Where did the promotion campaign go?

[Greneth]

I could run myself ragged and hoarse on this subject. About the only really important thing Genesis needs is the newbie dungeons. Everything else while nice I don't believe is needed for recruitment or a high playerbase.

Take a look at NewWorlds if you get a chance, I could sit here and list a ton of reasons of why I think that MUD is absolute crap but I'll just save everyone the reading and say Genesis blows it out of the water with ease.

The difference is if you asked a MUD player about Genesis and NewWorlds they would probably know the later and not have a clue what the first one is. NewWorlds has a population at any given time of the day of 60-120+ everyday. Why? Because they are quite active in TopMuds and several other Forums and MUD recruitment places. I just can't figure out why all those people stay, but then again if you've only been introduced to one shitty type of beer and it's over glorified I suppose you wouldn't feel the need to try anything else.

[Cherek]

Celephias: I suggested newbie helpers get a message when newbies log in and out before. Perhaps it can be implemented! That would indeed help us to "catch" the true newbies.

*nudge gorboth*

[Makfly]

Arcon and Cherek, I can sense your frustration, and I fully understand how hard it is to wait. You seem to be operating on the assumption that the playerbase is in a steep and disastrous decline. This isn't true. The playerbase remains fairly stable, though at an undesirably low level. By waiting for things to be done properly, I do not agree that we are at risk of the game completely dying off.

I see Genesis the same way I see model trains. The hobby will not die until those who enjoy it do. I think our "die hards" will stay with Genesis (waxing and waning in their interest, but maintaining a basic core of players overall) for decades to come. We can (and will) be able to wait out the period of time needed for proper development.

The "do something ... ANYTHING!" response is understandable, but misguided. What we need instead is "DoThingsRight" as my old friend Gnadnar used to say. And that is the course the current Admin has elected to take. You may disagree with that course, and you may wish we had a different Admin. Well, we don't.

The current Admin is limited by its own manpower and the time we as individuals have in our daily lives to devote to the game. For myself, my time is heavily divided between family, work, and numerous other considerations. That being said, I am still perhaps the most active of the Admin overall (Petros blows me out of the water, when he isn't swamped with his own RL!) My interest in the game has not waned, and I am fully devoted to getting things where they need to be. You can rest assured that I will finish what I have started, but I do insist on doing things in a way that I believe to be correct.

So - to answer a few of the questions ... I agree that Denis Loubet's personal webpage looks pretty awful. It was created many years ago and is not to modern standards. His gifts are primarily those of artwork and illustration. He is not our site designer - rather, he is providing illustrations to meet the designs Tapakah sets for him. The final product of these efforts is proving to be truly distinctive (not looking like other things on the web) and speaks to what we are - a type of high-quality gaming that harkens to a bygone era of the Golden Age of roleplay.

Cherek, I agree with what you've said about the client. We are not trying to design something to compete with ZMud at all. Rather, we just want a way to guarantee that our visitor's "first steps" into the game are a high-quality experience, rather than a bare-bones telnet drab-fest. I like very much the idea that we could create a customized ZMud or ZMud client with pre-set Genesis stuff that we ask people to download. If there is talent around to accomplish that, I'd be interested to know about it.

G.

I think gambling on the fact that you have a healthy, friendly & helpful community, when all the work on the website and the game has been completed, is risky.

It's definitely a damned if you do, and damned if you don't scenario, but in your belief that the community is stable and won't decline, I think you might have forgotten one factor.
What kind of players are left when the promotional campaign is starting, and are they the ones that are interested in doing their utmost to hold on to any new player who might wander into the web of Genesis?

I don't think it's any surprise that the make-up of the Genesis community has changed as the numbers over the years have declined, so any further decline in the player-base is, most likely, from the social types. The ones that will probably play the biggest part in keep new players coming back.

As has been mentioned above, a friendly, helpful and social player is worth much, much more than newbie dungeons, art on a website and a better webclient.

[Arcon]

Arcon and Cherek, I can sense your frustration, and I fully understand how hard it is to wait. You seem to be operating on the assumption that the playerbase is in a steep and disastrous decline. This isn't true. The playerbase remains fairly stable, though at an undesirably low level. By waiting for things to be done properly, I do not agree that we are at risk of the game completely dying off..

Please remember that at least a third of the so called "active" population are on idle triggers in their guilds and then I don't know how many that are running on scripts and those few left either grind alone or lead someone on a script hardly talking.
Do you know how often I log on, get equipted just to quit again? All because I see the who list and I think "I don't feel like grinding alone again."
I wonder how many players there are that do the same thing, that has a log in on less the 5 min because they don't see anyone to team with?

And you say it is stable, for how long? You are still talking about a web client that hasn't even begun to be made, we don't even know who can make it.

Please understand, we are grateful for the time you put into this game, and I know that there aren't many wizards and we also know you do this for fun. The problem is that the game will never be perfect, that is whats good about it, it will always change. You have a very nice picture of genesis as a goal and I want us to reach that goal, I just want there to be more then 5 players when we do.

[Hektor]

This is a good debate, very necessary and interesting.

I believe I was hearing your points that we desperately need new players and that we cannot go on improving forever before we start a campaign, lest there won’t be anything left worth campaigning for. I absolutely agree that we need more players and soon

However, the point remains the same for me. To campaign heavily now would be luring in a lot of players to something they are just as likely to leave again. The game does not support newbies enough at this point.

As to the discussion on other players vs. content
I used to be able to get about 3 people a year to try Genesis, now it is 1 every year on average. Of all the people I have lured in the past 5 years - none have stayed. It is possible they never would have even if the game was more supportive of newbies. I do know all who tried it complimented the newbie guide though.

My experiences are they leave on the following grounds:
It is a textgame with too little support - too much to learn, and even if you decide to give it a shot by playing constantly for a month or so there is too little information about aspects of the game. (We need a webpage with comprehensive and accessible information about basic game concepts, a better webclient one day would help too)

The quests are awful - lack of logic and cohesive structure, different command structures in quests leads to frustration and frustration upon frustration.(We don’t have the resources to fix this, but it sure would help)

When you have failed your n’th attempt on a quest and whoever big guy and big guys team number gazillion have run by you because they don’t have time, there is NOTHING to do (Newbie grinder zone needed).

People are so negative – You run into old players on forums and in the game who verbally attack eachother, the game, concepts of the game, or simply attack you with their character. (The community is not only good and helpful)

My most successful attempts have been when more than 1 newbie started on together and helped eachother, learning and growing together.

We need newbie content and support before we start pushing for people to give it a try. Yes we have a great community, but the community alone cannot sell this product / service. We may get more people to try the game, and we have more people cheering the game on when they are playing. That will not do a thing when the game is so inaccessible in my opinion.
At the very least, finish the webpage and make sure you can get the information a newbie needs there before you start luring people in and setting them up for failure

Try starting a new character. Delete quest docs. Try to do quests only by what you can see from asking/searching. Delete your maps. Remove all your settings from your clients. Do not contact anyone at all except people you meet in game, and do not reveal your other chars and use that influence at all. The learning curve is very very steep.

A few things I would be very curious to hear more about from everyone.
Based on your experiences:
Why do you think new players leave?
Why do you think they stay?
What is the base minimum of improvement the game would need before a promo campaign should be started?

[petros]

Celephias: I suggested newbie helpers get a message when newbies log in and out before. Perhaps it can be implemented! That would indeed help us to "catch" the true newbies.

*nudge gorboth*

I like this idea. Should make those who are really interested in pursuing helping newbies an easy way to really help them. I'll see about making this happen in the next week or so.

[Cherek]

Hektor: Good points.

To answer your questions at the bottom:

I think new people who stay do it primarly because either they have a RL friend who play, or they make friends in the game. These olkd or new friends can show them the tricks, give them the maps, and the quest solutions, help them with the client etc. Completely alone, I also doubt many stay.

I think people leave primarly because they feel alone and dont know what to do, or how to do it.

What we at minimum need for a campaign? Well it all depends, if its gonna take three more years before we get a new webpage I dont think we need one. If its gonna take years before a newbie dungeon, I think we should go without, etc. But if we assume the following is added within a year, (preferably less time) I think this is minimum:

- I agree that we need a Sparkle with a newbie dungeon (and basic faciclities for food, equipment etc).

- I also agree we need a fairly modern webpage with basic information. Especially including a "newbie guide" and also including good maps.

- A web client that you can alt-tab too and from (the one we have with one simple fix), and/or a downloadable zmud client with presets.

With this, I think we should launch a campaign.


And while doing so I think the next thing to work on are the quests. I believe it will be impossible to fix all crazy typos and all that within a reasonable time frime, but there is some fairly simple things we can do. (as I mentioned in more detail in another topic). The easiest and most important to me would be to add a few questions to all quest NPCs around the realms. Coding-wise this is VERY easy to do. Anyone could do it really as long as you know the quest.

It would work like this:

Quest orbs point you to the quest NPC.

All quest NPCs respond to the words "quest / task / help". But we also add more questions to them. So they now hint about locations of things, and syntaxes. So if you find say some bushes you dont know what to do with, you simply go back to the quest NPC who will tell you "Bushes you say? North of here? Hmm.... perhaps you can 'crawl' through them? Have you tried that?".

That would be a good start into making quests more solveable and more fun. And actually not so hard to do as you think. Most likely way less hard than lots of other things the wizards work on. And extremely useful. And all mortals could help out (like we did with the orbs).

[Cherek]

Celephias: I suggested newbie helpers get a message when newbies log in and out before. Perhaps it can be implemented! That would indeed help us to "catch" the true newbies.

*nudge gorboth*

I like this idea. Should make those who are really interested in pursuing helping newbies an easy way to really help them. I'll see about making this happen in the next week or so.

Nice! Thanks Petros!

[Cherek]

Please remember that at least a third of the so called "active" population are on idle triggers in their guilds and then I don't know how many that are running on scripts and those few left either grind alone or lead someone on a script hardly talking.
Do you know how often I log on, get equipted just to quit again? All because I see the who list and I think "I don't feel like grinding alone again."
I wonder how many players there are that do the same thing, that has a log in on less the 5 min because they don't see anyone to team with?

And you say it is stable, for how long? You are still talking about a web client that hasn't even begun to be made, we don't even know who can make it.

Thats what I feel too. While the statistics may say our playerbase is fairly stable, I wonder if it takes into account all the idling that is going on these days. Check some "last" on the players logged in at any given date, check their login times. There are people that for some reason stay logged in for days, even weeks and they are more often than not on idle triggers. I find it very frustrating to mail and send messages to people who never reply, and I can imagine the frustration of true newbies who still havent grasped to "idling" concept. I have spoken to newbies who wonder why people dont reply and tried to explain this to them.

Statistics may lie, my "feel" from playing the game is our numbers of truly active players are declining.

I too log out because of lack of people to play with, and because I know those who are logged in most likely are either idle in their guild, or tagging along someone on triggers and really not active either.

No I too think its very dangerous to assume we have a core playerbase that will always stay. It may very well be true. But what if it isnt? Can we risk it? Yes some things need to be fixed but it needs to be fixed quickly, and who said we cant work on the campaign anyway?

Is there a strategy? An idea how to do it? Who to target? Where? Do we need money? Banners? Movies? Text? What?

All that will take time, and can start now. So we can LAUNCH it when its time.

(Sorry for three messages in a row, it felt better to split it since I write so much all the time.)

[gorboth]

It would work like this:

Quest orbs point you to the quest NPC.

All quest NPCs respond to the words "quest / task / help". But we also add more questions to them. So they now hint about locations of things, and syntaxes. So if you find say some bushes you dont know what to do with, you simply go back to the quest NPC who will tell you "Bushes you say? North of here? Hmm.... perhaps you can 'crawl' through them? Have you tried that?".

That would be a good start into making quests more solveable and more fun. And actually not so hard to do as you think. Most likely way less hard than lots of other things the wizards work on. And extremely useful. And all mortals could help out (like we did with the orbs).

Exactly! This will be one of the projects I work on as soon as the current batch of global improvements (imbuements, newbie grinder, Sparkle basics) is finished. The groundwork has been laid out for this process for years, in fact, thanks to conceptual work by Tapakah and numerous players who have been interested in helping out.

Thanks Cherek,
G.