Keeping Players In The Game

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • Keeping Players In The Game

      So how do you keep players in the game?

      Four game days into the scenario, and half the players are gone.
      My experience is that the player count continues down from there.

      I understand that playing as Davie Crockett at the Alamo is fun, once.
      How do you provide incentives for players on the losing side to fight to the last breath?

      I don't have a solution, but would really like to have my opponents last more than they have.

    • Online too much?
      Yeah, I can see where players who don't have a lot of gaming free time (school, work, a life in the real world) would be at a disadvantage.

      Still, I am hoping to figure ways that players would want to stay in a game, even if they were in all probability going to not finish well.

      What comes to mind is a bonus to the experience level a player receives for playing longer.
      As I understand it, currently players gain experience for a variety of reasons; such as by defeating units, conquering cities or provinces, and completing build orders.
      If there was an increasing bonus to those actions based on the current length of the game, I wonder if it would be an incentive to continue playing?

      The bonus would be tied to the players rank in the game, so that the one on the bottom of the list receives the largest portion of their earnings.
      As an (possible) example, if there were 64 players in the game, the one ranked at the top would get 1/64 of the bonus he earned that day.
      The second highest ranked would get 2/64 and so on down to the lowest player, who would get 64/64 (a full share) of his earnings.

      Once you figure out what the basic bonus was for the day for a player, multiply it by the number of game days the scenario has been running.

      Again, as an example, it is the end of the fifth game day. The player at the top of a 64 player list earned 500 bonus points for actions before adjustments.
      As the top player, his bonus is multiplied by 1/64 to yield 7 points.
      Multiply that by the number of days the current number of game days (5) to give him a total of 35 bonus points added to his experience.

      It might also help if the player was notified (like via an event post) of how much progress he made in the past game day.

      The post was edited 3 times, last by Hydralysk ().

    • Hydralysk wrote:

      Online too much?
      Yeah, I can see where players who don't have a lot of gaming free time (school, work, a life in the real world) would be at a disadvantage.

      Still, I am hoping to figure ways that players would want to stay in a game, even if they were in all probability going to not finish well.

      What comes to mind is a bonus to the experience level a player receives for playing longer.
      As I understand it, currently players gain experience for a variety of reasons; such as by defeating units, conquering cities or provinces, and completing build orders.
      If there was an increasing bonus to those actions based on the current length of the game, I wonder if it would be an incentive to continue playing?

      The bonus would be tied to the players rank in the game, so that the one on the bottom of the list receives the largest portion of their earnings.
      As an (possible) example, if there were 64 players in the game, the one ranked at the top would get 1/64 of the bonus he earned that day.
      The second highest ranked would get 2/64 and so on down to the lowest player, who would get 64/64 (a full share) of his earnings.

      Once you figure out what the basic bonus was for the day for a player, multiply it by the number of game days the scenario has been running.

      Again, as an example, it is the end of the fifth game day. The player at the top of a 64 player list earned 500 bonus points for actions before adjustments.
      As the top player, his bonus is multiplied by 1/64 to yield 7 points.
      Multiply that by the number of days the current number of game days (5) to give him a total of 35 bonus points added to his experience.

      It might also help if the player was notified (like via an event post) of how much progress he made in the past game day.
      Maybe bonuses like "Play for 500 in-game days"?

      Just a suggestion...
      "CoN is a game of 80% skill and 20% luck" - Tifo_14

      "I don't get paid enough to do anything" - Germanico

      Nothing stops the Tifo :thumbup:

    • 1. Penalize players who go "auto" via suspension (Call of Duty used to give timeout for quiters so they couldnt join new games, and yes the company line is thats not our model). Example do not allow to join new game for a week.

      or

      2. Penalize players by Reduction of 1 Rank Level.

      or

      3. Reward players who fight to end with 1 Rank Increase.

      4. Bigger Chance would be to have Tiered games and/or make requirement of 1 completed game. Currently think allows most games after rank 2 (which is nothing if start 1 game and build a few things than quit). This would keep noobs / quitters in baby pool till they graduate by at least finishing 1 game

      - lvl 0 - 10 (98 pct quitters). This would also keep some us sharks out of baby pool and make for a better experience for noobs.
      - lvl 11 - 20 (still mostly clueless but stick it out types; then generally get smoked by a veteran)
      - lvl 20+ (usually semi decent players)
      - lvl 40+ (could even charge a $5 entrance fee or only open to security council; as most would pay to have a fun / fully engaged game).


      Dorado just happy to spawn games and have 90 pct of players quit; than everyone bags on public games. It really is a terrible model despite a great game and alternative is joining alliance and waiting to play a game. To me just building for a week is like watching paint dry and a few times I joined alliance some "general" tries to tell everyone exactly what to do.
      "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him "

      aka ...The killer formerly known as BuckeyeChamp

    • Hydralysk wrote:

      Tifo_14 wrote:

      Maybe bonuses like "Play for 500 in-game days"?
      Just a suggestion...
      Do you mean "500 game days in one game instance"?
      No, cumulative across all games

      Example: 45 + 31 + 39 + 7 + 34 + 2 + 30 + 14 + 38 + 42 and so on, until you get to whatever the requirement is.
      "CoN is a game of 80% skill and 20% luck" - Tifo_14

      "I don't get paid enough to do anything" - Germanico

      Nothing stops the Tifo :thumbup:

    • Tifo_14 wrote:

      No, cumulative across all games
      Example: 45 + 31 + 39 + 7 + 34 + 2 + 30 + 14 + 38 + 42 and so on, until you get to whatever the requirement is.
      Oh.
      I guess I did not make myself clear.
      I am trying to figure out how to keep players from quitting a game early.
      Unless their nation has been eliminated, what kind of incentive is needed to keep them playing, even when they aren't in the top ten slots for victory in a given game?

    • Hydralysk wrote:

      Tifo_14 wrote:

      No, cumulative across all games
      Example: 45 + 31 + 39 + 7 + 34 + 2 + 30 + 14 + 38 + 42 and so on, until you get to whatever the requirement is.
      Oh.I guess I did not make myself clear.
      I am trying to figure out how to keep players from quitting a game early.
      Unless their nation has been eliminated, what kind of incentive is needed to keep them playing, even when they aren't in the top ten slots for victory in a given game?
      Another suggestion could be for each game a user plays, they would be rewarded with an amount of gold. This amount would be determined by taking a base value (ex. 10) and multiplying it by the number of days the player was active. So with my example, if the player spends 30 days ingame, they would get 300 gold. Not a big reward, but enough to keep players tuned-in.
      "CoN is a game of 80% skill and 20% luck" - Tifo_14

      "I don't get paid enough to do anything" - Germanico

      Nothing stops the Tifo :thumbup:

    • Buckeyechamp wrote:

      1. Penalize players who go "auto" via suspension (Call of Duty used to give timeout for quiters so they couldnt join new games, and yes the company line is thats not our model). Example do not allow to join new game for a week.

      or

      2. Penalize players by Reduction of 1 Rank Level.

      or

      3. Reward players who fight to end with 1 Rank Increase.

      4. Bigger Chance would be to have Tiered games and/or make requirement of 1 completed game. Currently think allows most games after rank 2 (which is nothing if start 1 game and build a few things than quit). This would keep noobs / quitters in baby pool till they graduate by at least finishing 1 game

      - lvl 0 - 10 (98 pct quitters). This would also keep some us sharks out of baby pool and make for a better experience for noobs.
      - lvl 11 - 20 (still mostly clueless but stick it out types; then generally get smoked by a veteran)
      - lvl 20+ (usually semi decent players)
      - lvl 40+ (could even charge a $5 entrance fee or only open to security council; as most would pay to have a fun / fully engaged game).


      Dorado just happy to spawn games and have 90 pct of players quit; than everyone bags on public games. It really is a terrible model despite a great game and alternative is joining alliance and waiting to play a game. To me just building for a week is like watching paint dry and a few times I joined alliance some "general" tries to tell everyone exactly what to do.
      see I knew you liked COD. :D
      CDR Crimson
      Founder of The Militia Collective

      Training and Screening Hub, New Players or Existing: Come Find your perfect Alliance here!

      Join Our Discord !

    • Giving players more rankings won't keep them in the game - if people are bored of the gameplay some meaningless rank won't do squat (I know rank unlocks some things in game but I'd wager 90% of players don't know that and/or don't care). If you want to go down this path you need to make people CARE about the points they're getting - much more obvious achievements might work for some people but I'm still not convinced this is the right path.

      Giving them gold for staying active longer might help, that's a similar but (imo) better suggestion.

      Adding some level restrictions into at least some of the games would go a long way here I think - 0 - 10 as the base might be a bit too low, it takes quite a few games to get to level 10 and this base level is probably going to be boring empty games. Maybe even just 1-3 or something very low.

      The other options are larger mechanics based changes that would make the game more fun once you end up on a losing side - it's probably hard to do this without completely changing or at least unbalancing the game.

      I have two thoughts:

      1. Allow nations that are crippled to become protectorates of larger nations
      2. Allow multiple crippled nations to become one less crippled amalgamation of nations operated by one user.

      1: Protectorates
      Much like how a game like Total War does it, once a nation meets some maximum requirements (no more than X units and no more than X income or something) they can request or be offered a protectorate status by a larger nation, possibly the one who is conquering them.

      They would receive an allied status with shared intel (maybe only one way shared, i.e. the proctor can see the protectorate but not the other way round) and would automatically pay a percentage of their income to the Protector nation (maybe 20-50%?) and a percentage of their VPs belong to the Protector too. If someone declares war on either of these allied nations they are automatically at war with both. This means the Protectorate gets some protection and is able to rebuild, though will forever be restricted due to the payment of resources. Maybe they can buy their way out of protected status if they recover.

      The Protector gets to have an ally under their thumb to help them, they get some additional income and VP but can quickly end a war and move on to fight someone else meaning that sometimes they will prefer this path over total destruction. Plus, since the Protectorate would still have a few homeland cities with buildings and can immediately continue to build units it's probably at least sometimes going to be a much better play for the bigger nation than just destroying them.

      There might need to be some limits on research, unit numbers, incomes etc to ensure this is balanced.


      2: Amalgamation of nations
      This idea is to somehow allow nations that are losing / have basically lost / have become AFK to be collapsed down into one nation under one user's control. Obviously this is complicated and I can immediately see many issues with this, but the idea of taking a bunch of nations that are about to be, or have been, controlled by AI to be merged for one user to control seems cool. If you have a game were 30 people leave in the first few days to a week this might help salvage at least a few people who stay with somewhat competitive nations.

      It could be existing players in the game who get the option, or it could pop up for new players to join and takeover. You probably don't want this new nation to be very likely to be TOO strong so there needs to be some controls on this and I'm not quite sure how you'd handle researched technology merging - you don't want to create a super nation. You'd have to put limits on initial army size, resource rates and banks, number of homeland cities etc

      It might be cool to give this new nation some special objective since its likely they won't win. Maybe it's more a survive objective, or the biggest amalgamation to survive. And/or maybe some mechanic that limits existing large nations from immediately destroying a new amalgamation (some sort of deployed UN peace keeping force that scales back over 5-10 days?) might be needed.


      Both these ideas would be challenging, but maybe people smarter than I can figure out how they could work.

    • MoNoMaN01 wrote:

      Giving players more rankings won't keep them in the game - if people are bored of the gameplay some meaningless rank won't do squat (I know rank unlocks some things in game but I'd wager 90% of players don't know that and/or don't care). If you want to go down this path you need to make people CARE about the points they're getting - much more obvious achievements might work for some people but I'm still not convinced this is the right path.

      Giving them gold for staying active longer might help, that's a similar but (imo) better suggestion.

      Adding some level restrictions into at least some of the games would go a long way here I think - 0 - 10 as the base might be a bit too low, it takes quite a few games to get to level 10 and this base level is probably going to be boring empty games. Maybe even just 1-3 or something very low.

      The other options are larger mechanics based changes that would make the game more fun once you end up on a losing side - it's probably hard to do this without completely changing or at least unbalancing the game.

      I have two thoughts:

      1. Allow nations that are crippled to become protectorates of larger nations
      2. Allow multiple crippled nations to become one less crippled amalgamation of nations operated by one user.

      1: Protectorates
      Much like how a game like Total War does it, once a nation meets some maximum requirements (no more than X units and no more than X income or something) they can request or be offered a protectorate status by a larger nation, possibly the one who is conquering them.

      They would receive an allied status with shared intel (maybe only one way shared, i.e. the proctor can see the protectorate but not the other way round) and would automatically pay a percentage of their income to the Protector nation (maybe 20-50%?) and a percentage of their VPs belong to the Protector too. If someone declares war on either of these allied nations they are automatically at war with both. This means the Protectorate gets some protection and is able to rebuild, though will forever be restricted due to the payment of resources. Maybe they can buy their way out of protected status if they recover.

      The Protector gets to have an ally under their thumb to help them, they get some additional income and VP but can quickly end a war and move on to fight someone else meaning that sometimes they will prefer this path over total destruction. Plus, since the Protectorate would still have a few homeland cities with buildings and can immediately continue to build units it's probably at least sometimes going to be a much better play for the bigger nation than just destroying them.

      There might need to be some limits on research, unit numbers, incomes etc to ensure this is balanced.


      2: Amalgamation of nations
      This idea is to somehow allow nations that are losing / have basically lost / have become AFK to be collapsed down into one nation under one user's control. Obviously this is complicated and I can immediately see many issues with this, but the idea of taking a bunch of nations that are about to be, or have been, controlled by AI to be merged for one user to control seems cool. If you have a game were 30 people leave in the first few days to a week this might help salvage at least a few people who stay with somewhat competitive nations.

      It could be existing players in the game who get the option, or it could pop up for new players to join and takeover. You probably don't want this new nation to be very likely to be TOO strong so there needs to be some controls on this and I'm not quite sure how you'd handle researched technology merging - you don't want to create a super nation. You'd have to put limits on initial army size, resource rates and banks, number of homeland cities etc

      It might be cool to give this new nation some special objective since its likely they won't win. Maybe it's more a survive objective, or the biggest amalgamation to survive. And/or maybe some mechanic that limits existing large nations from immediately destroying a new amalgamation (some sort of deployed UN peace keeping force that scales back over 5-10 days?) might be needed.


      Both these ideas would be challenging, but maybe people smarter than I can figure out how they could work.
      Ah, another EU4/HOI4 advocate.
      "CoN is a game of 80% skill and 20% luck" - Tifo_14

      "I don't get paid enough to do anything" - Germanico

      Nothing stops the Tifo :thumbup:

    • Hydralysk wrote:

      Online too much?
      Yeah, I can see where players who don't have a lot of gaming free time (school, work, a life in the real world) would be at a disadvantage.

      Still, I am hoping to figure ways that players would want to stay in a game, even if they were in all probability going to not finish well.

      What comes to mind is a bonus to the experience level a player receives for playing longer.
      As I understand it, currently players gain experience for a variety of reasons; such as by defeating units, conquering cities or provinces, and completing build orders.
      If there was an increasing bonus to those actions based on the current length of the game, I wonder if it would be an incentive to continue playing?

      The bonus would be tied to the players rank in the game, so that the one on the bottom of the list receives the largest portion of their earnings.
      As an (possible) example, if there were 64 players in the game, the one ranked at the top would get 1/64 of the bonus he earned that day.
      The second highest ranked would get 2/64 and so on down to the lowest player, who would get 64/64 (a full share) of his earnings.

      Once you figure out what the basic bonus was for the day for a player, multiply it by the number of game days the scenario has been running.

      Again, as an example, it is the end of the fifth game day. The player at the top of a 64 player list earned 500 bonus points for actions before adjustments.
      As the top player, his bonus is multiplied by 1/64 to yield 7 points.
      Multiply that by the number of days the current number of game days (5) to give him a total of 35 bonus points added to his experience.

      It might also help if the player was notified (like via an event post) of how much progress he made in the past game day.
      You want to keep players playing their current games? The answer it's easy: just as some suggested before me, rewarding players with vanal things as ranks, which very few really care about, will do nothing to solve the problem. Instead, reward them with gold, thing which everyone understands and wants

      You can create a daily reward system for each game, in which the player receives 500 gold each day played (Or any other amount you consider appropriate. Just don't be so stingy because then the incentive will be good as nothing) And that's it, do something as simple as that and you will see how the in-game desertion will be greatly mitigated

      Of course, this reward should be limited to a certain number of games, like three or five. It must not, by any reason, be available indefinitely, because then the problem would persist as if you have done nothing

    • TheGENOC1D3R wrote:

      You want to keep players playing their current games? The answer it's easy: just as some suggested before me, rewarding players with vanal things as ranks, which very few really care about, will do nothing to solve the problem. Instead, reward them with gold, thing which everyone understands and wants
      You can create a daily reward system for each game, in which the player receives 500 gold each day played (Or any other amount you consider appropriate. Just don't be so stingy because then the incentive will be good as nothing) And that's it, do something as simple as that and you will see how the in-game desertion will be greatly mitigated

      Of course, this reward should be limited to a certain number of games, like three or five. It must not, by any reason, be available indefinitely, because then the problem would persist as if you have done nothing
      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?

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

    • 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.
      Considring their "company overall profile", no.
      "CoN is a game of 80% skill and 20% luck" - Tifo_14

      "I don't get paid enough to do anything" - Germanico

      Nothing stops the Tifo :thumbup:

    • KFGauss wrote:

      TheGENOC1D3R wrote:

      You want to keep players playing their current games? The answer it's easy: just as some suggested before me, rewarding players with vanal things as ranks, which very few really care about, will do nothing to solve the problem. Instead, reward them with gold, thing which everyone understands and wants
      You can create a daily reward system for each game, in which the player receives 500 gold each day played (Or any other amount you consider appropriate. Just don't be so stingy because then the incentive will be good as nothing) And that's it, do something as simple as that and you will see how the in-game desertion will be greatly mitigated

      Of course, this reward should be limited to a certain number of games, like three or five. It must not, by any reason, be available indefinitely, because then the problem would persist as if you have done nothing
      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?
      Man, we're talking here about customers (the players) using one company's product for their enjoyment, (playing) a product based on software that is. For those escenarios, belive me, there are no perfect certanties nor ultimate solutions. Dorado could do just as you say, spend a lot of resourses and hire a team of people who's only job is to keep a track of when people log in every day, how many time they stay logged and how many times a day they log in. Actually, they may aswell have that information already, in the records written on their servers within the game. And even so, they may as well go on a search for the Holly Grail, and they will end with the same result.

      The thing here is that how many times a day a person log in its complety irrelevant, coz someone loggin in every five minutes does not mean that that particular someone will stay in their current games for more than a day or so. Heck, for what I can tell, people who log in more often are the same ones who desert frecuently those said games coz they are more prone get bore when the game came to a stanstill.

      So there it is, I hope that answer your question, I do had thought on the detail of" how you define playing", and came up with the most practical solution I could think of. Truth is, the issue discussed in this topic will never get a definitive solution. I dont have that definitive solution, and no one will ever have it. People will just keep defecting their games when they get bored or when they just go with other more interesting things to do or games to play. But what the ones behind CoN should do, is to go for the most practical methods that help mitigate the desertion of games as much as posible, and I assure you that, if Dorado some day implements my suggestion, people will desert, at least, much less than they do today