with a few old players returning to activety again I thought I'd bring up a discussion about it.
While getting new players is all fine and dandy, lets get realistic, odds of us attracting heaps of new younger players are not that great, with all the online games around a good old text based game just aint that much fun to most people.
So lets try to focus on trying to get some of the old players back instead!
What can we do to get these people back ? I am sure we all got a bunch of old Gen
players on msn/facebook/icq etc who we talk to now and then, question most people
ask me is "You still playing Gen?" "Anything new going on?"
So there's an intrest from these people in the game still, they just need to get a bump to get
back to gaming again, question is how do we do that ?
Recodes are one way, it they have indeed made some people returned, but I think there's smaller things we can do get some more of these old foogeys back!
Some thoughts I think that could help bring people back, bring back the fun of the old days, where a death did not make you want to leave the game.
Sure death recovery helped make people worry less about death, but lets be realistic for most of us gaming hours a day for 2-3 months to recover a death is still something that takes away from the fun of playing.
One solution was the time based recovery that was brought up in the past, where you'd get a say 60 or 90 day "recovery" period, if you logged in regulary for that time you'd get a small boost in recovery per login(once a day)and at the end of the recovery you'd be fully recovered without having to grind and grind. Also if I remember right, the idea was that if you grinded as well during this period your recovery would go even quicker. Which I think would be a good idea.
Another issue that I heard people complain about is how they aren't happy in their guilds and thats a big reason why they just fade away, they dont have the will/time to spend months of recovery just to switch to a new guild. So my suggestion is, either cut the penalties for leaving a guild in half or remove them completely(or introduce the earlier mentioned time based recovery).
That way I think we'd see some more old players returning, if they could return and switch guilds without having to take a huge hit in stats,(cause lets face it its not much fun returning from years away to take a death just to be able to switch guilds).
Another way to make people have more fun, introduce a once a month "wiz-weekend" or something similar, were focus were not on conflicts and keeping up guild vs guild roleplay etc(unless you want too of course).
Maybe throw a once a month
* "new ability" like global rescue for a weekend to increase enteraction between smaller and larger players? Right now I at least feel that I cannot bring too small players with me cause I have no way of rescuing/switching tanks if they get attacked by mean foes.
* "global war weekend", where those who sign up are signed into 2 teams(or more depending on how many want to try it out)and get some features to track eachother/a domain to war in , and then keep track of kills and such info.
* "express way into a new guild weekend", where guilds would chill out a bit on the harsh and time demanding recruitment policies and do a quick evaluation of a player if he doesnt fail miserably, they get a chance to join their guild on a low level without having to spend months tasking etc. Of course this would have to be used carefully, but at the same time some guilds out they really do take themself waaaay too seriously
Well those are just a few ideas that came to mind, I am sure theirs people out there who think they are all dumb, some might think them brilliant, but at least we're discussing things and maybe something can positive can come out of it?
Whats YOUR idea(s) to bring some old friends back to the game?
