Player retention and you: brainstorming

[Riev]

Sure is a lot of talk of shoving things in people's mouths, a skill previously allowed only to psionicists probably.


Armaddict has a point, but unfortunately we don't play in the same world we did 6 years ago when we didn't KNOW we were plateau'd on a skill. And combat back then also worked a whole lot differently than it does now.

The end all be all, I believe, is as RGS mentions: Assassins get backstab which, with even a decent weapon and half an hour of waiting, can pretty much insta-kill anyone. Rangers can kill NPCs and PCs from (used to be 3) 2 rooms away without attracting notice because archery lag is nearly non-existent.

A pickpocket can steal your weapon before you ever draw it, a burglar you'll never see but suddenly you're poor and missing your clothes. Fuck, even Merchants are OP because at some point they basically buy and sell at flat values and only GENERATE coin.

But Warriors? My dear, sweet warriors? They're useful against other humanoids in a game that DRASTICALLY encourages beast-mobile martial conflict. Sure, going against a warrior as an assassin is kind of a no-go, but it can be done, and warriors are generally at the thing they excel in. They are frontline fighters with +humanoid that are forced to go fight scrabs, spiders, and rantarri. Maybe they fight a gith, but probably not. Another humanoid player? SURELY not, and flee is so powerful and easily accessible its ridiculous. I've only ever seen mobs fail a flee for "going up when there is no up" and its a skill you can use 8 times before the other player gets another swing in.

But we were talking about retention, right? Honestly, I don't see retention of new players being a problem with this line of thinking because so few are likely to be in for 20-30d played to reach this plateau without being hooked. If its retention of veteran players, there are SURELY other things preventing the hemorrhaging of veteran players than "I can't skill up quickly"

[RogueGunslinger]

Sure is a lot of talk of shoving things in people's mouths, a skill previously allowed only to psionicists probably.

LOL

But we were talking about retention, right? Honestly, I don't see retention of new players being a problem with this line of thinking because so few are likely to be in for 20-30d played to reach this plateau without being hooked. If its retention of veteran players, there are SURELY other things preventing the hemorrhaging of veteran players than "I can't skill up quickly"

Yeah we got way off topic, actually.

[Saellyn]

All I meant to say is that, right now, it's hard for weapon skills to go up. It's hard for warriors to branch. And it should remain that way.

[RogueGunslinger]

Why do you think it should remain that way, though? A warrior with an advanced weapon is just a strong warrior. They're not suddenly going to one-hit you. Right now if they could kill you with their advanced weapon, they probably could have done it better with their mastered weapon. (because there's no way they got their advanced weapon skill high.)

And when compared to other classes, a warriors melee ability isn't really all that powerful. It doesn't have much utility beyond tanking and killing NPC's or demolishing noobs who don't know how to play the meta.

[Synthesis]

The game just takes too much time for responsible people to commit to any kind of serious role.

If retention is the goal, the game itself is going to have to start including elements that are more casual-friendly.

I'm not going to flesh out any ideas, because I have shit to do, but there are a few options:

-Offline training
-Offline income-generation
-Crafting/delivery interface to mobile devices
-Basic communication interface to mobile devices (remaining susceptible to interception/shenanigans/whatever)
-Ability to read and post to your PC's relevant IC rumor-boards offline or mobile

It's pretty annoying to log in after aging 2 IC years and I'm still broke, all my shit is at novice, and my clan thinks I'm some sort of imposter.  Let me take care of the miscellaneous bullshit of Armageddon Life by putting in 5 minutes a day on my phone, then when I can log in for a full 90 minutes (a whole IC day!), I can actually RP instead of jumping back on the salt-greb skill-up hamster wheel.

[Riev]

Back in my heyday in the Legions, there was one PC named Sulda (?) that almost never had the time to log in unless there was a big event going on. Which was sad, because she was a great PC and awesome to get into random shenanigans together (like nearly falling onto the stage in the Uaptal theater during a very amazing play).

But it was very jarring to know she'd been around as long as my PC, and I was a Sergeant and she was "considered" a private but never got the title because she was "never around".

[Inks]

Gawd no. No offline anything other than survival please. Your PC is in no danger while offline, whereas players who log in often are far more likely to kick the bucket.

[Malken]

Gawd no. No offline anything other than survival please. Your PC is in no danger while offline, whereas players who log in often are far more likely to kick the bucket.

While the rest of us just decide not to log in anymore because most 21th century games are casual-friendly, so for the next 3 weeks of holiday vacation I have I decided on WoW, Hearthstone and Fallout to be my gaming companions.

Armageddon is sooooooooooooo at the bottom of the list.

[Armaddict]

Gawd no. No offline anything other than survival please. Your PC is in no danger while offline, whereas players who log in often are far more likely to kick the bucket.

While the rest of us just decide not to log in anymore because most 21th century games are casual-friendly, so for the next 3 weeks of holiday vacation I have I decided on WoW, Hearthstone and Fallout to be my gaming companions.

Armageddon is sooooooooooooo at the bottom of the list.

See, and that's fine with me.  Casual friendly is good, casual-catering is bad.

[BadSkeelz]

I think I've said before that it'd be nice if skills leveled up more quickly to a point of "competence" (Whatever that would mean), and then slowed down to present speeds when you want to get to advanced weapons or high offense or whatever.

Make what now takes 20 days to accomplish 5 days. Yes, you'll have more codedly powerful characters running around, but you'll still have people who play Arm 20-30 hours a week. They'll quickly rise above the pack.

[Malken]

A dude that plays only on weekends with master sword isn't going to create much damage to the overall of the game since nobody will really know who he is BUT that dude will be playing because he knows he won't have to spend the whole week where he only has an hour or two for Arm to just log in to kill verrin hawks to get anywhere.

Sure, you the guy who plays Arm 10 hours a day will have died 2-3 times by the time that Weekend dude gets to master sword, but you will have done a crapload more than him and you'll be 1000000 wealthier and with a hundred more contacts. That dude will just be happy to be getting somewhere slowly but surely.

(but this is sort of a moot argument because to come up with such a system with Arm's ancient code would be a supreme nightmare and probably impossible to implement)

[Armaddict]

That dude will just be happy to be getting somewhere slowly but surely.

  So get there slowly and surely, with the same amount of time played as everyone else.  If you're only playing 1-2 hours a week, I don't see why that entitles you to anything different than the guy playing 1-2 hours a day.  You're going to spend the same amount of time doing the thing.  Sure, you can say that that means they're getting somewhere ahead of you...

  But to use your own examples, 21st century, casual-intense games have the same thing.  In WoW, you don't progress as fast as someone who goes in balls deep.  You don't get experience while offline (there is an argument here for something similar to 'rested' experience).  You do the same quests in your 1-2 hours of logging in per week that they did.  They did all those quests in 1 day that it took you a month to do.  I really don't see any correlations between 'why you go elsewhere because they are more casual friendly' when they're operating on essentially the same basis.

  It sounds to me more like you're bored of the game and don't want to go through anything in the game to get to where you want to be.  WoW is not permadeath, you only have to go through those things once for each character you make.  In Arm, you do the beginning each time.  To most of us (or some of us, as it may be), that's part of the enriching part of each character being truly different than the previous ones, no matter HOW many times I've played an elven burglar or human warrior.  To you, that seems to be just a waste of time, and if you think that way...I'm not willing to support the idea that you should be allowed to skip it under the name of 'casual' when it's actually just 'impatient'.

  But hey.  That's also why I'm okay with you playing WoW instead.  You grind those quests and instances for the same gear everyone else has.  You customize those talents to be just like every other <insert class here>.  I hope that it brings you joy.  I left that atmosphere to return to this one, because each character ends up different.

HOWEVER:

  In keeping with that passing thought of what the above blurb said...what about rested?  I'm less agreeable to Eve style, because you guys are trying to make it sound like Eve keeps you even for being offline when it really doesn't (derail below on why that is).  However, something like rested?  You get a reduced timer on skill gains, or larger bursts of skill gain based off of how long you went without using those skills, but with a cap of how much you could get at a time from it?  Would that push towards the goal at hand with this particular line of thought?

THE EVE DERAIL:
  I've played Eve for a long time.  The reason why eve based skills would not work well for Arm is because while they are called skills, just like arm, they behave in a different way.  In Eve, the strength of your character is determined only minorly by what their skills are, most of it coming from the fittings you UNLOCK due to raising skills, being superior to those lower-meta-level items you fitted on your ship before.  Thus, staying offline and gaining skills on Eve is somewhat common...but it's because you're waiting to be able to use a certain piece of gear.  This doesn't translate over to Arm due to there being no 'restrictions' based on skill.  You can wield anything you want.  All of its usefulness comes from that skill, not from the item.  A journeyman skill swordsman against a novice skill swordsman beats the SNOT out of him, regardless of what sword he's using.  This is not true in Eve.  A level 5 skill guy against a level 4 skill guy, using the same items, doesn't have that significant of an advantage.  Thus, the idea of giving skills in ARM while offline runs counter to the flow of pretty much any other multiplayer game out there...it gives actual progress while offline.
  This would fundamentally change things.  It doesn't retain players, it loses them.  It poses the question of how important is it, really, to log in?  It cuts out that drive that most players sink into to push their character further.  But the plots!  The money!  The prestige!  They drive you!  I agree, but I say that that is exactly how it is right now.  If you're letting the skill-based side of things completely reduce your incentive to log in, I don't think the parts of the game that stick out beyond the skills are what you're here for, honestly.  Because those things are still here as is, and you seem to be undercutting their importance in favor of being able to kill things good right from the get-go.

[Malken]

I'm not bored with Armageddon, I just know that I don't have the time to play it anymore in a way that I would enjoy it again. Having to raise my skills again for the 32501501205021th time in my lifetime is just one part of the reason. In Warcraft, I can hop in and out as I please, and you have heirloom weapons/armors that give you a boost to your experience gained and your items go up as you level. The guy that plays 15 hours a day still have a lot more than me in the end, being able to do many dailies, to do professions, to do guild stuff, me? I'm mostly just able to level up and enjoy the story.

Sure, we have that too in extended subguilds and it's a great start, but you still gotta keep smashing verrin hawks a million time per characters to get anywhere and I'm definitely not willing to commit to that time required in my life anymore.

But you're definitely right - I just don't see myself whacking textual monsters anymore so I'm not blaming it all on Arm. Meet me halfway and you'll get yourself another player, don't and this is 2015, there's a bazillion great games for me to play that doesn't require this commitment of time.

[Armaddict]

In keeping with that passing thought of what the above blurb said...what about rested?  I'm less agreeable to Eve style, because you guys are trying to make it sound like Eve keeps you even for being offline when it really doesn't (derail below on why that is).  However, something like rested?  You get a reduced timer on skill gains, or larger bursts of skill gain based off of how long you went without using those skills, but with a cap of how much you could get at a time from it?  Would that push towards the goal at hand with this particular line of thought?

Can you answer that?  Is that helpful, or does it not help enough in your opinion, or...?

[Malken]

In keeping with that passing thought of what the above blurb said...what about rested?  I'm less agreeable to Eve style, because you guys are trying to make it sound like Eve keeps you even for being offline when it really doesn't (derail below on why that is).  However, something like rested?  You get a reduced timer on skill gains, or larger bursts of skill gain based off of how long you went without using those skills, but with a cap of how much you could get at a time from it?  Would that push towards the goal at hand with this particular line of thought?

Can you answer that?  Is that helpful, or does it not help enough in your opinion, or...?

Well, technically we already have that, since time logged out counts as your "skill reset thingie" - I think I prefer the Eve method, where we could select a skill from our character and while we are logged out it raises -very- slowly depending on your wisdom.

But anything to make it less of a drag helps in every little ways - Again, Armageddon from 1992 only had to compete with King Quest 2 and my BBS forum posts addiction, today, if you want to keep it as hardcore and unfriendly to anyone with remotely a life to live, you'll be bleeding out players more than you gain some (as the current situation seems to be)

[boog]

I'm on Synthesis and Malken's side. There has to be a little bit of give. This player base is aging. A lot of us don't have the same sort of time we previously did in our youth to devote to "leveling up" in a game that should be a way to pass the time. Kids, jobs, school, not wanting to sink the time we spend online in a game into grinding away.

Maybe those that play more can get something as a bonus or added incentive so that it looks less like favoritism given to the casuals. But it DOES suck to, after being on OOC hiatus for a while, exist vNPCly, and come back to skills that are still shit. Or hell - only having an hour a day to play and having to either roleplay or skill up. It blows.

[Jave]

When I played characters, my personal method to climbing over the newbie hump without having a lot of time to spend playing was to log in for 10-15 minute spurts throughout the day just to quickly RP through some basic skill training. Throw out a few emotes. Fail a few skills. Log back out and get back to work or whatever else I was doing. As Malek already mentioned, skill timers continue even while off line so the next time I did it, the skills were ready to increase once more.

When I had time to sit down and play properly for a couple hours I would spend that time socializing more than training and within a couple RL days I was typically up to journeyman level in all the skills I was practicing.

... ... except weapon skills. Weapon skills are a totally different bag of potatoes.

[Saellyn]

Casual. I mastered chopping weapons in five minutes with THESE THREE EASY TRICKS!

First: Make friends with Jave.

Second: Use them to become friends with Adhira.

Third: Tell her you want branched weapons! BAM!

oh...

[RogueGunslinger]

What's weird to me is only a few combat skills don't increase at normal rates, where other, even more powerful combat skills take much less time. For instance Parry versus Kick(which really needs to be renamed/re-echoed to strike).

[Molten Heart]

The biggest advantages of longer play times come in the form of interactions and role-playing opportunities with other players and the ability to effect and further plots. Giving players who don't play as much, modest boosts or other advantages to help them from getting left behind seems reasonable.They don't even have to be bonuses but instead something like the ability to gain skills faster until they pass a certain threshold.

[Armaddict]

I think I must fundamentally play this game different than you guys, because I really don't understand.  You guys make a chore out of using skills, to the point that it is a detriment to your experience.  You're talking about -not being able to roleplay because of skills-.

I have characters that are skill heavy.  I have characters that are very skill light.  I have characters that are a mix, where some skills are integral and other skills are nearly untouched.  This isn't based on my ability to log in, or ultimatums placed on me by how my time should be spent.  It's determined by my characters doing what they do.  It's determined by roleplaying.  This dichotomy you're making where it has to be one or the other actually goes over my head and makes me blink in confusion, because that's the purpose of it.

If your doing non-roleplaying meta-skilling, then yes, being a casual player will make you fall behind (as it should?).  If you're just playing the character, the skills go up as necessary/reasonable for your involvement in things.

There are days where I log in and nothing happens.  I walk around and mingle and that's that.  I may wander around and try to make some coin, via theft or hunting, or whatever.  But it's based off of my time in the game, not based off of me moving towards some future plan.  So...I think I fundamentally disagree with your need to advance while offline because we fundamentally view the goal of the PC differently.  I want mine to have a badass story, not be a badass.  They get there through the story. It's why when things go a certain way that you couldn't have seen coming, and you end up being able to deal with it, it's an actual fist-pump of 'YESSS', because you just got a major part to your character's storyline that will affect things permanently for that character.  That doesn't require skills.

It -does- require you be online for those things to happen to you.  It's just statistics.  More time online means more opportunities.  Having a character doesn't entitle you to character progression, it's just like any other RPG.  You get what you put into it.  I don't see why being a casual player with less time for the game makes it 'pointless to log in' with those things in mind.  If you're actually enjoying the game, that 2 hour window that you can log in and see if you can get involved in things is a big deal.  I've been in said position before (it changed drastically when I switched my career path), and it never occurred to me that this game was suddenly not worth playing because my skills weren't going up on their own.  I'm having a very hard time relating to that mentality.

Edited to reply to Molten:

Giving players who don't play as much, modest boosts or other advantages to help them from getting left behind seems reasonable.They don't even have to be bonuses but instead something like the ability to gain skills faster until they pass a certain threshold.

See, and I was trying to come halfway with the idea of rested, but also went against the idea of Eve-like skill gains because the skill systems are so drastically different in how they affect the character.  However, the idea of improving more quickly with less time online was apparently just as unappealing, which is where I kind of shrug and say 'If you don't want to log in to develop a character the same as any other RPG, I can't do much about it.'

[Synthesis]

When I played characters, my personal method to climbing over the newbie hump without having a lot of time to spend playing was to log in for 10-15 minute spurts throughout the day just to quickly RP through some basic skill training. Throw out a few emotes. Fail a few skills. Log back out and get back to work or whatever else I was doing. As Malek already mentioned, skill timers continue even while off line so the next time I did it, the skills were ready to increase once more.

When I had time to sit down and play properly for a couple hours I would spend that time socializing more than training and within a couple RL days I was typically up to journeyman level in all the skills I was practicing.

... ... except weapon skills. Weapon skills are a totally different bag of potatoes.

I did that in school, when nobody minded if I was logging in for 10-15 minutes in the back of class.  You can't really do that with most real jobs.  Also, you can't really do that in most clans where there is a schedule you have to keep to, which prevents you from practicing those miscellaneous skills, unless you just routinely and blatantly violate the rules.

Anyway, I'm not advocating for full-on parity between full-time and casual players, because I don't think for -retention- purposes, that's entirely necessary.  For retention, you just need to give people a reason to log in or otherwise interact with the game.

I don't buy the "no danger" argument, because 99.9% of the time sparring isn't dangerous, anyway, unless you're sparring a totally clueless newb, in which case actually dying in sparring is more realism-breaking than skilling-up offline.

[Malken]

Armaddict, this thread is about player retention and we're telling you why most of us don't play it anymore - If you're telling us that the system works for you and that we're not 'playing it right', that doesn't solve any problems, we'll remain logged out while you get to continue enjoying all of the perks that come with the way you're playing/enjoying the game right now.

Really, if you think that a game system from 1990 still works in 2015, that's cool for you but for many of us, it's really not worth the bother.

Sure, I could play kids that are totally crappy when it comes to fighting/whatever else just so I can focus on the rp, but after having played like 5 kids in a row, I gotta start wondering what the hell I'm doing with my gaming time 

[nauta]

Making the game experience better for casuals has come up before.  I posted some suggestions on it above.  You also might find this interesting:

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php?topic=36148.0

It's a tough question, but I think everyone can agree on one thing: if there's a way to make the game better for casuals so that more people can play in a balanced fashion, then that's all for the better.

[Armaddict]

Armaddict, this thread is about player retention and we're telling you why most of us don't play it anymore - If you're telling us that the system works for you and that we're not 'playing it right', that doesn't solve any problems, we'll remain logged out while you get to continue enjoying all of the perks that come with the way you're playing/enjoying the game right now.

Really, if you think that a game system from 1990 still works in 2015, that's cool for you but for many of us, it's really not worth the bother.

Sure, I could play kids that are totally crappy when it comes to fighting/whatever else just so I can focus on the rp, but after having played like 5 kids in a row, I gotta start wondering what the hell I'm doing with my gaming time 

It is a thread about changes that could be made about player retention.  I'm saying that this does not seem like a healthy change to make, and attempting to modify it to make the same effect without screwing with things that don't need to be screwed with.  I'm not telling you you're 'doing it wrong', I'm telling you that the Eve-based system seems to be favored by you because of your individual playstyle, while not taking into account the impacts it has on other areas of the game.  I'm not demeaning the way you play it, so much as trying to, through discourse, find out where that 'happy medium' actually -is-.

I really do think the reduced timers based off of time spent offline is far more helpful than you inferred.  You say 'It already does that', but I'm talking about something more along the lines of 'You have accumulated 8 hours of rested.  For your next 8 hours of playtime, your skill-increase timers are decreased by 50%' (these are completely arbitrary numbers).  In other words, if you could only log in for two hours, and you decide to go out and do your thing, you could see 3 or 4 skill increases where the normal person would get 1 or 2.

The impasse we're at is that I am also stubbornly clinging to an idea, which is one of the core fundamentals of the skill system here...it improves through use, not through virtual use.  Your character is yours, not a virtual one.  The same way people cannot adversely impact your character while you're logged out, being logged out does not positively impact you.  Rested still requires you to log in and try to participate in the development of your character, and thus be available to be dragged into things or stumble on things to be involved in.