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Post To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
I had thought this had been covered in spades in two previous threads, but apparently not.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=62917

viewtopic.php?p=763695#p763695

Getting players to stay on your game is like hitting on a women at a bar....the more she is paying attention to everyone else, the worse your chances are. I will personally atest that the number of games in my bookmarks that I stopped playing simply because i forgot to log in for a week are several dozen. There are hundreds if not thousands of online games, counting Flash sites like Kongrate, and getting a playerbase to stick with your game in particular is a competition. The games which have gotten huge, RO, Maplestory, WOW, Eve, are the games which people could play for hours on end without having to look at any other game. The games which died flashpan deaths are those which you would play for an hour, maybe two, then have to wait a day or two for timers or action points or lockouts to regen.

Which is where we get to weeklong lockouts. As i said above, the more time people have to look at another game, the sooner they are going to find a game that they can play nonstop without having to wait, IE not Star SOnata. Yes, WOW has week long lockouts, but it has hundreds of instanced dungeons, so if a few or even most of them are on lockout, you still have content to run. SS does not have hundreds of dungeons (DG do not count as the drop system is indecipherable to anyone not on the dev team. No one is going to consistently run content long term if they are getting mostly junk and have no clue where to get the item they actually want.)

If players run all their lockouts on friday, what are they to do the rest of the week? If your answer is "play something else" congratulations, that is why we cannot get new players to stay. If they do not have content to run over and over all day long, day after day, then they are going to start looking at other games, and it will be a matter of time before they forget to log int star sonata because "Hey, there is another dungeon on this game, and one after that, and one after that!".

If you really want to do weekly lockouts, kool, but you need about 50 times the number of instances we have currently. Otherwise, the lockouts need to go away. The reason grind-fests occurred is because it keeps players at the keyboard for hours on end, which is a good thing. That is where you want them. A their keyboard, playing your game.

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Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:18 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
lrellok wrote:
Which is where we get to weeklong lockouts. As i said above, the more time people have to look at another game, the sooner they are going to find a game that they can play nonstop without having to wait, IE not Star SOnata. Yes, WOW has week long lockouts, but it has hundreds of instanced dungeons, so if a few or even most of them are on lockout, you still have content to run. SS does not have hundreds of dungeons (DG do not count as the drop system is indecipherable to anyone not on the dev team. No one is going to consistently run content long term if they are getting mostly junk and have no clue where to get the item they actually want.)

If players run all their lockouts on friday, what are they to do the rest of the week? If your answer is "play something else" congratulations, that is why we cannot get new players to stay. If they do not have content to run over and over all day long, day after day, then they are going to start looking at other games, and it will be a matter of time before they forget to log int star sonata because "Hey, there is another dungeon on this game, and one after that, and one after that!".

If you really want to do weekly lockouts, kool, but you need about 50 times the number of instances we have currently. Otherwise, the lockouts need to go away. The reason grind-fests occurred is because it keeps players at the keyboard for hours on end, which is a good thing. That is where you want them. A their keyboard, playing your game.


I can't tell if you're serious... do you actually think that everyone runs fucking level 60 instances on their 110s once they run out of things to do? Most endgame WoW players (which I am one of) only run a few mythic dungeons a week + their raids. Running your mythics usually takes about 2-4 hours depending on the competency of the group, and unless you're running all four current endgame raids (which basically no one does because it's a waste of time since raids of previous patches drop lower ilvl gear) your raiding is done in anywhere from 4-6 hours.

Most of the time a WoW player puts in is the stuff that you think seems to have zero play value, like rep grinding, daily quests, just fucking around and exploring, afking in Stormwind/Orgrimmar/Dal, world PvP, etc...

In fact, even when I was religiously farming Invincible, Onyxian Drake, Blue Proto, and Ashes of Alar (really rare mounts) I didn't manage to increase my weekly play time by more than like 2 hours a week. Because those hundreds of instanced dungeons you mentioned? You can literally pull all the trash to the bosses and one shot everything in an AoE.


Funny, because WoW doesn't do this... In fact, the WoW downtie from lockouts is actually very similar to SS. Mostly just kind of seeing what you can improve,
gather, and waiting for lockouts to reset...


This is another pile of shit, let me tell you why; Of the "hundreds"
of instances you linked. Literally only 32 of those matter right now (Legion instances),
of those 32 you can immediately drop 12 because Heroics are useless to anyone at level cap, of the 20 left you can drop about 7 because you only need 4-5 mythics to get your order hall chest gear to max ilvl/legendary drop (actually less now since they did a drawdown on keystones), of the 13 left you can get rid of all the normal/heroic raids not including Tomb of Sargeras, because they all drop lower than baseline ilvl gear now.
This leave us with 5 Mythic Dungeons (any 5, you don't have to pick which), 1 regular raid. So that's 10 instances that matter right? Wrong. There's no reason to do EM,
ToV, or NH mythics more than once since you can get better gear out of ToS normal/heroic. So those 3 fall off and the final count of instances/content that matter on your weekly lockout are;

5 Mythic dungeons (this is about a 2 hour investment if you're not garbage)
1 Tomb of Sargeras Normal/Heroic (this will take you about 6 hours)
1 Tomb of Sargeras Mythic (this will admittedly take you a day to complete, but like less than 1.5-2% of players are mythic raiding so, and if you're mythic raiding you typically don't need the Normal/Heroic lockout, but leave it in just for shits and giggles)

Total; 7 instances that matter. And you can do all 7 of these faster than you can do relevant SS content each week, because the existence of high tech levels in SS does not render lower tech levels worthless like WoW does.


Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:46 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
Actually, just realized a thing... SS actually has more productive downtime out of lockouts than SS. In WoW, you literally cannot get a BiS (best in slot) piece, or really any piece that isn't going to just get replaced in a week, without raiding or running high level mythics.

SS has DGs which actually drop some of the best gear in the game. So yeah. Not only is there more up time on relevant lockouts in SS due to there being more of them, and them taking longer. Once you do expend all of those you still have DGs, the closest equivalent in WoW being World Elites, and World Quests that can drop some gear that will be useless the first time a raid piece for that slot drops.

TL:DR; you're complaining that you don't have a lot to do, but the reason you don't have a lot to do is because you're an F2P and since you're not generating income for the game it's not a huge priority to focus on you.

And before you start talking about how any good game would give you access to more content even as an F2P I'd like you to look up exactly what you can do on WoW as an F2P.


Last edited by ShawnMcCall on Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:51 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
This should be to JeffL, not to Jey. Jey is only a server admin who makes sure hamster is running nicely.


Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:52 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
ShawnMcCall wrote:
TL:DR; you're complaining that you don't have a lot to do, but the reason you don't have a lot to do is because you're an F2P and since you're not generating income for the game it's not a huge priority to focus on you.

And before you start talking about how any good game would give you access to more content even as an F2P I'd like you to look up exactly what you can do on WoW as an F2P.


It would be really helpful if you actually read the post before commenting. This is not about f2p, thats a totally different argument. This is about player retention. If i wanted to argue F2p, i would be citing the 80/20 rule.

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Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:24 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
lrellok wrote:
ShawnMcCall wrote:
TL:DR; you're complaining that you don't have a lot to do, but the reason you don't have a lot to do is because you're an F2P and since you're not generating income for the game it's not a huge priority to focus on you.

And before you start talking about how any good game would give you access to more content even as an F2P I'd like you to look up exactly what you can do on WoW as an F2P.


It would be really helpful if you actually read the post before commenting. This is not about f2p, thats a totally different argument. This is about player retention. If i wanted to argue F2p, i would be citing the 80/20 rule.


Yeah, and your basis for the argument "That WoW has enough instanced content to justify lockouts" is fucked. You're quoting 4 lines, ignoring the 30+ where I explain why what you're saying makes no goddamn sense.

SS has more up time on progression relevant content, so explain that away.


Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:32 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
I mean seriously, let's talk about how each large patch makes all prior content in WoW completely obsolete. Meanwhile in SS, Bana drops endgame viable base kits, the commods to build t22 ships, Emp drops Emp Augs, Emp Rays, Emp Drone Controllers, Dark Wave BP drops off of DG ubers and less often off of random DGs... You don't even have to enter an instance to find meaninful progression each week.

Meanwhile there is *1* instance in WoW where you get your endgame gear (Mythic dungeons won't give you BiS, only high ilvl pieces that will be replaced for class tier sets out of the raid). Once you run that, it's over for a week.


Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:35 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
lrellok wrote:
ShawnMcCall wrote:
TL:DR; you're complaining that you don't have a lot to do, but the reason you don't have a lot to do is because you're an F2P and since you're not generating income for the game it's not a huge priority to focus on you.

And before you start talking about how any good game would give you access to more content even as an F2P I'd like you to look up exactly what you can do on WoW as an F2P.


It would be really helpful if you actually read the post before commenting. This is not about f2p, thats a totally different argument. This is about player retention. If i wanted to argue F2p, i would be citing the 80/20 rule.


Also, you don't understand the 80/20 rule... or you don't understand the basis for it.

I'll give you an example; Microsoft uses this in OS patches. Microsoft only focuses on the top 20% bugs per patch, this eliminates most of the complaints coming from all customers and allows natural progression to address the next 20% since they've already taken care of the largest portion of the customer base. You, however, are not a customer in Pareto's rule you do not matter. Since you will never offer income to the game, you are never a priority, the priority is the minority that generates the growth, so you deal with their problems to increase your gain. You however, Rendghast, generate no growth, in Pareto's metaphor you are one of the pea plants that does not offer a meaningful amount to the whole so you can be neglected for the 20%


Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:44 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
ShawnMcCall wrote:
Yeah, and your basis for the argument "That WoW has enough instanced content to justify lockouts" is fucked. You're quoting 4 lines, ignoring the 30+ where I explain why what you're saying makes no goddamn sense.

SS has more up time on progression relevant content, so explain that away.


No shawn, that was a preemptive rebuttal. THe basis of my argument is that a large number of mostly successful games use very little content lockouts, or have huge masses of relevant content independent of lockouts. Wow being the exception, with very large numbers of lockout content. Simply because you are to much of a snob to use the content, does not change the principle of the argument.

And i have already dismissed the DG's as having a completely incomprehensible drop system. If you want to redo the wiki, please, feel free.

Quote:
Also, you don't understand the 80/20 rule


80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your players. IE most of your user base will never pay you money, you need to structure the game in such a way to make them useful to the paying members.

We are discussing retention, not funding, please try to stay on topic shawn.

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Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:47 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
lrellok wrote:
ShawnMcCall wrote:
Yeah, and your basis for the argument "That WoW has enough instanced content to justify lockouts" is fucked. You're quoting 4 lines, ignoring the 30+ where I explain why what you're saying makes no goddamn sense.

SS has more up time on progression relevant content, so explain that away.


No shawn, that was a preemptive rebuttal. THe basis of my argument is that a large number of mostly successful games use very little content lockouts, or have huge masses of relevant content independent of lockouts. Wow being the exception, with very large numbers of lockout content. Simply because you are to much of a snob to use the content, does not change the principle of the argument.

And i have already dismissed the DG's as having a completely incomprehensible drop system. If you want to redo the wiki, please, feel free.

Quote:
Also, you don't understand the 80/20 rule


80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your players. IE most of your user base will never pay you money, you need to structure the game in such a way to make them useful to the paying members.

We are discussing retention, not funding, please try to stay on topic shawn.


Lol, so not doing content that is literally worthless to progression in any way makes you a snob... I guess 99% of all WoW players are snobs... I don't think you realize when I say patches make old content obsolete, that is not a figure of speech. Blizzard forces you to do new content by making old content useless.


Also, again you don't don't understand Pareto's law. Pareto's law is not 80% of yield comes from 20% of stock, so you have to make more stock viable. The 80/20 rule is literally this; since 20% of your stock will always produce the vast majority of your yield, then the needs of the other 80% of your stock *literally only matter when their needs overlap with the needs of the 20%.* Keep trying to reference writings you don't understand though... it's adorable.


Tue Jun 13, 2017 3:24 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
ShawnMcCall wrote:
Lol, so not doing content that is literally worthless to progression in any way makes you a snob... I guess 99% of all WoW players are snobs... I don't think you realize when I say patches make old content obsolete, that is not a figure of speech. Blizzard forces you to do new content by making old content useless.


Which is why i am here and not there. Please, again, on topic shawn

Also, again you don't don't understand Pareto's law. Pareto's law is not 80% of yield comes from 20% of stock, [/quote]

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity)[1] states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Thats exactly what is says....

Quote:
The 80/20 rule is literally this; since 20% of your stock will always produce the vast majority of your yield, then the needs of the other 80% of your stock *literally only matter when their needs overlap with the needs of the 20%.


Which is a great way to loose 80% of your stock and then you get into what are called negative feedback loops.....though i will admit that does have something to do with why we are loosing a quarter of our player base each uni....still not on topic.

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Tue Jun 13, 2017 3:46 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
I can agree that the mid game content isn't as extensive as players might hope for. However, the progression through that stage of the game is so fast paced that I don't think putting a lot of time into it is something we should be focusing on. Tech 20 is where the 'endgame' of star sonata really begins and from there on out there is plenty if content to warrant weekly lock outs. And if you do manage to complete your lockouts for the week? Make an Alt. Alts are extremely useful in Ss.

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Tue Jun 13, 2017 4:11 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
DarkSteel wrote:
I can agree that the mid game content isn't as extensive as players might hope for. However, the progression through that stage of the game is so fast paced that I don't think putting a lot of time into it is something we should be focusing on. Tech 20 is where the 'endgame' of star sonata really begins and from there on out there is plenty if content to warrant weekly lock outs. And if you do manage to complete your lockouts for the week? Make an Alt. Alts are extremely useful in Ss.


I'll still be looking into the mid content section on occasion. Filling it with handy things like the particle sing brake etc etc...


Tue Jun 13, 2017 7:49 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
Regarding the post about item modifications, we have a big announcement coming up very soon.

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Tue Jun 13, 2017 7:55 am
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Post Re: To Jey, On the subject of lockouts and player growth
every time you post those sort of things the player base drops by 1/3


Tue Jun 13, 2017 10:17 am
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