Where players found us: November 2015

[Nergal]

November 2015
Total new accounts: 283 (was 141 last month)
New accounts with more than 30 minutes played: 45 (was 32 last month)
New accounts that played as recently as last week: 21 (was 19 last month)

Popular answers to where they came from:
Mud Connector: 104 (was 53 last month)
Google: 30 (was 19)
Top Mud Sites: 36 (was 10)
Friend/word of mouth: 16 (was 14)
Reddit: 7 (was 8 )
Bay 12 Forums: 2 (was 1)
TV Tropes: 1 (was 3)

More interesting/unique responses:
- A good friend and I were talking in a cancer treatment center, I am going through chemo. He mentioned this game to me so now I'm trying it. In his memory.
- I heard about MUDS from a Youtube show called PBS Idea Channel and they mentioned MUDs and I thought they sounded cool as a fan of MMORPGs and Zork. I mentioned them in a dinner coversation with my brother and he said they sounded cool.
- Something Awful
- Was looking at /r/muds and TMC. You guys were on top.
- work
- Hot chick that sent me nudes via the internet talked about MUDs so I just looked it up.

Login info for new accounts:
30mins-5 hrs: 32 - was 18
6-11 hrs: 5 - was 2
12-17 hrs: 2 - was 2
18-23 hrs: 2 - was 1
24+ hrs: 4 - was 9

What we can learn from this:
The voting drive has been great for raking in sheer numbers, but retention is still an issue we need to work on. I am of the opinion that growth results in further growth, as well as encouraging past veterans of Armageddon to return to the game, because a larger playerbase spurs a greater amount of activity and makes things interesting. Thus, new player retention is one of our biggest things to focus on at the moment. To any new players reading this, what kept you here? What do you feel the game needs in order to stay?

Those that came through word of mouth were generally the ones that stuck around the longest. TMS and TMC have a moderate level of retention. So after you click those voting buttons, tell your friends about Arm too! I know it can be hard to talk about this crazy hobby of yours in a way others can understand, but it's probably easier if they're used to the idea of roleplaying. It's totally worth it in any case.

[Lizzie]

November 2015
Those that came through word of mouth were generally the ones that stuck around the longest. TMS and TMC have a moderate level of retention. So after you click those voting buttons, tell your friends about Arm too! I know it can be hard to talk about this crazy hobby of yours in a way others can understand, but it's probably easier if they're used to the idea of roleplaying. It's totally worth it in any case.

This is also why I keep harping on the idea of being an active participant in the TMS and TMC fora. Anonymous clicks don't mean as much as people posting their thoughts of the game and encouraging other people to try it.

[Jihelu]

Whoever be sending those nudes out, you are doing gods work.
Also hmu.
JK.
Pls I'm lonely

[nauta]

November 2015
Those that came through word of mouth were generally the ones that stuck around the longest. TMS and TMC have a moderate level of retention. So after you click those voting buttons, tell your friends about Arm too! I know it can be hard to talk about this crazy hobby of yours in a way others can understand, but it's probably easier if they're used to the idea of roleplaying. It's totally worth it in any case.

This is also why I keep harping on the idea of being an active participant in the TMS and TMC fora. Anonymous clicks don't mean as much as people posting their thoughts of the game and encouraging other people to try it.

What if we all made an effort, every time we sent in a staff kudos (or maybe even player kudos), to pop over to TMC/TMS and drop some praise bombs as well?  Maybe even add to the kudos pulldown: "Kudos are yummy.  But what's even more yummy?  Word of mouth advertisements on TMS/TMC."

- Hot chick that sent me nudes via the internet talked about MUDs so I just looked it up.

Glad it worked!

24+ hrs: 4 - was 9

Thanks, Nergal!  This one stood out to me.  It's a paucity of data problem in part and I'd love to see all this stuff stuffed into a spreadsheet for easy analysis of trends... but with raw numbers having doubled, we'd expect numbers in each category to double too, which happened (almost) in all the other categories but this one, where it halved.[1]

It's a weird category (a brand new player that is insta-hooked; I'd imagine most new players, myself included, sort of putzed around for a few weeks until things clicked), so it might not be worth fussing too much on to find a rhyme or reason for it.  Flipping through the old "Where Players Found Us" posts, it seems that the 24+ hrs people are almost always word-of-mouth people, and there's no reliable trend to be found about them, but that was just a brief look.

Are most new players popping into Allanak?  (Now that Tuluk is closed, I'd imagine they are.)  It might be helpful to have a look at where new players are spawning to see if there's something about that that could be fiddled with to lure them into the trap... I mean hook them, e.g., maybe new players that spawn outside of Allanak aren't retained, whereas new players that do spawn in Allanak are, or vice versa or something.

[1] ETA: Qualification: Raw numbers did double, but riding high on the vote ranks, we should expect a lot of lookiloos, which it seems we had.  30min+ was 45 vs. 32, so a roughly 50% increase, not 100%.  I doubt there's anything we can do to fix that -- just the nature of the vote rank beast.

[Nergal]

Yep, that bit of data (the 24+ hour mark, which I use to measure retention) stood out to me too. And over time as I do these things monthly, I will have a set of trackable data in Excel that can be made into a useful graph. October 2015 was a starting point for this project, which has me focused on extra publicity for the game. I definitely encourage extra participation on TMS and TMC by other Armers interested in promoting the game too.

[Kankfly]

- A good friend and I were talking in a cancer treatment center, I am going through chemo. He mentioned this game to me so now I'm trying it. In his memory.

Damn.

[nauta]

Yep, that bit of data (the 24+ hour mark, which I use to measure retention) stood out to me too. And over time as I do these things monthly, I will have a set of trackable data in Excel that can be made into a useful graph. October 2015 was a starting point for this project, which has me focused on extra publicity for the game. I definitely encourage extra participation on TMS and TMC by other Armers interested in promoting the game too.

It's a great project.  One thing to think about: sorting the categories like you do (and have done) into raw hours played might miss out on what we want to be tracking, since if someone signed up, say, on Nov. 28th, but was instantly hooked, this wouldn't make them a 24+ hr player.

So, you might consider doing some sort of POTENTIAL-FOR-ADDICTION STAT: hours played in relation to hours since the account was created.  Make sense?  ETA: Or hours-played-per-day.

[Nergal]

Yeah, that makes sense! I'll see about getting that for October and November later today.

[nauta]

While I'm on the suggestions roll: What if we sent an e-mail after a month to new accounts and asked them for feedback (what worked, what didn't work, etc.)? You'd probably get a lot of useless data, but you might get some things that are useful.   I noticed we do ask for feedback in this thread, but speaking from my experience, I didn't realize the gdb was part of the game until a couple months into it.  Plus, responding in a public forum is a bit... scary.  I guess you'd have to decide if it's worth it.  Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea to send out an unsolicited e-mail asking for feedback at regular intervals: after a month, after a year, then each year after that.  (ETA: the gdb is a great place for announcements and brainstorms and refining ideas, but for raw feedback, I don't think public fora are the way to go.  People ramp up the rhetoric when they know they are in a public forum; there's mob mentality; sometimes there's snark from veterans; and so on.)

[Desertman]

Surprisingly what made me actually devote to this game in the very beginning was some of the stories in Original Submissions on the old website.

I was a very young teenager when I started playing. Those stories gave me the mental visuals I needed to make the world come alive and really illustrated to me in the beginning what the world -should- be. When you first login to a MUD you generally have no idea what the setting is actually like. You will have to roam and read a few hundred room descriptions to get a full scope visual. Those stories let me have a full scope visual before I ever got into the game (I read several while waiting on app approval). They made me want to be part of this world before I ever got into this world.

That's just me. Try posting a few stories from Original Submissions on the voting websites maybe? *shrug*

Telling someone, "Come read our rules and documentation.", is a lot less interesting than, "Read this awesome story that actually illustrates what the world is like. You could be part of this story.". That's what it did for me anyhow.

My first few PC's that died horribly were based entirely upon a story about an elf who was a spice runner in Allanak. Sure I never made that awesome spice runner. But I had inspiration that fit the setting.

[nauta]

That's just me. Try posting a few stories from Original Submissions on the voting websites maybe? *shrug*

Telling someone, "Come read our rules and documentation.", is a lot less interesting than, "Read this awesome story that actually illustrates what the world is like. You could be part of this story.". That's what it did for me anyhow.

I can also say that the stories were helpful and inspiring, exactly in the way Dman was saying: they help new players get a sense of the world and they also give new players hope for something greater.  (The one where they interview that whore and stab her in the eye with a torch still sticks with me.)  A few things to add:

a) Players can pop over to TMS/TMC and link to stories.  So do it!

b) Perhaps we can make the stories more easily accessible from the main page -- maybe under the dustcover quotes, have a link to: read some of our stories!  (Or even a 'story of the week'.)

c) The most recent story in 'Stories' is 2012.  The most recent log in 'Logs' is 2012.  But there are newer original submissions (both stories and logs) in the 'Original Submissions' thread.  Let's move those stories from the Original Submissions thread onto the website!

d) Let's submit more original submissions players!  It doesn't have to be epic, just a cool scene that you think could give new players a feel for the place -- personally, I prefer the short scenes to those more epic world changing logs about templars and spies and things, but I'm all for the 'both-and' approach not 'either-or' here.  (IIRC, there was a glitch last year that got fixed on it, where staff had a different 'Original Submissions' pulldown or something, and we couldn't submit an original submission, so that might explain some of the missing data.  I just checked and the Request Tool, Original Submissions pulldown no longer tells you to go to the 'Original Submissions' thread, so it's totally fixed.)

[RogueGunslinger]

I notice a lot of complaints newbies have is getting into the game and not knowing things their player should know, or being timid about fucking up interaction. D-mans post about submission got me thinking. What if we had a list of scenarios, either from a log, or simply fabricated, to which new players can read and learn from much like original submission?

For example, one would be "Common Interaction with Noble" And have a short log of a player approaching, looking at the noble, looking at his ring, bowing, speaking respectfully about wanting to join the house as an aide, and how that scenario usually plays out. You would bold certain things, like the Templars Ring in items list, any notable markers, like color, a cloak or sigil. Then in the margins of the log, put in footnotes that explain what's going on and what details are important.

We could do this for multiple things. Joining the Byn. A ride out to hunt, salt foraging, mining, paying for protection in the 'rinth, buying water from the temple... The sort of things every player should know, but has to get in game and go through it once in order to find out. It would be nice if they had a list of scenarios to learn from instead.

[Medivh]

Not a single "your mom" in the how I found out about ARM?
War has changed

The sample roleplay stuff RGS mentioned sounds like a great idea.

[Marauder Moe]

Example IG snippets (linked) in helpfiles is good idea.

[Adhira]

I think we've posted before but the reason we have the Original Submissions thread is because at this point in time we don't have an easy way to upload things to the website. Previously we had a web tool which allowed people to submit and then staff to approve and upload. We moved to a new site, and this no longer functions.

It's part of the ongoing wish list but as far as I'm aware it's not on the project list for any of the current active coding types.

[Riev]

But the idea of linking to the Submissions forums is still valid, yeah?

I especially like RGS's idea.

[nauta]

I think we've posted before but the reason we have the Original Submissions thread is because at this point in time we don't have an easy way to upload things to the website. Previously we had a web tool which allowed people to submit and then staff to approve and upload. We moved to a new site, and this no longer functions.

It's part of the ongoing wish list but as far as I'm aware it's not on the project list for any of the current active coding types.

Oh, ok.  Well, if that's the case, maybe (just an armchair suggestion of what sort of linkage could be added to help the newbs)...

a) Provide a link to the gdb Original Submissions thread on the 'Community' pulldown on the main website and also under the 'Community Quick Links' on the main website; call it something like 'Latest Stories' or 'Recent Original Submissions' (although 'Stories' is sexier).  You could then rename the 'Original Submissions' link under the 'Community' pulldown to something like 'Old Original Submissions'.

b) Rename the 'Original Submissions Discussion' thread to 'Original Submissions' (or 'New Original Submissions').  (I wouldn't mind seeing the discussion split from the submissions themselves.)

c) Add some language in the intro-to-this-thread blurb for Original Submissions explaining why there are two original submissions spots, and how to get to the other one, or something.

Hope that makes sense.

(While I'm thinking about it: For the longest time, I thought the 'Staff-Related' tab on the gdb was for Staff-only material, and never flipped through it.  Also 3 of the 4 links in the 'Links' section of Original Submissions are 404.)