Zorg wrote:While implementations of new features can be helpful for retention issues, they will hardly play a role.

There is also a long time since we created a new universe; perhaps the time to create a new one has came. New universes always boost activity across all universes as they all benefit from the increased advertising and returning players.

Regarding the split up, if a universe keeps running on low numbers with no profit (right now, massacre is not doing well) we will need to consider drastic measurements with the most drastic of all to remove it from main welcome page (no direct newcomer signups).

Another issue to consider is the deletion of inactives; with many inactives player interaction is reduced as most farm the inactives. We are going to test this primarily in massacre for the time being.

We also need help from current playerbase in spreading the word; the usage of referral system is adequate and only a few players seem to bother with it. That's a good way to help the game.

Deleting inactives just for the sake of is a bad idea imo.

The referral system is not adequate either, I have referred 3 people and not received anything at the intervals listed on the referral page. The first was because it was a coworker at work and so from the same IP, the next 2 one played for awhile and then quit but he had enough points for at least one reward maybe two. The next didn't even make it to the first portion.

The problem is the antibot page, I gave the guy my referral link only and he mentioned a captcha when he was signing up and then I get no credit or even him showing up under my referral page (different IPs, different PCs).

I can understand why you would want a captcha on the referral system but you really need to at least pass the referral ID to the botpage so that it remembers it. Since these issues I have not even bothered to give the referral link whenever I mention the game (very rarely since I know most will just get bored and quit)

Make the game more interesting and fix referrals that get botchecked then you'll see it used more.

medal wrote:Deleting inactives just for the sake of is a bad idea imo.

Don't be quick on this one. For example, STANDARD has 85 000 unique combats in last 60 days. How many of them are on inactives I do not know but I would assume that a majority of them is towards inactive players.

This creates a false impression of inactivity and demoralizes users as there is reduced user activity.
By reducing the inactives, we will inevitably increase user interaction. We will try this in Massacre, if it works it will be expanded in the rest of the universes.

Two of the most played servers.

extreme has 5.12% active players speed has 3.79% active players. the exact numbers are 168 and 120 respectively. a really good active raider does +500 raids per day. a decent raider does +200 raids per day. both the numbers are more than total active players. and on an average the number for active players within raiding range is about 30% of the total number. so that is around 50 and 40 for respective servers.

so yeah mate numbers do say alot. you have the statistics we have the game experience. your numbers has to relate to our game play experience not the other way around.

Zorg wrote:

medal wrote:Deleting inactives just for the sake of is a bad idea imo.

Don't be quick on this one. For example, STANDARD has 85 000 unique combats in last 60 days. How many of them are on inactives I do not know but I would assume that a majority of them is towards inactive players.

This creates a false impression of inactivity and demoralizes users as there is reduced user activity.
By reducing the inactives, we will inevitably increase user interaction. We will try this in Massacre, if it works it will be expanded in the rest of the universes.

I would caution you to thoughtfully consider your plan before implementing, if you decrease the number of inactives there is going to be a point at which the more established players will compete and probably crowd out the new players. The scenario I see unfolding is making it even more difficult for new players and also making raiding even more of a chore, the result will be both demographics (new and vet) leaving the game. At least at this point the vets are not leaving nearly as quickly as the new players, if you can bring new players in and retain them then that gives more interact and challenge for established players.

It's my opinion, you're free of course to ignore it but you should realize with some time invested in the game and some money as well that we all are trying to help you out.

----Begin feed of troll----

I mentioned Standard because it is not well known for its raiding activity. I am not sure where and how you got the numbers you have. If you counted them one by one, it would be better to spend your time into more creative things (like advertising the game?). If you used a tool, then you deserve a game ban.

Whatever numbers I speak, they are always true. If I wanted to hide something, I would not speak at all so please do not question the data I release (asking a troll to stop trolling... what am I thinking here ? ). Here are all the raids in Standard by username. The list is long so I included only players above 500 raids. The top raider does about 150 a day. You can count the total to see if my number was correct or not.

Standard top raiders last 60 days And now that I fed the troll (SPY), back to what we were saying.


-----End of troll feed-----

I need to get the discussion back on topic:


The topic author pointed out that there is few fleet interaction in compare to his initial experience. At first I identified the first major issue which is the number drop and then I started seeking and discussing solutions with you.

Besides right advertising -which is the most major action we are currently undertaking-, we are thinking of more things to do. One of them is to reduce inactives. I will remind you that in the beginning, we were pretty fierce in inactives deletion. We gradually relaxed the deletion rules for inactives since Massacre release in about October 2011 (if I remember well). Before that, we were deleting people weekly at exactly 30 and then 45 days of inactivity. Sometimes even sooner than this as we had server issues with more than 1000 accounts. So, it is not like we are going to try something entirely new here.

In Massacre, we are taking out about 250 accounts a week. There are now 5800 accounts in massacre and we have deleted about 500 accounts in last 2 weeks. The reason we are taking them out slowly is to make the whole procedure seamless. In the end, we will not delete them all; the inactives will still be more than the actives.

Fact is, that the game is far better than it used to be 4 years ago. The primary reasons for the playerbase drop is not necessarily game flaws. It mostly concerns playerbase splits at times that we weren't able to recover in time. The effort will be continued from our side and the more support we can get from the playerbase, the better.

Zorg wrote:If you used a tool, then you deserve a game ban.

now who is speculating here. tool ofc i am using a tool. only a fool wd deny that. but its your job to find out if that tool is a legitimate one or not. after what you said on that line i feel absolutely no obligation to state or mention the nature of this tool.

Zorg wrote:Besides right advertising -which is the most major action we are currently undertaking-, we are thinking of more things to do. One of them is to reduce inactives. I will remind you that in the beginning, we were pretty fierce in inactives deletion. We gradually relaxed the deletion rules for inactives since Massacre release in about October 2011 (if I remember well). Before that, we were deleting people weekly at exactly 30 and then 45 days of inactivity. Sometimes even sooner than this as we had server issues with more than 1000 accounts. So, it is not like we are going to try something entirely new here.

what you said there and what you said here...

Zorg wrote:Another issue to consider is the deletion of inactives; with many inactives player interaction is reduced as most farm the inactives. We are going to test this primarily in massacre for the time being.

you failed to specify the nature of deletion you were talking about earlier. the way you posted it seemed that the curtail of inactive pool wd have been enough to dry the income source. it seems that portion required the necessary details which you provided AFTER my trolling attempts. if you had been forth comming with the "plans" without giving us vague informations we wont need to fire at you at will at all

Zorg wrote:Regarding the split up, if a universe keeps running on low numbers with no profit (right now, massacre is not doing well) we will need to consider drastic measurements with the most drastic of all to remove it from main welcome page (no direct newcomer signups).

so a particular server if not getting enough intake of players to the existing veteran players then that universe will get cut off and eventually drained off. thats a promising information for any universe. but i suppose you were refering to massacre.

so the choice is simple play with the most popular universe to be sure that it will last long. now my question is who makes a universe popular?

1) advertising?
2) player invitations?
3) existing player base?

i am not blaming here just trying to decide what is the best way to choose for an universe or invite a few friends in to play this game.

and fyi i have asked friends to join in. but u know what? they lost interest and moved on.

PS: ohh and i totally forgot... the thread author? posted this on xtreme universe box.. just so you dont miss it while explaining stuffs

Honestly, and I hate to be this guy, but I think the reason that this game loses so many users is because of the lack of variety of things to do. I mean, when you come to the game, everything is new and fresh, albeit a bit slow. But you work hard to unlock all the new ships and technology, join alliances, raid, all sorts of stuff. And, depending on the crowd you jump in with, all this can be a great way to kill time.

But fast forward a few months, or even a year or two. You've been using the same ships to repeat the same routines you've been doing for a year. It's repetitive, and I am the biggest hater of repetition myself. I mean, the people that you've been hanging out with in the game are awesome, for the majority, and so you keep coming back. But you lose interest in the game, and start coming back just for the chats. And you start coming back fewer times, because your counterparts are in the same recession of playing that you're in, and eventually you rarely come back at all.

Take me for instance. I've been in vmode since before Christmas, mostly for being busy IRL, but still. There's rarely any new additions other than the odd bug fixes, and the two new ships. Yeah, new universes get opened, but they're just the same thing. Honestly, there are just far too few things to do within the game, and the only, ONLY reason that I'm here now is because of my love for the Zorg community.

Text based games are just like this. There's really no way to fix this, only prolong the time it takes to become boring. Take Facebook's Mafia Wars, for example. Relatively the same thing as zorg, with ships and planets and raids swapped out for guns and chop shops and jobs and killing. But that game has a far, far greater variety of things than zorg. Granted, it still gets boring quick, especially without player interaction, and because you can pretty much get anything you want with RL Cash.

So yeah, I've absolutely no suggestions on how to keep players longer.

But, I do have a suggestion on how to keep new ones.

A bloody tutorial system to earn rubies!

It's been suggestion SO MANY times, and I don't understand why you haven't picked up the idea and ran with it.

The general idea is to basically force all newly registered players go through the tutorial, teaching them the importance of building and raiding and fleetsaving. And maybe not give ruby rewards, but resources or ships instead. 95% of players quit after the first day they sign up, you've said so yourself in the past, and we can only speculate it's because they don't understand/too lazy to figure the game out/ think you start out too slow. With a tutorial, we would kick most of these hindrances out with one fell swoop.

Anyway, that's just my dollar and two cents.

Approved Suggestion List

It's actually already on the Approved list.

See actual suggestion for the Tutorial here

So, yeah. Get it done. Erm, please. Boss. Sir. >.>

Tutorials will be implemented, alongside with a universal Hall of Fame. ASAP. Both will help with retention.

I know I am posting in the X-treme section; x-treme playerbase is the most hardcore in ZE and thus a suitable place to discuss anything about the game.

We don't want to take drastic measurements for any universes. The major variable that we take in mind to determine how well a universe is doing, is the active members per day. The best things that a player can do is buy rubies and use the referral system. ZE has big advantages against any other game of the same type so recruiting won't be this hard.

Ace, ZE is a online multiplayer game. Mafia Sh!t is an online single player with a leaderboard.

An idea that could help with repetition syndrome, is to re-open Generals tournament universe. This time for 6 months. It has different concepts and traffic wise it did very well. Perhaps if it lasts 6 months at least, it could not only pay for itself but also retain a good portion of players for the rest of the universe. We could fetch about 1000 daily active players within the first week.

curious question for a curious idea i have.

how many players does it make a good battlefield for a server like generals?