Measuring results

[Hektor]

Hello everyone. This is sparked by Gorboths note about a promotional effort at an upcoming con. (great news!)

However, we have been working on making an ingame survey as to measure results and hopefully spot effective promotional activities.

The survey has been introduced as something that would be queried to participate in as part of the tutorial.

There should be some incentive to start and complete the survey.

Question remains - when should a player be prompted if they would participate in a survey? and what would a good reward be?

I personally am in favor of a query of participation and execution taking place before one starts even logging on - so to spot, which promotional efforts yields a general interest & new characters. Then it should be able to extract data if the players that answered "I saw / heard of the game on MudConnector" has a higher chance of continuing to the "actual genesis" than say a player that answered "I saw it at the Genesis convention site poster" etc.

I would argue that the reward should be a few extra gold coins right when you log in the tutorial as immediate reward and some extra qxp when you finish the tutorial as to enhance the goal incentive model.

Ideas? thoughts?

[Laurel]

Between char creation sequence and first steps on your own.
In this moment you have already done something within the game so just 1-2 questions are quick answered.
You don't want people to not even bother attempting Gen because of questioning in the first interactions.

[gorboth]

Laurel has stated my fear - that inclusion of a survey in the first few minutes of the game will make people think "Ugh! What nonsense is this? I came to play a game, not take a survey." (log off, quit, terrible first impression, never return.)

I like the idea of a survey giving us feedback about where and how our promotion efforts are reaching people. But my gut reaction so far is to have it be some brightly colored pavilion in Greenhollow or something, so that the player encounters it in a thematic way and it "fits" into gameplay rather than takes you out of the immersion.

G.

[Cherek]

I think the important part is to get players to actually answer it. Before they do anything else. I think making sure everyone who tries the game answers one(1) question is extremely important for us. If we have a pavilion in the tutorial area we will not know anything about new players who dont get that far. And thats important information to know, do people quit even before reaching the game itself?

Also making it optional and thematic means some will most likely skip it, or not even notice it.

I strongly think we should have one question directly after the new character name has been chosen. That is the "How did you find out about Genesis?"-question.

I doubt anyone will quit because of that. Basically all online services have this question when you sign up. People are extremely used to it. And all you need to do is press ONE button. It takes perhaps 10 seconds at most, and gives us very important data.

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How did you find out about Genesis?
1. Word of mouth.
2. Online advertisement.
3. etc, etc

I mean its one question we really need to know. Anything else is just bonus. Sure, we could have a pavilion too with more questions to get extra data if we want to. But that singly question really needs to be answered by all new characters I think. There is a reason so many online services have this question when you create an account. Because it's very important information they really need. So they know what types of advertising actually works. We need to know that too, or we seriously risk just spending our money on something that has no use.

[Hektor]

I agree with all Cherek wrote. Sums it up. We need to have that one question posed right away in a simple manner. Let us focus our attention on promo efforts that work.

[Zhar]

I hate filling forms online. This seems very much like it...

Let this one slip and soon we'll be posting captchas during login to prevent botting. *boggle*

[gorboth]

I agree with Cherek, and think this sounds reasonable. Here's a proposal. I've taken the old sequence and looked it over, and tried to dress it up for potential revision. My goal is to make it look friendlier and eliminate huge cumbersome blocks of text wherever possible.

Please read the old and then the new, compare, and offer feedback.

Current login sequence look and feel:

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Please enter your name: fiddlestick

New character.

Welcome to the realms of Genesis!

The administration and wizards of Genesis hope that you will enjoy your stay
with us in these realms. Before you continue, we like to draw your attention
to the following. The administration of Genesis actively promotes the use of
names that are fitting in a mediaeval or fantasy environment! Words that are
are a noun or adjective in the English language are normally discouraged. We
retain the right to erase those players that select a particularly unfitting
name. Chivalrous pretitles (Sirjacob) are not permitted. Genesis is aimed at
a mature audience. We strongly advise that players read "help rules" and the
relevant pages mentioned in "help topics" before venturning into the realms.

Do you really want to use the name Fiddlestick? y[es], n[o] or q[uit]? y
Welcome, Fiddlestick. Please enter your password.

To prevent people from breaking your password, we feel the need to
require your password to match certain criteria:
- the password must be at least 6 characters long;
- the password must at least contain one 'special character';
- a 'special character' is anything other than a-z and A-Z;
- the 'special character' may not be the first or the last
  letter in the password, that is somewhere before and after a
  'special character' there must be a normal letter.

New password: 
Now please type the password again to verify.
Password (again): 
Creating a new player.
Please enter your email address (or 'none'): none
Set to: none


Energy flashes briefly! ... and then ...
> 
Utter darkness ... Void ... Stretching endlessly toward nothing ....

A friendly voice says: Welcome, traveller.

For reading ease, and including the new single survey question, what about ...

Code: Select all

Please enter your name: fiddlestick

A new character, then! Welcome ... but first ... know that in Genesis roleplay is
taken seriously, and thus we ask that your name be one that can plausibly fit
within a medieval fantasy setting (and we reserve the right to delete names that
we find unfitting or that might break immersion.)

Do you really want to use the name Fiddlestick? y[es], n[o] or q[uit]? y

Excellent. Welcome, Fiddlestick, to Genesis LPMud!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             Creating your password
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your password must match the following criteria:
    - at least 6 characters long;
    - containing at least one 'special character'; (non alphabet)
    - the 'special character' must *not* come first or last in the password
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Please create your password below
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New password: ********
Now, please type the password again to verify.
Password (again): 

Excellent. Now, please enter an email address, or 'none' if you do not wish to.
Email address: none

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Just one question - Where did you hear about Genesis?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        [1] A friend
        [2] A colleague
        [3] Poster
        [4] Mud listing pages
        [5] Web Banner Advertisement
        [6] I'm not new to Genesis.
        [7] Other

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           Thank you! Let's begin now ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Energy flashes briefly! ... and then ...
> 
Utter darkness ... Void ... Stretching endlessly toward nothing ....

A friendly voice says: Welcome, traveller.

Comments?

G.

[Cherek]

Gorboth: I like it. Even with the extra question it is still shorter and faster than the old version.

[Hektor]

Yes this looks promising. Then we can at a later point have whatever other reminder when they finish the tutorial that there is an option (and reward) in doing a more extended questionaire. This, however, will be sufficient to partially monitor results of our promotional efforts. If we then compare the statistics of players answering 1-7 we can also get some indicators of what efforts attract a playertype that is more likely to continue playing.

If anything I might suggest that the 7 - Other response prompts a small "please specify" but it may not be necessary at all.

Thank you for the quick response.

[Laurel]

Will a prop stay within the player-file forever, so you can verify later how long given players stayed/played or how they grew, performed in quest-/general-/combat-exp and stuff?

I know I am trying to make statistics from a very low number of occurences, but well - that's the only thing we have now, or?

At least until we decide to increase the size of Genesis as a whole by copy-paste of large exping grounds for various sizes (make Calian foothills, trollshaws, goblin caves more like Krynn plains or hobbiton more populated or Kalaman/Flotsam/Balifor/Kendermore/Argos/Drakmere bigger ... like Kabal? etc.), which could then hold more than 3-4 various-sized combat-grind teams. But that's a completely different topic alltogether.