Getting new players to stick around.

[Electro]

Do not come in here and start blabbering about "the game is not that tough". You are wrong and this thread is not the place to do it.

So we were all new players at one point guys. We all remember just how tough it was those first few months to stay alive. As I am sure most of you have noticed, Wyvern has been lacking new blood recently. There are several reasons for this, but one of the most glaring is that once a new player starts, they get frustrated and do not give the game a chance to show its true charm to them, so they quit and never come back.

This thread shall be used to come up with ideas on how we can help out the newer players, because like it or not, without new blood, Wyvern will die.

My first idea is to start a "Mentor" system of some sort. The problem is, nobody wants to do anything for free. And if there is some form of payment, then it will get abused. My idea is to get older players to "adopt" a newer player; and make them responsible for the well being of the newer player. However, instead of receiving money, or xp or some valuable reward, I recommend a voucher of sorts.

Make the vouchers need to be collected in order to achieve a prize. In example:

5 vouchers-a portable throne or some other item
10 vouchers- a doll of the player
20- a tour of a wizard's workshop

These are just examples, but I believe with the proper prize, older players can be motivated to help, without being tempted to abuse the system.

[Teshuvah]

Originally Posted by Electro

Do not come in here and start blabbering about "the game is not that tough". You are wrong and this thread is not the place to do it.

So we were all new players at one point guys. We all remember just how tough it was those first few months to stay alive. As I am sure most of you have noticed, Wyvern has been lacking new blood recently. There are several reasons for this, but one of the most glaring is that once a new player starts, they get frustrated and do not give the game a chance to show its true charm to them, so they quit and never come back.

This thread shall be used to come up with ideas on how we can help out the newer players, because like it or not, without new blood, Wyvern will die.

My first idea is to start a "Mentor" system of some sort. The problem is, nobody wants to do anything for free. And if there is some form of payment, then it will get abused. My idea is to get older players to "adopt" a newer player; and make them responsible for the well being of the newer player. However, instead of receiving money, or xp or some valuable reward, I recommend a voucher of sorts.

Make the vouchers need to be collected in order to achieve a prize. In example:

5 vouchers-a portable throne or some other item
10 vouchers- a doll of the player
20- a tour of a wizard's workshop

These are just examples, but I believe with the proper prize, older players can be motivated to help, without being tempted to abuse the system.

I asked Elec to start this thread because this is something I am very interested in.
The tutorial probably needs a revamp, so ideas of things to put in the tutorial are good.
Ideas like vouchers are good. But here are the things you must think of when you suggest that.
1: how do they get them?
2: how is it verified that you helped?
3: minimal wizard intervention other than maps/additions, this is about keeping new players not getting wizards more involved with new players.
So as you suggest things, think of these carefully.

Players stand around now and don't help.
Although in all fairness I saw a level 33 go to NV and help a level 4 today.
That is something Wizards just can't do. We can't show them areas, etc sell them items to help etc.

So let the ideas roll and yes do not just start doing the "its not that hard" or start "game bashing" without valid suggestions to improve it or it will just get nuked.

[Beer]

I think a good idea would be titles like "headmaster" or "principal" (teachers names) for people who have considerably contributed to helping lower leveled players

If they are too long to fit on your screen there could even be a little symbol next to your name to indicate that you have helped or will help lower leveled players

[Electro]

Would it be possible to turn it into a quest of sorts?

Maybe the higher players can apply a desk or something that marks them as being available for the quest, and if a lower level player applies the same quest it sends a message or a mail to the volunteer?

There would still need to be some form of checking system, but this way, the quest can award the points straight to the volunteer without having to go through the new player.

[Burba]

Rewards might work. Obviously they couldn't be sold. It wouldn't be a good thing if people did it for a reward. The best way to do rewards might be to just give mentors something upon entering the guild, like a mentor hat or access to a special mentor guild area. I don't think there's an effective way to monitor how helpful someone is.

Maybe members of the teachers guild should see when new players join so they can check on them to see how they're doing? There's the help chat for questions, but new players might not know about it or might feel uncomfortable using it when they're confused. If someone greets them and tells them to ask or use help if they have any problems, they might have an easier time getting help.

Also, nerf the monsters, give everyone gold, and increase skills per level by 1. Oh, and take out all of the tough puzzles.

[Machuno Besar]

I was thinking something in the direction of a town, where you help out people with some basic stuff. Like clear a basement, get some materials for someone. Get information from someone etc etc.

EDIT
Ok so more

You start in a house with other people that are the same race as you. When you log in you get a whisper or magic mouth that tells you to walk around a bit and press 't' to talk to the people that are inside. That way you get an idea of what your race can do.
You then leave the building trough the door (obviously) and find yourself in the town of Xploar. Tudros whispers you when you exit the building, and tells you to find the house of wich the doormat says '1' (or something, i was just thinking like a tile).
You enter the house of some old lady that wants to get a painting from the attic, but there are spiders in it. You need to get up there, kill the spiders and get the paiting. When you walk over the painting you get another whisper from the lady that says: Oh I forgot, you need to use the 'get' command or .... to pick up stuf, get the painting and come give it to me with 'give painting to old lady').
And there, you learned how to fight, get and give stuff and do basic things.

I can't think of any more parts of the tutorial right now. But they shouldn't be to hard to find. You can link parts with stuff like: 'I have a note for...', or '<person> was looking for help, could you take I look there'.

[Beer]

spiders are fairly hard at level 1...

[Machuno Besar]

Just lower their stats? :/

[Arilou]

Teaching players that spiders are killable right as they enter the game isn't the best idea. Tweaking stats is more of an advanced thing that should be done for players who already have a basic understanding of the game. So, if we really, really, really needed to use spiders rather than using another type of monster, it would be better to make a non-giant version via a new graphic.

[Electro]

The game has recently been trending towards having players group together to be more and more successful. More low level grouping areas would be essential to teaching new players to group and make new friends as soon as possible. The sooner they learn to group, the better. Possibly make a seperate tutorial/make an area in the current tutorial JUST for grouping?

[Yoggie]

Not gonna lie, but I didnt read any of the previous posts cause im lazy, but I think the best way to get new players to stay is to just be nice, or to have older players invite their friends to play. I know I only started playing cause my friend lalavava told me about "This awesome game called Wyvern". He showed me the ropes etc, and I've been playing off and on for 5 years now. So you don't really need to fix up the tutorial or w/e Just get players to stop feeling all high and mighty and above helping

[Thynar]

As a new player (less than a week) I'll have to say I'm quite happy with the game as I found it. I actually appreciate all the barriers against too much hands-on help (impossibility to just give away gold or items and enforcement of quest no-spoilerism). In this sort of games I like to spend most of my time exploring and trying things on my own and the challenge is more enjoyable if I know I really can't "cheat" my way around it. I did get very good help of the actually useful sort, though, meaning answers about game mechanisms, general hints, locations of trainers and advice on skills, both throught the help channel and direct player interaction. So my impression is that the Wyvern community actually is being quite open and helpful to new arrivals like me, while the actual game makes it sure you can't just get free gold/quest solutions/other spoilage and again, I consider this a very good practice.

The tutorial itself was straightforward enough, though it didn't talk about guilds at all. Of this topic I had to learn through the manual and mostly asking around. It would be useful to have it clearly written down somewhere that a guild choice is not final (as I was told in /help), which together with untraining possibilities gives a lot of freedom for experimentation with character development (or at least that's my impression for now.

[Teshuvah]

Originally Posted by Thynar

The tutorial itself was straightforward enough, though it didn't talk about guilds at all. Of this topic I had to learn through the manual and mostly asking around. It would be useful to have it clearly written down somewhere that a guild choice is not final (as I was told in /help), which together with untraining possibilities gives a lot of freedom for experimentation with character development (or at least that's my impression for now.

Thank you for your comments.
This is a very good point. You have no idea yet that there are guilds, nor what to train.
Some may even think the trainers are in the tutorial so that means you must train something there and that's generally untrue except for a skill or two and then it's only cheaper, not required.
So some discussion of training choices, and guilds and the ability to untrain later at a high cost if needed would be good.
I'd really like to see emphasis on showing them there are so many choices, as Wyvern is really all about options and choices for your time spent with us. And you may not be used to that from other games.

Originally Posted by Electro

The game has recently been trending towards having players group together to be more and more successful. More low level grouping areas would be essential to teaching new players to group and make new friends as soon as possible. The sooner they learn to group, the better. Possibly make a seperate tutorial/make an area in the current tutorial JUST for grouping?

Definately need more grouping areas for the NV area.

I'd also definately like to see the tutorial not all per player. So you can run into other players, old and new.
In that premise there could be a tutorial grouping area that teaches about grouping along with some other skills within it.
This also would allow higher levels to come help and show them around.

We need some more specific ideas for grouping areas.

Originally Posted by Electro

Would it be possible to turn it into a quest of sorts?

Maybe the higher players can apply a desk or something that marks them as being available for the quest, and if a lower level player applies the same quest it sends a message or a mail to the volunteer?

There would still need to be some form of checking system, but this way, the quest can award the points straight to the volunteer without having to go through the new player.

I'd love to see some variation of this.
Written like this we'd need a lot of code.
But its possible to do it with items , new player goes to X and gets token. Gives token to who ever helps them.

While this could be abused, the prizes are more for show than anything else so probably wouldnt be abused.

Totally preventing abuse is a code issue once again...
I'd love some long term, help new player quest though. So I need to hear some more input or ponder it for a year..lol

[Teshuvah]

Originally Posted by Beer

I think a good idea would be titles like "headmaster" or "principal" (teachers names) for people who have considerably contributed to helping lower leveled players

If they are too long to fit on your screen there could even be a little symbol next to your name to indicate that you have helped or will help lower leveled players

Titles are a good idea and the teachers guild being coded to include this would be great if the long name bug could be fixed. That would be a client upgrade.

[Beer]

At the moment, I think Electrowiz's idea of tokens is the best idea

[Gustavus]

First, I do agree that the Teachers Guild is the best thing in the game for encouraging new players.

Second, for the following, I'm going to be lazy and copy and paste. Quotes from the log are printed with <snip> to show the start, and </snip> to show the end.

<snip>
You shout: One thing I could suggest: when I first started the game, I came out of the training tower and went west. It was a long time before I realized where New Verden was.
teshuvah bubbles: please post in the forum malagigi thats the kind of thing we want
You shout: So, something as simple as signs at the crossroads could help.
teshuvah bubbles: amazingly there is a huge sign right outside tutorial tower
teshuvah bubbles: it needs to blink and say read me
fouet shouts: There is a sign, but there could be a magic mouth the instant you leave or something like that.
</snip>

At this point, I went to the crossroads area, and read what I *thought* was the sign in question. What I thought was the right one is the small sign just next to the tower says. It reads:

<snip>
The sign reads:
The Wyvern Tutorial is in the Tower to your right. It teaches you everything you need to know to be able to start playing Wyvern.
</snip>

At this point I still didn't realize my mistake. However, trying to be thorough,
I looked around. I found a small sign that said:

<snip>
The sign reads:
Davos - 2 leagues east
</snip>

Just as I was about to state that there were no corresponding signs for Amita and New Verden, I noticed an image, different from the small sign images I'd seen, that I must have passed by more than a hundred times.
It dawned on me that it was supposed to represent a crossroads type of sign (that is, arrow boards pointing in different directions). [Actually, isn't there one like it in the tutorial itself? Arrgh.] I finally read it, and the following.

<snip>
The sign reads:
Training Tower - east
New Verden - 0.5 leagues south
Amita - 0.5 leagues west
Davos - 2 leagues southeast
All three towns have areas for new adventurers and shops for purchasing equipment or selling loot.
</snip>

So, the conversation in shouts continued:

<snip>
teshuvah bubbles: and a magic mouth isnt baby sitting.
teshuvah bubbles: forcing them to do something to get out of the tutorial is
You shout: You know, I never, until now, realized that thing was a sign! There is a sign right next to the training tower that I took to be the "sign" image.
teshuvah bubbles: see?
teshuvah bubbles: players dont 'look" at things
teshuvah bubbles: there is a huge sign across from it too lol
teshuvah bubbles: the tutorial needs a revamp, but we need ideas of what you missed, what you didnt understand, what confused you when you started for that.
teshuvah bubbles: This game requires a higher IQ than most.
teshuvah bubbles: That in itself is a struggle
salkand shouts: You should explain skill sets more carefully.
teshuvah bubbles: Players are spoiled by other games that do everything for you.
teshuvah bubbles: So what you said malagigi is good and needs added to the forum...
You shout: I'll do that in a bit Teshuvah, right now I'm going to play for 20 min.
teshuvah bubbles: Ok don't forget, please
</snip>

My specific suggestion at this point is simple: make that sign image look more like a sign! It is obvious when you know it is a sign, but not so obvious when you don't.

--Gustavus

[Fredd]

This is a pretty interesting subject, even if no ale is involved.
The teachers guild is a free guild, no benefits or what not. Its main benefit is to introduce new players to the game, which is reward enough. And help in a new game, to someone is really appreciated. I remember Soonsoo and Binsenkind offering advice to a poor Dwarf many moons ago.
If you bored, showing new people spots not take that much time, neither is offering advice on skills. Now when someone asks something , and they get 5 shouts "Go to tutorial tower", that statement while being true, its more polite to just send them a tell. No one likes to appear foolish, especially a new player.
When it appears English is not there primary language, there is no reason to ridicule them. I am from Alabama, my english is bad enough.Just try to help them, over the years I learned several useful words in 5 languages, except for one that I think means fatty.

So when you are bored, just take a little time to help someone, it really does pay off for all.

[Crier]

One great addition to the tutorial would be a sign or something in the communicating part, with all the names of the teachers. It could teach new players the "who" command (way too many shouts of "Hey is Bob on?") and it will teach them how to use tells to tell a teacher. This makes the teacher's guild much more useful because for a newer player finding a teacher to help them out is really hard on its own.


EDIT::
I also think that the tutorial should be harder to skip over, meaning that it can be skipped like this one, but most new people would be forced to do it until they can figure out how to skip it.
IE: Secrete path in the well? Requires you to use some of the game skills (have to talk to someone at the end for a key and unlock the door and done) or something like that.

[Hamel]

A 'teacherwho' command would be nice for all players, so if they need help they can ask one of these people. Also, a quest required to enter the teachers guild, to assure that people who join know what they are doing.

And if you ever did get an automated rewards-for-answers system going, some good rewards may just be titles that could only be obtained through teachers-guild XP.

[blazerv]

I think we all agree that the tutorial shouldn't be a per player map anymore so can we get that changed so we can get this process going =D.