open freeform text. I'd probably lean on the first two over open response questions, because it'd be easier for staff to review answers that way.

As far as what we'd survey about... anything. I'd be interested in everything from basic demographic info to very focused questions about game issues.

edit: I'm mainly asking for a framework or shareware program we can put on ginka can do this, not suggestions on how to handle the survey itself. We need to get the capability first.

[Gimfalisette]

I'd probably use something like Constant Contact for what you want. Export from the account database into a spreadsheet a list of email addresses associated with all accounts that have been active within the last X days (say, 180 days for a 6-month range), then import that data into the tool as your survey list. The tool tracks your responses, and if you've done a good job designing the survey then you'll have meaningful data.

Should be free up to a certain quantity of email addresses and/or for a certain time period; but it looks like it's still only $15 or so per month which is money WELL spent on any kind of marketing effort.

[Jingo]

Just throwing in my 2 cents and saying that I don't think there is a problem.

Armageddon is a niche game that is always going to have a small, tight-knit community. I hype it all the time to my nerd-friends but it's obvious they're not really interested once they figure out the work involved for making a new character.

I'm not very worried about veterans either. Because even I have threatened to quit at some point.

[IntuitiveApathy]

To throw out a suggestion that hasn't been mentioned (on this thread yet), I support letting new accounts use a random character generator for their first character or two.  The one that's been talked about lately is pretty good (but we probably want to tone down the backgrounds and personalities a bit).

I think this is an absolutely fantastic idea.

As Jingo just mentioned, many people (and my friends to whom I've tried to sell the game to as well), just won't even get started because they hit the first stumbling block: making their first character.  For some people, they're just willing to throw something in there and see if it goes or not.  But I would guess that the majority of Armageddon players, and those that Arm would want to retain for the future, are not those type of people.  The game world, as advertised (and rightly so), is rich and deep.  These latter type of players would want to know about the world and how the game works so that they could properly design a character and fit in from the get go.  In order to do that, there's a massive amount of documentation to go through.  Even the slimmed-down new player documentation is quite a bit of reading to do.  The question for new players is then: Should I really be investing this time into something I don't actually know the true worth of yet?  With the wealth of much more easily accessible competition (ranging from other games to any other kind of entertainment) out there, I think Armageddon really loses out in this respect.  Which is a real pity, because people don't actually get to see how fantastic the game is.  I'm sure there are a whole lot of people out there that if they just had that taste of Armageddon, they'd be strong players.

The random character generator for new accounts would allow new players to have an easy trial of Armageddon - they could hop right in with a predetermined character concept and experience the game world first hand.  The hope is that the initial experience hooks them and they'll be much more willing to spend the time to delve further into the docs and come up with a character concept of their own when it comes time.  I feel it's important that these character concepts be detailed enough that they would be easy for a newbie to follow, but varied enough that you couldn't tell the PC is on a new account, at least by way of the character itself (not the playstyle/game knowledge).  This way, new players wouldn't feel like they'd be playing something someone else had just played last week and vets would maintain the level of comfort they currently have interacting with new players.

Veteran loss/drift is going to happen.  Yes, there's things that can be done about it.  But it's much much easier to improve the other side of the coin - new player retention.  And in my opinion, there's a much bigger upside to the time/effort to be spent on it, too.

[Lizzie]

None of this is relevent, because the "studies" alluded to regarding business models have nothing to do with MUDs. Retention rate of a mud playerbase *cannot* be compared, in any way, shape, or form, to any other business, of any kind, ever, period, end of story. Not even magazine subscription rates.

A few studies were done in the past on mud retention rates, and the generally agreed-upon consensus was that anything over 1% was a good thing. So - for every 100 players who come and go - if at the end of the year you have 1 more player per hundred than the year before, then you're doing just fine.

[Lakota]

None of this is relevent, because the "studies" alluded to regarding business models have nothing to do with MUDs. Retention rate of a mud playerbase *cannot* be compared, in any way, shape, or form, to any other business, of any kind, ever, period, end of story. Not even magazine subscription rates.

I think Gimf put up a good case that comparisons could be drawn. So...I disagree?

So - for every 100 players who come and go - if at the end of the year you have 1 more player per hundred than the year before, then you're doing just fine.

Not if you're losing great players and gaining in turn shitty players. I'd rather have one ale six over one hundred Deleraks anyday, but c'mon.

[Lizzie]

Well then you're not talking about retention Lakota, you're talking about improved or maintained quality. If you want to retain or improve quality, then you should check studies (or create your own) on that. This (I thought) was about player retention, with no particular emphasis on the quality of the retained player.

[Gimfalisette]

We're talking about retention of already-converted players (veterans), as well as conversion of prospective players. You're talking about conversion of prospective players, which is in essence the sales cycle. (Prospect to customer.)

[Lakota]

Well then you're not talking about retention Lakota, you're talking about improved or maintained quality.

Is there not a direct, inherent relationship between player retention and improved/maintained quality?

[Clearsighted]

Ultimately, whatever staff does, will have little effect in retaining players except on the periphery. Those who retain and inspire players, are the vast majority of the time, the IC leaders and companions in the game world. That also works in reverse. Particularly poor leaders from whom there is felt to be no IC escape, tend to drive them away.

[SMuz]

Honestly, I'd leave the game as soon as my player dies - but I'll make another side character, not a hero this time, just a sidekick. Or a mini-villain. This game takes up a lot of time, just like any other other game which I tend to stop playing after a while. It's not that the game is bad or anything; it's that it's just too good

But I promise, I'll try to get as many people to join the game when I do leave

The trick of course, is in retaining them. Sure, most newbies are bad, but it takes a while to suck 'em in and train them till they get better. The main thing keeping away players, IMHO, is the concept itself - a harsh, rude, cruel world full of backstabbing (political and physical), corruption, etc. Low fantasy, as opposed to Shadows of Isildur's high fantasy concept.

[Tisiphone]

Honestly, I'd leave the game as soon as my player dies...

I daresay you will. However, I should hope one of Armageddon's retention problems isn't killing players.

[Clearsighted]

The trick of course, is in retaining them. Sure, most newbies are bad, but it takes a while to suck 'em in and train them till they get better. The main thing keeping away players, IMHO, is the concept itself - a harsh, rude, cruel world full of backstabbing (political and physical), corruption, etc. Low fantasy, as opposed to Shadows of Isildur's high fantasy concept.

Dunno about that. It's the IC harshness and cruelty that keeps me. I think the main difficulty with newbies is the OOC harshness and cruelty it takes to endure in order to really grasp the game. Considering how (relatively) little OOC help is given.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I kind of like the idea of making no karma give you a human only option. Noobs no longer have to worry about racial roleplay, and they can work anywhere and do anything. It's a clever idea.

[Only He Stands There]

I'm split on that.

For one thing, it really helps new players get acclimated, it makes learning the races easier, and so forth.

On the other hand, though, it also sucks for new players to not be able to play anything but humans, especially if they're players who have been around for a long time and just overlooked for karma.

Perhaps making it so that your first PC/first couple of PCs could only be human, rather than a "0 karma = human only" option?

[Lakota]

I daresay you will. However, I should hope one of Armageddon's retention problems isn't killing players.

ROFL!!!!

You kill me.

[Rahnevyn]

Morgenes and I found an open source survey framework we think we might be able to use. I'm planning to hack around with it over the weekend and see if we can get it running. If we can, we ought to be able to do some surveys without needing a third party.

[staggerlee]

I'm not sure that limiting race options is going to do anything to improve player retention.
I could elaborate on why... but I'm not sure I need to. If you think about it there are a lot of factors that could scare people off and make the game inaccessible, and failing to portray an elf or dwarf in a nuanced, consistent manner is probably not the largest of them.

[Gimfalisette]

If you think about it there are a lot of factors that could scare people off and make the game inaccessible, and failing to portray an elf or dwarf in a nuanced, consistent manner is probably not the largest of them.

I think the point being made is not about whether or not the newbie has the ability to portray a non-human race; it's about non-humans being less likely able to find employment or interact socially than humans. Making an elf and then getting in game to find out everyone hates your PC from the start, you can't find a job, you receive open abuse, and no-one wants to be friends? Confusing and off-putting. Likewise, making a PC in Red Storm and then not being able to find even one other player? "Quit."