Where Players Found Us: September 2014

[MeTekillot]

Senior Merchants and Agents have always been allowed.

I was actually about to say "Maybe those are allowed" but I did not want to be wrong. It is better to be half-wrong. Thank you for the clarification  


EDIT: that is not a passive-aggressive thank you for your input smiley face by the way i am just trying to be friendly

EDIT EDIT: how do you prove sincerity through text

[nauta]

I love all of these ideas in spirit. I like the auto-gen idea. Here's how we could make it work even better.

Auto characters could be generated, as has been suggested, but let's use the custom tat guy as inspiration for this. When the player says let me in, they get generated with a four sentence desc, matched to sdesc terms. But the only background you get is criminal. You are a criminal, sentenced to fight in the arena. Now, what Militia Leaders and Templars can do is 'release' the ones who display enough drive to be trying to RP. This makes the entire process completely in character.

Scripting in the rooms of the Holding Pens (which are already built, by the way), could be used to 'release' combatants to the arena. The actual Pens could utilize either a calm state, which allows no fighting, or non-lethal take downs by the NPCs there, so we don't instantly turn off the newb when he dies. The Holding Pens could also be turned into a 'school' of sorts, so that when the player is not fighting, they can learn.

Militia Leaders and Templars could be alerted when new players have been in the holding pens for more than ten minutes, so that they can go choose to interact with them if they want to.

Pretty neat idea.  I think it might be best to keep the (1) streamlined chargen concept separate from (2) the issue of what to do with all 'em newbs. 

For me personally, I sorta (ducks) don't really kinda (ducks) like the arena or even the macho fighting stuff.  (I do like ultraviolence, however.) 

So my vote would be, for (2), just do nothing (maybe limit them to humans and hometown Nak).  Set them loose at the Gaj, with a generic background / mdesc / sdesc, make sure they see in BIG BAD LETTERS that this is RPI and that you better read the docs, soonish.  I mean 80% of the time, barsitting is super boring at the Gaj anyway, so why not spice it up with some fresh faces? 

I'm also of the (probably wrong-headed idealistic) opinion that the 54% that got away that wouldn't get away via (1) won't be hack/slash or stupid, but people who want to RP in an RPI, but just want to test out the non-waters first.

[CodeMaster]

Since this is pure fantasy, I would deploy these autogenned newbies in some non-disruptive roles.  In the order in which I'd allow newbies to experience them:

Level 1. You're a road slave, carrying rocks around to help build a road.  You can't talk or run; you can just pick up boulders from a source, carry them along a road to some destination. Other PCs can see you but your action set limits interactions to looking and moving.  Once you're out of movement points you collapse and your preview is over.  If you spend too long in a room a slaver whips you until eventually you collapse.

Level 2. You're lost in the desert - a gith raided your caravan and you only barely managed to escape.  You have no sense of direction, your throat is too parched to talk to anyone (you're an ultranewbie and you shouldn't be talking anyway) and you've got about 20 RL minutes before you thirst to death.  If you try to drink water your character just collapses and the preview is done.  Small potential to interact with other PCs.

Level 3. You're an enslaved crafter for House Salarr/Kadius, tied to the room and unable to leave.  Your job is to craft one of each of five simple items (bootlaces, whatever), after which your preview is done.  Salarr/Kadius NPCs can walk into the room to interact with you, whip you, etc.  Greater potential to interact with a limited number of PCs.

Level 4. You're a criminal sentenced to die in the arena.  Every dusk or so the bell tolls and throws all the criminals into the arena, followed by a sequence of increasingly harder beasts until all the newbies are dead.  You can interact with other PCs by emoting as you fight.

[RogueGunslinger]

I really like that idea, but damn that first one sounds brutal. Made me laugh.

[Reiloth]

In my mind, it was kind of like the intro to Skyrim, or those RPG maps on Starcraft and shit from back in the day that were 'Fantasy Games'.

When a newbie PC is made, they go through a pre-scripted program -- A caravan being attacked by raiders. They are spared death -- After seeing a bunch of NPCs get killed, parsed out so they can read the scroll, and knocked unconscious. They awaken to find themselves at the gate of the city they chose.

I dunno it sounds cool in my head and my brain has the dumz

[wizturbo]

In my mind, it was kind of like the intro to Skyrim, or those RPG maps on Starcraft and shit from back in the day that were 'Fantasy Games'.

When a newbie PC is made, they go through a pre-scripted program -- A caravan being attacked by raiders. They are spared death -- After seeing a bunch of NPCs get killed, parsed out so they can read the scroll, and knocked unconscious. They awaken to find themselves at the gate of the city they chose.

I dunno it sounds cool in my head and my brain has the dumz

That would be super fucking cool.

[MeTekillot]

I played a MUD that did something like that and, to be honest, I did not really like it very much.

[Rokal]

Since this is pure fantasy, I would deploy these autogenned newbies in some non-disruptive roles.  In the order in which I'd allow newbies to experience them:

Level 1. You're a road slave, carrying rocks around to help build a road.  You can't talk or run; you can just pick up boulders from a source, carry them along a road to some destination. Other PCs can see you but your action set limits interactions to looking and moving.  Once you're out of movement points you collapse and your preview is over.  If you spend too long in a room a slaver whips you until eventually you collapse.

Level 2. You're lost in the desert - a gith raided your caravan and you only barely managed to escape.  You have no sense of direction, your throat is too parched to talk to anyone (you're an ultranewbie and you shouldn't be talking anyway) and you've got about 20 RL minutes before you thirst to death.  If you try to drink water your character just collapses and the preview is done.  Small potential to interact with other PCs.

Level 3. You're an enslaved crafter for House Salarr/Kadius, tied to the room and unable to leave.  Your job is to craft one of each of five simple items (bootlaces, whatever), after which your preview is done.  Salarr/Kadius NPCs can walk into the room to interact with you, whip you, etc.  Greater potential to interact with a limited number of PCs.

Level 4. You're a criminal sentenced to die in the arena.  Every dusk or so the bell tolls and throws all the criminals into the arena, followed by a sequence of increasingly harder beasts until all the newbies are dead.  You can interact with other PCs by emoting as you fight.

As a newbie whos only just recently joined.

I wouuld say i'dve loved an intro like that. as an avid roleplayer and a newbie.

[Desertman]

I think the true key to increasing Armageddon's playerbase numbers is focusing on retaining veteran players. Armageddon is hard. It is hard for smart people who are intelligent gamers. I've brought in a ton of our current vets, and I've tried to bring in a ton of other people. Some of them work out, and the ones that don't tell me straight, "This game is too hard to learn.". Honestly, no amount of documentation or coaching was ever going to help them. They simply weren't right for this game.

Our quality of roleplay is far superior to other MUDs due to the fact we have a slow trickle of new players that have a large base of veterans to watch and learn from and that are willing to keep them in check and teach them.

Those veteran players are the key to keeping the quality of our playerbase high. No amount of documentation or scripted starting rooms are going to make good quality roleplayers out of newbs. The only thing that does that is a self-policing force of veterans to teach our newbs as they come into the world.

If we suddenly had an influx of 100+ newbies at a time hitting our server because we made the entry process more relaxed, the veterans wouldn't be able to keep these guys in check and teach them by example. It would be overwhelming. It would be a big giant newbie circle-jerk of newbies trying to roleplay with newbies and seeing that as the norm, instead of a few newbies surrounded by a ton of veterans showing them what the norm actually is.

Our veteran playerbase is what makes this game. Not the amount of newbies we get in. When I started playing this game our peak playerbase was around 20 to 30 people on average. An RPT that hit 40 - 50 was a big deal. It's double that most of the time now. I've played a lot these days where it is triple that. It took many years to get to that point but the quality of roleplay was maintained on the path to getting there.

I think Armageddon is a game where we want our playerbase to grow slowly over time. I'm fine with our current rate of progression.

The real scary thing is when we lose veterans because they have been jaded. Every lost veteran isn't just a lost player. It is a lost teacher and lost recruiter of countless new players. The focus should be on making sure we don't alienate our teachers and our recruiters first, since they are not only the best source of quantity, but also the ONLY source of quality.

(See last month. The only new players we even got that are still playing were referred by other players.)

[wizturbo]

If we suddenly had an influx of 100+ newbies at a time hitting our server because we made the entry process more relaxed, the veterans wouldn't be able to keep these guys in check and teach them by example. It would be overwhelming. It would be a big giant newbie circle-jerk of newbies trying to roleplay with newbies and seeing that as the norm, instead of a few newbies surrounded by a ton of veterans showing them what the norm actually is.

I think the doomsday scenario you're making a case for, where newbies invade the MUD and crowd out the veterans, would require a lot more than pre-gen newbie characters.   I think a conservative best case scenario is a 50-100% improvement over our current conversion rates, that's going from 22% -> 44% on accounts created that at least log in to their characters.  The 100+ newbies in a short time window scenario you're eluding to in your post would require much higher conversion rates, on top of a much greater number of people creating new accounts.  Keep in mind, these changes would only affect conversion, not the number of people creating accounts.

• That means after 30 days, we would have 6-8 new, engaged players vs. the ~4 we saw this month.  
• That would come out to an extra 30-40 engaged players a year, on top of our current acquisition rate.  
• After the first year, that would equate to +4-6 concurrent players at any given time, and of course more than that during RPT's or peak play hours.  
• If these assumptions hold true, after three years, the average number of players who come up on "who" would probably be ~20 higher than it is today.

Essentially, it would push prime time concurrency into the concurrency that's generally only reserved for RPTs or weekends, but on a daily basis.  Of course RPT's would see even higher concurrency.  I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty amazing to me.  I can think of no downside, except perhaps we'd need more staff to handle all the extra stuff going on all the time.

[Desertman]

We can throw hypothetical numbers with no backing at all at each other all day, but that isn't going to prove anything for either of us.

All I know is I don't want "dicktowel" the elf being let into the game for any reason ever. I certainly don't want five or six a day being let into the game every single day of the week because they didn't have to go through an application process.

[Marauder Moe]

Eh.  I don't think any business/community ever flourished with a strategy that caters to old veterans over attracting new members.  I think a lot of veteran attrition is actually just unavoidable (burnout, lifestyle changes).

That's not to say that the staff should leave us old fogies to wallow in our jadedness.  There has to be balance.  

But if there is any tilt, I think it should tilt towards getting fresh blood into the game.  New energy, new ideas (after some seasoning).  People who are excited to play concepts we've seen a hundred times before, since it's still fresh to them.

That said, I don't think we can just let brand new players roll into the Gaj with a pre-gen 5 minutes after finding us on TMC.  Part of the application process is to ensure that new players have at least read enough docs to conform with the game's theme and style.

Plopping a bunch of newbs into a separate instance of the game won't help either.  You'll just have the blind leading the blind without any actual knowledge injects.

BUT.  Maybe I'd be down for a live newbie school if it had teachers... I dunno.  Hold on, spinning off a brainstorming thread.

[Talia]

I love that you guys care so much about this. (I do too.)

[wizturbo]

I love that you guys care so much about this. (I do too.)

Yeah, I'm loving this thread.

[wizturbo]

We can throw hypothetical numbers with no backing at all at each other all day, but that isn't going to prove anything for either of us.

All I know is I don't want "dicktowel" the elf being let into the game for any reason ever. I certainly don't want five or six a day being let into the game every single day of the week because they didn't have to go through an application process.

I must agree with the "dicktowel" comment.  I don't want this either.  I hope that was just a colorful anecdote that Talia added and not a super frequent occurrence?

[Red Ranger]

Eh.  I don't think any business/community ever flourished with a strategy that caters to old veterans over attracting new members.

But what if the analogy changes, and instead of analogizing players to customers, players are viewed as employees? Most businesses focus on retaining workers in an effort to reduce the costs of high turnover, to reduce the loss of institutional memory, and to maintain morale.

All I know is I don't want "dicktowel" the elf being let into the game for any reason ever. I certainly don't want five or six a day being let into the game every single day of the week because they didn't have to go through an application process.

In general, I'm in favor of your thesis in this thread (see above), but I'm okay with so-so newbies joining the game. "Dicktowel" might be a BIT much, but I can remember a certain "Jerusalem Rivers" who panned out nicely.

[Barzalene]

I don't think OR is the correct word in this discussion. I think we want to retain d players AND attract new ones. I'm guessing you mostly agree. I thought wizturbo had great ideas.

With regards to conversion on new players, I would say, let's start with easier things first. What if there was an ooc room for new accounts. No descs. Just a place where they could get some help making a pc, where helpers could get them through that hurdle.

Newbie Chanel where helpers and/or staff could answer questions. At the start you'd be told how to opt out. After 48 hours on your PC you'll be reminded that you  can opt out.

[CodeMaster]

With regards to conversion on new players, I would say, let's start with easier things first. What if there was an ooc room for new accounts. No descs. Just a place where they could get some help making a pc, where helpers could get them through that hurdle.

At the very least, is there some kind of a notice during chargen (especially as you generate your first character) that you can use the helper chat then, too?  Just like:

Code Select Expand


OK, creating new character.
***
Reminder:
This can be a challenging step for new players, but there is a help chat
that you can access on the website (http://www.armageddon.org/) and
someone may be able to guide you through each step of the process.
***
What is your character's name? Dickto^H^H^H^H^H^H


[Nyr]

The focus should be on making sure we don't alienate our teachers and our recruiters first, since they are not only the best source of quantity, but also the ONLY source of quality.

A focus on better communication, respect, and understanding is important, but it does entail work from both sides and acceptance of at least some common ground rules.  It also isn't exactly a very good focus as a primary focus.  Don't get me wrong, it's good to do the things I mentioned, for their own merits.  I think Moe has a good point here earlier too.  What I'm saying is that it's not good to put as our primary goal, "don't alienate people that are currently not feeling the game for what could be a myriad of reasons, none of which are necessarily the full story that might be available from a staff perspective."

Staff members are human beings.  As such, they may well make mistakes.  Something a staff member does or says might offend a player, upset them, disturb them, or utterly alienate them from the game.  A staff member may do something that is against staff rules.  Anything is possible because of the fact that staff members are human beings and human beings make mistakes.

Players are also human beings.  As such, they may well make mistakes.  Something a player does might be wrong, misguided, completely against the rules, etc.

Ultimately, staff members (and at the highest level, the Producers) are the arbiters of these mistakes.  A ground rule that would be nice (but isn't something anyone necessarily has to agree to, it being the Internet) would be to go into any disagreement with the understanding that staff do have the best interests of the game at heart and are working to make it better.  Another good one (but also isn't something anyone has to agree to, see:  the Internet) would be that maybe, just maybe, you're "wrong"--whoever you might be.  However, one common ground rule that must be accepted by all parties is that the Producers are the final say on things.  If you disagree with that in a formalized process, you've gone through every single avenue to handle something and the people at the highest level have told you (in consensus) that X is the case.

When players do those things (doing something that looks like a mistake), staff members have an expectation to go and deal with those things.  This is not just an expectation in the sense that "it would be a great idea if staff did this but they certainly do not have to," it's something all staff are supposed to do.  If they don't do it that's not a good thing.  We know that.  That is why we are expected to do it. This starts with communication from staff to the player, and it ends with an appropriate response as deemed by staff.  This (the formalized process for communicating with a player that is doing something that is not what staff expect, even if it's an issue of encouragement towards RPing better) happens often enough that it may as well be something that is expected to happen every time.  Players should not have adverse action (read: punishment, disciplinary action, whatever you want to call it) taken against their account or PC without being notified.  Depending on what happened, the corrective action might happen prior to or at the same time as the e-mail.  (Example:  "We banned you on the discussion board earlier because you went off on a diatribe and flamed several players.  We took a bit to e-mail you because we wanted to first deal with the crap you were putting up on the board and ensure you wouldn't be doing that anymore.")  As a measure to deal with the "maybe, just maybe, staff is 'wrong'", we have actual review in place--STs report to admins, admins report to producers, and there is accountability between staff members.

When staff members do those things (doing something that looks like a mistake), players do not have that same expectation to attempt redress, appeal, or point out the problem.  By that, I mean that a player doesn't have any onus on them to actually follow any guidelines or grievance airing process, even though those things actually do exist.  Staff have a ton of rules and procedures for handling things.  Players do not.  Players have very few rules they must follow.  Sharing IC info, multiplaying, botting, and GDB rules.  Even when they violate those, they still have staff going through the above process. 

Players can choose to just "be" jaded, do nothing about it, and make snide remarks wherever to whomever, and either get over it eventually or let it fester forever.  That's fine, I suppose, but it doesn't get anything done and staff won't necessarily know that something might be up or could be clarified because we can't read minds (see above on humans and their abilities/limitations).  Even if we see someone being snarky here and there on the boards, we don't go out of our way to talk to them until they've actually broken some rule, because people are complex and they may just be having a bad day rather than be a jaded veteran of the game. 

Players can choose to do the previous and/or put in a staff complaint that is pretty much them venting about how x or y staffer is a piece of shit, etc without actually addressing anything solid (yeah, we've seen actual complaints like that before).  That's not really appropriate, and usually the player isn't expecting to get a completely in-agreement response from the Producers that says "wow, we totally agree, x or y staffer IS a piece of shit!  We've given them that title and banned them from the game!"  They are complaining to complain, maybe just to say they "followed the process" to other people and then continue to be jaded about their "reasonable complaint" being "totally ignored" by the iron-fisted staff. 

Players can also choose to put in a reasonable complaint--discussing something grounded in reality, with the expectation that they might actually not have all of the facts or might be wrong, probably even with a little bit of reasonable venting involved, and expect the Producers to investigate and provide a reasonable response.  Reasonable complaints that result in something being changed, done, or corrected are usually more rare.  Most fall between the extremes of crazy conspiracy land and completely reasonable.

As for staff, we've got these avenues out there, we're already "here" and open to talk to, and we have quite a few more players to be concerned with that are here and now and willing to engage in dialogue or play the game itself.

[Adhira]

We can throw hypothetical numbers with no backing at all at each other all day, but that isn't going to prove anything for either of us.

All I know is I don't want "dicktowel" the elf being let into the game for any reason ever. I certainly don't want five or six a day being let into the game every single day of the week because they didn't have to go through an application process.

I must agree with the "dicktowel" comment.  I don't want this either.  I hope that was just a colorful anecdote that Talia added and not a super frequent occurrence?

I'd say it's more of a super frequent occurrence than a colourful anecdote.

[wizturbo]

I'd say it's more of a super frequent occurrence than a colourful anecdote.

[Rahnevyn]

I'd say it's more of a super frequent occurrence than a colourful anecdote.

To elaborate a bit, with the exception of a very few apps from veteran players, almost all of the "Rejected" apps you see on the weekly update come from brand new accounts whose app was so off base it couldn't be "saved". What I mean by that is that generally, if we see a new player who made an honest effort to write an application but got a few things wrong in their background or description, we almost always edit those details and approve their application. The ones that get rejected are those that put no effort into the app at all - like our friend dicktowel, or players who gave us less than a single complete sentence of description and background.

Some staff members go even farther and don't reject any apps at all, but instead paste in a whole new generic character for the new player to try. I'm not aware of a case where this has actually "saved" a player, but maybe it will some day.

So that will help give you an idea of the sort of numbers of junk apps we're getting. Rejections are anywhere between 10% and 50% of new apps in a given week, depending on how high we are in TMS/TMC and who's quickest on approving apps that week.

[Malken]

That's kind of funny because many of our veterans would probably eventually name their characters something like Dicktowel (or at least the Zalanthean) version of Dicktowel and it's totally IC.

Like when I named one of my elf "The Dungster" or my famous sorcerer Poopiehead The Wicked.

[Lizzie]

We can throw hypothetical numbers with no backing at all at each other all day, but that isn't going to prove anything for either of us.

All I know is I don't want "dicktowel" the elf being let into the game for any reason ever. I certainly don't want five or six a day being let into the game every single day of the week because they didn't have to go through an application process.

I must agree with the "dicktowel" comment.  I don't want this either.  I hope that was just a colorful anecdote that Talia added and not a super frequent occurrence?

I'd say it's more of a super frequent occurrence than a colourful anecdote.

plus this from Rahnevyn:

(stuff and then) So that will help give you an idea of the sort of numbers of junk apps we're getting. Rejections are anywhere between 10% and 50% of new apps in a given week, depending on how high we are in TMS/TMC and who's quickest on approving apps that week.

...and some players are trying to figure out how to attract the particular set of newbies that would find chargen to be too hard and therefore should get auto-genned characters and backgrounds?

So then they get their first PC PKed the first day, and gen up more of that 10-50% of rejectables - thus driving the rejectable percentage up AND making more work for the staff, JUST so you can increase numbers without thought to quality?

Blech. Blech and more blech.

[Desertman]

Are we still sending out the emails to our veterans who quit the game to ask them why they left and what we could do to get them back?

It was one of these emails that got me playing again actually after I quit for over two years.