How to Truly Keep Novices

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Comments

  • One thing I've run into a lot both as a novice and as someone trying to help novices is that it seems like some players think that because there is a more intensive intro, they don't need to/aren't allowed to interact with novices until it's complete for some reason. Holy cow I really hope that's just some individuals being misguided. As someone not new to muds, but new to Achaea, it took me a solid hour to work through the Great Rock thing. I can't imagine someone fumbling through the basics for an hour without anyone speaking to them and being generally ignored.

    All the mechanical things in place for novices are great and all, but personal, meaningful, engaging interaction is so desperately important.

  • MelodieMelodie Port Saint Lucie, Florida

    I don't think talking to them is a bad thing, you just shouldn't be directing them to other tasks is all. When they're fresh from the intro, their intro should be their primary focus, as that's what it was created to do.

     

    Absolutely nothing wrong with interacting with a newbie and helping/encourage them during that, though!

    And I love too                                                                          Be still, my indelible friend
    That love soon might end                                                         You are unbreaking
    And be known in its aching                                                      Though quaking
    Shown in this shaking                                                             Though crazy
    Lately of my wasteland, baby                                                 That's just wasteland, baby
  • Hasar said:
    Give me a newbie with trans elementalism and crystalism, a mule, and I WILL MAKE THEM A GOD.

    Anything short of that, I use them as meatshields.

    Am I doing it right?
    Give them a web tattoo, and a list of people without buckawns (preferably enemies, but you might as well keep your allies on their toes too).
  • Hasar said:
    Give me a newbie with trans elementalism and crystalism, a mule, and I WILL MAKE THEM A GOD.

    Anything short of that, I use them as meatshields.

    Am I doing it right?

    Wait... why am I still a meat shield? WHY AM I NOT A GODDESS!? FU @HASAR! FU!


  • Halos said:
    Get drunk and touch the floor, @Saeva. Hasar will make you a goddess quick.
    Inappropriate. [-(
  • MelodieMelodie Port Saint Lucie, Florida
    @Halos - YOU GOAN DIE FOR THAT, EASTERN DWELLER. >:P

    DEATH IS COMING!
    And I love too                                                                          Be still, my indelible friend
    That love soon might end                                                         You are unbreaking
    And be known in its aching                                                      Though quaking
    Shown in this shaking                                                             Though crazy
    Lately of my wasteland, baby                                                 That's just wasteland, baby
  • one thing i can think of is the monthly promos wherein the prize is a small token, item or reward. a lot of the promos nowadays require purchases. the promos themselves are quite rewarding already, i admit, but not everyone can fork out money, and some just won't at all.
  • Tarkanian said:
    one thing i can think of is the monthly promos wherein the prize is a small token, item or reward. a lot of the promos nowadays require purchases. the promos themselves are quite rewarding already, i admit, but not everyone can fork out money, and some just won't at all.
    All of the monthly promos require purchases actually, because their only reason for existence is to stimulate credit purchases. Those credit purchases are 100% what keeps us alive.
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    What about the life enhancing auras or temporary xp bonuses for those people who work tirelessly to bring in and walk through new novices? Also, how would such a thing be tracked?


  • edited April 2014
    @Kresslack See my earlier post. We give credit bonuses to organizations (3% bonus on top of purchases to cities, 5% to Houses) for that exact reason, since there's no way for us as admin to track it/judge it reliably. Organizational leaders are in a far better position to do so - we just reward the organization based on its performance in encouraging credit buyers as a whole. If this isn't happening, it's a problem.

  • Sarapis said:
    Tarkanian said:
    one thing i can think of is the monthly promos wherein the prize is a small token, item or reward. a lot of the promos nowadays require purchases. the promos themselves are quite rewarding already, i admit, but not everyone can fork out money, and some just won't at all.
    All of the monthly promos require purchases actually, because their only reason for existence is to stimulate credit purchases. Those credit purchases are 100% what keeps us alive.
    sorry, i meant the one like, 21-log-ins-equal-small-prize-thing. or a lesson every 10 minutes, maximum of 10 lessons per RL day, which translates to nearly 52 credits every month.

    i know that RL credit purchases are needed, but it's the little things that make them stay, in my opinion.
  • Sarapis said:
    @Kresslack See my earlier post. We give credit bonuses to organizations (3% bonus on top of purchases to cities, 5% to Houses) for that exact reason, since there's no way for us as admin to track it/judge it reliably. Organizational leaders are in a far better position to do so - we just reward the organization based on its performance in encouraging credit buyers as a whole. If this isn't happening, it's a problem.

    Orgs (at least in my experience) aren't in the habit of handing out credits directly to reward people. They hold credit sales, and the higher your rank, the better the deal for you. While this does reward novice helpers (since in theory they are being favored for it and gaining ranks), it is an indirect way to do it.

    In addition, you need gold to buy sales credits, but every hour you spend helping newbies is one less hour to make that gold. The reward is not appropriate to the activity.

    This is one of those situations where we all agree things could be better, but no one has a workable solution.
  • I understand that the Admin are not in the best position to reward those who help. I just disagree that in game Admin's are all that much better at it.

    While I have not been an org leader for a long time I clearly remember when I was the difficultly and drama of being the person to hand out rewards. This is why the solution of just having credit sales at below market prices is done.

    I still think the person best able to know if someone was helpful is the new player themselves. Giving them access to a quick survey (one question plus the ability to have the feedback be anonymous) seems like an easy thing to do that would also give you a lot of data on who was best at retaining new players.

    Heck the person picked by the novice might not even be in their org. Like perhaps they wandered into Mhaldor and got such a rich and rewarding expeirnce of getting kicked out that they just had to keep playing.
  • Sarapis said:
    Tarkanian said:
    one thing i can think of is the monthly promos wherein the prize is a small token, item or reward. a lot of the promos nowadays require purchases. the promos themselves are quite rewarding already, i admit, but not everyone can fork out money, and some just won't at all.
    All of the monthly promos require purchases actually, because their only reason for existence is to stimulate credit purchases. Those credit purchases are 100% what keeps us alive.
    Honestly, the best monthly promo reward you guys have ever had (the pewter flagon on a chain) wasn't linked to credit purchases.

  • TharvisTharvis The Land of Beer and Chocolate!
    I liked the Altpromo, still have 100ish credits to randomly gift to people.
    In unrelated news, anybody with a character made after 2011 have 100 unbound credits they want to trade for bound credits?
    Aurora says, "Tharvis, why are you always breaking things?!"
    Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
    Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."

  • Feral said:

    I still think the person best able to know if someone was helpful is the new player themselves. Giving them access to a quick survey (one question plus the ability to have the feedback be anonymous) seems like an easy thing to do that would also give you a lot of data on who was best at retaining new players.

    Heck the person picked by the novice might not even be in their org. Like perhaps they wandered into Mhaldor and got such a rich and rewarding expeirnce of getting kicked out that they just had to keep playing.
    That'd be ideal if it were possible for us to distinguish alts from real newbies, but when you're talking any reward of real value, it will simply incent people to cheat on a dramatic scale with alts, and we don't really have any tools to deter that behavior.
  • edited April 2014
    Hmm, that's actually kind of an interesting idea @feral. I'll give it some pondering. It's not one we've ever discussed internally, and it has the major advantage of being very resistant to gaming the system. Thanks!
  • I would love some sort of high level improvement to city/house credits. Currently, they function as a stable path for advancement, and usually reward hunting, questing, and city/house rank over the myriad of roles that players can undertake to make their organization and the game as a whole a better place, which does include people who help novices, although I do feel like there are other roles that potentially go undervalued.

    I, of course, say this without having long-term alts in all of your cities, so maybe you guys do it better, but it's not like random Jackie McNewbieson will know to go to city X for a great introduction to the game.
  • Tvistor said:
    To be honest, I've had a really high novice retention rate, and the biggest reason the people that went dormant on me went dormant was Achaea is just too expensive to trans things on. Most people don't want to pull out a credit card on a new game (let alone a text-based game, since for a true newbie it's often their first), and when you quote them a number on what they would need to spend or how much they'd need to bash up, it's almost inevitable some people just stop caring within 24 hours.

    The game is often very 'eh' once you've gotten over that initial rush of 'Wow, everyone is in-character!' and you don't have all your class skills. You can't really try the PvP out since a lot of classes need tri-trans (+ horrific number of credits) ( + another 60 credits for SVO or whatever), when you do people reveal that Focus is pretty crucial ( + credits for Survival), then you find out you need tons of curatives ( + however much gold), then you --

    Oh, actually, I'm just going to play any other game/football.

    I'm about to go meet Berenene so I can't do the maths, but I think kitting out a low level character (assuming they won't want to bash for ages, because let's face it, they'll probably quit then too) costs as much as FIE-standard fencing gear.
    Yeah, all my friends are aware of Achaea's cost of entry, and are just utterly disinterested in it because of them. Not just the monetary expense, but the coding knowledge required turns off at least one person who's generally interested in roleplaying and would probably otherwise have a lot of fun with it. x:
  • TharvisTharvis The Land of Beer and Chocolate!
    @Tvistor there's bigger packages than the 200 credits one
    Aurora says, "Tharvis, why are you always breaking things?!"
    Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
    Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."

  • Let's pretend I was right though.
  • TharvisTharvis The Land of Beer and Chocolate!
    yeah, you're right though. The prices to trans three skills with real money are insane, and with the prices the ingame credit market is at, that could be called equally insane
    Aurora says, "Tharvis, why are you always breaking things?!"
    Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
    Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."

This discussion has been closed.