Any SotA presence at E3?

Pretty much just get an account...go to one of the starter zones and see how many folks are there. I went into Highvale the other day and there were at least 20 people there. How i know they are new. All wearing Outlander tags. Most folks after time stop using that title. Also the abundance of questions hurled at me while i was in the zone....which i gladly answered all the questions posed to me. I got to a point i went to zone chat just so i didnt end up repeating myself over and over. So it was pretty much a hands on tutorial for some of them. It was nice to see so many new folks

 

I just keep noticing lots and lots of newbie questions in chat. Those are definitely new people.

 

Why would people playing because of the mailings log in with Steam if the mailings don't mention Steam?

 

Also, why are we mailing old players? @Chris and @DarkStarr ? I mean we CAN but we need marketing to target MMORPG players that haven't played or even heard of this game. Social media marketing (which can start as free) is a good start.

And honestly, I wouldn't do it until EP2 or at least until Quests and Maps are fixed. Otherwise they're just gonna walk right back out the door.

Also, I would incentivize playing the game for x number of house on a new account for prizes that bind to that account. I'm talking like 5oo hours or some number people who think they'll just create a new account to get the incentive will REALLY have to work to get and so they won't do it.

A house deed, a unique house to put on the lot, something in-game. I get that binding is a no-no here but we can make exceptions (and have) for incentive items.

 

Probably because there is no budget currently for anything but emailing an existing lists of names, which is a nominal cost compared to just about any other form of marketing. If there is free-ish social media marketing out there, of course go for that too - perhaps that starts to be a resource issue to roll out though.

Yup, it would be ideal to wait if possible to minimize retention problems that may happen if they did it now. But if those are a long way off...

 

Because they have their email addresses? I mean, why not?

 

I drove past the E3 convention when I saw the line outside. Had pancakes at The Griddle Cafe and went back home.

 

If players are returning from the pledge days pre-launch then I can easily see why they might not want to be using Steam. Setting up your account via Steam back then was a big no-no for most who had an eye for possibly selling their account if/when they decided to quit playing the Shroud someday. You had a difficult if not impossible time trying to transfer the accounts over to the new buyer thru Portalarium. I still see no need for using steam, unless your into lots of games.

As far as E3 Booth etc. You would want to have something to actually show/share with people about the possible release of Episode 2. The kind of things that are new and ground breaking for the game, not sure they are close to that point at this point.

 

I understand that. However, it doesn't address what I'm saying. I am not arguing that Steam has fewer people using it... or even over time. That's not in contention.

Not everyone switched. In order for this argument to work, -> *100%* <- of the people who received the email, and decided to act on it, would have -> **already** <- switched over from Steam, or had never been using. Not 72%. Not 98%.

100%

I am a living example as someone who 1) still uses Steam, 2) received those emails and 3) logged in, grabbed my reward, and logged off, which would not produce the desired results they're after, with player retention, and would produce the results seen.

Otherwise, we should have seen a significant bump, relatively speaking, on the Steam stats, because, statistically speaking, some NON-ZERO percentage of the people would have logged in with Steam. There was no bias or mechanism for the mass emails to somehow target only people who were already switched from Steam. 100%.

Are you saying that, for some inexplicable reasons, Portalarium decided to only target those who weren't using Steam specifically? Why would they have done that? And what makes you think they did? Again, even if they were using Steam, then decided afterward to switch, it would have still produced that traffic, assuming that *100%* all decided to switch then and there.

Is the bolding and underlines and arrows and things helping? I swear I can't dumb this down any further. If I say, "Statistically emailing a bunch of people should have some of them still using Steam", a response of "But most people use the launcher more because it's better" isn't even in the same conversation.

 

You wouldn't have gotten in anyway lol

 

What about the $10k a month they could save in advertising by not renting out office space? What happened to that? According to Chris since March they should have at least $20-30k by now for advertising.

 

I would rather we put the saved money to development than advertise the game. We can all do that.

We are still missing basics in this game such as an achievement system, raid system, and focus on improving incomplete like cooking has one skill and is a waste with lower tier recipes almost useless. So much can still be done like enhancing skill for cooking to take low tier foods from meaningless to meaningful. It could be like a cooking masterworking skill. Also adding alcohol use in more recipes could add extra reason to use brewery.

If game improvements continue then we can all be the advertisement along with emails etc. I say save our cash for needed development.

 

Yea, I've been watching player numbers on the Steam side. They've generally been going down despite the emails, except for two significant bumps; the first was participation in the decoration contest, and then word going out that Tartarus was OP. Then, as soon as the devs nerfed Tartarus, the player numbers went down again.

This is further evidence for what @oplek is saying, because the Steam numbers are actually accurately reflecting ups and downs in player participation due to various events, rather than showing a mass exodus from Steam to the launcher. They're going up when players see an opportunity to get their goodies, then they're going down. And are generally stagnant or going down.

If we're talking about seeing new players, yea I've been getting new friend requests since they forced MP on Overland and towns, too. But I also would get new friend requests before this change whenever I switched to MP, because I would generally play in SP. However, I haven't seen a regular influx of new players over a period of time. There have been times I've played where I've literally been hanging around the Overland for days for most of the day, just to catch players and chat up with them. For example, during the Brittany Fort fishing competition, for several days, I was going around playing sea shanties on my lute, and telling tales of the sea, and encouraging people to join the fishing contest. Sometimes, I would take a break from the Overland and pop in a town to see the "Nearby Players" list and catch up with people there, and then return to the Overland. Over a period of time, I saw the same old names over and over.

Interacting with other players and backers over time, I've personally heard two things. The first is players quitting because they haven't liked the direction the devs gave been going on. Some players may like it, but its alienating others. The second is players becoming bored and guild members dropping off because its pretty easy to grind things now, especially with the game changes, and you get tired of grinding and run out of things to do (the "more content" problem -- Tartarus was "more content" when it was OP, then it got nerfed).

I'm not saying any of this to be "doom and gloom", because I'm not that type of person; I'm just trying to give an honest perspective. Which I hope we can share here on the forums. Because the talk of there being an influx of new players sounds like wishful thinking to me.

There have been a lot of people who have said "if you just change x, y, and z to be more like other MMOs out there, the SotA playerbase will increase". I've never believed this, but I would be okay with being proven wrong, and don't see it in the numbers, either.

By the way, I think some of the changes some players feel are important have nothing to do with what appealing to new players, or retaining them; they're mainly requests by old players who have been there, done that, and want things that cater to them as old players. Some of those requests I agree with, some I don't. But new players don't care about fast travel, raids, +16 level weapons, dying buildings, Destroyer bears. You know what draws and retains new players? Immersion and solo gameplay. Sorry, but its true.

 

By the way, if anyone is wondering about player creation events in the stats; one thing to mention is a lot of players create new avatars to kill them and get their skulls and bones. I'm guessing that's why Sole has a 198-0 kill-to-death ratio in the 30-day leaderboards. (And why those PvP stats are kind of useless).

 

I came back because of it. I had quit for almost a year

 

I know very few players who bother to use steam. Direct access is faster and easier

 

A great place is the discord channels for games that have not released yet. I bought into Chronicles and met several folks in their discord. Some of them have started playing Shroud.

 

As Alleine and Majoria explained before advertising we need to improve some features of our game:

- New quest/journal system;
- More unique NPCs and more options for character customization;
- Crafting system (cooking, crafting spec, agriculture); All are incomplete;
- Reduce the loading times;
- Complete the player made dungeon feature with NPC placement and player quests;
- Raid system and new bosses for raids;
- More monsters and creatures.
- Merge some scenes and make it bigger, we need bigger and more complex places to explore.
- Seer system, players with the ability to respaw monsters and place itens, creating living quests.

After that lauch EP2 and advertising.

 

I would LOVE to see better character customization and some sort of barber certificate to rework your character based on the new options provided. Like hair that does not look like hay caught in a hurricane covered in dirt and set on fire... you know, little things.

I'm glad I have a helmet to cover up the mess for now.