Thoughts: Playerbase size, growth and retention

[L-A]

Hi all,

Klemkin (with his well thought out post) got me thinking on the thread about RP vs PK.

Yes, I clearly like the PK side of playing and can RP. I don't like players thinking they are mutually exclusive (eg I want to RP not PK) and so on. However, this isn't a thread about that.

Klemkin pointed out that the game does change - and it is different to when I (and many others) started. One of my previous posts clearly made reference that the game is 'friendlier' than it used to be (examples would be adventurers, moderate tier, lockers, academy, clans etc). However, does this directly correlate do more players?

When we had a large pbase the game wasn't quite as 'friendly' - and maybe this was or wasn't a good thing. However, what got us that pbase and how did we keep it? We had it for a long time well before everything is as it is now.

Well, it certainly wasn't through having everyone not get full looted because a lot of that went on. Large cabal wars happened too - what those today call 'tag teams' is something that is just par for the course when multiple people from cabals are one. So that probably wasn't driving player away.

Since the game is now more friendly - has this caused players to leave - I don't believe so.

What I do remember is that we had a LOT of active voters - 'vote lag' was in during some of this time. Even when it was removed 'voting drives' happened a lot. I remember Virigoth promising 'coding rewards' with how far we were on TMS as it affected his motivation. We hit certain things and he coded cool stuff or finished things we wanted. Not great we had to be...persuaded but it did work.

I remember someone saying they dont know how we could get enough votes to compete with the other sites - however, I remember with a pbase around this size we could easily have 1000+ vote by this time of the month. 1000 - 1100 votes would put us in the top six at the moment on TMS.

So - I hypothesise:

Pbase growth, retention and so forth is linked more to players being active, voting so new players CAN find us. We already have the tools in place (lets face it, most experienced players don't slaughter newbies without a word spoken. They take the time to teach and advise along the way - if you're not doing this please forward me your character names and I can put the boot on the other foot and 'convince' you that its better you play ball with newer players. I may play hard and for keeps - but that doesn't mean I won't show anyone who is interested how to do the same) to keep players - I mean we have vampires, liches, crusaders, Watchers, Tribuanl (player run ciites). Cool equipment, staff are around, good things DO happen. We are a well established and ever evolving MUD. We do have a lot to offer - and we've retained new players this year because of it.

So, I'm going to show the nay-sayers how to get those stats - someone said that they'd donate if we could be up there for three months. This would be another thing we'd all gain by doing this - however, mostly we'd find new players and get the pbase growing which is what LOT of players seem to want at the moment:

Say we need 1100 votes at the moment - I count this to be the 15th day of the month. Each player can vote twice a day from one PC (some of us vote more but this is a bonus). So:

1100 votes by now is ~74 (1100 / 15) votes per day. With players voting twice at day that is 37 players voting twice a day and we'd be in sixth spot.

We do have this many people active in the game and on the forum. Go count the threads of how many different people reply, add the IMMs and yo'ud be surprised.

Not to mention a few of us can vote at home and work and get this number up.

So, who actually wants to find out if its voting that assists more than 'friendly' game measures?

Get your A into G and get the votes in. At the moment we have 216 votes leaving us in 19th place. This means we have a 7.2 people voting daily - that sounds like numbers the IMM Staff alone have achieved without any help from the pbase. Makes us look like a bunch of bludgers eh? We're all big on 'I want to help, I want to help' yet we can't click on a screen twice a day - some level of commitment form most of us who browse the forums more than that.

Vote now, vote often. For every player was gain that we can give a positive experience to we gain 60 votes (maybe more) per month. Gain five players and that's 300 votes a month - you see how close the stops from four through ten are at the end and tell me we can't be up in the top three or four like we used it.

L-A

PS - anyone who wants PK help my PM box, as always, is open :-)

[EyeSeeU]

We have 218 votes now and I always vote twice a day, even if I am not playing. Well said though my man. Lets just hope everyone will vote, I mean how hard is it to click on the link and then on vote for this site and enter?

[-Totenkopf-]

Well I am on iPhone at work so will keep it short. Years ago I never used to vote. I guess I was an ungrateful little twat. Now I do so daily. What I personally feel doesn't help with retention is the fact I feel my character cannot have any significant or lasting effect on the world around them. I grow bored and feel like my character is stagnating no matter how hard I try to spice things up. The character must be around 8 months old and over the last 6 months I feel I have accomplished little. A chat last night with anume makese feel like I might yet have opportunity to feel like I can make a contribution (whilst at the same time bringing me right back down to earth and killing my aspirations in another regard, doh)

this is what kills my motivation to play. I feel like I reach a plateau. I probably will not make another character as the satisfaction to time ratio I get just doesn't seem worth it. In the early days there was so much to learn and experience. This is still the case for new players so provided we can get them here I am sure they will stay. I have to agree that the cries of full loots and over aggressive vets are all garbage. Another biff I have is the topic under discussion. The lack of pb. In my time slot their is a severe lack of players. Some people even log off when I am around even though I wouldn't be after them anyway. This would destroy an otherwise useful rp experience. Anyway typing on this phone is quite cumbersome and I should be working anyway

[Grim_Reefer]

I vote religiously.

[mya]

It's praticaly impossible to vote twice a day, everyday.

Day has 24 hours, you can vote again after 12 hours.

If one second passes, your second vote keeps getting latter and latter.

Anyhow, i started voting at 9:00 and 21:00 . Ended up voting at 14:00 and 02:00. After that i decided to just vote once a day, 12 hours is to long of a window to vote twice.

[EyeSeeU]

Wake up early in the morning and vote before you go to work, then after you are home from work and have settled down hop back on before bedtime usually 12 hours have passed since you voted in the morning... *DING*! *ROCKET SCIENCE PEOPLE* It's AMAZING!

On a side note were moving up in the world... 18th place!

[L-A]

It's praticaly impossible to vote twice a day, everyday.

Day has 24 hours, you can vote again after 12 hours.

If one second passes, your second vote keeps getting latter and latter.

Anyhow, i started voting at 9:00 and 21:00 . Ended up voting at 14:00 and 02:00. After that i decided to just vote once a day, 12 hours is to long of a window to vote twice.

This is what I'm talking about - no one doing simple things because of some 'reason.' If you can only vote once then VOTE ONCE. Don't bring the 'reasons' why it won't work here - that isn't helping us, the IMMs the MUD or anything in any way, shape for form.

L-A

[Imoutgoodbye]

I figure since TMS resets at midnight, THEY allow voting once every twelve hours, aka there are windows instead of them having it set by when every person voted. I could be wrong, but if I'm wrong, I've only been voting once per day instead of the twice per day as I was believing.

[f0xx]

I figure since TMS resets at midnight' date=' THEY allow voting once every twelve hours, aka there are windows instead of them having it set by when every person voted. I could be wrong, but if I'm wrong, I've only been voting once per day instead of the twice per day as I was believing.[/quote']

Usually that is how most voting sites work. I believe that is the case here as well.

[klemkin]

Do you know what would be an interesting linear graph? The placements on the top 50 chart versus the average player number of the given time.

[Imoutgoodbye]

I almost forgot....how do you get 1/5th of a person?! Or do I not want to know?! :eek:

[L-A]

Grinding it out nicely for a late charge everyone. Let's keep it going - vote early, vote often!!!

Get into good habits and FL is on the charge next month- TOP 5 HERE WE COME!!!

L-A

[Mindflayer]

Just voted!

[L-A]

Vote early, vote often!!!

We've been slowly winding in that Star Wars MUD ahead of us - just five votes ahead and we really only got out chii together half wa through the month. Just goes to show FL really shouldn't be at ~18th on TMS.

I think we should manage around double the votes next month (assuming we mainly got ppl going from around 15th of this month....) which would rank us #11. A nice improvement. I do remember us being able to run in the top 10 so you never know - we might surprised ourselves!!!!

VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN!!!

L-A

[mya]

Do an interesting exercise:

Click on the "Member List" on top of this page.

Then on "Search Members", on the right. "Advanced Search".

Fill the field "Last Post" "Is after" with a somewhat close date.

I set it on 1 September.

Press enter to search.

Check this on the answer page:

"Showing results 1 to 30 of 91"

That means that on this Forum 91 members have been active since 1 Sep 2009.

Interesting, no ?

[Questioner]

Tell me Mya, did you purposefully spell "Knowledge" as "knoledge"?

And yeah, that is really interesting.

[jibber]

I vote every day, from my computer (when I get up) and when I get home from work. I also vote from my Blackberry phone which obviously has a different IP. SO that's 4 from me a day! Woohoo.