Player retention: Skill reincarnation

[stoicreader]

Problem: how do you retain players? Many people quit after losing their character.
Problem: how do you prevent trouble makers from making a brand new account with a new IP?

What I would like for myself and to solve the above problems:

Once a skill is mastered with one character, any subsequent character who has that skill, will automatically have it boosted to 3/4 of its max.

Stop wasting our time skilling up everything. Once it's done and we understood what it took to get there, don't make us do it again, not when it's so easy to lose a character.

Don't put it in documentation so new players don't know about it.

This way, every character is an investment, and trouble makers are less likely to fuck around. And if they do, it's really really easy to punish them. "I'm resetting your bludgeoning skill, you abused it with that dwarf and I've removed dwarf as an option for you for one year."

This also serves as "karma light". It's like karma that you gain automatically from surviving the game and doing well.

[KakkarotYaBoi]

I think part of the glory is the grind. If you got master skills, great, you've been working hard! You deserve it! If you want a character that has been a Merc for 10 years and want boosted skills, apply for it.

[mansa]

There's a couple fundamental things with your premise that I disagree with.

I believe:
Players leave when their characters die without a good ending / storyline fulfilment.
Players leave when they attempt to accomplish a big goal / task and their ideas get railroaded or shut down.




However, I don't think this has anything to do with skill progression.

The act of skill progression is part of the strengths of ArmageddonMUD.  When long-time characters die, having them restart at the bottom and grow in strength creates the storylines that ArmageddonMUD excels at.

My analogy that I've used before is..
ArmageddonMUD, as a game, is designed for characters similar to Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition that start at level 3 and reach level 10.   The game isn't designed to handle characters stronger than level 10.  If we were to boost character's skills to an equal level "8" in this analogy, they reach level 10 rather quickly, and they reach the maximum potential and they hit their cap, and they've won the game.   There isn't anything left inside the game that has "risk."   They start to do things that the game isn't designed to do, and they get burned out and stop playing.

[Delirium]

Crossposting.

If you think the current classes suck out of the gate you never played an old school class.

You start out SO capable compared to how it used to be.

Do not want to see even more creep toward higher starting skills unless it's through a special app.

Growing a character's skills is part of the journey of telling their story. Don't be in such a hurry to reach the next chapter. Enjoy and develop each arc of it. It makes for a far more rewarding and rich experience.

[X-D]

A very long time ago this was actually tried.

For whatever reason, it did not last very long.

[Gentleboy]

I love the grind.

New characters should be completely different from the last. Each concept should be fresh. When you die, it isn't "let's try that again." It should be "let's try something new!"

And that is a celebration. Arm can be your friend or your enemy. It can be a lovely thing that teaches us to grieve and live for the moment, and that it's just a game. Or it can be a bitter thing that shows the worst in players and collaborators.

Dying in Arm is at first painful. And then joyous and freeing. I do not want to live off the coattails of my last character at all. That includes skills.

Skills are great too, because when no one is about, I can practice even the most fundamental like cooking. It gives me something to do. All ends do not need to point to coin or strength, but there's a joy in rummaging for certain items to make a dumb 5 ingredient craft. Or trying a new tactic on rats and kagor.

[Bogre]

I don't think this is actually good for the game.

There is a benefit in that more veteran players do not just completely run the game. Any new character can eventually rise to challenge other characters, relatively. The turnover of powerful chars helps keep the game on more an even setting.

It's ok to have relatively fluctuating levels of power and skill in the game, and between a players PC's.

Now, if we wanted to address how difficult or how long it is to achieve, that's something I think could be interesting. Right now there are still significant blocks on some skill advancements.

[Delirium]

As I've posted elsewhere, it's not the "grind" that's the problem. It's the lack of opportunities to reliably practice.

[stoicreader]

As I've posted elsewhere, it's not the "grind" that's the problem. It's the lack of opportunities to reliably practice.

That's a great point!

I am a busy woman, as an example, I hate that I will never, ever, ever, have a character that will be good at combat, because I do not have time to grind, nor do I enjoy it.

Perhaps, much of this game is just not for me. 🤷‍♂️ I've had a few long lived characters, two karma, and... Typing forage endlessly with every New character is just not fun. It's a game, that's just not fun when my time is spent grinding.

[X-D]

Stoic....Did you know you could go from novice forage to JM and only use the skill maybe 20 times?

I mean, the docs actually tell you how to skill up, maybe not all in the same place, but it is there. And other then language skills, The last remaining skill (kick) That you had to spam was fixed just this last week.

Almost all skills can be raised from novice to master with less then 5 actual hours invested.

More RP, less skill grind and you will find you do better.

[stoicreader]

Stoic....Did you know you could go from novice forage to JM and only use the skill maybe 20 times?

Thank you XD. Sure. Just to preface. I'm not saying Armageddon presently and I'm logged on my cellphone on the GDB.

Anyway if what you say about forage is true, and it's 20 failures, then that's 20 logins for me. 5 days a week, for 4 weeks. Or a whole month of play to get halfway to master. I could meta, log on with my cellphone, fail forage, log out, set a timer for an hour, and repeat hope that staff doesn't notice. This is not fun.

Now imagine sparring? Where I need other people for a useless grind? And it takes longer than forage.

The time investment of Armageddon is just too much.

If I could
A: be able to ooc coordinate for plots.
B: not waste my time grinding.
Then I'm sure playing Armageddon would be more interesting than taking a nap.

In an effort to prevent the occasional abuse, the game is rendered unplayable by an entire class of players who would like to play casually.

[Delirium]

Forage:
Use crafts that check the forage skill as well as actual foraging and you'll get there plenty fast.

OOC playtimes:
I agree there needs to be an ingame but OOC way to communicate with other players regardless of login times (see my mudmail suggestions, with the option to set your "mudmail name" so you can remain anonymous as a player). Staff seems to hate the idea of "play by mail" but if it's purely for coordinating playtimes or alerting to absences I see no issue. We should not have to be or be expected to be logged in 24/7 to find someone. It's not healthy.

Combat skills:
Practicing on your own should never be as rewarding as having a partner or taking risks outside, but you should be able to drill combat and weapon skills solo, so that you aren't completely wasting your time. If magickers can skill up to mon fireball without ever having had to go outside and risk themselves, let combat PCs use some kind of 'drill' command for one chance at a skill check/failure per skill they're practicing, maybe once every IG day or so.

(Suddenly people will actually stick around and practice in an empty Byn hall, giving other players a chance to find them.)

[X-D]

Man...Stoic, I am really trying to help here...within the confines of the rules.

I am currently a VERY casual player, With normally less then 5 hours a week to string together for play.

With a PC that has maybe oh, 60 hours of actual play, nearly fully branched and I doubt I have 10 hours in actually working those skills.

And really only have they been worked because I log in with nobody around. I made the PC to not really worry about them and as more a social role if possible.

The interesting part is, And this is something the docs do state, If you RP and use skills WITH your RP in a realistic fashion...they will go up with little work or notice.

[Dresan]

As I've posted elsewhere, it's not the "grind" that's the problem. It's the lack of opportunities to reliably practice.

I don't disagree with this statement. But i think it just begins to outline a tip of the bigger iceburg of problems caused by some of the design decisions made by staff a few years back.

I've now come to beleive the changes made to combat learning have hurt the game a lot. The main change being that you need to fight something stronger def/off wise to learn weapon skills. There was alsoa second change (i think) where I believe player had learning bonus in regard to combat skills during sparring when being in a clan.  I think anyone that has played this game long enough knows how silly the idea is to go out to remote wilderness areas just to skill up against potentially strong npcs. At best you'll die, and at worst staff will consider you a twink. Bascially if you wanted the opportunity to be good at combat you need to join a clan.

I have said this this before, but people don't adapt, they won't waste their time to learn to enjoy something new. They will just leave. There are plenty of other free experienced out there being offered that would love for someone to give them that very same chance after all.  Tuluk closure was an excellent example of this in action, and I consider the combat changes have had similar effect on indie players.

I can only imagine staff believed the only ones effected would be people who refused to join clans and indie enforcers who didn't choose a subclass that gave them early access to backstab/sap. That the changes would further considate players into clans that could more easily be managed and make the game feel more populated.  It makes sense on paper, but I don't think it crossed anyone's mind how it might feel for people to have to start a new character whose success was based on opportunity rather than their time/effort. And clearly no one every considered what would happen if the population continued to drop.

Its funny as well, one of the reasons I stopped playing in Tuluk back before its closure is that I wanted to play a codedly skilled assassin. Historically Tuluk did not have the same opportunities for backstab/sap training as the south did with the rinth and redstorm alleys. Backstabbing animals is something that worked in the north, but staff refuses to come up with a standardized policy around it, so its really up to chance whether or not the staff member watching you feels like you are a twink for backstabbing critters, making it a fustrating experience to this very day. 

I think even now some of the decisions being made are in line with a game that is going to consistantly have 70-80 people at peak instead of one that allowed a person to potentially still have fun with even if there are only 15-20 players online scattered around the known instead.

[Malken]

My last five or so attempts at playing the game went pretty much like this..

1) Grind up my skills and get enough 'sids for some decent equipment until I felt I was at a pretty good place character-wise so I could do interesting things with the character.
2) Realize that it took way too long and that I don't have the time/need for this in my life anymore.

Rinse and repeat once in a blue moon or so.

[stoicreader]

Man...Stoic, I am really trying to help here...within the confines of the rules.

I feel like you are helping,.thank you. But not a man. She her pronouns please.  <3

Between you and delirium Im a little inspired and I special apped a role from a fresh perspective. My real life is a mess, so I hope I can make this character work with my crazy schedule

[Armaddict]

Side-tangent:  It would be nice if we put preferred pronouns on the side under username if possible.  That'd help in various cases where we inadvertently cause issues.

Real-tangent:  Seeing various responses to the way the current classes are, the grind, etc recently has got me thinking a lot about the different things people get out of playing Arm.  It's easy for us to think about our own good ventures and ways of thought as 'the right way', which I'm really really prone to.  The truth is, different truths on those matters will exist for different players based off of what they want from the game.  The largest flow 'against the grind' is under a presumption, though, which is that the grind is necessary to unlock content of the game.  Ironically, I see this as self-removal from content of the game.

The new classes, for whatever problems I have with them, eliminated a lot of the early-game risk.  Lots of hunting and survival content is unlocked immediately upon characters entered the game, which some will argue against, but I can only guess that that's because risk still exists.  However, most of that risk comes from chance encounters that are uncommon.  I've found myself being able to leap directly into safe hunting, foraging, plotting, etc right out of chargen with minimal supplies/gear, purchased with starting coin.  So despite the tedium that many find with the grind, I want to reiterate clearly that there is not content secretly stashed away until you perform a lot of time grinding; that is a player-made construct based out of minimizing risk, which is fine, as long as you want boring play.  I don't think this should be bypassed for the sake of the desire to dive right into 'things that are more difficult' or things that are risky early on.  You saying that Delirium and X-D inspired you to a new view is a good hope for me; I hope you can enjoy improving at a pace that is fitting for you and your character, while also realizing that you can get right into that improvement right off the bat with a comparatively low risk to your character.

It really is overemphasized, the need to be able to tackle anything thrown at you.  Sometimes, being a little uncomfortable with not knowing your chances of success are what lead to interesting relationships and scams and plans and courses of action in the game.  Early-character is the best time to make risks happen, because the investment is not yet that large.  Even early character PvP is usually the best.  They are situations that can fail, but can also define character paths for the rest of their lifetime.  Which clans they hate.  Their attitudes on how fights should go, etc.  Everything slows down once your plans are grander, once your skills are higher, but more importantly, once your relationships are solid and your reputation is just as, if not more, important than your prowess.  So while grinding may be part of it, I'd focus more on those things that become more important anyway.  The relationships, the reputation, the direction, and the roles your character will fill in the world, and these are handily and conveniently formed well during the grind, as long as it's done with risk in mind rather than safe harbor that keeps you sheltered from those things.

Edit:  Just to make a simple example of what I mean about risk, because I don't mean go out there and do stupid things.  What I mean is, if you're looking to create a reputation, you might join the Byn.  Build a reputation as a mercenary, as your skills improve.  But a lot, if not most, are not going to care that you've been a runner for nearly a year and you show up in the tavern every night.  A lot of people might care a lot more if you're that one kind-of-poor hunter who is always coming in with scrab shells trying to find someone to sell them or work them.  One will get you skilled faster, and definitely more safely...but you're a lot -less- prone to being involved in other character's plans and lives by doing so unless they are someone interested in hiring mercenaries.  So there is a tradeoff.  Finding ways to grind safely often leads to better skills, but often at the cost of having actual 'things to do' other than grind.

[HazelHomewrecker]

I really do have to disagree, to be honest.

When you make a new character, you play it like it's completely new--no one has ever seen or heard of them before, outside of special circumstances concerning some role calls. In that same vein, your skills--all of them--are baseline, because the goal of the game is to grow and progress. It is an "eat and grow" style of game, dependent on player input to drive your character from point A to point B, not a game where you just jump in with all of your skills leveled because you had a character once that DID have those leveled.

They are completely, wholly, separate.

Treat each new character like a new account entirely, honestly, that's my advice. You have to build from scratch, which can be pretty tiresome and demoralizing after spending an IRL year or year(s) grinding up a character only for them to die unexpectedly or something. However, removing the grind would just make the game cater to the people with the lowest amount of time to play, and there would suddenly be an uprise in ridiculously skilled characters everywhere all the time.

Not only that, but it would be a GLARING difference for new players versus veteran players on a coded level, which is extremely unfair. These veterans would just start making their 3/4 of the way leveled characters, and newbies would still have to start from scratch. Either everyone gets it, or no one does, it's really that simple. One might argue that these veterans already have an unfair advantage in the form of Karma points, but that's something different.

In line with what Bogre said, it would be a lot more feasible to open up an alternative question concerning just how long it takes to actually achieve a competently-skilled character. However, this just seems like a really unhealthy suggestion.