mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 9, 2019 20:25:33 GMT -5
A couple of days ago, a new GDB account made a single post and never posted again. That player was Hanyo, and their post was titled "New Player will not be Returning".
The responses were, at best, an attempt at encouraging the player to stick around, and at worst, a revelation of the Armageddon community's desperation when it comes to its player retention crisis. I'm not going to break down each reply here. But I do want to draw some attention to the main cause of bad player retention: a general inability to empathize.
To be clear, there are posters who empathized with the new player. In fact, most players were sympathetic and empathetic. But many players also showed an inability to commiserate with the newbie on their newfound grief. I'll pick out a few choice replies and go from best to worst.
By Night Queen:
This is a good post because it brings up some possible root causes for why newbies suffer from needless death and flee the game, and proposes some kind of solution to that problem (if it exists).
A piece of one reply by mansa:
The new player made their intentions clear: they intend to leave the game behind after their bad experience. Telling the new player to do something else beyond that is insensitive; between the lines, the new player can read this reply and see that they're being told that they're wrong and that they're having a knee-jerk reaction. After all, mansa only outlined two options for the new player and neither of them include walking away from the game forever. It would have been better to propose the break from the game and suggest reconsidering Armageddon if their search for a new MUD doesn't go well. As an aside, mansa is usually good at reaching out to new players and was mentioned positively by Kaitrena (the most recent Shalooonsh accuser) so this isn't an attack on him, but perhaps he'll read this and improve.
By heade:
In other words, "Back in my day, we had to walk uphill both ways and we liked it." This kind of thing is used in kids' cartoons to portray an unsympathetic elderly character. This is not sympathetic at all, and newbies who have been on your game for a week don't care how hard the game was 15 years ago.
By Lizzie:
In other words, the newbie is completely wrong and/or doesn't know what they're talking about. This is how to be completely unsympathetic.
Armageddon has a lot of problems, to be sure, and one of its biggest problems is new player retention. There are a lot of conditions for the game to resolve before it can retain more than a negligible amount of new players per year, but it can start by addressing how to be empathetic as a community and leave the cruelty and apathy IC, where it belongs. Right now, the way staff and many players treat newbies is at its absolute lowest. This year there were a few accusations of harassment, and there were a few last year as well. Armageddon can only do better than it's currently doing. If it refuses to address these issues, another community will outpace it and retain the players Armageddon is losing.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2019 1:17:49 GMT -5
Not sure where balthas are loading these days, but they used to be fairly uncommon and inaccessible. Weird for a newbie to reference them.
If they’re a new player and started in Luir’s against recommendations, maybe she/he shouldn’t be surprised that they got ganked.
Of course, I suppose it’s feasible that they read about balthas in the helpfiles, but, still, kinda strange.
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jkarr
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Post by jkarr on Dec 10, 2019 2:35:44 GMT -5
Not sure where balthas are loading these days, but they used to be fairly uncommon and inaccessible. Weird for a newbie to reference them. If they’re a new player and started in Luir’s against recommendations, maybe she/he shouldn’t be surprised that they got ganked. Of course, I suppose it’s feasible that they read about balthas in the helpfiles, but, still, kinda strange. u know u play more arm than star wars when u put an l where the n is and think theyre talking about a whole different creature lol the newbie was referencing shit from these guys  |
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ShaLeah
Clueless newb
Sooth Saying & Seeking Clueless Vet
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Post by ShaLeah on Dec 10, 2019 7:14:53 GMT -5
Posts like that one always come across as "cries for help" to me. Why make a forum handle and wait to get approved just to say fuck this place? It's the same with the "I quit" posts. Every person I see that's made one of those is back at some point or another.
Consequently...
If what the OP needs is to be validated and shown appreciation then those replies may help them.
I maintain that Armageddon (or any other game) should not attempt to keep every player that tries it.
It's too intricate to be like WoW and attract that amount of playerbase.
The right ones stay.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 10, 2019 7:56:12 GMT -5
If I had to explain my overarching point in one short paragraph, it would be this:
Most players leave the game silently. It's rare that people don't leave the game silently on a permanent basis. When people do leave permanently, though, and post about it, it's an incredibly rare learning opportunity. But players tend to waste that opportunity by trying to retain the player that already appears committed to leave instead of seeing how they can change the game and do better at keeping the next person that comes around. Maybe Hanyo was a lost cause but the more players pretend there aren't serious problems with Armageddon, the more the playerbase will shrink.
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punished ppurg
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Post by punished ppurg on Dec 10, 2019 13:25:43 GMT -5
"The game is not meant to be balanced!" is the charlatan's translation of, "We don't have the ability to design a meritorious game." Let us not mince words. Armageddon has not surmounted these issues because the staff just are not good enough to. After some thought, I have sorted everyone into three baskets. Some are decent coders without any drive to create something meaningful: their drive was sapped by the sheer amount of busywork the rest of the team has constructed for themselves in order to maintain the appearance of activity. Some, like Looonsh, only trundle on because their bipolar "plots" interrupt the utter stagnation of the other staff non-actors: their abysmal communication skills and gaslighting, sociopathic terminology ("that player was stalking me!") is written off as cooky and wacky! And then (the most deleterious) are the Animal Farm pigs in the image of nessalin; what with their immense, dead weight smothering the drive and creativity of everyone below. What a game Armageddon could be with all of the 1, and none of the 2 or the 3.
I asked the other day why there hasn't been some sort of mentornet system added to the game as a resource for newbies to talk in-game with oldbies. I was told, "Policy reasons." It's policy not to implement good ideas that other MUDs have in helping player retention? That's a big think from me.
When a newbie plays Armageddon, they see the clunky skilling system. They see the nonsensical database of guessing that is the crafting mechanic. They see the curtain of karma for the privileged — used more in the Soviet sense of a public opinion censor. And if they play long enough, they hear the conflicting tales of "favored" players acting like turboshits — and getting away with it: especially if the newbie has been crucified for much less. Some choose to internalize the environment and regurgitate it: for the sake of karma, mostly. Some choose to voice their disapproval of an objectively subpar system: this GDB thread shows such a case. Judging by the player retention numbers calculated over the years, the vast, overwhelming majority choose to stop playing. They may not voice their disapproval to the GDB; after all, what would they accomplish? But out in the world, Armageddon becomes synonymous with these rotten-to-the-bone conditions. The notoriety of this poor design only grows when every newbie cuts their losses; as all their friends will now know the warning story. High expectations laid low by sheer incompetency — the Swan Song of the last RPI.
That being said, this is the most unfettered criticism I've ever seen expressed on the GDB in 2019. Take note, charlatans. You can certainly dismiss these complaints, unfocused as they might appear, as frustrative grumblings of the newbie — too green to truly appreciate the fart-sniffing aroma of Murder, Corruption, Betrayal. However! Wholly rejecting this feedback is a mistake. A better game can be made than what Armageddon is right now.
Some snippets of GDB outrage:
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Post by gloryhound on Dec 11, 2019 9:29:27 GMT -5
I found another post, something like "a call for more people to play goodie two shoes", amusing.
It might as well have just been "a call for more victims to screw with". Here is a player, who, in my impression, is getting frustrated because everyone is a miscreant now trying to screw with everyone else, leaving him with less opportunity to do the same and to derail any positive thing some character is trying to accomplish.
Only a naive player would try to accomplish something positive in the game (i.e. be an achiever). But not everyone wants to PK-or-be-PKed/ImmKed over and over. So it's inevitable that a lot of prospective players (and tired players) will reject the game.
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Dec 11, 2019 9:59:31 GMT -5
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 11, 2019 10:50:32 GMT -5
I found another post, something like "a call for more people to play goodie two shoes", amusing. It might as well have just been "a call for more victims to screw with". Here is a player, who, in my impression, is getting frustrated because everyone is a miscreant now trying to screw with everyone else, leaving him with less opportunity to do the same and to derail any positive thing some character is trying to accomplish. Only a naive player would try to accomplish something positive in the game (i.e. be an achiever). But not everyone wants to PK-or-be-PKed/ImmKed over and over. So it's inevitable that a lot of prospective players (and tired players) will reject the game. That post you referenced does have an air of self-interest to it. But I can't generally blame Armageddon players for not being able to comprehend objective morality as it exists in the game world and subjective morality for each individual within that game world (PCs, NPCs, and vNPCs), specifically because the presentation of morality is generally a muddled mix of juxtapositions. Take charity for example. It's safe to presume the "harsh world edgelord" position on charity is "don't take care of anyone but yourself". But there are beggars all over Allanak, particularly around the Arboretum (hopefully that place still exists), and they aren't going away. So clearly, their begging pays off at least somewhat: they're able to scrape together some food, water, and coins but they continue to persist in poverty. Of course, they're getting this food, water, and coin from the charitable vNPCs they're presumably begging from. The conclusion of any reasonable player is that Allanak supports both altruistic charity, extreme self-interest, and everything in between. Or slavery. The position on slavery is different from place to place. In Allanak, it's "slaves are the property of aristocrats and the wealthy and they are not to be messed with". People generally accept slavery as an institution and there haven't been any significant slave rebellions since Thrain Ironsword. Of course, Red Storm exists just south of Allanak, and it takes about 5 minutes to get there from Allanak if you can spam your way through the storm. In Red Storm, escaped slaves freely live and contribute to the economy. They're not seen as objects to be owned, but actual people with actual lives. It would be odd to play an abolitionist in Allanak just as much as it would be odd to play a slaver in Red Storm. Considering Allanak is much more powerful than Red Storm as a political and military entity, we're left to assume that Allanak prefers Red Storm to exist for some unknown, and likely unwritten, reason. The conclusion of any reasonable player is that Allanak both supports slavery and escaped slaves. No player really knows what it means to be a "good person" or a "bad person" in Zalanthas, and there are probably as many opinions on that as there are players. And that's probably how it should be, although ideally not because of mismanaged game world writing, but because of player ingenuity. It's unfortunate that ingenuity is often discouraged by the staff. |
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Post by sirra on Dec 11, 2019 11:47:21 GMT -5
This is kind've a silly thread.
In the grand scheme of things, Armageddon's problem with player retention has VERY little to do with newbies getting killed off.
In my experience, the sort've people who would drift away and stop playing regardless, were the ones who'd meet one drawback and buggered off. Armageddon was NEVER going to keep those guys.
Armageddon was great at capturing the people who took to the challenge of it. Which, really, is sort've most people drawn to this medium for entertainment anyways. As soon as they got mentored and had their first truly successful character, they were hooked and stayed around for years.
What drove the vast majority of people away from Armageddon was that for most of the last 15 years, the key staff decision makers have been stupid assholes.
That's it.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Dec 11, 2019 12:31:28 GMT -5
I don't think Armageddon's player retention problem has anything to do with newbies getting killed off - the vast majority of people who leave MUDs leave because there appears to be nothing to do in the game or the staff are actively assholes who push people away. The thread is more a commentary on how players react poorly to players who decide to leave the game and always seem to find a way to blame the player for his or her own bad experience with the game. Whether by saying you didn't try hard enough, or you got unlucky, or you just need to try again to see the game is actually good, etc. It betrays players' lack of trust in other players' accounts of their experiences.
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Jeshin
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Post by Jeshin on Dec 11, 2019 13:20:19 GMT -5
Player retention issues are rarely game specific and they are rarely staff centric.
NEW players tend to have barrier of entry be the cause of retention issues. If you've never played an RPI before the syntax, pacing, how things operate is different. Different means misunderstood and that means you can be like fuck it I'm going back to the DBZ mud or the Iron Realms MUD. NEW players also can be demotivated by significant setbacks. If they make a character then die within 72 hours (not played but creation) without understanding why or getting an idea of the setting that will likely cause a loss of player.
It is players who are transitioning from newbie to established or oldbies that leave due to systemic issues.
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sneazy
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Post by sneazy on Dec 11, 2019 15:07:46 GMT -5
Change the name to "A Masochist's Den" and they'll get the right kind of players.
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Post by lechuck on Dec 11, 2019 16:06:15 GMT -5
While this is certainly true, new players have no way of seeing this. They see two things:
1) Not a fucking thing is going on in the game
2) They get PKed at the drop of a hat
#2 is closely related to #1 but, again, new players can't be expected to have the perspective to see that connection. They make a character, they explore the game, and then they get PKed the very first time somebody can come up with some half-assed reason to do so. The reason that happens is that absolutely nothing is going on in the game, but that fact is not readily apparent to those who only just arrived. Newbies suffer the consequences of idiotic staff decicions without knowing it. Veterans adapt to idiotic staff decisions by shifting their focus onto wanton PKing because it's the only remaining way to feel relevant in the game.
That could be solved pretty handily if there was something to fucking do on ArmageddonMUD, but there isn't. People just linger and grind skills and wealth, and when they've done that for as long as they can stomach, they feel like they need to put that to use. With the total absence of story and metaplot, the only way to feel like four months of work was not a total waste is to smash some other player in the face with it. How many years has it been since there was a genuine HRPT that mattered and drove people to care about anything beyond their e-peens?
Staff has failed so astonishingly hard at moving this game forward that there's nothing left anymore than the pursuit of coded power. Compare this to the days when cities changed hands, rebels wrote history, and warcamps were established around valuable resources. Today's Armageddon provides nothing for players to give a shit about except how powerful their own characters can become, and the only real way to measure such a thing is your kill score. At the end of the day, players did not bring the game into this state. They just reacted to it.
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Post by shakes on Dec 11, 2019 17:33:19 GMT -5
It's a connection issue.
Your connections to other people are what matters.
Increasingly, the positions of power are encamping and fortifying themselves ... the Templar recruits OOC his OOC buddies to become aides, fill other important positions, etc. It's become largely that almost everything in the game is becoming OOC drive, not IC driven.
To a newbie trying to step into this ... you're going to hit the limited "fun ceiling" of what you can do on your own, with code, without being part of anything ... and lose interest. And then when you do make the rare IC connection and get involved with something then someone comes out of the woodwork and kills you for reasons which have probably never even been spoken aloud in game and certainly not where you would have heard it.
If you lack the OOC connections to stronger players with higher social status, and/or staff ... you're not only going to get bored quick but you're also a limping gazelle on the Serengeti to those players who have either already achieved 3 karma and know it won't be taken away or who are so socially entrenched they know they'll never be punished for wiping you out in bullshit PK ways.
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