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Concerning Player Retention and Realism

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Schwerbelastung:

--- Quote from: Omniraptor on April 11, 2014, 01:48:17 am ---The flip side of this 'problem' is that a coordinated team who are individually unskilled will beat a team that's good but can't work together, which is as it should be. I don't think GOI's greater emphasis on teamwork is really a big problem, it's the core of the game and what sets it apart.

--- End quote ---

I agree. Having greater emphasis on teamwork sets GoIO apart from the other games, and in a good way. The same thing applies in many other team oriented games - flawless team coordination can and should beat individual experienced players. Because of this, individual performance - except maybe in the case of being a pilot/captain - has less of an impact in GoIO (as I've written several times in this thread), but this could be "balanced" through other means, some which I will point out later in this post.

I would still like to make a point that team coordination may not matter if one of the teams does not understand game mechanics well enough. This is especially true in the case of captains. A skilled captain with low level / AI crew with virtually no communication can relatively easily beat a well coordinated low level ship in 1v1 if the skilled captain knows how to use certain game mechanics to his or her advantage.

Note that I'm not saying the problem is in experienced people beating low levels, I'm saying this could be made less of a problem if low level players were more aware of game mechanics on average. In my OP I detailed some of the things I should have taken into account as a low level player, most of which I had more or less no idea of back when I was a low level. I believe during my 20'ish years of gaming, this is one of the few games where this is especially true.

Some of the main things I've personally argued in this thread are as follows;


* New players have a clear disadvantage against experienced players, and this is made worse because getting to understand the important game mechanics takes a relatively long time, especially compared to a lot of other games. This could be improved (and is being improved according to a dev) for example by improving the tutorials.
* While there is a lot of depth in this game, one of the problems concerning player retention might be that the game is not very good at giving immediate, obvious feedback. (Actually, possibly the only indication of this is the difference in hit markers - big/small, yellow/red. And even understanding this difference takes a lot of time for a new player who just hopped in a game.)
* Statistics and similar mechanics could allow for more interesting* gameplay, where you as an individual have a better chance of having fun and measuring your relative performance even if the rest of your crew/team is not communicating or doing very well.
*subjective

Omniraptor:
One thing we as players could do RIGHT NOW to make the game more accessible is make youtube guides detailing piloting basics like "don't meatgrind", "stay together", "focus on one target", "take cover to avoid getting sniped", "don't try to run if you're in a junker", "do your best to flank galleons" and lots of others.

Also general captaining basics, like "everyone should have a specific station", "everyone should be using proper tools", "EVERY ship needs a buff hammer", "call out important events such as enemy sightings or component breaks", "captain's job is not only to fly but also to manage their own ship".

Or we could make youtube videos detailing how/when to use specific weapons, and maybe similar guides for ships. Basically turn existing guides into videos with voiceover and pretty gameplay footage so they're more engaging (to certain players) than reading a wall of text. That way the info could reach players who would never bother reading anything on the forums, and if they had any questions there would be a link to the forum thread in the description.

redria:

--- Quote from: Omniraptor on April 11, 2014, 02:03:40 pm ---"EVERY ship needs a buff hammer"

--- End quote ---
Hades-artemis pyramidion I actually prefer no buff hammer. I like my balloon to be maintained for emergencies, and I don't think a buff hammer engineer can maintain my balloon well enough. Also, it needs a gunner for the hades.
Buff hammers extend into the realm of advanced gameplay. Focus on getting engineers to manage their areas properly before you start making them also handle something like buffing.

But that's besides the point.

I agree that our discussion should try to revolve around what we can/should do as players and a community. We can't control Muse, and they have their own ideas. We are best off trying to grow the game through community efforts.

That said, personally when I play a game, I like to learn it and find my place before I look at things online. Any sort of guide, be it video, text, hologram, whatever, is something I avoid in any game until I have my feet under me. Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like I would rather base my skill in experience and grow my abilities by learning tricks from others, than to learn through guides and gain experience only as someone who already knows the community tricks.
I don't think any guide outside of the game will help keep new players. I think that in order to keep a new player, you have to get their interest through the game itself. Then their interest might grow as the connect to the community.

So while video tutorials would be beneficial for mid skill players looking to improve, I think that we first have to keep them around long enough to care.

To get a new player's attention, we must assume several things

Assumptions

* They are not yet interested in actively training/learning - only in playing the game
* They will not look at the tutorials since tutorials are not required - better to learn through experience
* They will not be prepared for the coordination needed to maintain a ship and a team
Working around this set of assumptions, what can we, as a small group of players active in the forums, do to make players more interested in sticking around and improving?

--------------------------------------------------------------------

In a completely different direction, I had an idea that would require Muse support, but would be interesting.

Coded Retention Idea

Brand all players into one of the factions immediately. Your faction is displayed.
Factions may have allied factions. These are shown publicly in game.
Muse controls the alliances, shifting them about to keep things varied.
You may only play on ships with people of your faction/allied factions.
You may change factions on a limited basis. Start with 2 free changes. Max of 2 changes storage. Every week you are given a free faction change.
If your faction wins a game, any game, your faction gets one point towards a public leader board. Games with players from allied factions gives a point to both factions.
Clans are part of a faction.

The idea here is that instead of throwing new players into a bunch of random lobbies and hoping they figure out community themselves, we push them to get to know their faction. If one of the strongest parts of the game is the community, and the only way to discover that is by playing long enough to wander into one of the fun lobbies, then we are missing an opportunity. Give players an incentive to bond. Give them common enemies.
My basis for this is the factions in WoW. I know nothing about them, and have never played the game, but I know players get spirited about the distinction. Maybe that isn't the direction we want to go, but it would add an interesting facet to the game.

Clans each being part of an individual faction, with factions shown on the leader board, would give clans an incentive to more actively educate new players instead of just "go play the tutorial please", since the clans would want their faction to do well. See a player in your faction that is terrible? Get them on your ship and make them not terrible so your faction does better.

Schwerbelastung:

--- Quote from: redria on April 11, 2014, 03:17:03 pm ---I agree that our discussion should try to revolve around what we can/should do as players and a community. We can't control Muse, and they have their own ideas. We are best off trying to grow the game through community efforts.
--- End quote ---

I disagree. While we can't control Muse, they have repeatedly shown that they do appreciate our input, and as such I would personally refrain from recommending that people only concentrate around community efforts. I believe this thread could be a healthy place for both dev suggestions and community effort talk, as sometimes the two can be intertwined (i.e. the tutorials issue). You have also posted a dev suggestion in this very post, as I'm sure you're aware. :)




--- Quote from: redria on April 11, 2014, 03:17:03 pm ---I don't think any guide outside of the game will help keep new players. I think that in order to keep a new player, you have to get their interest through the game itself. Then their interest might grow as the connect to the community.
--- End quote ---

I agree. I've been thinking of doing these so-called video tutorials, but I feel a lot of the effort would be wasted if people were expected to find the videos from some thread on the game forums. Even if there will be a direct link on the new UI to the forums. It needs to be more obvious to new players in order for most of them to be able to see it before either getting bored of the game or figuring it out for themselves.




--- Quote from: redria on April 11, 2014, 03:17:03 pm ---In a completely different direction, I had an idea that would require Muse support, but would be interesting.

Coded Retention Idea

--- End quote ---

While it is an interesting idea, I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. One of the main reasons people get "attached" to their faction in WoW is that both of them have very unique storylines and areas that the players actually play through during the game. Maps/areas, npcs, quests, even instances/dungeons and bosses. Not only that, the faction system is very easy to understand. There are only two main factions as far as the average player is concerned. Each one consisting of an alliance of subfactions, which basically never change.

You can change your faction (though this was only introduced years after the launch) but you will usually not need to do this, and if you do, you need to do it on the website of the game (and pay actual money for it, since it's a really big deal). The factions cannot communicate with each other either, as they do not speak a common tongue. This is in my opinion key in the "us vs them" thing. People found ways to circumvent the "communication block" during the initial launch by using ASCII characters, but this was very quickly fixed. The factions can basically only communicate with each other through emotes and very basic words (I believe the word "lol" has a fixed translation, so someone who learns it from context or from others will recognize it, for example).

Also, in WoW, if you see an enemy, he will still be your enemy 2 weeks from now. There are several, and I mean several nuances, and a huge amount of lore behind the factions, but the key thing is, you don't need to know anything else than "we're us, they're them, red is dead on PvP servers" to do well.

Simplicity is key here. Your suggestion sounds quite interesting, but I'm afraid a lot of the people would just get more or less confused by it. Heck, we even have players confused about the wanted/bounty hunter system, and that's pretty simplistic.

Piemanlives:
While I certainly agree that we need a more simplistic faction system, I do note that it should be complex enough to make it interesting, how we go about and do that is unknown to me at this moment.

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