Concerning Player Retention and Realism

[redria]

Maybe I missed something when I (totally didn't) read the 3 OPs, but I didn't think stats were the main factor in player retention?
Either way, since the topic is up, I would love to see a variety of stats. It would tell so much more about how things went.
For instance...
Damage dealt to balloons
Damage dealt to armor
Damage dealt to hull
Damage dealt to components
Damage dealt by fires lit
Damage taken to *
etc.

This would be much more informative than "I destroyed some things". If you are shooting a gun the entire match, you quickly see where the major damage goes. New players would very quickly learn to shoot balloons with carronades, and armor with gatlings. Because after matches they would see that when they were just spraying, the dealt massive damage to armor. So next time aim at that.

Relating to the pop-up noises, it would be cool to see a point system put in place that does pretty much nothing, but lets you see what you can do.
Below or above your hotbar, have a line where notes pop up.
+10 destroyed enemy armor
+8 destroyed enemy gun
+2 repaired a component
+3 extinguished a fire
+15 destroyed an enemy
-20 destroyed allied (anything)
This would be similar to FPS style games where you get a score as the game progresses. What the score would mean is anybody's guess, but just the pop-ups would be gratifying.

Relating back to player retention though.
How often do people come back to the same game repeatedly for the same experience? Gaming is about experiencing something new. New content -> players come back for a taste. Most games don't hinge on getting you to buy and continue playing the game. Most games hinge on making other people like the game enough to convince you to buy it too. Companies get a good rep for offering new content that keeps players interested.
Indie games are sort of different. Most have bugs and continue to update as they progress. Still, we are in a unique situation where we are wanting to retain players and keep people around to play pvp simply because that is all we have. Most other games either have something else to fall back on, or have a hundred other games so similar that a player doesn't attach to a community, but the style of game. Players hop from game to game following whatever takes their interest at the time.
My grand point here is that as far as I know, the game is so unique and in such a strange place for player retention to even be an issue. I don't really have any solutions, but just consider how many games you played before you got to GoIO, and you never stuck to them like you do to this. Player retention feels like a problem, and may be a problem, but it is only natural, not an epidemic that lurks behind every update.
Just my 2 cents.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

I know how economics work. You want to have enough capacities that they are enough 90% of the time. Problem is that after last sale it took a month to get to decent (but not quite normal yet). Means that if there is no more sales that the goal has allready failed. Issue if you want to increase the player base you need to increase you capacitiesr - especialy if you allready have your capaciaties 90% full.

[Imagine]

I know how economics work. You want to have enough capacities that they are enough 90% of the time. Problem is that after last sale it took a month to get to decent (but not quite normal yet). Means that if there is no more sales that the goal has allready failed. Issue if you want to increase the player base you need to increase you capacitiesr - especialy if you allready have your capaciaties 90% full.

Do you actually have numbers to support this or just anecdotal lag evidence?

(No sarcasm here, actually curious)

[Schwerbelastung]

I know how economics work. You want to have enough capacities that they are enough 90% of the time. Problem is that after last sale it took a month to get to decent (but not quite normal yet). Means that if there is no more sales that the goal has allready failed. Issue if you want to increase the player base you need to increase you capacitiesr - especialy if you allready have your capaciaties 90% full.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you didn't know how economics work. What I was commenting on was your claim that Muse as a company should not worry about player retention right now, as I myself do think it's an important issue for any game developer, especially indie developers.

A lot of the recent server problems have, from what I've understood, been Steam's problems. So Valve would be to blame here, not Muse. I'm not sure how the server mechanics work - if there are "low priority" servers that "go down more often" or something, but my point is that I'm not certain whether the servers are 90% full (or even mostly full, necessarily).

However, there may be some issues with the netcode of the game, which does present its own difficulties. Sometimes a poorly coded piece of software performs very poorly regardless of the hardware it's being run on (and no, I'm not implying you do not know this) and as such this might be something Muse could look into. However, code optimization is usually a low priority when there are larger issues at hand - one of which, I would believe, has recently been matchmaking.

[Omniraptor]

I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.

Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!

[Schwerbelastung]

I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.

Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!

What if we didn't need to implement complicated algorithms, but just tracked the stuff that is calculated in the game anyway? A little like the game calculates the seconds you use helm tools, it could calculate the amount of damage you do to balloons, for instance.

In an ideal world, the captain would be able to judge their crew and say "well done" or "please focus more on repairing next time", but not only does this have the potential of getting a little personal in case of critiquing, it is also something a lot of people don't bother to do. So if you were suggesting that game statistics can be replaced by peer evaluation, I'm not confident that is a viable option. However, if you meant something else, please feel free to correct me.

And as to your other point; I don't think the commendation system works "just fine". People give commendations left and right because of challenges that are unlocked through them, and you cannot give a "thumbs up" to a player if he performed well in your game, if you had ever, just once, in your lifetime, given a thumbs up to that player. Even if it was when you were level 1 and didn't have any idea how the system worked. So when you say it could be improved upon, I fully agree.

Finally, I'm sure you know that there are games that have both: a commendation system more sophisticated than the one in GoIO, and a means to track your performance relative to other players in the game. And while more features does equal more coding, I personally wouldn't like to shoot down either possibility in this thread since chances are the devs will read this and make notes, just in case they do end up having the time to implement new features in the future.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Do you actually have numbers to support this or just anecdotal lag evidence?

(No sarcasm here, actually curious)

No I do not have access to the appropriate metrics.
Most of the Aerodrome even was a joke becouse servers were crapping themselfs and were going eoither slomo or dropping people more than magnitude 12 earthquake (no insult meant against TO, it wasn't their fault servers were that bad).
I'm still getting regular rubber banding even as a hull engineer - witch is abnomral operation of this game. I know internet connection is fine, becouse I don't get dropped frames when streaming anything - (normaly 0 droped frames at about 10k sent frames). And a lot of other people that have fiber optics like me, and don't normaly have problems with this game, have been complaining - in fact there is a whole topic about it, even if it was started when things started to sort of nromalise).

[Imagine]

Do you actually have numbers to support this or just anecdotal lag evidence?

(No sarcasm here, actually curious)

No I do not have access to the appropriate metrics.
Most of the Aerodrome even was a joke becouse servers were crapping themselfs and were going eoither slomo or dropping people more than magnitude 12 earthquake (no insult meant against TO, it wasn't their fault servers were that bad).
I'm still getting regular rubber banding even as a hull engineer - witch is abnomral operation of this game. I know internet connection is fine, becouse I don't get dropped frames when streaming anything - (normaly 0 droped frames at about 10k sent frames). And a lot of other people that have fiber optics like me, and don't normaly have problems with this game, have been complaining - in fact there is a whole topic about it, even if it was started when things started to sort of nromalise).

The point here being that amount of people on a server has no correlation with the lag effects. Yes, I'm pretty sure we all want the server to run smoothly, but you can't really say that the servers can't handle more people when the same issues are going on with less.

[snor-laxatives]

I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.

Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!

Didnt read much of the thread yet because of TLDR (im at work) but this stuck out.  If we want to take something good from Moba's, why not just take there idea with the commendation system.  Instead of giving a general thumbs for things varying from being a good team player, telling a good joke, or doing your job on ship, why dont we have commendations for "Fun to play with", "Helpful", "Good piolet/ gunner/ engie", etc.

[redria]

I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.

Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!

Didnt read much of the thread yet because of TLDR (im at work) but this stuck out.  If we want to take something good from Moba's, why not just take there idea with the commendation system.  Instead of giving a general thumbs for things varying from being a good team player, telling a good joke, or doing your job on ship, why dont we have commendations for "Fun to play with", "Helpful", "Good piolet/ gunner/ engie", etc.

The commendation system has long been broken. When I first started playing, my impression was that if someone didn't quit early, and wasn't literally the worst person/player you had ever seen, they get a commendation. I still do that. I wasn't aware that there was anyone who actually thought about the commendations they give.

[-Mad Maverick-]

i think accurate match making is important for player retention in fact as wise man once said

I think what we need to do is overhaul the entire matchmaking process.

every other game that is pvp and has a steep learning curve like HON or madden have a comprehensive ranking systems for each player.   these rankings are based on things like, games played, kdr, points scored, damage dealt etc.  A ranking system will help us make a match making system that would put players of similar rank together(or as closely ranked as possible).  without an accurate way of assessing skill levels we will always risk having players feeling in over their head.

the other nice thing about a ranking system other than allowing for accurate and useful match placement is that it gives players something to work toward.  players who have goals are players retained.

[-Mad Maverick-]

also, i am all about a peer ranking system.  e.g. a more comprehensive commendation system

[Schwerbelastung]

I don't see the point of trying to automate a player's performance rating when we already have a commendation system that works just fine. I'd say we work on improving that instead of trying to implement complicated stat tracking and performance-evaluation algorithms. A captain is the best judge of their crew, and vice versa.

Also the last thing we want is more UI clutter or stupid 'point' popups. +100 open the game!, +300 walk and chew gum!, +450 jump off the ship!

Didnt read much of the thread yet because of TLDR (im at work) but this stuck out.  If we want to take something good from Moba's, why not just take there idea with the commendation system.  Instead of giving a general thumbs for things varying from being a good team player, telling a good joke, or doing your job on ship, why dont we have commendations for "Fun to play with", "Helpful", "Good piolet/ gunner/ engie", etc.

The commendation system has long been broken. When I first started playing, my impression was that if someone didn't quit early, and wasn't literally the worst person/player you had ever seen, they get a commendation. I still do that. I wasn't aware that there was anyone who actually thought about the commendations they give.

I feel the same way. I brought up the idea of an improved commendations system a few weeks back in a fireside chat, but it didn't get a very thorough answer since I asked it almost at the end. I think the answer was something along the lines of "that's interesting, we'll look into it".

I'm not sure how hard it would be to improve the commendations system a little. I can think of 4 changes:

• Have, say, three buttons for different kinds of commendations. "Fun to play with", "Helpful", and "Skillful", maybe. This gives people more reasons to commend players, and the players a better view on why they are getting commended.
• Let players track the amount of the different commendations they get, possibly both right after the game and in long term.
• Remove the challenges that are related to giving and getting commendations. In my opionion, players' only incentive for giving a commendation should be that they honestly feel he or she deserved it. Anything else removes from the main purpose of giving a commendation - a compliment, in a sense.
• This is a small but in my eyes an important detail: In DOTA, you actually have to click on a player's name and the type of commendation he deserves to give him a commendation. It's not something you can just "do when the game is over and you want to do something with your mouse", if you catch my drift. You need to take that small extra step, which reduces the overall amount of commendations but at the same gives them more value: if you were commended, the player really did want to commend you.

[snor-laxatives]

• Remove the challenges that are related to giving and getting commendations. In my opionion, players' only incentive for giving a commendation should be that they honestly feel he or she deserved it. Anything else removes from the main purpose of giving a commendation - a compliment, in a sense.
• This is a small but in my eyes an important detail: In DOTA, you actually have to click on a player's name and the type of commendation he deserves to give him a commendation. It's not something you can just "do when the game is over and you want to do something with your mouse", if you catch my drift. You need to take that small extra step, which reduces the overall amount of commendations but at the same gives them more value: if you were commended, the player really did want to commend you.

<3

Yes please, I feel like a scrouge when I dont give a commendation because its become that thing you do after each match.

[redria]

I'm not sure how hard it would be to improve the commendations system a little. I can think of 4 changes:

Here's one:
You can only give 1 commendation each match, and you can give it to any player on any team, with no limits on commending a player more than once.

Notice you get mauled constantly from across the map by a lumberjack? Give that gunner a commendation.
Your engineer reads your mind and rebuilds exactly the right parts in the right order? Commendation.
Everyone in the match sucked and you had no fun? Commendation for the ground.
Er.... Don't give a commendation.

It would make you think a bit about who you are going to commend.