Brainstorm: How to keep Avatars coming back?

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Our guild has been following SotA since the beginning, but as it turns out, most of our members have gone into hibernation. There is simply not enough compelling content available to continue enticing existing members back to play the game. Of course, we do understand that the game is still under development and most content is not ready yet, but even so, it will be beneficial for the game if more existing members continue coming back to help test and improve the game's development, especially now that the game is persistent.

This thread is thus dedicated to brainstorming ideas the Devs can consider to keep people coming back! I'll start the ball rolling with this suggestion: Release Rares!

Title: Release Rares

What: A free, exclusive Release Rare item Avatars can only get once per release

How: By completing simple quests related to a major feature of every Release. For example, for Release 37, you can get an R37 Rare by participating in and freeing a Town from a Siege. For example, a "2016 Head of Cabalist" Trophy or "Key to the City" in appreciation for freeing the town.

Why: Hat quests were a big hit during pre-persistence. Players simply love collecting rare freebies. This encourages existing players to log in every release just to get these release rares.

Thanks for reading!
Glantor Edge

 

there are countless reasons for why we are here. so while one idea may work for one group of people there will always be groups large and small that are missed by the retention efforts. so multiple ideas would need to be put into practice to achieve any real effect.

this leads me to believe that the devs would be better off focusing on just getting closer to release polishing systems (agriculture) quest and such rather than spliting up efforts even further than what they are now.

once we hit "commerical" is when i think that they need to work more on player retention imo.

really it depends on numbers that we dont know and they will probably not release for us to misinterpet

 

Funny enough we had this with the release tour hats.
You got a unique hat when you travled different destinations every release.
Mainly those where something new was to see or test ^^

 

What is the average level of your guild's hibernating members @Glantor Edge ? Are these high level players who've run out of playable content?

 

Average level is about 50 Adventurer level. There are only a few areas they grind at: Twins, Tenebris Harbour, Deep Ravenswood. Tried exploring all the mines and adventure scenes and downed the main bosses like Fire pillar, Phoenix etc. Guess they got bored, or were too used to the Log in for Quest hat, log off habit and simply stopped playing when there aren't any more "Quest Hats" to obtain for free.

The crafters are hibernating too, because once everyone in the guild was properly geared they had nothing left to do lol. Selling crafted wares right now is difficult and not cost effective / worth the resource cost and time, so many just gave up.

 

Can we make other suggestions or only discuss the one in the OP?

 

Actually I was hoping for more suggestions since this is supposed to be a brainstorm thread lol.

 

A game is used to play with a cash shop gave people who missed playing time an option to buy skillpoints.

Means if you haven't logged in a couple of month you can buy a certain amount of skillboxes to raise skill with.
Ofc playing the game should always advancing you faster... but still it eases the way back in and they could earn money.

 

Hmm, that sounds like Pay to Win? Pay money to buy Experience/Skillpoints? Or did you mean it in a different context that I am not understanding?

 

What I think would help bring new players in and retain them are a few ideas.
-More Quests. They don't have to be anything like WoW. The existing Morrowind-like freeform quests we have now are great, but there needs to be more of them. Many more of them. People enjoy the social experience the game offers, but many people also enjoy structured, objective based gameplay even if those objectives are vague, as long as progress can be made and rewards attained.

-Dungeons and Raids. They don't have to be instanced or repetitive. They can be like Vanguard where they're open world, quest focused areas designed for cooperative groups. Players enjoy overcoming great challenges with their friends.

-Available Housing. This is probably going to be hugely unpopular with the forum community, but I think it would benefit the game overall to have some sort of housing available to all. Even just as a 'hook' to get people excited about owning their own home. If it were up to me, the starting towns, Soltown, Resolute and whatever the third starting town is would reward the player for their participation in the opening sequence by offering them a permanent residence in the town's Inn. This Inn room would be instanced, accessible by a common door using a EQ2-like interface to select which version of the room you'd like to enter. This would give players a place to wet their appetite for housing and to at least try it out and have a place to place some items down. The Inn room would require a daily gold "rent". I think players would feel less "left out" for not owning a home, but at the same time would be encouraged to try and get a larger home and move up and out of their Inn apartment.

 

This! We need more (a lot more) simple, easy to complete, totally random quests! Okay, maybe not totally random, like for example the Butcher (any NPC butcher) can ask players to help restock his supply of meat! I mean, that poor fella is standing there in town the whole day, where else can he replenish his stock of Wolf and Bear Meat right? Ain't got no wolves in town, boy! It's not difficult to implement too, from a programming point of view. Excellent Suggestion!

Yes! Objective based quests that require 2 or more people to help are great! To expand on this, maybe it requires two people to turn switches in the same instance but different locations at the same time?

I think this might be solved by the rental system. Players can offer their rooms for rent to other players for an agreed fee. This also gives altruistic players the chance to convert their homes into Free Lodging!

Of course, it would be nice if NPCs can offer inns as a place to stay as well. For example, of course Inns in towns have limited space and are usually occupied by other NPCs when night falls. So, to solve this, Inns can have Basements or separate instances created by magical doors (why not?) where players can sleep/rest/decorate and place their chests!

 

I'd say that the best way to keep people coming back is by introducing an ongoing narrative.

For example, "Ardoris wants to unify the region under their rule". Then each month you run an event that follows in that theme, like: "Hearts and minds" - Unification and independence supporters are running pamphlet campaigns, players can contribute by copying the flyers and handing them to NPCs in the disputed region, most pamphlets at the end of the month determines how each town sides in the next event.

A little hint of a bigger story and some competition that doesn't involve ganking someone trying to pick cotton goes a long way.

 

Yeah good one! Just get Tracy Hickman to write a side story quest and implement it throughout the next 10 releases (or more)? With each release revealing a bit more and rewarding participants who collect all the quest pieces at the very end with a nice rare! That would rock!

 

Vanguards diplomacy quest lines come to mind.

 

If they have left it means they can only be reached via email from Port.

I suggest subjectlines with the word Rare in it.

Also, level 6 solo zones so solo players can keep up vs group players.

 

Guild Wars does pretty well with dailies for this same topic.

 

This is one thing that has been on my MMO wish list for a long time.

• I would like to see drops that give me the same feeling of chasing loot like Diablo2 where it is random number of effects and random bonus per effect with rares, commons etc.
• I would like the drops to
  
  • a) be something like a scroll that is applied to an existing player crafted item, no skill required just read the scroll and it does it.
  • b) be something that a crafter can add to a recipe
• I would like the bonus to make items be destroyed faster or non reparable once used to increase crafting usefulness.
  • i.e. ethereal type that has lower starting durability or non ethereal that have higher than normal but cannot be repaired
• I would not want there to be named set's or specific legendary named items. One pet peeve I have is MMO's where every character of the same class and level are running around in the same gear.

 

Why can't people accept that some people don't like playing incomplete games? "Oh noes, they'd rather spend their time with a finished product! Quick! Lets try to bring them back so that they can enjoy the useless totally-what-roleplaying-games-are-about grind! That'll REALLY bring the community together!"

Being rushed to hunt down that stupid robot in areas that were beyond my character's ability to do so were some of the worst experiences I ever had in SotA. It made me want to uninstall the game thinking "is this how the designers plan on rewarding my time spent? that's not a good sign for the future".

The only thing you can do is try to motivate them to play the part(s) of the game that is currently functioning: housing and role-playing events. If they're not doing that now, that gives you a good idea of their interests.

 

With at least another year before before "finished" new players coming in at release are going to land in a world where all but the least desirable housing is taken all quests are fully spoiled and they'll effectively never be able to compete in PVP or the crafting economy. Getting folks to play now is the only chance to avoid the hard bounce at release for returning players.

 

Get them away from wife/husband/bf/gf and/or their kids.