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New Player Retention Issues
morigosa
Posts: 710 Arc User
So, between various forum threads, and several in-game conversations, I have identified three critical issues that have caused new players to say "I'm about ready to just walk away from this game". In no particular order, these are:
The bug where z-store costumes show as owned when you first log in from the launcher. This one is critical - yes, there are ways to work around it (like the "hide unowned parts" checkbox, or logging out and then back in through the game), but you have to know that you need to do that. For a new player, the experience is this: you sign in, you start making a character, you get your costume as well-done as you can... and then when you actually try to enter the game you get kicked back to the login screen with the utterly unhelpful "Character creation failed" message. See here for just one example - and keep in mind a lot of people are just going to quit right then and there without going looking for answers on the forum.
The "feature" where certain costume options are locked until you've completed the tutorial (or was it gotten a character to level 10? Unclear). This is something of a one-two punch with the previous bug, where players end up unable to create the hero they want.
FATAL ERROR. This mission chain is essentially impossible for an AT at level 6 - and yet the tutorial shows you "Talk to Socrates for missions". I recently had a conversation with someone in-game who was about to quit because they managed to find this before they found the Westside missions they were supposed to be doing, and was incredibly frustrated at how fast the game difficulty had "ramped up" outside of the tutorial. My suggestion is simple: don't unlock these missions until the account has at least one character at level 20. And add to the mission text, where it recommends a team of two, also recommending at least level 20. (Plus, the hit points of Cyberlord in the second mission are still bugged at low levels, which doesn't help.)
I strongly suggest prioritizing fixes for these issues, since they're ones that can and have caused players to quit without even giving CO a proper chance.
The bug where z-store costumes show as owned when you first log in from the launcher. This one is critical - yes, there are ways to work around it (like the "hide unowned parts" checkbox, or logging out and then back in through the game), but you have to know that you need to do that. For a new player, the experience is this: you sign in, you start making a character, you get your costume as well-done as you can... and then when you actually try to enter the game you get kicked back to the login screen with the utterly unhelpful "Character creation failed" message. See here for just one example - and keep in mind a lot of people are just going to quit right then and there without going looking for answers on the forum.
The "feature" where certain costume options are locked until you've completed the tutorial (or was it gotten a character to level 10? Unclear). This is something of a one-two punch with the previous bug, where players end up unable to create the hero they want.
FATAL ERROR. This mission chain is essentially impossible for an AT at level 6 - and yet the tutorial shows you "Talk to Socrates for missions". I recently had a conversation with someone in-game who was about to quit because they managed to find this before they found the Westside missions they were supposed to be doing, and was incredibly frustrated at how fast the game difficulty had "ramped up" outside of the tutorial. My suggestion is simple: don't unlock these missions until the account has at least one character at level 20. And add to the mission text, where it recommends a team of two, also recommending at least level 20. (Plus, the hit points of Cyberlord in the second mission are still bugged at low levels, which doesn't help.)
I strongly suggest prioritizing fixes for these issues, since they're ones that can and have caused players to quit without even giving CO a proper chance.
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Also, a couple of other things for retention issues:
- Disable SOCRATES terminals until, say, lvl 10 (i.e. the Westside prison area). Better for progression, and less confusion.
- More emphasis on blocking early on in the tutorial/early content (this is about the time that newbies queue up for grabs, then promptly faceplant).
- Poe and Talos are still way too powerful for ATs of the appropriate level (not helped by the game not indicating that those are powerful enemies - i.e. Team: 2). Since Poe doesn't drop Q anymore, I'd say that they are in need of some serious nerfing. Especially with Poe - if vets who run that content legitimately die (even knowing the mechanics, and knowing what powers to take), I think that's a bit much.
I hadn't noticed Talos being a problem (he's an MV, but he stops fighting at 50% health), but Poe is significantly overpowered, particularly if you don't know about blocking lifedrain.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Poe, by contrast, is a serious problem - the worst part is the adds; if you aren't expecting it (and why would you be?), you pull the whole room upon triggering the cut scene. Just changing that one detail - make Poe not auto-aggro after the cut scene - would make that fight go from guaranteed face-plant for a new player, to doable. (Yes, yes, you can pull the first group without triggering the cut scene; if you're willing to wait for them to wander close enough, you can even pull with a thrown object as a melee character. But that requires knowing that stepping through the doorway will be fatal; a new player has no reason to expect that.)
Alternatively, mark the Poe mission as "Suggested team size: 2", and you should be set.
But on topic, two major deciding factors of players quitting:
1. That recent costumes appear in the tailor locked behind purchases and such. This is a huge mistake. The "hide all unowned costume pieces" option needs to be checked by default. Players are feel threatened that everything in the game will have a price tag.
2. That Alert window constantly annoying them telling them to play that instead of do missions in the city. Where they will get wrecked over and over again.
As long as that doesn't effect the Crime Computer remote access, I don't care. I use this to turn in the Defender quest at level 6 from the PoHo.
I haven't gone through with every AT, but I've yet to have problems with Talos. And Poe, well... I don't know. With a squishy / weak dps character, you actually need to use your environment and range to your advantage instead of just face tanking. There is actually a reason to block. Plus, you do get some sort of healing patch thing right at the beginning. I think part of the reason Poe may be harder for new players is due to game mechanics not being taught. How many people don't even know you can throw stuff at enemies? Or maybe people are just too lazy to do something other than stand and button mash.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
For Talos ... he's more of a DPS race (most ATs at that point probably don't have a healing power, much less regen), and Kodiak handing out some heal kits ("Heard he's tough. You might need this.") will definitely help.
As an aside, I have also seen cases where trying to create a character with costume parts you don't own results in the character being created but stripped of the parts in question... but I can also verify that, in some cases, it still causes the disconnect described in the original post.
Now that we've once again got a new dev team, I'd like to strongly suggest prioritizing fixes for these issues; things that make people quit before even giving the game a chance seem like they ought to be high priority.
And yeah, stuff like Fatal Error and adventure packs shouldn't be right there from Defender and Socrates as soon as you're in with a brand new hero.
-Ogre
More than 50% of new players quit before level 15.
Poe isn't that hard, if you block. I think it's more of a mechanics issues.. players have never had to block until they meet him. And you don't really need to block too much after in PVE.
Talos.. I'm on the fence about. My squishy ranged AT's floor him pretty easily in the low levels. But a squishy new melee character will get their tuckus handed to them.. unless they have some heal devices on them.
Fatal Error is designed so that you can run it as soon as you make a new character and skip the tutorial, gear up and grab a team mate. Or if you are trying to grind Questionite or get the costume pieces you can run it as a daily with any noob you meet, and if you are high enough level you can carry the whole thing.
I think I've only had one level 7 or 8 team unable to beat that mission because of lack of AoE. Then I just stopped supporting lowbie characters in that mission. The idea of taking noobs on a little tour was nice, but then running that mission twenty or thirty times loses the thrill.
How are people getting past the powerhouse and the teleport to Westside dialog and finding Socrates?
I just made six new toons and was bombarded by the Westside teleport dialog six times, actually twelve times, since I ran out of the powerhouse for double xp and back in to get powers and back out again.
I have no idea! But I've run into multiple people that have managed to miss that they're supposed to be in Westside, and have then gotten really frustrated at "how fast the game difficulty ramped up after the tutorial".
Hm... How's this for a compromise on FATAL ERROR: You can't pick the missions up before level 18, but they can be shared to any level? I.E. if you're level 6 and you're running it with a friend, they can share the mission to you, but a random newbie level 6 can't pick up the missions from Socrates?
No one wants to read CO's terribly formatted, tiny text boxes full of lackluster writing. By the time a new person gets out of the tutorial, they know to instantly close all of those irritating popup boxes.
After that, it's a matter of terrible conveyance on what players are expected to do next, with exploration being punishment instead of rewarding. Once you leave the area by the PoHo, I don't believe the teleport to Westside box pops up anymore. So if a new person decides to run around RenCen thinking they can come back to that mission, they end up getting lost and have no idea what to do next.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Any new person doing that has the brains of a cheese sandwich and deserves what they get.
"No! It's not entertaining me enough, so I'm going to ignore you!!"
The blame there doesn't lie with the one imparting instructions...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Wow, really? When I pick up a game, I want to play, not read a bunch of crap. There are a ton of popup boxes in the tutorial and last I checked, this is a video game not a book. If the information was so important, the devs would show me what I need to do instead of putting it into an annoying popup box. Or at the very least, allow me to look up this information with the in-game manual if I get stuck later. People hate popups which is why browsers have blocking popups as a thing and enabled by default.
I guess people who like to try and figure things out for themselves instead of being treated like idiot children are all dumb.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
This is a classic tutorial problem: I don't know what you don't know.
Take Firefall, for example. Depending on when you started playing that game during its yeeeears-long beta, you either got a "tutorial" that assumed you were a Counterstrike veteran and threw you in the deep end, or one that made you sit through WASD, Space to Jump-level handholding. (This was before Mark Kern got fired for changing his mind about every aspect of the game every two weeks, and took up hating women on the Internet to occupy his free time.)
Cryptic tries to split the difference between those extremes, but they still haven't solved the problem. Because Cryptic doesn't know your level of experience, they start you with general MMO basics. If you already know about WASD, and tab-targetting, and stuff like that, you become eager to dismiss those boxes as soon as they appear. It's not because they're (in-)sufficiently entertaining, but because they're telling you what you already know.
So when you get to something you really don't know, like Press Shift to Block, you've probably dismissed it without reading because the signal to noise ratio has been so bad until then.
If it were up to me, I'd start the tutorial in the Powerhouse and give players the chance to run through whatever level of basics they need, with "What's a wasd?", "What makes CO different", and "Let me figure this out" rooms. Then bring in the "Holy crap, we've been invaded by space bugs!" part of the tutorial when they choose to leave. I think that would help with the pacing, too, because the urgency of stopping the invasion is no longer at odds with each player's learning curve.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
It's a tutorial. They're giving you information on how to play the game. You choose to ignore it, don't blame the game.
"This is a game, I don't want to READ!" sounds so similar to "I don't have to spell gud! This isn't skool!"
Games are visual art, though. And there's one principle in visual communication know as "show, do not write".
Less long text crammed into small boxes, more screen overlays, voiceovers and animations. Or at least shorter sentences, more readable font and better text formatting.
But that's hardly an issue exclusive to CO. Plenty of games are still made that way.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
What were we even talking about? Oh yeah: New Player Retention Issues.
That player creation costume bug does suck big time, still walking around in some silly browns socks.
The root of all the game's woe is that it is too expensive and too stale compared to all the other options out there.
It's "Free for all" isn't free enough, everything costs too much for what it does and how often it will be useful, the freeform slot was priced out of reach at a disgustingly high price.
150,000,000 gamers can buy 10 games for $50 on steam, or 50 games on a good day.
150,000,000 gamers see the competition before they even hear about Champions Online.
Unfinished pre-alpha games get more front page attention than Champions Online has gotten in years.
150,000,0000 gamers can download and start playing some other (small) game in the time it takes for Alerts to pop in low population Champions Online.
Let's see, optimal 2000Q per character per 20 minutes divided by a 468 Q to Z conversion rate is 12 cents/zen an hour, making a free form slot a four hundred sixty hour grind.
No wonder they don't expose the z store to the website, people would walk away before the game download finished.
They need to make free form the the goal of leveling to 40, and then unlocking powers and ranks should be something that is done through in game currencies.
Everything in the game should be $1 each. That's just a 9 hour alert grind per item at the current rate.
Maybe the player to player Q to Z market needs to end with a fixed rate at like 200Q per Z.
But I actually quit paying my sub for an eighteen month 'sick of it' leave, at that price...so probably go lower.
He's probably using faulty New Champions SG and inconclusive steam data like so many times before.
Soooo let me get this straight. Popups with the intention of giving the player helpful information is "holding their hand every step of the way"....
...but if the devs somehow visually showed the player what they needed to do in place of text instructions, the player's hand isn't held and they're not treated like they're inherently clueless and need to be coddled, at all. Because a HUD arrow screaming "GO THIS WAY OK?" is considered less nanny-like and is actually a better way of letting the player "figure things out for themselves".
Yeah, I'm definitely seeing the logic in that. Last I checked this game is a linear-based mission / objective oriented one and not an open-world sandbox type where expecting players to figure things on their own is the point.
Heck, the walls of text akin to "reading a book" like you claim? They're mostly flair and can be ignored while you just focus on the mission tracker for the objectives, or just on what rewards are being offered upon mission completion.
If we're so keen on letting the new player figure things out on their own a la trial and error, remove all info popups, mission NPC markers and objective highlights entirely from the tutorial and let them run around like headless chickens while they get frustrated when they can't figure the system out to get out of tutorial to the main game. I bet that's a great way to get them to continue playing.
And as someone with the brains of a cheese sandwitch myself, I take great offense to the rest of your statement.
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Pretty sure the first step to becoming a legitimately good player is learning about how the game works on the most basic level, like paying attention to helpful instructions.
No one's telling you not to try and figure stuff out on your own, if that's your intent. Just no complaining if you don't know things that were explicitly mentioned in those pop-ups you decided to ignore or claim they're "skipable". And, yes, I still think that's foolish, but that's just my opinion and hey, you're allowed.
It's also very difficult to find a healthy community in-game to integrate into, at least in my experience.
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