1 (edited by Gwyndor 2014-08-10 16:47:14)

Topic: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Only about half the new players decide to join a corp before they have some experience with the game. Alpha content needs the most attention. Beta could use a bit but for the most part they will get used more as more people live on alpha and find they need stuff from beta eventually. Fix the missions ,make a contract system, allow players to reverse engineer non prototype modules for a far inferior ct. A proto ct requires about 10x the materials and also the research. If a non proto item was reverse engineered only give it 5-10 runs worth. Just a few ideas to give new industrialists, mission runners and pvpers a way to get established without depending on the absolute trash market. Also, cut the t1 module drop from ratting down to .25 of its current rate. Even .1 wouldn't be all bad. Keep the rare drops the same.

There are stories of huge engagements and when assaults t3 fit were rare and roaming was guarunteed to get you engagements quickly because gamma wasn't out. More islands isn't going to fix the problem. More islands with the same broken content or lack of content is going to continue to plague this game.

In other sandbox MMOs there are many ways a player can be solo with only one account and enjoy the game long enough to feed the market and add their own little footprint to the game. In perpetuum your choices to be solo are missioning the same three missions or mine the same infinite resources. You can get more content by joining active corporations but even that has its limits. I will try to find the statistic from Ccp on how much of their active playerbase stays in dangerous areas and how many actually prefer safer areas and carebear activities. They made up ~80% of the player population. The big fights and player driven content is what draws in New players but the actual content in the game is what retains these newcomers.

In perpetuum I don't know what the actual numbers are but I would say the percentages are the other way around with the 80% being the population of players preferring dangerous areas and only using alpha when they need alpha materials or market and the 20% being people who would exclusively live on alpha just because that is what they enjoy. This tells me that there is a major lack of content for the players wishing to play a different style of game than what the mechanics were intended for. Adding gamma didn't increase the actual population of the game did it? Was just shiny until people figured out the rest was ***.

TL;DR

Allow for reverse engineering of regular mods for far inferior CT's - allows for low level industrials
add contracts - support sale of all CT's and also package deals
reduce t1 drops - gives a market for low level industrials
10x more missions - this will actually retain the new people that are drawn by the awesome concepts the devs have created
*** gamma - says itself

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Missions not sucking and contracts have been asked for for *YEARS*.  It's true that a 1 account solo player has very few options.  The DEVs have literally told people to "just join a corp" in genchat when this is mentioned.  Good luck.

I don't think T1 removal is needed at all but the rest aren't bad ideas.  As I stated in other threads, the problem with modules is the enormous spread between the Tiers.  The bonuses need to be normalized to like 3 to 5% max difference between T1 and T4.  On many modules it's more like T4 is 50% better.  That means there is never a reason to use T1 unless you just want to throw the bot away in a suicide attack (even then T2 is often used for the speed gain).  I'm not calling for nerfs just normalization.  There should be a reason to use more than T2/T2P, and T4.  This would help new players far more than vets. 

Frankly T4+ and whatnot should never have been added.  The equivalent of WoW Relic gear and *** shouldn't exist in a player built economy as something that only comes from RNG NPCs.

Population graphs

<GM Synapse> please don't abuse our fresh players before blowing them up. And for god sakes, don't do that after it!

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

In firefall the Devs recognised this, suspended all PvP and PvP development and focused on PVE until it was right.

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Tonnik wrote:

In firefall the Devs recognised this, suspended all PvP and PvP development and focused on PVE until it was right.

you want Avatar Creations to turn Perpetuum from a PvP sandbox game into a PvE only themepark with robots?

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Because a PvP sandbox is going so well?

They have banged that drum for four years and are no further forward. Maybe a change of direction is what's needed.

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Annihilator wrote:
Tonnik wrote:

In firefall the Devs recognised this, suspended all PvP and PvP development and focused on PVE until it was right.

you want Avatar Creations to turn Perpetuum from a PvP sandbox game into a PvE only themepark with robots?

Actually, PVE is the bedrock of a stability for a game like this. There will always be far far more PVEers than PvPers. As important as making this a fun PvP game, it cannot sustain without a far stronger PVE incentive.

Sparking to other games

7 (edited by Annihilator 2014-08-10 00:57:44)

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

dont get me wrong - your are talking to someone who asked for PvE integration since... the beginning. and you know how long i am here.

Firefall was planned as a Sandbox game, was for a long time a arena PvP game and even aimed at becomming an eSport title. During Beta they did not only ditch the PvP part, they also ditched almost any aspect of its Sandbox.

Maybe those 10 Million Dollar and replacing more then half of their staff (of 80 DEVs) helped a bit to give them the current 10k+ player online via steam.

Avatar Creations, with their 4? sparetime DEVs have gradually dumbed down PvE to a point where i wonder why they even bother with AI robots.

Sure they have to concentrate fully on PvE. I just dislike the example of Firefall because they made a differnt game with the assets they had.
in other words, if AC would do the same, they would put syndicate protection on all islands with the next patch, and PvP would only be possible if someone flags up or SAPs would make the protection drop in a 3km radius when they are active (compare with "Sunken Harbor")

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

its going perfectly well


try harder



Tonnik wrote:

Because a PvP sandbox is going so well?

They have banged that drum for four years and are no further forward. Maybe a change of direction is what's needed.

DEV Zoom - "If you mean the NPC aggro, that's been like that for months already."

9 (edited by Burial 2014-08-10 13:03:15)

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

The devs shot themselves to the leg by not getting assignment patch part 2 out of the door before or right on Steam.

They had all sorts of interesting ideas like assignment booths on terrain, areas for harder group-oriented assignments etc. It also could've finally fixed Betas by giving it proper rewards for the risks.

@Devs: Whenever you decide to finish assignments, make sure you do them right. Don't hot-wire it together based on what's easiest to code but do it right. It has a lot of potential, don't waste it.

10 (edited by Kaldenines 2014-08-11 00:00:48)

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Annihilator wrote:

dont get me wrong - your are talking to someone who asked for PvE integration since... the beginning. and you know how long i am here.

Firefall was planned as a Sandbox game, was for a long time a arena PvP game and even aimed at becomming an eSport title. During Beta they did not only ditch the PvP part, they also ditched almost any aspect of its Sandbox.

Maybe those 10 Million Dollar and replacing more then half of their staff (of 80 DEVs) helped a bit to give them the current 10k+ player online via steam.

Avatar Creations, with their 4? sparetime DEVs have gradually dumbed down PvE to a point where i wonder why they even bother with AI robots.

Sure they have to concentrate fully on PvE. I just dislike the example of Firefall because they made a differnt game with the assets they had.
in other words, if AC would do the same, they would put syndicate protection on all islands with the next patch, and PvP would only be possible if someone flags up or SAPs would make the protection drop in a 3km radius when they are active (compare with "Sunken Harbor")

Agreed, I am always going on about PvP content because making the PvE combat fun in this game would be like building a whole new game.
At the moment PvE combat is as fun as smashing bugs with rocks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI_es584jCU) and it's going to stay that way weather the NPCs are red, yellow or pink.

+1
-Confucius

11 (edited by Burial 2014-08-10 10:32:58)

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Just shooting NPCs on a spawn is as raw and boring as something could possibly be in a game. That's exactly why there needs to be a wrapper around it, something to give it additional goals, depth.
NPC farming can be made fun.

12 (edited by Celebro 2014-08-10 12:10:00)

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Although more entertaining PVE is always a plus for all, it still requires much more development time and resources. The reason why the game has mostly favoured towards pvp, gearing for players to create their own content.

What they have failed in their vision is create enough tools for people to generate content, QoL feature helps too. The has been a burnout IMO , specially with leaders and vets.


This does not mean PVE cannot be improved, or that it should not. PVE geared towards solo play, and more options in the PVE play style of different individuals. NPCs with varying AI from solo to group play with a foundation of risk vs reward. PVE will still remain a means to and end, but the end is what's missing here the most.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Those are all symptoms of a larger and more sinister disease.

Alpha 1 - Alpha 2 - Beta 1 - Beta 2 - Gamma

There is no over-arching "game plan" that realistically provides incentives for players to advance and progress through the plan. If I can make the same money on Alpha 1 as I'm making on a Beta 2, there is something wrong.

And that's been going on for a while. Knee-jerk changes through complete ignorance of the game's reality, being developed and created purely from homeboy A looking at something and thinking "well I don't like that so lets change it".

The community isn't helping either. Half the population is a tumorous growth of crybabies that guilt-trip the Devs into changing stuff (example; CEO of a failed corp couldn't capture a station, campaigning on the forum to remove the lock mechanism), the other half just doesn't care.

As a consequence, they can't trust the feedback because 90% of the time they're being manipulated, and on the flip-side they're clueless about how the game really works and what makes it "good". We've been having the same discussion since 2011. There is no fixing it.

Ergo, everything is fine carry on. smile

[18:20:30] <GLiMPSE> Chairman Of My Heart o/
CIR Complaint Form

The Imperial Grand Wizard of Justice

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Burial wrote:

The devs shot themselves to the leg by not getting assignment patch part 2 out of the door before or right on Steam.

This.  Mission revamp is 2+ years late.

Population graphs

<GM Synapse> please don't abuse our fresh players before blowing them up. And for god sakes, don't do that after it!

15 (edited by Crepitus 2014-08-10 13:05:26)

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

Burial wrote:

Just shooting NPCs on a spawn is as raw and boring as something could possibly be in a game. That's exactly why there needs to be a wrapper around it, something to give it additional goals, depth.
NPC farming can be made fun.


I'm doing this right now.  It's kidn of relaxing and I can do it while reading the forums or watching a movie.  If they want to add something fine; don't take away.

EDIT: In other words make new *** don't adapt the old.  I like the ball and chain.

Celebro wrote:

solo play

That's what has been sorely lacking the most.

Population graphs

<GM Synapse> please don't abuse our fresh players before blowing them up. And for god sakes, don't do that after it!

Re: How to Retain New Members Without Depending on Players

my OP was a wall of text sorry, tldr added