How to get a player to return a second time?

[Callan S.]

I'm looking at the stats I have for player behaviour on my game, specifically the bounce rate. Ie, whether they come back

Now I'll compare to urban dead and the gameplay I found in that - I made a character recently and...swung wildly, by just pressing a button over and over, mostly missed, then hid in a house.

In mine you swing, but you have to watch the opponents move and use the right counter move - also have to watch for enemy counter attacks and hit the dodge button when it shows. Not much more, but more engaging that urban dead combat.

Now maybe urban dead has the same problem, alot of bounces. But he has word of mouth bringing in more and friends bringing in friends. But that's another topic entirely.

So beyond word of mouth and friends, does urban dead have the same problem? Or is it somehow doing better at just the 'randomly came across the game' level than mine - if so, how? It seems less engaging and less content? Yeah, there's the sense of having alot of options, but what you do in the end is swing wildly at a zombie a bunch of times then hide, your first play. It's just the illusion of options, at the start.

Thoughts?

[Jackolantern]

I am sure they are having the same problems, too. Heck, even F2P downloadable desktop MMORPGs have the same problem. But PBBGs in particular have very low rates of players coming back. While I don't have any hard data, I would guess that if you had 10% of your website's visitors becoming regular players you would be doing pretty good.

How does a game like Urban Dead get so many players when it seems to have inferior gameplay? Torn City is another very simple, cookie-cutter PBBG with huge amounts of players that is extremely profitable. I think it has to do with momentum. It takes time to get even a small amount of regular players. But then that small community will refer other members, and those will refer other members, and on and on. And then once your site is getting decent traffic, starts being referenced and linked from other sites, and the community is growing, you will get more hits based on that from search engines and PBBG fan sites. I think these games that have huge communities just have a very large "newbie hose". Every online game loses tons of players all the time, and relies on a stream of new people coming in to at least look at the game to at least think about playing (the newbie hose). But building the hose takes time, particularly without thousands or millions of dollars for advertising.

[hallsofvallhalla]

It takes time to get even a small amount of regular players. But then that small community will refer other members, and those will refer other members, and on and on. And then once your site is getting decent traffic, starts being referenced and linked from other sites, and the community is growing, you will get more hits based on that from search engines and PBBG fan sites.

I agree 100%. The community makes the game. The dumbest games make a big hit due to the community while some of the best games go under for not having one.

Would you play WOW if it only had 100 players? What about joining Facebook if it only had a few thousand?
BUT
Would you play Oblivion again if it went to Multiplayer and had a great community? What about Morrowind if you found a community of ten thousand players all playing again?

[Callan S.]

Yeah, I agree with you both. Though I would play wow as a solo game if the XP and rep gathering rates were increased by twenty or thirty times I found the game engaging enough sans other people - its just it was so watered down.

I forgot to mention, looking at the data it looks like people would fight a monster, but make no advancement in sentencebattle - most likely meaning they lost (or perhaps gave up mid battle). I'm wondering if they just quit when they lose - I've put in a bit of code to monitor losses now. Hopefully the code works and I'll see.

I was thinking of how alot of browser games out there lean on a 'beat some other player' element. I was thinking if I made it that new players, when they start off, they get to 'beat' other players (the inactive players who remain at zero sentencebattle) in getting some widget of power. Repeat a few (2+random(1,3)) times before hitting the pve part of my game, so they think they are ahead of other people (that whole keeping up with the jones's thing Lantern has talked about).

[hallsofvallhalla]

yep agree with that. Players love to defeat other players and look kewl among friends.

I am working on "Claim your own crown" type of play in QOC. Explore and settle a town and draw in players to be a part of your kingdom. You can actually buy an entire zone, though small, 100 locations, and build a small town and then sell off the land. Still working on incentives to live in other peoples land.

[Rastan]

A lot of the reasons i think people return to games have been mentioned here. I kinda feel like a game just has to have that "catch" where a player shows up sees clearly that he is a "noob" and feels compelled to improve that situation or just plain knows what to do sees how they can progress and rolls with it. I personally am going with the PVP approach. On top of that I'm trying to work in some shinies that players will see other players with and do the normal human thing and try to get something better lol. I definitely agree with the community aspect in a lot of ways but I think there also has to be that certain something that hooks someone in long enough that they feel they can and should progress in some direction in the game content. I think maybe this can be done with points of closure where it is clear you have fought today and can come back tomorrow and progress or maybe it is just an ongoing struggle to have more shiny stuff to showoff than another player. I personally in many games over the years kinda like the helping someone else progress idea. I like where if I have been there and have the means to easily help a newer player that I can do so. That's another social interaction that I don't think I'm alone in enjoying.

I have also noticed in a few games and noted my response that if I see "XXXXX number of players registered and xxxx number of players active over x hours" it makes me feel like there's people around to compete with.

At any rate, be it building that community that invites more or adding to a built community I feel like maybe the "catch" aspect is the most likely to succeed.

[Callan S.]

Rastan,
Yeah, I think those are elements to keep in mind as well. I like your phrasing of 'points of closure' - you mean that you can't just sit there for twelve hours clicking, that play ends for the RL day at some point, right? Also I like the helping someone progress thing too - you get to be the good guy helping out! Personally I like that more than pwning someone in PVP (but I like the challenge of complex PVP).


Halls,
I've been thinking about PVP and I'd like to draw upon an opponent between a certain range of power randomly, but not sure how

Code: Select all

$creatureinfo="SELECT * from creatures order by rand() limit 1";

Using this from battle but using the player database, if I wanted players with a PVP strength of 0 to 500, could I make it draw upon one randomly?

Also, if it can find nothing in the range, does the $ return an empty string?

I am working on "Claim your own crown" type of play in QOC. Explore and settle a town and draw in players to be a part of your kingdom. You can actually buy an entire zone, though small, 100 locations, and build a small town and then sell off the land. Still working on incentives to live in other peoples land.

I was thinking about what you wrote and I'm not sure that works as an attractant - only one guy gets the crown and the other players just live on his land - I think people want a shot at being king of the hill themselves. Perhaps if there was a second in command to the crown, and who's in it for a month or whatever time is determined by PVP matches? And also that's an incentive to live on that land - only people on that land can compete for it, perhaps?

[hallsofvallhalla]

good point. The actual owning of a small kingdom is more of a long term goal. Something work and save the money for. You cannot buy it with real money. The only way to own your own is to buy land somewhere and start making money. Not sure how far I will take this though.

Code: Select all

$pvpstrengthmax = $playerinfo3['pvpstrength'] + 10;
$pvpstrengthmin = $playerinfo3['pvpstrength'] - 10;
if($pvpstrengthmin < 1) {$pvpstrengthmin = 1;}

$otherplayer="SELECT * from players where pvpstrength<='$pvpstrengthmax' AND pvpstrength > '$pvpstrengthmin' order by rand() limit 1";

if(!isset($otherplayer3['name']))
{
echo "There are no players able to battle you at this time";
}

[Callan S.]

That code is gold, Halls! Just what I needed, thank you - I thought you might be able to use 'and', but wasn't sure. I adapted it to my code, will try it soon (right now I'm using a non DB version with the values just plugged in in the PHP). Also put in an and statement so they don't end up fighting themselves by chance!

I put a screenshot of a brawl outcome on my blog, whether it's much use to show anything at the moment!
http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/20 ... fight.html

[hallsofvallhalla]

nice, glad you are making progress.