October Player Retention And More

[H 820]

...This is actually still better player retention than I thought we'd have. If you look at the current map, commands, lack of rp and community from the perspective of a brand new player, I'm amazed we keep anyone at all.

[Medvekoma 2073]

Next to the throughout statistics, I want to provide some less-tangible and more of an anecdotal evidence to support the message. Thank you Squirt for the thread, first.

 

Spoiler

 

We came over to LOTC as a group (or to be specific, two groups). 12 of us played a considerable amount of time on the server to account for statistical purposes.
 

• 10 humans in Oren
• 2 humans in Haria

After five months of playtime, and with all except two of those remaining in our lovely group chat for daily activity (and this aligns strangely close to your statistics):
 

• 2 dwarves in Urguan
• 2 human in Oren
• 1 high elf in Haelun'or
   

Of the overall players with decent activity amongst Dwarves, at least four transferred from humans themselves excluding our two. Think what I'm trying to reason is obvious, dwarves and orcs have a far higher intake of "convinced players" than "decision players" that join them. But that's irrelevant for player retention.

 

What's relevant is why those left and what they personally told me / said in the group chat. One of the twelve was visibly picked on by the community before they left, but four claimed they couldn't find roleplay and were bored (the rest had no firm opinions).

 

Of the twelve, 3.5 of us were EU players and the rest various American.

Of those retained, I'm the single EU player retained that I counted as 0.5 because I technically live a GMT-3 lifestyle. All other four are US.

 

All retained players were one way or another hooked up into a storyline / progression.

 

• One rose in church ranks and became high pontiff (still human).
• Two interacted with nobility, one holding land in Vailor, the other now in Axios (one migrated to dwarves, other still human).
• One murdered and made a golem, brought along for adventures (now RPing in the same community the golemancer is).
• One taught magic by elves and involved in elven roleplay (later joined high elves).
   

Of those that left, the only one involved with any storyline / progression was the one picked on.

 

Some other interesting statistics:

• Of the 10 original Oren roleplayers, 4 had female characters. None of those remain.

 

 

= = = = = Switching to personal analysis / opinion = = = = =

Spoiler

 

The statistics from our smaller control group align with Squirt's statistics in terms of retained player percentages and timezone comparisons. The main difference is races, to which there's an easy answer:
 

• 6 joined as part of one human family
• 2 joined as humans to aid / interact with this family
• 2 joined the church where the one family was prominent (with a high pontiff, a priest and two ordained knights)
   

Based on this, I think it's safe to say I can speak for what I personally saw when I joined (half a year ago) and what I perceived people in our group experienced when they joined.

 

The general concensus:

 

Pro:
- Vast lore
- Magic system
- Diversity

Con:
- Toxicity

- Lack of roleplay

- Staleness

 

There's one important side-point to consider for the lack of roleplay, which I mentioned earlier. Four out of twelve begun their adventures on LOTC with female characters, none retained. Generally speaking, there's no mention in Oren's lore or Oren's introduction about the treatment of female characters which is claimed to be medieval. Two of the four original female characters were abandoned because they had literally no idea what to do with female humans, one became an IG-genderbender holy knight, the fourth one a nun.

 

I'm sure it's safe to say there's a good audience Oren's current female roleplayer caters for, and I'm /NOT/ and I repeat, I AM NOT CONTESTING THE PLAYERBASE'S DECISION ON THE TREATMENT OF FEMALES. However, I'm pretty sure it plays a good part in player retention whether the EXPECTATIONS of players meet what they RECEIVE.

 

As such, I'm sure a reference either a sideline when making a character, a guide or a lore (perhaps all three) page alteration should be made to inform players of it. So that they can expect it. 

 

And before you say "people should expect that on a medieval roleplay server", it's not that straight-up. I managed to RP as a commoner blacksmith for a whole of three months not witnessing anything against females, after which I was told of all the barriers for further character progression (titles & politics, mostly). It arrived at a point where re-rolling a male character was out of question (due to nexus profession skills), but further progression with the character seemed just as impossible. What does one do when something like that happens? I first went inactive, then shelved the character and joined another race. Others may just remain inactive.

 

Once again, this isn't "salt on Oren". If any of you played Mount & Blade (the original, not WarBand), you may remember the warning you got after selecting "female" for your characters about difficulty and a reminder of medieval times (it may have been a module, unsure). I'd reckon all players should know about it.

 

Two of the four from the group who originally created human females are now playing females of other races. If information was available / obvious straight-up, those two may have gone for other races by default.

 

I'm not backed by a large amount of statistics, however. So it's up to Squirt whether my accusation of female character retention being as terrible as GMT zone retention is correct or not.

 

Of the GMT note:

 

There's a /serious/ lack of roleplay GMT time. And I've seen at least one comment above calling for a build on "what we have" instead of trying to catch the GMT zone.

 

It'd be interesting to see time-zone distribution per individual race. Never the less, building on "what you have" instead of "what you could have" means that at the same time you have to concentrate mostly on humans. Which is ... boring. We'd lose one of the main calling cards of the server, one of the few things lifting it above other roleplay servers.

 

I see activity GMT time, but most of it is grinding. I know people who could be active GMT time, but instead do other things because there's just ... nothing to do. Sort of like small community roleplay. When one gets one, others get on too, and RP engulfs. Pretty sure an initiative could help with it.

 

For what's it worth, consider MC player demographics. Closest data I could find was a distribution of servers by country.

 

Yes, Europe has far more minecraft servers than the US. You just have to convince all the Germans to come over to LOTC and roleplay. And trust me, zhe Germans have a really good roleplay community as a nation. I'm not going to write nonesense about "European countries adapting minecraft in educaton and therefore providing the future for roleplay servers" because that's just too much for a simple analysis. But here you have it, mentioned.

 

There's a drive to secure GMT playerbase, but what to do for it?

 

 

SUGGESTIONS TIME:

 

• Spoiler

   

  • Get a GMT event staff strike team together with regular GMT-time events held, randomly from 2pm GMT to 8pm GMT. Make it random so people remain online, or at last attentive in skype.
     
  • Allow players to unhide themselves on the dynmap. It'd be a convenient advertisement that "this settlement has people online" or "this shop is being manned". Problem of course could be leaving it on and being attacked / killed because you were tracked down. Perhaps automatically disable it after leaving certain regions?
     
  • Revise player introductions. While it's a good rule-of-thumb to show the best of the server to first time players through the websites, showing them a white dream can leave them disappointed when they face the grey reality. Inform them what playerbase is the largest, tell them what awaits them in Oren, Haelun'or, Urguan or wherever (the racism of every race, treatment of sexes, treatment of magic, etc).
     
  • Have a couple guides for every race, every subrace. With skype and IG name to be messaged.
     
  • Find a better way to encourage play-time than the current rewards. They "cap" at 250 hours, you get nothing more after that apart from all professions unlocked if you play as much with one character as I played with Fallout 3 overall (which is rather unhealthy, children). And even at 250 hours, all you get is chance to grind more. I always had this mad idea of getting minae based on f(x) = (RP lines spoken a day, Average length of RP lines that day, Time spent online that day, Warning rating/quality rating).
     
  • Advertise what we have! For heaven's sake, the main page has as many words on "the amount of forum posts" and "registered members" as it has on the server's RP side itself. I don't think players choose servers based on the regression analysis of forum posts and registered member counts per individual server of a thousand samples. Pretty sure what they want to see are cool builds, cool sounding lore and cool looking concept art. "Wield one of the 40 unique schools of magics ranging from evoking water to twisting your foe's life force to vanquish demons and creatures roleplayed by the dedicated event staff ... or to subjugate fellow players, if what you seek is sheer power." Doesn't that sound better than "With over 1,000,000 forum posts, 4 years of experience and over 48,000 registered members, we have built an incredibly strong and colourful community."?!

   

   

 

</rant>

 

To squirt:

 

Could you provide/plot the following statistics?

• Time zone distribution per race per newcomers
• Time zone retention per race per newcomers
• Character sex distribution per newcomers
• Character sex retention per newcomers
• Character sex distribution per race per newcomers
• Character sex retention per race per newcomers

[Aengoth 2890]

Really good work put in there.

[Ethan the epic 115]

As a GMT player with a patriotic profile picture I would say the the timezone is lacking players, well because it's 

lacking players if you know what I mean. The population of great Britannia is roughly 64 million and the population of Australia is roughly 24 million, but the PST timezone is closer to the EST timezone than my timezone, and the EST timezone is the leading because America is the most populated developed country in the world.

[The Great Mongol Khan 1110]

East coast represent

[Medvekoma 2073]

58 minutes ago, Ethan the epic said:

As a GMT player with a patriotic profile picture I would say the the timezone is lacking players, well because it's 

lacking players if you know what I mean. The population of great Britannia is roughly 64 million and the population of Australia is roughly 24 million, but the PST timezone is closer to the EST timezone than my timezone, and the EST timezone is the leading because America is the most populated developed country in the world.

 

 

Europe's population is more than twice of the USA's. There's more people speaking fluent English in Europe than in the USA.

 

However, Europeans radiated towards their own nation's servers. But that doesn't mean it's a market that can't be exploited. Refer to my statistics. There's 3/2 as many European Minecraft servers as American ones.

 

And I know other servers have decent GMT activity ... well, because they have decent GMT activity. I'm pretty sure all it'd need is a push/initiative sustained for half a year.

[Krism 67]

Making this information viewable and open to the public is a great start to changing the problem.

 

From someone who is GMT+1 I can say that we lack players. I have quit the server in the past and stayed away for years simply because if I wanted to be a part of any event or actual RP I would have to stay awake until very late. Now I have more options to actually do this, but it still sucks at times and I can see why younger individuals would have trouble finding good RP without destroying their sleeping schedules.

 

It's a terrible thing because only with more GMT's can we retain other GMT's but we can't get GTM's because there are so few GMT's. Geeesh.

[argonian 14254]

Just now, Krism said:

Making this information viewable and open to the public is a great start to changing the problem.

 

From someone who is GMT+1 I can say that we lack players. I have quit the server in the past and stayed away for years simply because if I wanted to be a part of any event or actual RP I would have to stay awake until very late. Now I have more options to actually do this, but it still sucks at times and I can see why younger individuals would have trouble finding good RP without destroying their sleeping schedules.

 

It's a terrible thing because only with more GMT's can we retain other GMT's but we can't get GTM's because there are so few GMT's. Geeesh.

The timezone disparity's definitely getting worse as time goes on. In the early maps a GMTer could still find RP and peak time was early enough in the day, but as time's gone on the ratio of ESTers to GMTers has gotten larger and peak has moved into the AMs GMT. I never had to stay up until 4am for anything in the early maps, now I have to fairly regularly. And since there's no RP at GMT times, any new GMT players will leave causing the disparity to get even bigger. I don't know how we could fix it. Even if we did an advertising blitz on European and British communities, as soon as they joined they'd find no RP and quit.

 

The more troubling thing is how many EST new players are leaving. There's plenty of RP when they're on, so there's clearly another big issue. I think the spawn is definitely one of them. It's horribly designed, and those floating text things really aren't as good as proper signs(they're visible from both sides and not every turn has them).

 

A lot of the early commands are also really confusing and awkward if you're new. Instead of being told to enter your persona name straight away(which most players don't seem to notice), they should just get a message telling them to do /persona help for commands on creating a character. They should also be put straight into OOC chat so they can ask questions and say hi, instead of talking into the abyss in /rp.

 

Another thing that could help them would be when they pick their race, have a book spawned into their inventory giving a brief description of their race and racial nation. Just state common traits of their race, the name of the nation and the capital, religion, etc. 

[Krism 67]

39 minutes ago, James2k said:

And since there's no RP at GMT times, any new GMT players will leave causing the disparity to get even bigger. I don't know how we could fix it. Even if we did an advertising blitz on European and British communities, as soon as they joined they'd find no RP and quit.

 

 

I don't know if we have some info on what the ratio of timezones are on the ET? In general, we need more GTM's to get on in the GTM hours and RP. The problem currently is that when I get home and I could log on and play with GTM's, there are only 30-50 people on and I know RP will be hard to find. Also, I don't know this for sure, but I would guess that there are very few if any events at all in the GTM timezone.

 

Basically, GTM's have no real incentive to log on, there are almost no players on, no RP and no events. GTM's need to get on and more ET members in that timezone is needed so people have a reason to log on.

[Z3r05t4r 855]

I do agree, there has been an activity shift towards the American timezones. The Europeans have become less active, including me. The point is, as mentioned before, the lack of activity, motivation (on my part) due to a lack of RP being present. Looking at these numbers and giving it thought, it's harsh and now feels more apparent than ever.

 

Solutions, I am open to them, I'd love to see a changed spawn mechanic, nearby racial capitals, or perhaps even in the way of having a small transition realm where new players get to go through portals which directly bring them to their racials capitals. Fast travels are needed to bridge the vast gaps between locations too. With a timer and perhaps a little cost of minas, giving incentive to vote.

 

Just some thoughts, I am unfortunately not in any position to work on these issues or help out.

[bungo 3965]

i hope we get a new map soon because this is the worst map weve ever had i think i have 5 hours played this map its just a big mess.

 

this is why staff shouldnt be in charge of making maps.. when we have temp maps like vailor they end up being 100x better than staff made maps thanks to overcomplication of systems of land managment and just memeshit design concepts which arent needed.

 

thank you to the people that demanded epic mesa and desert and cool void biomes i hope you get a lot of use out of them.

[Medvekoma 2073]

1 hour ago, bungo said:

i hope we get a new map soon because this is the worst map weve ever had i think i have 5 hours played this map its just a big mess.

 

this is why staff shouldnt be in charge of making maps.. when we have temp maps like vailor they end up being 100x better than staff made maps thanks to overcomplication of systems of land managment and just memeshit design concepts which arent needed.

 

thank you to the people that demanded epic mesa and desert and cool void biomes i hope you get a lot of use out of them.

 

Agreed on that part. I haven't seen any decent use for most of the "special" biomes whereas grasslands and dwarf-compatible mountains are being overcrowded already.

[John Ivory 4547]

2 hours ago, bungo said:

i hope we get a new map soon because this is the worst map weve ever had i think i have 5 hours played this map its just a big mess.

 

this is why staff shouldnt be in charge of making maps.. when we have temp maps like vailor they end up being 100x better than staff made maps thanks to overcomplication of systems of land managment and just memeshit design concepts which arent needed.

 

thank you to the people that demanded epic mesa and desert and cool void biomes i hope you get a lot of use out of them.

Agree... ?

[Ducklingator 795]

And here I return with my idea of forts scattered around. Especially human forts.

 

Let's admit it, the main population is made of human players. It's nothing to argue about. Another thing you can't really deny is that alot of the players who play humans are likely to have a high rank, and are considered a nobility.

What if these players began building medium-sized forts of their own? There's plenty of those inactive maze-like forts that are usually locked. They're really well-built, but nobody ever uses them.

 

Now, imagine these forts, with a large group of players constantly going around in these. Spreading out into small cities and settlements that are allies, or enemies, of one another. With rich lords ruling over them. They can enjoy themselves, letting people into their places; occupy people by hiring guards, cooks and even cleaners. Enjoy some casual events, or perhaps slay thieves. Hire an awesome, assassin-like person to do the dirty work and walk around the walls. (Even if edgy, It still sounds like fun.) All of those things. I'm sure new players will be hyped to see so many options, so many paths to choose from, and so many places to roleplay in.

[Medvekoma 2073]

Just now, SuperDuckyGamer said:

Now, imagine these forts, with a large group of players constantly going around in these. Spreading out into small cities and settlements that are allies, or enemies, of one another. With rich lords ruling over them. They can enjoy themselves, letting people into their places; occupy people by hiring guards, cooks and even cleaners. Enjoy some casual events, or perhaps slay thieves. Hire an awesome, assassin-like person to do the dirty work and walk around the walls. (Even if edgy, It still sounds like fun.) All of those things. I'm sure new players will be hyped to see so many options, so many paths to choose from, and so many places to roleplay in.

 

Except that new players would see tons of empty castles that are only ever used for RP on their owners' convenience. People don't just "stay at home and wait for RP".