Newbie Retention Problem

[Daryn]

Yes, we do have our core players of battle-hardened vets, but the thing that any game runs on is the amount of people joining and staying there to assimilate into core players. I commend Squire of Reg on trying to accomplish this goal.

To help them along, that requires time to tutor them along with those handy player guides that you guys are working on.

However, the extremely competitive environments of Turbo and Reg may not be the best place for the newbies to test out the game in. What was your feeling after a day of hard net gaining when suddenly someone drops you down to low land? To vets, it's all part of the game, but the newbs may just realize that all their hard work has gone to waste and quit.

This is a extreme suggestion, but maybe a third game could be set up just for tutoring newbies. Attack limits are lower and it allows for a semi-competitive environment for newbs to test the water first and get used to the wars before sending them over to the big leagues. A system of rewards could be set up to reward newbies who accomplish something, like master indying, leadering, produce 50mil net in a run, etc, etc.

The other suggestion I had in mind is that every time a new account is made, the welcome letter sent to them includes a link to a teaching Clan, like Squire. That way, newbs won't have to go wandering around, not knowing what they were doing, until they quit again.

Feel free to constructively criticize. I know this has some faults that need smoothing out.

[Neobaron]

I made this suggestion a couple weeks back Daryn.

I really like it. Keeps the newbies out of the crossfire and prevents any cannons being fired at them intentionally.

Who knows if it will gain traction though.

[Daryn]

I made this suggested a couple weeks back Daryn.

I really like it. Keeps the newbies out of the crossfire and prevents any cannons being fired at them intentionally.

Who knows if it will gain traction though.

Really? We could always test it out. I noticed I managed to get one member into this thing from my ads, but it seems they had left.

PS, Neo: Great minds think alike. :3

[Abby The Rat]

Achievements.. targets to aim for.. it's all the rage in other games. Like Steam games and Flash games, like farmvile.

[Yellow Eyes]

Achievements.. targets to aim for.. it's all the rage in other games. Like Steam games and Flash games, like farmvile.

I made that suggestion too..here. I think thats what this game needs. It's too repetitive, too simple. Especially with the ADHD kids that exist these days, its no way to keep people around.

[Abby The Rat]

The problem with ADHD type kids is they want graphic, not text and that's something RWL could almost never give.

[Sharptooh]

The achievements thing is a really cool idea, I'd also love if it was implemented, and there were some really good discussions in the thread that Yellow Eyes made

The other suggestion I had in mind is that every time a new account is made, the welcome letter sent to them includes a link to a teaching Clan, like Squire. That way, newbs won't have to go wandering around, not knowing what they were doing, until they quit again.

The clan limit would kind of stunt this, unless you got about 2 or three clans participating. I think it could also give squire a really unfair advantage (if a lot of the newbs stuck around)

[Daryn]

For the graphics thing, we could easily get a new mod on the site to have a 'customize your warlord thing!'

If anyone has seen Gaia, you get to choose their appearance and dress them up. I can easily supply line art for this.

[The Lady Shael]

These are great ideas guys.

A newbie server is an idea that has actually been brought up in the staff forum more than once. I guess what holds us back is planning out the details, making sure that newbies will use it and other players won't abuse it. We don't want jerks signing up and beating down everyone or making the server unplayable in any way. There is a top secret staff forum thread on creating a newbie server, but here are some of the ideas that came out from the discussion:

-NPCs for newbies to interact with, you can only attack NPCs
-faster turn rate (newbies tend to sit online when first signing up, waiting for turns to come)
-incorporate specific instructions to walk the player through attacking, building structures, General's Hut, etc ("Now build some markets. Good job! Now demolish them. You are AWESOME!")
-having mentor/big sibling accounts which don't receive turns, but so vets can sign up and help teach new players.


I've tried to make the sign-up message as welcoming as possible. It may have changed since you signed up, this is what it is now:

Welcome to Redwall:Warlords!

If you are new, click the Help link at the top to get started! Reply if you have any questions.

Want to get $1 billion in cash to get started off with? Sign up on the RWL Forums (http://www.redwallwarlords.com/forums) and post a topic introducing yourself with your warlord name and number!

Frequently Asked Questions:
http://www.redwallwarlords.com/faq.php


If you're not sure what to do, do not be afraid to ask one of the higher players for help, or ask for help on the forums. =) Everyone here is more than happy to help a new player (or an old player who is lost =p).

Have fun!

-The RWL Staff

(btw don't even think about signing up for a new account to claim the $1 bil, that's only targeted towards players who have never signed up on the forums)

Sharptooth is right about the Squire thing. It would be hard to maintain a game-sponsored clan fairly. Squire has done a relatively good job in the past of messaging new players welcoming them to the game and inviting them to join, but a good amount of people who sign up would rather try to figure out the game on their own (that's why we really need to fix the game guide).


Achievements is another great idea... again something that unfortunately has to take the back burner until we finish the code transition.


Graphics are something I not-so-secretly desperately want for the game (at least for the newbie server). If you have any way of helping us achieve this, Daryn, PM me about it (hopefully Redwall-related graphics).

Everyone and anyone can definitely help with newbie retention though, in two ways:

-help us make the game guide accurate and easy to understand
-message new players to welcome them to the game and try to integrate them into the action (ask them to join your clan, attack a player, be an ally, offer them aid, etc)

[Firetooth]

I know this is ambitous, but would a port to the val hall system be possible? You have one account and each round you can sign up on x server (still allows name choice.) Not only is it an easy way to keep track of all the rounds you have played, it also means you only have to give details like your name+email once.

It'd help the newbie server thing as you could either:

A) Manually control who can play
B) Put some kind of auto-cap in

I like the NPC and new turn thing...I also like the mentor account idea.

I have an idea for Graphics...a warlord avatar? You could have one model for each race and three pre-set textures. You could also have a blank template download so people could edit their avatar. There could be an upload so people could upload any image...obviously, you'd need to make sure people didn't put inappropriate stuff up. I'll show an example of what I mean, but in a forum form from another site I visit sometimes.  (took me ages to crop+upload this because gimp is perhaps the weirdest program when it comes to screenshots...I could've done what took me 5mins in 30seconds in paint)



I hope I conveyed that understandably. :-\

[Daryn]

I have the basic drawings, etc, etc, but I need someone to help on cleaning it up on GIMP, photoshop, etc, etc.

Here's a sample I did yesterday. I can add different weapons, clothing, etc.

[The Lady Shael]

@Firetooth: Global accounts are also something that have been in the plans for a while. It's definitely ideal, and something we're definitely trying to work into the code transition. Also the avatar thing is kinda what Daryn meant, except they can only choose from a set of defined "avatars", or characters, really. I guess the way I imagine it is, you pick your race, and for each race, there may be 3-4 different types or outfits you can choose from. Or like Daryn said, you could also choose a weapon. So something like choose race->outfit->weapon.

@Daryn: That's pretty cool. Peace is our resident photoshop master, I'm sure he could clean it up and make it look graphic-y no problem. Kilk is relearning photoshop apparently, maybe he can try while Peace is off doing married things.  :P

[Kilkenne]

As of this morning I cranked out some pretty decent stuff, I know what I'm doing again (last time I really did anything in here was '09 and I got...well, really good at it) I just have to redownload all my textures and remake all my custom brushes/filters which will take me some time. Idk what I'll be able to do to anything scanned but we'll see when the time comes around.

[Firetooth]

@Firetooth: Global accounts are also something that have been in the plans for a while. It's definitely ideal, and something we're definitely trying to work into the code transition. Also the avatar thing is kinda what Daryn meant, except they can only choose from a set of defined "avatars", or characters, really. I guess the way I imagine it is, you pick your race, and for each race, there may be 3-4 different types or outfits you can choose from. Or like Daryn said, you could also choose a weapon. So something like choose race->outfit->weapon.

Sounds good, and yes I missed Daryn's post by accident, I was in a rush :-[

Anyway, all this stuff is quite exciting.

[Kilkenne]

I threw this out there before in some thread or something, more than likely while drunkenly rambling on MSN, but if we want to retain people, and we want to move in a more graphic-intensive direction, would there be a benefit of some kind of mini-game that awards money once a day or so?

Basically something to make you log into the game (reg) once a day, and just push butan doing something dumb, we all know what kind of flash games are addictive. I don't know if we have the capability to code or make anything like that, but hey, something interactive might keep people logging in. And while they're logged in maybe they'll use some turns.

And then play.