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Brainstorming to improve the retention rate


Tiberius
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Approximately 1 in 30 new players stay and play the game after registering. With the vast majority of new projects/suggestions focused more on the long time players, I wanted to see if we could brainstorm ideas/suggestions on how we can improve the retention rate of new players. If you have an idea/suggestion post below and I'll add it to the OP as a bullet point. We can then look into the idea/suggestion further and develop it into a game suggestion.

  • Share alliance guides | FAQ | Common Knowledge 
  • Allow players to add more Roleplay content to their Nations: Factbooks, dispatches, articles.
  • Integrate offsite communities into on site communities. In-built forums, live chat, newsletters etc.
  • Admin to increase marketing/advertisement of the game
  • Better advertisement of current RP mechancis, such as the factbook, forums RP'ing
  • Informative article on IC/OOC seperation. Good behaviour/bad behaviour, better enforcement on IC/OOC areas on the forums.
  • More game content, more things for players to do. Themed game events as an idea, NS has Z-Day etc. Look at mechanics and events that need global co-ordination and teamwork.
  • Improve the mobile app, mobile gaming is huge and we should absolutely target this as a way to grow the game.
  • Add new resources, new improvements etc
  • Improve the information available to players (Formulas, best building practices) less guessing. Players should not have to join alliances to learn how to play the game efficiently. 
  • Bonuses for joining alliances, encourage people to get involved in the wider community.
  • Increase game dev staff to get more updates
Edited by Tiberius
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16 minutes ago, Flanderlion said:

I still thought dispatches was the way to go, allow nations to make factbooks etc. and let them RP better. Also better guides for new players/easy builds to follow etc.

Factbooks already exist ingame. I actually didn't know they did for like 18 months, so they should be advertised better.

 

To OP: Step one would be to actually increase the number of people coming in. Word of Mouth just is not sustaining population anymore, regardless of whatever might be the cause of that. 

 

Past that, reviving RP on a level above nation's might also work. Pretty much no alliance today really RPs itself at all, 

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Just now, Akuryo said:

Factbooks already exist ingame. I actually didn't know they did for like 18 months, so they should be advertised better.

 

To OP: Step one would be to actually increase the number of people coming in. Word of Mouth just is not sustaining population anymore, regardless of whatever might be the cause of that. 

 

Past that, reviving RP on a level above nation's might also work. Pretty much no alliance today really RPs itself at all, 

Ours does, but its more due to us combining our ns RP with our cn/pw's.

Huh, I actually never noticed. Looks good though, very comprehensive. When was it added? 

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19 minutes ago, Flanderlion said:

Ours does, but its more due to us combining our ns RP with our cn/pw's.

Huh, I actually never noticed. Looks good though, very comprehensive. When was it added? 

I have no clue and I don't think anyone else does either, we'd have to ask Alex. ?

Syndi kinda does, GOONS does too I'm told, but that's about it really that I know of.

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1 hour ago, Flanderlion said:

Huh, I actually never noticed. Looks good though, very comprehensive. When was it added? 

 

53 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

I have no clue and I don't think anyone else does either, we'd have to ask Alex.

It has been around for at least 4 years.

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

To the OP: I think some informative article (?) about separating IC from OOC would help people free themselves form real "hate" and let them enjoy the virtual one. I think a lot of new players don't really understand the real nature of being attacked or attacking others or their alliance being at war with others.

This is actually a problem with older players too anyway, so trying to have something that would fix that issue would be helpful. It would certainly reinforce the forums for example.

Edited by Ripper
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I enjoy the "political" suggestions as much as the next guy but @Alex here's some actual advice for improving your game:

1. You cannot stop or withhold content "for current players or whales" because you're trying to improve new player retention. Realistically you have a solid base of players, you want to do everything you can to retain them. Content is king when it comes to maintaining an attention span in the world of 2020 gaming. Not to mention, even new players need stuff to do once they actually register.

2. Advertisement and marketing are the only thing that will consistently bring in new players on an appropriate scale. You need to brand this game as a poliSim with roleplaying aspects. Start enforcing IC vs. OOC a little better in the IC forums, allowing RP to grow back into the community. There is an audience for Polisci nation building games. The RP, the community, the interaction: these are what makes PnW great. The game itself without the community interactions? Next to worthless. Play to your strengths.

3. Integration of the community into the game. You want ever single new player to get involved with the community as quickly and easily as possible. Forum accounts and game accounts should be merged, no one should ever have to register twice. There should be live chat options on the game website itself. Whether that's with a discord window or a "newsletter"-esque page where countries can publish articles, doesn't matter. The new player should be able to log in to their nation and SEE the community, not needing offsite forums or discords to get involved (at least not immediately, the idea is to hook them and then pull them deeper from there).

4. Mobile, mobile, mobile. The mobile app is paramount for gaining new players. Browser games are old-school, they're dying. PnW needs a larger emphasis on being a mobile-friendly game. The new changes recently were a beautiful first step.

 

These four areas alone will take up an inordinate amount of time and effort from a singular dev so I'll leave it at that. Overall, keep rocking Alex. I think you're doing a great job so far. It's really just a question of when you're going to expand your business to include other devs/staff and after that you'll be golden I think.

Edited by Bartholomew Roberts
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Guest Elijah Mikaelson

I think one of the biggest issues for me and I am sure others is the lack of content, 

1) We should be able to mine for water, fresh water would reduce disease rate and improve farms
2) Land has to be worth more, must have a bigger effect on the game, larger land bigger farms, more space for buildings, and when being attacked it should cost more gas therefore making it a defence options also
3) Got to make more content for what people call "whales"  if you are 1500 days old and ten cities well its most due to the fact you choice it, give people a chance to catch up but you should work more on upper tier projects making smaller nations wanting to get there. not kill off upper teir just to try and get new people at the risk of losing older members

Also, Improvements should not only need infra but land also, if each improvement cost 50 infra then it should cost 25 land, so if you wanted 10 improvements you would need to have 500 infra and 250 land.

This would have a massive effect on farming, right now a nation with 2.5k infra and 3k land can have 20 farms with 114% comms, image now that the Farms use all unused land, so if you have 30 improvements taking up 1500 infra and then 750 land, this means you can only farm 2250 of the land?

How can you farm land that has hospitals, hangers and such on them?

Edited by Elijah Mikaelson
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Better information is definitely a factor. Some things are explained well on the site and some are really not, and the wiki is spotty also. More things to do would be a big one as well. I enjoy my time here, but there is so little of substance to do to really flesh out the nations and have more ways to interact with other players.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/31/2020 at 5:46 AM, Tiberius said:
  • Improve the information available to players (Formulas, best building practices) less guessing. Players should not have to join alliances to learn how to play the game efficiently. 

Agreed. The initial presentation of information in-game with the objectives presented one at a time and the rewards for doing so is excellent. The issue is that it's just a basic overview and to really understand the game, you have to join an alliance for quality, in-depth guides. A new player has very little idea what alliance has the best resources for this, apart from picking one of the top ranked ones. Then they don't do know if the culture is a fit for them. Additionally, the amount of information to read and absorb is overwhelming to a newcomer.

Today's PnW looks a lot different than the one I left a few years ago. There are API keys, bots and scripts for game advantages that are utilized by those with the understanding of how to do so. This is intimidating for a new player who wants to be able to manage their nation efficiently but doesn't have access to these tools or understanding of how to use/create them. The answer should not be to join an alliance that does. It should be built into the game.

On 1/31/2020 at 5:46 AM, Tiberius said:
  • Improve the mobile app, mobile gaming is huge and we should absolutely target this as a way to grow the game.

I haven't even seen the mobile app. It's not available in the Apple Store although there's a link to it on the main game page. But, the game website needs to be better optimized for mobile. Part of it seems to be but then, for example, if I go to one of my cities, I have to slide the page around to see all of the improvements.

On 1/31/2020 at 5:46 AM, Tiberius said:
  • Integrate offsite communities into on site communities. In-built forums, live chat, newsletters etc.

I don't know how well this would work, but I will say that communities are all over the place now. Alliance forums have always existed, as well as live chat. It used to be that everyone used IRC. There was the game channel and alliances had their own channels, but you were all on the same server and could hop around between channels in one place. Discord has replaced IRC as the most prevalent client now, but my alliance uses Slack, for example. So now I need to be in Slack and Discord. Other alliances may use one or both of these, or maybe they use another alternative. I can't keep up.

 

Another issue I see with new player retention is simply a fault in the design of the game. You begin protected for a couple of weeks but then if you don't join an alliance, you will be raided out of the game. I'm not advocating peace mode for tenured nations, but why not allow new nations to remain on beige until their ready to come out? After the initial 2 weeks, you could penalize their growth a bit or limit improvements (there's a wide variety of options to make this feasible) so that they're encouraged to find an alliance and leave beige but not force them to do so.

Lastly, the war system definitely needs to be tweaked. I'm glad this discussion on military changes has been started. I know the game has survived for just over 6 years and that's a testament to the dedication Alex has put into it, as well as the player support for it. But that doesn't mean the current trajectory is sustainable. War is the pulse of this game. It needs some work.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello folks. Being very new here, 3 days now I like alot of the ideas coming up here. For me its finding helpful info for us new players. I find it pretty limited, and the same vague info repeated. I do agree with the idea of "more" to do i game. It seems like alot of time, especially as a new player is spent waiting.
So far, I am enjoying it, as I learn and pick up more information. Its a nice change from playing Torn for the last 2 years now.
Cheers all!

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12 minutes ago, Rummy said:

It seems like alot of time, especially as a new player is spent waiting.

The whole game is spent waiting, however as a new player, there are a lot of unaligned nations you can raid and surely your alliance would allow/recommend doing such.

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Look up to the sky above~

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- Make an IOS app available in the U.S 

- add all updates to the Google play and ios store (last google play update shown is from 2017) 

- community advertising in other games , web fourms , social media , etc. Show the game off 

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16 hours ago, Grave said:

- Make an IOS app available in the U.S 

- add all updates to the Google play and ios store (last google play update shown is from 2017) 

- community advertising in other games , web fourms , social media , etc. Show the game off 

The app doesn't exist anymore. It's been removed from everything by flood negative reviews and what not.

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  • 1 month later...

1 examples?

2 how do these differing food types affect gameplay specifically? what are the costs and benefits of each?

4a see 2

3 see 4

4b see 3 ..... they dont exist below city 10 because they are too easy to raid and the cost of getting there is too high compared to how easy it is to reset that progress

5 sure

to conclude yes things can easily be added for roleplaying value fairly easily but newer mechanics take more thought than just regurgitating real world systems

there is only so much dev time and increasing complexity at this scale will take alot of it >_<

there is no holy trinity in this game it is economics and humans will minmax everything over time... wich is the reason for your alliances homogeneous builds

2k and 2.8k at 10 cities are not the appropriate builds neither is 2k land 😕

i appreciate the energy tho keep it up

also i recommend continuing raiding for much longer if you are actually decent at it since you make more raiding per day than one would passively... like enough for both city plans and the cities to get to say.... 20

rawr

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