Making newcomers important ?

#1
Greetings,

One of the problems we are trying to solve without any good ideas at hand yet, is how to make newcomers (more) important.

Right now, someone who creates an alliance will browsing through recently joined players and invite them. Or will start browsing galaxies for established players without a tag to invite them. Once he reaches the desirable number/power he will stop. The cycle will continue when someone else wants to create an alliance or expand his current one.

Meanwhile, a lot of newcomers are going to the waste.

As noted in viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9056
Administrator wrote: For the new year, our main objective is to increase the stable playerbase of each universe.
Therefore we are thinking to improve the retention rates somehow. Any ideas?

Re: Making newcomers important ?

#2
Maybe it might be possible to let the leaders of already established alliances to control a secondary alliance to be used as a training wing for new players.
Here they can be trained, offered advice by more established players and receive the protections of a stronger alliance.
The stronger players could then move on to the larger alliance.
This would act as a protection for both the new player and the main alliance, because I think alot of the more established alliances are worried about spies and weeding through all of the players that are not capable of grasping the game.
Image
I'll take 96.875%

Re: Making newcomers important ?

#3
pros n cons to this and was mentioned back along time ago but requires much change.

will do the list then i will fill the explanations in edits as i have time and the counters before everyone has a fit.

1) Do away with player protection as is and install 3 tiers.

2) All fleet included in scores regaurdless if up or down.

3) Because it is mute as it really is unforceable do away with milk/push rule.

4) Random alliance generator and every 11th new account starts a new alliance.

5) Reduce amounts of attacks to 10 times per person per 24 hours in first tier 20 times in tier 2 and as is in final tier.

be back in a bit to explain pros/cons.Every action has n equal and opposite reaction.

Re: Making newcomers important ?

#4
It is just an idea,
but maybe a 'starter-pack' for new players would be nice.
I was thinking of some small ships
-colony ship
-small transport
and some resources.

That way, they get stimulated to play on and not to quit after a while.
Regards NEO
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."

Re: Making newcomers important ?

#6
I know you said you would list pros and cons on each of these as you had time but I am bored so I will comment my thoughts on them. For craps and giggles. ;)
-Death- wrote:pros n cons to this and was mentioned back along time ago but requires much change.

will do the list then i will fill the explanations in edits as i have time and the counters before everyone has a fit.

1) Do away with player protection as is and install 3 tiers.
I will wait on this one because as it is I dont understand how these 3 tiers would work.

2) All fleet included in scores regaurdless if up or down.
No way, strategy for some players are to hide their fleet for ninja's.

3) Because it is mute as it really is unforceable do away with milk/push rule.
This would be unfair to new players that do not know anyone and have to start off on their own.

4) Random alliance generator and every 11th new account starts a new alliance.
Meh sounds interesting but seems like alot of unneeded strain on the servers.

5) Reduce amounts of attacks to 10 times per person per 24 hours in first tier 20 times in tier 2 and as is in final tier.
Still dont understand this tier system lol

be back in a bit to explain pros/cons.Every action has n equal and opposite reaction.
V-Master wrote:Thats really a GR8 idea ^_^

+2 from me
haha there are like 7 ideas up there. you like all of them?
Image
I'll take 96.875%

Re: Making newcomers important ?

#7
The starter pack has to be shot down as Imperial Support is more than enough. We do not want ideas that will give newcomers rubies for example or excess resources to make them save. Do note that we always need to take in mind potential problems with cheating and always in this case, precaution is better than policing.

The auto-creation of alliances sounds promising and perhaps it would be even better to add them to newly created alliances. So they would end up with a leader that will care. This is also easy to make and implementation does not mess with the game so it can be imminent.

A newcomer does not face the problem of attacking immediately. They all start with 0 points, therefore they can only be attacked by other 0 pointers which is rare and will last up to 1 hour (till the rank update takes place).

Ideas need to keep flowing in as we need to address this issue properly as it is part of our primary development objective for 2012 which is to increase the active players in all universes.

In this point, it would be good to know that old universes find it very hard to lure and keep new players and to this also plays a role that newcomers are unimportant for established players.

Re: Making newcomers important ?

#9
biggest thing when asking yourself the question..if i never played a game like this what would i want.

briefly the tiers would be 0-100k 100k-500k 500k and up.Reguardless which why you go the tiers or % you need to include fleets in score.Actually fleets included full time ha several more advantages then dissadvantages.I can track your online times alot easier now than if your score was showing 100% of the time.The % is to easy to get around and does not protect smaller players. All it does is hurt little guys..if i lift my fleet in speed i can drop 3.5 million points..wait for update hit that 50k fleet n by next update be back out of his range to retaliate.

more later..
cron