Concerning Player Retention and Realism

[Mattilald Anguisad]

In a first person shooter, even a fresh new player can headshot a veteran. Getting the jump on someone is good, but less important given the quick reaction rates possible. Both players can turn just as quickly (ignoring sensitivity).
In a MOBA, a more advanced player will naturally have the advantage, but can still be taken out by a poor move/stroke of luck.

This is where the theory is wrong. The correct analogy in MOBAs would be a noob tream gatting a teamkill/ace on veteran team - and it's not going to happen.

[Schwerbelastung]

In a first person shooter, even a fresh new player can headshot a veteran. Getting the jump on someone is good, but less important given the quick reaction rates possible. Both players can turn just as quickly (ignoring sensitivity).
In a MOBA, a more advanced player will naturally have the advantage, but can still be taken out by a poor move/stroke of luck.

This is where the theory is wrong. The correct analogy in MOBAs would be a noob tream gatting a teamkill/ace on veteran team - and it's not going to happen.

I'm not quite convinced that the analogy has major flaws. In a FPS, say, Counter-Strike, you have 2 teams (for the sake of the argument, 5v5) trying to kill each other. Same for MOBAs.

In Counter-Strike, you can kill one experienced member of the enemy team with a well-placed shot or a stroke of luck.
In a MOBA, you can kill one experienced member of the enemy team with a well-placed spell or a stroke of luck.

In both games, killing an experienced member of the enemy team alone is not only possible, but also very satisfying. And as described before, this is not the same as winning or losing the whole match.

In GoIO, you have 2 teams trying to kill each other. One inexperienced member (captain), or ship, has a very low possibility (as described by redria above) of killing an experienced member (a ship) of the enemy team.

[Piemanlives]

But that's also kind of where the differences show between GOIO and games like a MOBA or CS. While MOBAS and CS are both semi team based games, an individual can in fact carry the entire team, and while there are certainly elements of teamwork in both, a team on GOIO is 2-4 ships depending on map and game mode, each ship is a team in of itself. If just one person on a ship is not doing their job properly it affects not only their ship, but also their ally ship. A 1v1 in GOIO is described as 1 ship against the other, however it isn't just one person flying those ships, but rather crew versus crew in which they must decided what they should repair or what guns to focus on or fire with.

What am I trying to say here exactly? Essentially, in games like CS or a MOBA type game a player can go and lonewolf it and come out victorious, sure in both you're placed in a team however you can effectively do your own thing as long as you're doing it correctly. GOIO is certainly more team focused then the previous two, of course you can hop into a lobby alone and play a few rounds like that, however EVERYTHING you do affects the flotilla as a whole, you can royally mess up in CS or a MOBA and your team can still win, while a mistimed repair can spell defeat or using the wrong ammo can extend combat and put you in a bad place.

[Omniraptor]

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.

[Piemanlives]

I have to agree with Omniraptor, further building on this the essence of this community is in fact built upon the precedent that the game has provided, and that is you must work together in order to achieve victory. While sure we've had our fair share of arguments and the like, but the GOIO community is on average much more friendly than other games. In a podcast I was watching they were discussing Dark Souls II, using the covenant system as an example, the game calls the blue covenant the Covenant of the Meek, basically insulting anyone who joins it due to the fact that they don't want to PvP.

[Schwerbelastung]

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.

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]

"EVERY ship needs a buff hammer"

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Coded Retention Idea

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.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Coded Retention Idea
I think it's a horrible idea. I want to be free to pilot any ship, and same goes for our clan. We regularly rotate thru difirent ships and difirent tactics, and geting locked to random selectgion of 2 ships would probably make us all quit Goio.

Also killing a ship is NOT like killing a player in a moba. it's like killing entire team of players in moba. A ship is not a player it's a small team of 4 players. Team size in MOBA's is either 3,4 or 5 players (Twisted Treeline in LoL, Bloodline champions, Defense of the Ancients map in any DotA style MOBA, respectively). Killing 1 ship means a team of 4 or 8 players beating entire team of 4 enemy players. That means all 4 experienced players making more errors at the same time as 4 inexperienced players do correctly. Assuming you could get a pro team to play against teams of noobs in LoL (lol is so far the only MOBA with serious pro circut), how often do you thin you'd get a team of newbies score an Ace against the pro team? Never. That is exact same as expecting a team od newbies take on a competitive team in Goio and kill a ship. Pro LoL players know when to engage, have insane skills and insane map awareness. Newbies might get some kills, but that is almost like loosing a baloon or an engine or a gun in Goio - it's something you can recover from even in competitive matches.

[-Mad Maverick-]

not to mention with only 50 players on at any given time getting a lobby going is already hard enough without worrying about if there are enough of a given faction online to even field a full boat (e.g. 40 of on faction and only 10 of another)

[Schwerbelastung]

Also killing a ship is NOT like killing a player in a moba. it's like killing entire team of players in moba. A ship is not a player it's a small team of 4 players. Team size in MOBA's is either 3,4 or 5 players (Twisted Treeline in LoL, Bloodline champions, Defense of the Ancients map in any DotA style MOBA, respectively). Killing 1 ship means a team of 4 or 8 players beating entire team of 4 enemy players. That means all 4 experienced players making more errors at the same time as 4 inexperienced players do correctly. Assuming you could get a pro team to play against teams of noobs in LoL (lol is so far the only MOBA with serious pro circut), how often do you thin you'd get a team of newbies score an Ace against the pro team? Never. That is exact same as expecting a team od newbies take on a competitive team in Goio and kill a ship. Pro LoL players know when to engage, have insane skills and insane map awareness. Newbies might get some kills, but that is almost like loosing a baloon or an engine or a gun in Goio - it's something you can recover from even in competitive matches.

I feel I may not have explained myself correctly when I was making these analogies.

First of all, I detailed in my very first post that the two games (or actually, a game and two gaming genres) can not be compared directly in many respects. An analogy is flawed by definition; if it wasn't, it would no longer be an analogy, but the very thing it was being used to describe. I could have chosen a game that more accurately depicts teamwork between two units within a same team, such as Artemis space ship simulator, but that game is unknown to a lot of people so I had to choose the lesser of two evils and make my analogy based on a game/genre that was more widely known, yet didn't perfectly capture the teamplay aspect of GoIO.

My reasoning for choosing the two gaming genres was threefold;

• The genres were widely enough known so people could get an idea what I was talking about.
• There are enough similarities in the games to compare some things. For instance, if my friend says he would like a multiplayer team game where he can either play together with his friends or alone, I could ask him to try out all the three games/genres; DoTA/LoL/MOBAs, CS/team FPS games, and GoIO. In all 3 games, he would be a newbie. However, the experience he would get in these games as a newbie would be very different depending on which game he would like to try out. Apparently the two games/genres have succeeded in having players keep playing them after starting, whereas there are statistics to show that GoIO might have some problems in this regard. I'm trying to find out peoples' opinions on why they seem to be better at this than GoIO and am trying to present some arguments of my own.
• Both/all games are bought and played mainly by individuals, and it would be unrealistic to expect the majority of the newcomers to work well within a team, especially if they join games where the player experience levels vary wildly and they are not aware of core game mechanics.

Basically, the key similarities as far as this thread's intent (in regards to my OP) is concerned are as follows;

• Both/all games still attract new players today
• Both/all games are more or less team oriented
• Both/all games are played with the intention of having fun

The key differences, respectively;

• Both/all games have different levels of player retention, for various reasons
• Both/all games have different ways in which a new player can realistically expect to experience satisfaction/get a feeling of success
• Both/all games have new players experience different amounts of fun, for various reasons

Remember that I have been both a newbie and an experienced player in all these games/genres, like many others of us. As a newbie, I had a significantly harder time of getting into GoIO and the 4 real life friends of mine have all but given up on the game for reasons I've described in this thread - and yet, they all have tested out and kept playing MOBAs and team oriented FPS games. I'm not a statistician by profession but I understand 5 people is not enough to make a reliable statistic. However, it is an anecdote that seems to somewhat support some other peoples' comments and research about player retention in GoIO.

I believe we can all agree that GoIO as a game will live longer if Muse succeeds in increasing its player retention. This thread is partially intended to potentially help them out with this, possibly giving them some ideas and opinions to work with.

[SirNotlag]

     Forcing people to become part of a group sounds like a very bad idea to me as, this decreases the number of people you can pair up with for matches and the community is so small it can't afford that.
    The best idea I can think of to increase player retention is actually the clans. This is a team based game so becoming part of a group is vital. Clans can teach new players all the tricks of the trade, and give them a group of players they can play with regularly.
GOI's current clan system is, for lack of a better term, pathetic! All it is, is a tag there are no systems to back it up in the game. Now I am no programmer or have any idea what Muses capabilities are so I have no idea how hard it is for them to upgrade and actually implement something, but from here I am just going to describe the clan system for a 3rd person shooter I used to play which was slightly different from the norm and something similar would go a long way in help GOI.
    Firstly the clans had their own pages you could browse in the game, there was a huge list of all the registered clans. The page had their name, and a brief line of description, list of all members, number of games played won/lost, and score and rank if they participated in the ranked matches.
Anyone could make a Clan too... well sort of it required at least 5 founding members I assume simply to stop everyone and their mothers from making a clan and overloading the database. But it was super simple click "create clan" fill out the info and name then select 4 people from your friends list not currently in Clans and bam! there you go new clan.
    The MOST unique thing about this clan system was probably the "request to join" I myself have never seen that in any other game. Anyway it worked just like a friend request send it to the clan and it would go to the clan leader and he could accept or deny. He clicks accept you're in, he clicks deny you'd get a message saying you got rejected. I never was a clan leader so I have no idea if these requests could become nonstop bombardment and be annoying as hell but systems could be put in place to limit that like making it so you can only request to join a specific clan once a week and only allowing one request pending so a person cant spam all clans in one sitting.

TOO LONG DID NOT READ!
Make an actual clan system! Important components being a clan list to browse and the ability to send requests to join a clan. 
I think this would help player retention specifically because clans teach those who join them and add a sense of belonging. This is a team based game so you need people to work with but from what I have seen a lot of people jump into this game alone with no friends and get frustrated then leave . The ability to allow them to request to join clans would allow them to work towards becoming part of a group quickly rather than the invitation only system which makes them feel excluded.

[Alistair MacBain]

Sidenote:
Muse once said they are working on a clan feature. Will take a while till its finished due to coop and adventure but its being worked on.