Where Players Found Us: September 2014

[Talia]

Nyr has been pretty busy and thus asked me to work this up and post it.

Raw data for September

Total new accounts created:  205
Duplicates (created multiple accounts out of confusion/staff accounts/etc):  8
New accounts minus the above: 197



Where people came from
(noteworthy results mentioned, some might be concurrent)

Topmudsites:  9
Themudconnector: 75
Google: 21 (note that these can probably be attributed to either TMS or TMC or may be otherwise concurrent with the above)
Search/web: 37 (these also can probably be attributed to either TMS or TMC)
Friends/other players/family/co-workers/homies:  22
Reddit:  3
TV Tropes:  1

A smattering of some miscellaneous answers:
dicktowel
A friend of mine plays it and told me it was pretty awesome.
random search for pictures of 'Dark Sun'


Login data

Made account but did not create a character: 107 (54%)
Created a character: 90 (46%)
Created a character that was approved but didn't play: 23 (12%)
Actual logins (created a character that was approved and they logged in):  43 (22%)
1 hour or less in playtime: 11
1-2 hours of playtime:  11
2-6 hours of playtime:  9
6-20 hours of playtime:  10
20+ hours of playtime:  2
Of all these, appear to still be playing: 4 (all were referred by friends) (2%)

Are you a new player with comments about how you found us and how the game has been for you so far?  Feel free to chime in here!  Getting your perspective on things will hopefully help out future players.

[Desertman]

MFW the "dicktowel" guy isn't still with us.

[Talia]

MFW the "dicktowel" guy isn't still with us.

Well, not to give too much away, but the character he tried to app was also named "Dicktowel." So..........


But try to guess the PC's race, go!

[Araza]

Damn elves.

[Talia]

Damn elves.

I guess "Dicktowel" was just too much of a giveaway :/

[Desertman]

I miss him and I never got to play with him. 

[wizturbo]

Talia,

While i'm hardly a new player, I have recently returned from a rather long break and it has inspired some thoughts on how Armageddon might improve on getting new players to join it's ranks.

I apologize if some of this is obvious, or has already been raised.

Based on these stats, Arm doesn't need more new accounts being created, it needs to improve its conversion rate.  22% to actually make a character and login is pretty rough.

This is a hard thing to improve.  Arm is inherently a game with a rather steep learning curve in terms of learning the culture and game world, and there's no way around that.  I think there's tons of really great documentation though to address that part.  History, world and culture aside, there are some areas where improvements could be made to make the learning curve seem less steep, or at least postpone needing to climb certain parts of it.

Here are some specific suggestions:

1)  Made an account, but not a character:

-  Character descriptions.  Having some pre-generated generic character descriptions for newbies to grab and make slight alternations to could really help them avoid the paralysis that can come along with trying to build a description from scratch.  Perhaps putting some short message that character descriptions may be updated twice in a character's lifetime will help, so they don't feel they're stuck with that description forever...  (of course at this point they're cute and think they'll actually live that long).  

-  Generic character backgrounds.  Same thing as descriptions.  Avoid paralysis.  So many character backgrounds seem to be pretty generic anyway, I don't think this would harm the game, especially for newbies.

2)  Played, but didn't last more than 6 hours.

-   Create a "New Player Chat" in-game, which is default on for all new accounts and is automatically turned off after X number of days.  Veteran players and staff who sign up as mentors can have the flag turned back on for them, so they can field questions in the new player chat in-game.   If this would take too much work to build in-game, having an out of game option available on the website would be the next best thing.

-  Alternatively, having a New Player room, that can be accessed similar to the one for scars, could also serve this purpose.  Could allow mentors/staff to see how many people are currently in that room at any time, so someone could pop over there and offer assistance.

3)  Having a friend who plays Arm seems to be THE way people stick around...

- A recruit-a-friend program could help with this.  Adding something as simple as a "recruited X players" tag on GDB accounts could work wonders, spreading awareness about which players and staff are helping populate the world with more boots and brains.  Perhaps even something that could nudge karma decisions or special application requests in a player's favor, if their contribution on that front is substantial.

[Saellyn]

How about hell no to karma for recruiting players. No thanks.

[Inks]

Yeah...no Karma for recruiting players.

Thanks for the stats. Maybe a browser based application system would help with conversion? Not sure.

[Talia]

I don't see us doing karma for player recruitment, however, the idea of rewarding players for doing something positive for the game is a good idea. I have more to say on this whole topic but I have other stuff to do right now, so will post again later.

[Barsook]

We started a recruit-a-friend campaign but didn't really help us last year.  And the New Player Chat ideas was suggested too.

(We have the Publicity group)

[wizturbo]

That's cool.  No karma.  Just some ideas guys...can't like them all

[Talia]

Based on these stats, Arm doesn't need more new accounts being created, it needs to improve its conversion rate.  22% to actually make a character and login is pretty rough.

Yes, I agree with you. This is something I've noted for a long time. I think--without going back to do the research--that we've actually improved a lot in recent years as far as getting people from the "account created" to "character made" point. Most of that is probably due to our more automated account approval stuff. There is still room to improve at the "character made" point. I agree that it would be really helpful to have pre-made characters for new players to jump into and try the game out, but of course that's a big coding deal.

An observation that only staff are privy to is that many of the new character apps we get are quite awful; they show no evidence at all of having read any documentation, and very little ability to follow the directions on screen. So it's possible that there's some segment of potential players who we're just never going to bring along into the game. Then again, if we had a way for them to try the game out, maybe they'd then put some effort into a character app?

I did run a recruit-a-friend campaign in probably...2012? It wasn't very successful. These are the best potential candidates for the game but players don't seem to want to campaign in that manner. I can't remember what prize I offered, maybe it just sucked (I don't think it really did, but honestly don't remember.)

[HavokBlue]

I think the person who recruited the most friends was supposed to get a staff-led tour of an unlinked part of the game or something.

I've tried to recruit real-world friends and while they all love hearing my stories, they all say they don't have enough time to play.

[Nyr]

here's how busy I was

I just now said to talia:

"we should do september's numbers"

[Saellyn]

here's how busy I was

I just now said to talia:

"we should do september's numbers"

i'm sure she said that it would be a great idea to do that.

[Talia]

here's how busy I was

I just now said to talia:

"we should do september's numbers"

i'm sure she said that it would be a great idea to do that.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

The IG chat is still my favorite idea.

>newb I'm lost ... I ran out of food and water.
You tell the Helpers:
   "I'm lost ... I ran out of food and water.

Newb #23 tells the Helpers:
   "I'm lost ... I ran out of food and water.

>newb 23 Haha. Dibs on your boots, bitch.
You tell Newb 23:
   "Haha. Dibs on your boots, bitch."

Helper 1 tells Newb 23:
   "Haha. Dibs on your boots, bitch."

A Helper tells you:
   "Haha. Dibs on your boots, bitch."

[Talia]

I did not just laugh at that. I did NOT.

[Saellyn]

Code Select Expand

A Helper sends you:
     "Just keep going west. You're almost there..."

*Beep*

[Talia]

I went back and did a quick look over the numbers to see how we're doing long-term on retaining new players, here are the numbers just from this year. These are new players who created their account in that month and have played within the past month:

January = 4
February = 1
March = 2
April = 2
May = 4
June = 7
July = 4
August = 8

[Voular]

Just an peripheral observation on this topic of player retention - doesn't, whith such a low number of 'new' players, make it also doubly more important to care for the older playerbase that can get disillusioned, burned out and jaded and not log in for months/years at a time? I mean, are we growing faster than we're losing players? (Obviously or we'd be a dead game, but still..)

[Nyr]

Just an peripheral observation on this topic of player retention - doesn't, whith such a low number of 'new' players, make it also doubly more important to care for the older playerbase that can get disillusioned, burned out and jaded and not log in for months/years at a time? I mean, are we growing faster than we're losing players? (Obviously or we'd be a dead game, but still..)

What would you suggest to do here to care for them?

[Saellyn]

I'm kind of curious what to do about that myself. The game changes every so often, sometimes in a big way. I don't see why it's so bad that the game has stayed the way it has.

[Voular]

Just an peripheral observation on this topic of player retention - doesn't, whith such a low number of 'new' players, make it also doubly more important to care for the older playerbase that can get disillusioned, burned out and jaded and not log in for months/years at a time? I mean, are we growing faster than we're losing players? (Obviously or we'd be a dead game, but still..)

What would you suggest to do here to care for them?

Don't have any bright ideas. Why not talk to returning players and ask them if there was something that could have coaxed them into returning sooner/with more vigor? I mean, some have RL reasons, some might just not agree with policy x or y or how a certain thing got handled. People are easily rubbed the wrong way, and I think the effort required to have experienced, knowledgeable players stick around is probably less than it would take to recruit/indoctrinate new players.