Keeping Players In The Game

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    • TheGENOC1D3R wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      Have you (and the other folks in this thread) thought about how you will define "playing"?Will Dorado need to hire a couple of people who do nothing but spend all day making decisions about whether logging in 5 minutes per day and issuing 3 orders is enough activity to constitute "playing" in Game #12345, but in Game #45678 you need to have been logged in for at least 6.8 minutes and have to have issued 5 orders, one of which must be either an attack or a building construction?
      ... I do had thought on the detail of" how you define playing", and came up with the most practical solution I could think of. ...
      I'm still a bit confused.

      I recall this thread being about rewarding players who don't drop out of games, and I recall reading about a belief that games would become more interesting if players didn't drop out of them.

      However, I don't recall reading here about any automated way to measure the difference between someone actually participating in a game, and someone simply pretending to participate (in order to collect the reward).

      Until that difference can be automatically determined (well enough - perfection isn't required), I'm thinking that this entire conversation is dead-on-arrival.

      The goal is a good one, but . . .
    • KFGauss wrote:


      However, I don't recall reading here about any automated way to measure the difference between someone actually participating in a game, and someone simply pretending to participate (in order to collect the reward).

      Until that difference can be automatically determined (well enough - perfection isn't required), I'm thinking that this entire conversation is dead-on-arrival.
      Would a two day timer of no significant activity be adequate?
      By 'significant activity' I mean attacking an enemy unit, or creating a unit or facility?
    • This would work just fine. The only difference i would add is make it a one day timer. Or, a variation of that would be:

      For 1x games: for each day, "Significant Activity" (what you said plus moving a unit) during that day nets that person X gold. To keep people from gaming the system by creating 100 games and each day making one "Significant Activity" per game, this could be limited to maybe 4 games or so.

      For 4x games: replace "each day" with "each 4 day period".
    • I have spent a lot of time in BUSA games creating coalitions and trying to convince people to play better. It's not as easy as it sounds. There are many reasons why so many people just quit. A few are note worthy.

      1) The fog of war. New player sends some units to attack a city. Sometimes they die, sometimes they succeed. They have no way of knowing anything about the battle other than the end result. One comment was quite interesting. "I don't like to attack with big stacks because I don't want to risk losing all those units at once."

      The few people that use their air units for patrol purposes stop as soon as they realize the never know what was found except in the destination province. The roleplaying scenario was: Person 1 in airplane: "Ok look at those units. Mexican armor units and infantry units" Person 2: "Should we alert our commander?" Person 3: "Of course not."

      Giving new players new information risks overloading them with too much stuff. However, just like there is a tab for spy intelligence, there certainly could be a "Recon" tab for what UAVs, Recon Units, and other patrolling units see. The format would be: For each entry, Game Day and Game Time, Province, ID of Unit making the discovery, picture of what that unit sees.

      A combat log would also be a separate tab. The format would be: For each entry, Game Day and Game Time, before and after pictures of the battle event.

      2) The low production rates, especially of 5 city nations. People attack other nations, their army gets smaller and smaller, they can't produce enough to replace their losses, they quit. The low rare supply rates mean people that experiment with different units types end up with a bunch of weak level 1 units, all of different types.

      3) Hopelessness. As soon as they notice there is a successful coalition, or one particularly success nation, a huge percentage of people just flat out quit. In a WW3 game I tried to organize people against a single 5 person coalition that was strong but not stupidly strong. Everyone else just flat out quit. Day 11 and the 5 person coalition got to spend the rest of the game going against BOTs.

      4) BOT nations just randomly declaring war on a person. This makes the game seem too random. "Why is this nonsensical thing happening?".
    • KFGauss wrote:

      TheGENOC1D3R wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      Have you (and the other folks in this thread) thought about how you will define "playing"?Will Dorado need to hire a couple of people who do nothing but spend all day making decisions about whether logging in 5 minutes per day and issuing 3 orders is enough activity to constitute "playing" in Game #12345, but in Game #45678 you need to have been logged in for at least 6.8 minutes and have to have issued 5 orders, one of which must be either an attack or a building construction?
      ... I do had thought on the detail of" how you define playing", and came up with the most practical solution I could think of. ...
      I'm still a bit confused.
      I recall this thread being about rewarding players who don't drop out of games, and I recall reading about a belief that games would become more interesting if players didn't drop out of them.

      However, I don't recall reading here about any automated way to measure the difference between someone actually participating in a game, and someone simply pretending to participate (in order to collect the reward).

      Until that difference can be automatically determined (well enough - perfection isn't required), I'm thinking that this entire conversation is dead-on-arrival.

      The goal is a good one, but . . .
      I think I know what you mean by that, you dont want people to exploit the reward system, logging-in on a dozen games just to get the juicy gold, am I right?

      Well, it doesn't need to be that hard, Dorado doesn't strictly need to know if someone is actually playing or logging-in in the game just to get the reward. As I said in my suggestion, the reward system could be limited to a certain number of games, 3 at least I think would be fair. And even then, I think they will have it easier coz, if I recall correctly, CoW also belongs to them, and that game has, or at least had, a daily reward system avalible just to a single game, so the code its there, the thing its just to implement it correctly in CoN. Just dont give away lame things that nobody cares about coz then the reward will be just good as nothing

      Also, if they think that making the "reward system" avalible to more than one game at the time its way too much to give, at least make it possible for the player to chose in which game he/she will want the reward to be avalible coz, you know, some of the game modes can last even two months, and I think thats a hella of time to wait to get the reward again back from a game that you already lost, lest say, in the first couple of days

      The post was edited 1 time, last by TheGENOC1D3R ().

    • anything that can be exploitet. Will be exploitet. Like protector...it will attract mulit account player.

      The real question is: why do people drop out.

      It cant be that everything is slow and they run out of resources. Many just build nothing. They dont even move a single unit. Sometimes they build a army base in the capitol and thats about it.

      I ask myself why do i play. What keeps me motivated? Its my kill statistic. I am pretty proud of it. And the games joined/win Ratio.

      Still i am only lvl 92 not even close to any officer level. So i dont carr avout the level...but i like hunting lvl 100+ players for the fun of teaching them that quality beats quantity.

      But for others? I cant tell. Analyse while people drop and you find the solution. Till then:

      Show in the land picker how many cities and troops are left and if the country is currently at war. This helps players replacing wakend spots.

      And in the first 3 days: Kick player after 12h inactivity. If they dont login during this time they are not intrested. No need to wait 2-3 days to make the spot available for others.
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by kurtvonstein ().

    • kurtvonstein wrote:

      anything that can be exploitet. Will be exploitet. Like protector...it will attract mulit account player.

      The real question is: why do people drop out.

      It cant be that everything is slow and they run out of resources. Many just build nothing. They dont even move a single unit. Sometimes they build a army base in the capitol and thats about it.

      I ask myself why do i play. What keeps me motivated? Its my kill statistic. I am pretty proud of it. And the games joined/win Ratio.

      Still i am only lvl 92 not even close to any officer level. So i dont carr avout the level...but i like hunting lvl 100+ players for the fun of teaching them that quality beats quantity.

      But for others? I cant tell. Analyse while people drop and you find the solution. Till then:

      Show in the land picker how many cities and troops are left and if the country is currently at war. This helps players replacing wakend spots.

      And in the first 3 days: Kick player after 12h inactivity. If they dont login during this time they are not intrested. No need to wait 2-3 days to make the spot available for others.


      try understant that your way how play and why isnt be important for other , and isnt be important how keep player play

      1)systematic barier and auto kick system is not about how replace nonplayer account it just how put on one map some number of player how is be on start just to rise up change that somebody spend money for that one time spamed map

      so seriously system and how work kick is not way how it improve ( becose dorado shitt on your idea becose primary is money ... )



      2)that you need motivation for keep play evry 5 minute ...

      try understant that 50% register and quict in 5 minute is probably scout account measn player that search what play and simply just only look in game ... (is there still chance that some % of that quiter asnd scouter realy start in future play ..

      b)kids realy that game may play adult but some it porible that is play wer small kids ) that realy dont understant nothing about game just teach myself how register for any game and simply try to look yes it is painfull, secondary little older kids that have almost zero patience like 5 minut nothing clikc nothing hapens look in game next day ) with almost zero motivation what si hapens wnd how it go beetween ( what is horioble some player dont have problem say it im online evry day yes evry day ... but this game need online ,brain. patience .. ( for be susscsefull in viev by you kurtvostein ..

      but yes is there way hthat some noob try farm his rank ,play on brother account .borrow from mummy credits card .. and be posible that make some realy good bullshit but mostly is by real life of player .. and seriously ... 90% that playewr isnt invest in gama that basicaly time need it for proper play ... so pleas stop that bullshit diskuzion if you know it where is problems and only you want full map .. but it make just headapn becsoe dorado want money ... and people want his real time ... and you want real oponent .. in game ... and keep it by some revards .. realy ... yes may in time when game isnt be on mobile .. now ... why
    • kurtvonstein wrote:

      anything that can be exploitet. Will be exploitet. Like protector...it will attract mulit account player.

      The real question is: why do people drop out.

      It cant be that everything is slow and they run out of resources. Many just build nothing. They dont even move a single unit. Sometimes they build a army base in the capitol and thats about it.

      I ask myself why do i play. What keeps me motivated? Its my kill statistic. I am pretty proud of it. And the games joined/win Ratio.

      Still i am only lvl 92 not even close to any officer level. So i dont carr avout the level...but i like hunting lvl 100+ players for the fun of teaching them that quality beats quantity.

      But for others? I cant tell. Analyse while people drop and you find the solution. Till then:

      Show in the land picker how many cities and troops are left and if the country is currently at war. This helps players replacing wakend spots.

      And in the first 3 days: Kick player after 12h inactivity. If they dont login during this time they are not intrested. No need to wait 2-3 days to make the spot available for others.
      Man, believe me, if anyone try to mitigate this issue by trying to answer "Why people drop out?" You'll never going to catch up with the most efficient solutions. You could do a research of course, spend lots of resourses, and never get even close to solve this issue, coz everyones opinion is different from each other; what keeps someone motivated to keep playing may as well be the thing that provoque someone else to quit. And the truth is, people is people. Some just join for the sake of it, and then drop out the game to never comeback again. Some others join and they dont get the country they wanted so they just leave for another fresh-start game, and the list could go on indefinitely


      The best way to act here its not to figure it out what "keeps" people interested in their current games, but to give them something that convince them to stay at their current games. In situations like this, you dont give people what they "want", because nobody knows what they really want, thats how people is in real life; give them something they ask you and inmediatly they are asking you for something else. No, what you do is giving them what they NEED to stay interested on their current games.

      And most important of all: keep things simple; optional tutorials and trying to teach people on whats are the "ways" to play wont solve anything. Most people dont even bother on watching the tutorials and nobody likes to be lecture on how to do things right. But gold, every one understand what gold is for, and they will want it, one way or another, they will look for it, I assure you that. Thats the best lead Dorado could have in this topic, on a way to solve it. The thing is just how much are they willing to go down that way
    • If you still think payment is the best way to motivate workers you are 0 yars behind research. PAyment is what is called a negative motiator. meaning if you feel you dont get payed neough you will demotivated. But payment doesnt motivate you. Because in the moment your get it its already losing the incentive.

      When I refer to anaylzing players drop outbehaviour its not liek you cant do it the smart way. This is data analytics: You identify common thing you build cluster and you define the interesting clusters from the not that interesting ones.

      This ist not about making everyone one happy. This never works. But its a 80% approach. The quitters that leave the game after trying he first minutes and notiving that it not what they want are one of the groups you can ignore.

      But there are more clusters. The ones that want it to be faster, the ones that want more research or economic options. The ones thaat want more chatting before they are lonly and so one...

      But hey I am not gettign pais to do this analyse...so i stop here...
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.
    • kurtvonstein wrote:

      I show the doors but I will not open it and go thourgh it...its not my house...
      So, you just came to a public forum just to hint at that you're capable enough to find a proper solution to the issue in question, but also that you don’t care enough nor you're willing to discuss it further just because you’re not being paid so it doesn’t worth your time. Again, all of this on a public forum whom only purpose is to give feedback to the devs and the owners of the game so they could improved it for us, the players, a game you surely play too. Wow man, that’s… just sad
    • correct. I give my opinion on a public forum. I will not conduct a complex data Analyse on a public forum. Because as you mentioned its public.

      And I care enough to give my opinion on several issues. But I am not a contractor of this game and the devs have often pointed out what they think about dome my idead duch as queue for research, gold free games or gold price increase on heavy use (such as setting moral to 0).
      Do sorry for you but I feel no obligation to go beyond this point.
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.
    • "Lower level" games, which can only be entered by new players and which are closed to experienced players, should be introduced. New players are only allowed to enter that game (closed to experienced players). New players cannot play ordinary games. Only winners of "lower level" games are allowed to enter ordinary games, while losers (or inactive players) are not allowed to play ordinary games. This would solve the problem of inactive players in ordinary games because only active players would be able to achieve a place in them.