Player retention and you: brainstorming

[Is Friday]

Are we talking about bad account notes again? I have the best.

[Norcal]

Wait..no...the best worst? Or the worst best? 

[Marauder Moe]

Man... we have really lost sight of the fact that account notes are primarily a staff communication tool, not a player feedback tool.  We've also seen over and over again that you shouldn't sweat bad account notes.  Good players have had account notes.  Sponsored role players have bad account notes.  Staff have bad account notes.

Alesan - If your have a character that passed the application process and wasn't immediately killed for invoking elven faery gods, spitting in that templar guy's face, or asking people in the Gaj what their favorite football team is then you've joined the league.  The rest will come, I assure you.  Welcome!

Everyone else - It seems GDB negativity could be a contributing factor to player turnover.  I'm not advocating positivity-only enforcement, but maybe threads that become a festering vortex of complaints that don't have any real practical solutions should be capped off at some point.  Anyone with remaining grievances can start a newer, more focused thread and/or begin a new dialog with the staff about them.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

Membership in the Atrium for long-lived human pcs who both pay and have outstanding reputations and clans backing them?

That way every third long-lived ranger/ivory needle maker won't be in the Atrium, but that six-month master crafter Kadian has a shot if they're willing to open their wallet for the pleasure.

Also I really miss the Tuluki wines. That's like six liquids that are no longer available in the game.

Dig up old weapon/armor/clothing/jewelry mastercrafts that haven't been created in at least a year and have them for sale at high prices in one of those glass paned cases you can carry around, that way people can see them, and its something for anyone with accumulated money (as money tends to do) to spend their wealth on.

[ibusoe]

Everyone else - It seems GDB negativity could be a contributing factor to player turnover.  

That would be scary if it were true.  But I don't think that it is.  I have a hard time envisioning one of our fellows here saying, "Gee, I'm having an absolute gas here with the game, but the GDB is so horrible I'm thinking of leaving it all."

I'm not advocating positivity-only enforcement, but maybe threads that become a festering vortex of complaints that don't have any real practical solutions should be capped off at some point.  

I dislike that idea.  Unless we're to have draconian censorship, people need to be allowed to complain.  If people are to be allowed to complain, better for it to be in one place so that most of us can ignore it in favor of threads about new code ideas, pictures of people's pet dogs and stories about how grand the old days are.

None of which relates, I fear to what is your underlying post, my good man.  You wish us to be constructive.

Okay, how goes?  My opinion is not altogether relevant, I think, for I am not on the fence.  I am not someone who is in danger of leaving, a flight risk for example, nor am I somebody whom has left that is mulling a return.

But others in our target demographic have posted, and here is what I have learnt of them.  

• Easier for new characters or new players to jump into the game, and get involved in things both crazy and awesome
• Easier to make a difference, no matter how minor in the game world.  It should take less time for a character to become awesome.
• Characters should be allowed to change over real life months.
• Stats should be less important, or stat problems should be easier to correct.

Mayhaps if the staff were able to do something to address those ideas brought up by players in our targeted demographic, then it would boost our numbers.  I genuinely don't know.[/list]

[Marauder Moe]

Everyone else - It seems GDB negativity could be a contributing factor to player turnover.  

That would be scary if it were true.  But I don't think that it is.  I have a hard time envisioning one of our fellows here saying, "Gee, I'm having an absolute gas here with the game, but the GDB is so horrible I'm thinking of leaving it all."

We just had someone say so literally one page back...

[Lizzie]

Everyone else - It seems GDB negativity could be a contributing factor to player turnover.  

That would be scary if it were true.  But I don't think that it is.  I have a hard time envisioning one of our fellows here saying, "Gee, I'm having an absolute gas here with the game, but the GDB is so horrible I'm thinking of leaving it all."

We just had someone say so literally one page back...

I noticed this too, and sometimes have the same sentiment. I go into the game, wonder where people are, idle for a bit while waiting for someone to show up - and read the GDB while I'm idling. I get the sense that people are doing nothing but complaining and wonder - do I really want to RP with these people? The more I read, the more I wonder. That gives ME a negative vibe, and I think - no, I really don't want to be playing this game with those people who are doing nothing but complaining on the GDB about the game they claim to be playing.

So I log out and do something else for awhile. I don't want to NOT play. But I don't want to play with people who complain all the time either.

[Desertman]

I'm fine if staff wants to establish a policy that specifically defines exactly what benchmarks a thread has to reach before it is considered toxic and/or negative enough to warrant closing for the protection of the community.

If it's going to be done on a whim based on someone's personal opinion and their feelings however.....no.

So yeah, let's get some documentation written up and then I'm all on board.

[Alesan]

I was warned by a friend when I came back to this game, NOT to read the GDB. So, there's that I guess.

Should I have listened? I'm thinking yes.

[Jave]

I personally don't think locking threads down for being too toxic is the answer to that problem, because then you create more angst among the populace over censorship and stifling the ability of the people to petition the government for their grievances and what have you.

At the moment we already have rules for when we lock threads and they are centered around flaming, getting to specific about IC events, etc. - I am comfortable with the current rules.



I don't want to speak out of turn but we do have some ideas we're discussing on the staff board at the moment pertaining to how we can help bridge this perceived gap between the players who play and the players who staff. But we're still working the kinks out. It's getting hashed out though.

[Desertman]

I don't want to speak out of turn but we do have some ideas we're discussing on the staff board at the moment pertaining to how we can help bridge this perceived gap between the players who play and the players who staff. But we're still working the kinks out. It's getting hashed out though.

I think you should elect some staffers based on their ability to effectively and openly communicate with players to be your "Representatives".

Some people simply are not good at interacting with other people. Unfortunately you can't teach someone to be personable and likable. Some people just aren't and never will be. They don't know how to talk to other human beings without making other people not like them.

That goes for this game community, your local bowling club, Bingo night at your community center, and pretty much every single social group.

(I'm probably one of those people. I have no idea. The problem with being a person that isn't likable is YOU DON'T KNOW you are that guy/girl. Everyone wants to be liked. Everyone thinks they are likable. The problem with being socially inept is the person who has the issue will NEVER understand they have the issue, not really. That is why you need a group to elect people to be "The Face" because usually the person who shouldn't be interfacing with your "clientele" has no idea that they shouldn't be.)

If you are an elected Representative, you are in charge of interfacing with players.

If you aren't, then you aren't.

We have some staffers that are awesome at talking to people. We have some that are lacking in that department despite their ability to do GREAT things in other areas of their staffing duties.

I don't think that makes them the bad guy. I don't think it means they shouldn't be staffers.

I do think it means we have a responsibility to look at it from an objective standpoint as adults and say, "This guy isn't the guy we want manning the front desk when people walk through the door if we want them to continue visiting our establishment.".

Every single person on your staff isn't going to be someone you want handling PR for you no matter what you are doing in any group....including this group.

I think recognizing that and making a policy for that will get you a long way.

[Delirium]

There's talking about issues, and there's becoming a negativity echo chamber.

For example, I work at an occasionally high-stress environment. Clients are mean, things go wrong in weird ways, and people do dumb stuff.

When we start complaining about this stuff beyond "ugh, this exists, let's fix it", our team chat becomes this echo chamber of negativity and all of us just become super sour and very demotivated to do anything. It becomes a chore to even get to work and productivity goes way down. We just bitch all day. Nobody likes that.

When we noticed this, we made an effort to be more positive, to joke more (lots of stupid silly gifs) and focused on just dealing with it, fixing what we could, and moving on.

It gets really easy to get caught up in what is going wrong, so easy that you lose sight of all the positives.

So, being positive doesn't mean you have to ignore the problems. But you can acknowledge them, implement fixes as possible, and then move on.

[Dresan]

I was warned by a friend when I came back to this game, NOT to read the GDB. So, there's that I guess.

Should I have listened? I'm thinking yes.

When I first began many years ago I felt the same way. After all these years, I still feel the same way but I still want to at least try to influence the path this game will take. It can get pretty toxic, but on the brightside it used to be worse around here. That said people here are pretty good at insulting and being snarky to others in a way that flies under the radar of the moderators.  Sometimes I don't think people actually realize how negative and snarky they are coming off as, despite their own desire to be positive.

Regardless of your ideas, be ready to defend them, not everyone will agree with you.

When it gets to be too much just take a break from the GDB.

[Norcal]

I was warned by a friend when I came back to this game, NOT to read the GDB. So, there's that I guess.

Should I have listened? I'm thinking yes.

Some of us are not so bad.

And once a year or two ago, I complained to staff about something on the GDB.  The only time I have complained about GDB stuff.

The staff person asked me if I took the GDB seriously,  I said yes, and the person said well, don't do that. 

In a way it made me sad,  yet on the other hand I can understand that thinking. Alesan one thing that often strikes me is how often I join a clan and find lots of people who I never see posting on the GDB.  It could just be alternate GDB accounts, yet I think that in the majority of cases it is just folks who play and have fun.

I can get caught up in some of the threads here, and then start to think how things need to work better, how this does not work and that, and on and on.  Then I log in and crawl into my PC. 

They have never heard of staff, except a double bladed agafari super warstaff.  Account notes might be something that the funny man in the bank keeps. And karma?  I knew her.  she was with the circus for a while, but got killed by that rogue gicker.

[nauta]

A few misc. ideas (practical):

o Advertise new accepted sponsor roles in the weekly updates announcement (or somewhere).  It's nice to know if you are thinking about returning what the state of the various clans are, and some sponsored roles don't get advertised.  E.g.: "New Fale Noble enters the game."

o With Question Requests and Character Reports: the person that opens it should be the one that closes it (or auto-close after X days). Not only does this allow us, as players, to send a quick "Thanks!  That was helpful.", but it also encourages the perception that at least these functions are conversations.  It'll also help track questions/requests -- you aren't spawning new requests all the time.  From a player perspective, a closed request feels like the door has been shut, even if that's not the perception that one wants sent.

o Move bugs/ideas out of the game entirely and into the Report Tool.  This also encourages the idea that we are interested in feedback / suggestions for improvement.  ETA: It also might cut down on frivolous or half-thought out ideas, as there won't be a character limit, and, just a hunch, but if a player spends time going to the Report Tool, etc., they'll provide a better bug/idea.

o Add a "Feedback" button on the main page, right under the Helper Chat button.  This encourages the perception that we are interested in feedback and ways to improve the game / gaming experience.

[Mordiggian]

I think if we required people to use their internet browser instead of their MUD client to bug/typo things, a lot of people just wouldn't bug/typo things.

Also, players are not able to provide certain information that is often necessary to resolve these issues. When you typo something in game, we can see the unique ID of the submitter, the room they are in, and the object, character, or room being typo'd. This is helpful for us to find what needs to be fixed instead of manually checking half the Red Desert for that respawning war beetle or whatever it is that's the issue.

[Dar]

I manage a sales company and I've experienced first hand an escalation of negativity. It is amazing and very scary, how simply being negative can seriously harm a person's day and their outlook on life and their work. That can also be infectious, meaning a person's negativity if often expressed infects others and they themselves begin to see things in a lot more negative light, even if at another time, they wouldnt give the issue a second thought. Unfortunately there is no clear solution, because if negativity isnt expressed, then people do not know how serious the issue is and simply never fix it. At my company this is solved by having some serious incentive for managers to seek out roots of negativity and work to fix it. Which means they talk to people one on one. Of course, that means that the managers must absorb all the negative and 'never' ... give it back. A very daunting, difficult, and 'necessary' job. That's where the difference between specialists and a manager comes. Specialists would never be expected to deal with other employees, or customers, despite being awesome and necessary for their jobs. The concept of spiraling negativity is a real thing and until some proper systems of PR and management were established, they costed my company millions in revenue.

[Harmless]

I want to emphasize this from one of my recent posts here:

I need to add this. I respect the staff enormously, think that everything they've been doing lately are steps in the RIGHT direction (I strongly favor change and experimentation in general), and have high hopes for the game.

Luir's apartments and the announcement of a subguild revamp are both AMAZING changes, and for them to happen back to back like this kinda blew my mind.

And I just submitted a new character. Maybe I'll clock more than a handful of hours played this time!

[hopeandsorrow]

I returned, because I felt like play again.

Then today, logging on from home hoping to play a little bit.  I'm immediately reminded of why I quit.

Sometimes... do you guys think... it could be other players?

[BadSkeelz]

Maybe. What are other players doing that's discouraging?

[Narf]

Maybe. What are other players doing that's discouraging?

He's not really allowed to say here.

[hopeandsorrow]

Maybe. What are other players doing that's discouraging?

He's not really allowed to say here.

I was angry in that moment; calmer now.

The game, takes a lot of work, to bring a character from novice to proficiency.  Clans aren't always a good option (I find them utterly constrictive and boring).   




Just a little butt hurt and exhausted.

[Dresan]

What is sad is the clans don't have to be restrictive and boring.  At some point or another most clans have given their full members a lot of freedom to travel or do their own thing. It sometimes depends on the leaders, but schedules weren't really things people followed all the time.

Except Byn, that was restrictive with its recruits for as long as I can remember which is why I avoided that clan like the plague for the longest time.

My legionnaire and his legionnaire partner used to ride around the scrub like badasses, helping people, threatening people, and just laying down the law where they saw fit. Regulars and mercenaries in kurac could go where they pleased too, schedules was something for recruits to teach them discipline. You could get into so much shit, and when things got back you'd run back to the outpost and hide behind kurac. Though don't expect your sergeant to be happy if someone who mattered complained you did something in one of the cities, but so long as you didn't get caught it was all good.

It just depends on the current leadership both on staff and player level though. Over the years things some clans got so restrictive though, never swung back to give players more freedom. Kadius and salarr are usually okay, but they those clans have seen their moment of being restrictive too at one point or another.

[hopeandsorrow]

Upon further reflection;
Armageddon is hard.  It's part of it's allure it's also what can make a new PC an exhausting endeavor.
Retaining new players, players who lack the camaraderie, karma, and options that you may have maybe be difficult if that is their experiences are negative.


Player to player interactions can go a few ways, but in my particular case I seem to find certain interactions displeasing not by their nature but the frequency they've happened to me and my experiences by them.

At first, I accepted it as part of the game and tried to remain calm while I searched for motivation to roll again.  I even sent kudo's in the past.

As time goes on, each encounter, similar in nature starts to wear thin.  You can only play 'prey' for so long that you can't help put feel the deck is stack against you. You start to feel pigeon holed, ganged up on, and that this will forever and always be your place in this game.  It's heart breaking, especially when you read such awesome, wonderful things other players got to do, see, and be apart of. Yet your own experiences are colored by being pounded in the ground before you could even walk.

I don't have near levels of player clout that most of you possess and the game in its nature, rewards that clout in karma and knowledge.  I've yet to earn much in either, partly because of that exhausting endeavor.  The day zero to proficiency in the desired role, is an undertaking, when you don't have friends who play, or aren't always entirely knowledgeable.

I've gone out of my way, giving great effort to try many different things and to find ways that allow me to cope and deal with that endeavor, but nothing softens the sting or blow of starting day 0 again, remember full well the day prior the game was much more enjoyable.

So I've become naturally distrustful of players, because in some instances I felt because I was trusting, because I did remain, because I did role play, I was punished greatly for it.  Whether this is the case, I'm not sure, perhaps I shouldn't see the actions of another player as punishment but then again, in those moments, I only have my perspective and experience to draw upon.  On the whole, my experiences have been negative.

To not take this further off topic, players, both in their own play and how the view things (me for example) could retain more love and motivation for the game, if we trusted more.  As well, players who do wield such power and trust from the staff, should always keep in mind, you will in most cases being causing another player grief.  Be at least sympathetic to that or don't expect your victims to want to play if that becomes a running motif.  In other words, trust and don't be selfish.


Understand, I've played some seriously tough games, I have thousands of hours in some super competitive games over the years.  But nothing compares to Arm in its scope of reward/effort/risk ratio.  It's one thing to lose that too the unfeeling/unthinking coded world.  An entirely other to knowingly lose that by efforts/actions from another player.

Again, since staff get blamed so much and so often (which isn't always right). I feel players at time could do more in their own play to make sure to bring conflict where conflict is due and to hold the power they can wield over their other players and their efforts as something sacred.  

To make this post longer, I gave a severely inappropriate response but that response was from my aggravation not only with the game, but what other players can do.  I shouldn't of taken it personally but that's because I have issues trusting the other players because that trust has been taken advantage of.  I can't go into details nor should about my experiences and what brought me to that, understand also this entirely OOC trust, not to be confused with IC trust.  I don't in most ways trust players to role play, or I assume that their character's actions are insincere and entirely OOC driven.  Which is a personal issue granted, but it didn't become an issue till I did have experience where IC actions were entirely driven by the OOC desire to cause me grief.  

 From my perspective, I'm the lowest rung on the totem pole, forever being kicked.   Perhaps that is 'wrong' or just part of the Armageddon learning experience but nothing at this time, make it less painful and nothing makes day zero, suck any less.

[hopeandsorrow]

It just depends on the current leadership both on staff and player level though. Over the years things some clans got so restrictive though, never swung back to give players more freedom. Kadius and salarr are usually okay, but they those clans have seen their moment of being restrictive too at one point or another.

My biggest issue is my erratic play times.  I don't have the luxury of sitting down for long RPT's, I'm lucky if at night I can get a couple of hours of play with out interruption.
Sure I can, over a period of days, in short 1 to 2 hour bursts (sometimes less) get play time in, but it's difficult to remain present for clan RPT's or stop on top of duties.  OR in my experiences with military clans, which I like in some ways.  I log on, no one else is on... Nothing I can do.  I have an OOC desire to explore, hunt or whatever, but ICly my character would suffer consequences.  Which makes it, on a playability level, annoying and more trouble then it's worth.

I enjoy some of my time as GMH hunter, but I also found, having to sacrifice my play (Something I want to do) to achieve something I feel obligated to do.  Now sure I could be a shitty hunter and ignore it, but that's not always the role I seek.  It's much easier for me, from my perspective to remain indie, and squeeze in where I can.  As well all my most rewarding experiences have been with my indie characters. 

I'm in fact envious of you who seem to be content and happy with in the Byn or AoD,  I'm simply not.