There's some people here saying more realism is more fun, some saying less realism is more fun, and people talking about how these things relate to player retention. I'll try to chip in. And yeah, I usually end up writing long-winded posts. For those with less time and/or interest, there's a tl;dr in the end. And no, you most definitely don't need to quote the whole post or reply to all points if you want to comment!
Also, if you wish to argue with the tl;dr instead of the actual post, please feel free to. However, it can be a good idea to read the whole post before doing so if you have time.
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Foreword and why I am actually writing this much stuffI believe one of the biggest questions Muse's staff has been trying to answer is exactly this one; why have there been problems with player retention, what steps and/or other incidents could have caused possible declines and/or increases, and what can we do to remedy the possible problems with player retention?
Now, bear with me here; I'm by no means a seasoned expert on this. However, I
am currently majoring in relevant subject(s) (my major is possibly the least clearly defined at our university) - I've studied computer science, marketing, behavioral psychology, corporate and team level cooperation and business administration, for instance. I
have also worked for 2 years at a gaming company, though my assignment was more with customer communication and team synergy (although claiming that the latter was an actual responsibility of mine may be stretching it) than product development. I've also played games since I was like 6, much like some others here. As such, I may be able to provide some more food for thought. I am not trying to derail the thread, although a lot of this post doesn't directly concern realism but player retention. People have been talking about both up to this point, though.
People gaining and losing interest in any game may have also something to do with other gaming titles that have popped up. Are there games similar enough to GoIO that might have an effect on GoIO? To give an example, has Dota 2 caused a change in LoL player retetion, and if so, has the change been brief or consistent? Has the opposite happened? Were there patches that caused a surge from one game to another? Possibly, but investigating questions like takes a lot of time. Personally I haven't seen many games like GoIO, so it might be fair to treat it as more or less a niche. Despite this, popular titles that pop up
will have some gamers spending time on them instead of their old games, even if the games are very different. There have been some GoIO players i know playing a lot of Titanfall recently, for instance.
There are also obviously a lot of other things that can affect a game's "overall popularity", many of which have been discussed in this thread. Basically, even though suggesting possible causation between two different things can sometimes be reasonably accurate, one should be careful when making broad assumptions. And finally, I'm writing this post to give my thoughts on the issue, and in a best case scenario, talk through these posts to you, the others, and maybe even the devs about something that may not have been talked about too much as of late. No, not everyone will like reading a wall of text. That's why there's a tl;dr.
I know there's a lot of people on the internet nowadays that can't be bothered to read much more than a few sentences (and to be fair I have a feeling that there are even people who have skipped the post up to this point and will just scroll to the end after reading this), but I hope I can reach at least a few people regardless of that. I've done my best to keep the post coherent through formatting.
Some reasons why I think some people, especially new players, prefer other games to GoIOGame features and the learning curve, new players vs vets. Has the lack of matchmaking been detrimental to the game in terms of player retention? In many other online games I've played, I've stood a bigger chance against experienced opponents. In games like Counter-Strike,I can pick up a weapon and one-shot an enemy regardless of his skill. I can get the money to buy a weapon like this in a few minutes,
even if my team is losing. Counter-Strike only recently introduced matchmaking and in my eyes has done extremely well so far without it, mainly because of this. Also in DOTA 2, one well placed spell can be either practically or literally the end of an enemy hero, regardless of skill. Not so in Guns of Icarus. I started playing this game with a couple of friends, I'm the only one of the 5 who stayed as an active player. The others still like to play if we get the whole gang going, mainly because there is a very large gap between the
expected or required and the
actual amount of teamwork that takes place within "pick-up-crews", especially with low level players.
Basically, as a new player, I was essentially completely powerless against people who used teamwork, as I didn't know how the game mechanics worked yet, much less how to utilize our strengths together as a crew or even a team of ships. I could ask people how things work, but this would basically only work in game if there was a helpful player in my crew as I rarely had time to type in match chat, nor did I expect people to reply through it. Novice games balance things out as far as player experience goes, but as there are in my experience very, very rarely experienced people (CAs or teachers) in there, it's "the blind leading the blind" to quote NoWuffo, another forum user and a CA. People are sometimes eager to get into "real matches" partly because of this, partly because there are often very few novice matches around, partly because they want to play with "good people" for one reason or another, and partly because you cannot customize ship loadouts in novice matches. There may be other factors, but I consider these the most important ones.
Remember that a lot of low level players, especially from non-english-speaking countries, are not only inexperienced with the game but may also have some trouble being efficient teamplayers if they don't understand the communication that takes place in the lobby or in game, or if they cannot get a grasp of basic game mechanics in a relatively short amount of time. Also, getting a grasp of more advanced game mechanics is all but impossible if you can't communicate in or read English. That being said, most people playing this game do speak English, and there are no localization of descriptions, quick voice commands, or even tutorials unlike in most MOBAs, at least not at this time. I hear a Russian translation is on its way, though.
When talking about low level players vs. experienced players and the lack of matchmaking, Thomas actually went into a lot of detail and argued thoroughly on why he thinks his test results and arguments for implementing matchmaking are relevant
here, more power to him. On a side note, I stole some of the formatting since I thought it was good. Anyone who is willing to do his best to prove he has an idea or an argument that is not too far-fetched can be a big help in my eyes. I read through the thread, and was not overly surprised at the results, having been on the journey from a newbie to a relatively experienced GoIO player within a few months.
What about the community? Would it have been possible to retain more players with a different kind of community in place? We have the CA system, developers who actively take part in community events and talk to the community, and a lot of friendly people in the community. Do we have our arguments and "bad apples"? Most definitely. Are they vocal enough and sufficiently great in numbers to stain the community? In my opinion, not really. Also, a lot of the issues that cause arguments can be dealt with in a civil manner on the forums. I believe we are in a very good place when it comes to the community on average.
In relation to this, the current lobby system divides people in two. Some people want the games to start quicker, some enjoy the socialization that takes place in lobbies. Muse have likely done everything in their power to both keep the game relatively social and introduce mechanics that keep the game from "dying out" (i.e. matchmaking). How will it turn out? Will we gain or lose more players with future changes? What about the general friendliness or Time will tell, but these are all issues that are thoroughly discussed not only by the devs but also by the community, also in this very thread.
Comparing teamwork, solo performance, and the learning curve of GoIO to MOBAs, a widely popular genre of games with matchmaking To elaborate on the expected and actual teamwork, I will once again reference MOBAs, which is arguably one of the most wide-spread online gaming genres of our generation. For anyone who isn't familiar with these games or their history and wishes to read an article on it, try
this (MOBA, DOTA, ARTS: A brief introduction to gaming's biggest, most impenetrable genre). Having played more MOBA matches than Guns of Icarus matches (some 2500-3000+ vs 1800), I'll try to compare them to a certain degree. Now, know that I've played 1500+ matches of both games/genres, and
I know these games cannot be directly compared in many respects. However, as they both are games where you can either play individually or exercise teamwork, and one genre is wildly popular, it can be entertaining to think of the similarities vs. differences. So, as far as some general differences go;
- In a MOBA, a single player has a far bigger chance of making the game go one way or another, especially when talking about inexperienced players. Because of the so-called "snowballing" effect (getting a good start helps you do well later) new players can stumble across this and get a feeling of immense satisfaction as they see their team win more or less "thanks to him". Kills, deaths, and kill assists are all tracked and visible throughout the match.
- (Unlike the performance chart in GoIO which you can see for a few seconds if you play through the whole match. The performance charts are on top of that individual, so you have no idea how well you did overall, no good way to compare yourself to others. Not to mention you don't get gunner performance reviews as an engineer or vice versa.)
- There is matchmaking in most MOBAs, which makes games start relatively quickly and without much hassle, and which does its best to put experienced people against other experienced people and vice versa. It is possible for the match making system to relatively quickly calibrate your perceived skill, so "natural talents" or other games' veterans don't go through hundreds of "noob-stomps" as they progress through the system, unless they take certain steps to try to ensure that they do. Also, having thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of players doesn't exactly hurt the chances of there being more people with skill level equal to yours. The initial size of the playerbase has often been a concern when talking about matchmaking.
- While there are bots you can play with and against, the AI is activated in non-bot matches in only one instance I am aware of; a player leaving a novice (limited heroes) match in DOTA 2. In other cases, other steps are taken to try to balance the match if one team has a quitter/quitters. If the quitter(s) don't come back, players can even leave the game as they please without receiving a penalty, as the game may become a lot less interesting and fun at that point. Matchmaking stats will be recorded though, to prevent abuse.
- Due to the bigger playerbase, there are also more tournaments, more people streaming the game, more people talking about it, etc. You may think "So what? Yeah they're big." but a thing like this is like free marketing; you can reach millions of people with an expensive advertising campaign and have a lot of them buy the game, but you an also reach millions of people with active streamers and popular ESports events and tournaments, and that can have an effect not completely unlike having a constant, very expensive marketing campaign going on.
- In turn, in my experience bigger communities are on average less friendly. This has not prevented many games from being long-term hits, though. LoL, DOTA, Counter-strike, need I say more?
- Most MOBAs are free to play, which makes it relatively low-risk to try them out as a new player. However, they also usually have large enough player bases and development teams/companies to support the free-to-play model well, and the MOBA genre was already relatively popular and well-established before F2P became a widespread thing.
- While there are progression systems in both MOBAs (such as levels, masteries, runes, etc.) and in Guns of Icarus (class levels through achievements), the Guns of Icarus progression system could (and has) been improved a bit. A sense of progression is usually a pretty good incentive for players to keep on playing. A lot of new people still ask "how do I level up" in the game, too. Maybe you could have a small text "Number of achievements required to level up your class: x" in the performance sheet?
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