Getting more players

[RoberetGoldsmith]

Title says it all boys and girls

 We all know that planeshift is the mustard but not many other people know. Being a guy who RP and suffers an allergic reaction to any power levelling,  my playing experience is much to do with who else will RP, more players...usually means more fun and there is a general acceptance that it is a bit quiet these days.

So anyways through some suggestions out there kids. Personally I wonder does planeshift have a twitter or a tumblr? I mean it might not be the all mighty answer but its easy and free to do and it puts the game on social sites that are full of people who'd be interested in giving planeshift a go if they found out about it.

Secondary point. What was soo good about 7th August 2008? What happened on this site to make it the busiest day on here. I'm curious.

[Illysia]

I think the SA guys gave the PS tutorial its only win. It weeded out all but one of the guys if I remember. I seem to remember one of the guys trolling about being a king and the marriage and whatnot outside of Kada's. However, picking on Rizin was not cool. 

In response to the OP, at this point the only solution is to work from inside out. If you look at old reviews of PS, what stuck with people was the community not the game itself. Until the community feels more intact, even if it is only a small group, it won't hold people's attention long.

PS has way too much professional competition to get by on novelty and not enough charm or for the game to get people on it's own merits. If it were a little more quirky or something, it might at least get cult favorite status.

[Vakachehk]

So anyways through some suggestions out there kids. Personally I wonder does planeshift have a twitter or a tumblr? I mean it might not be the all mighty answer but its easy and free to do and it puts the game on social sites that are full of people who'd be interested in giving planeshift a go if they found out about it.

All I know is that it has a Facebook page, which is low in likes, and administrators and GMs don't seem to be frequently watching it (many complaints and problems stated on it).

[Taya]

I've introduced three people to the game and all of them disliked it before reaching the end of the tutorial. I've also heard a lot of players flagging the tutorial as an issue and I have to agree that it's a bit of a turn off.

Another issue that I know has put players off is the chat system. The way it's set up for a new player prevents them from using a lot of the options and I've seen so many people getting confused over how to set it up properly.

I know these things aren't bringing more people to the game, but improving them somehow would maybe help to get those who do register to stay longer. After all, both of these things delay new players' abilities to get involved with the community, which seems to be the thing that can be good about this game.

But these issues have been raised a lot of times already by a lot of people...

[Zazhia]

I agree with Taya about the chat thing. I do a lot of RP with new players, when I spot them. Afterwards I often try to thank them for the RP in /tell, but I rarely get a reply. Maybe it's just because they don't bother writing one, but I remember how hard it was for myself to understand how to set up the tabs ... and yes, I think it is a pity not to be able to communicate OOC with the new players, as I believe praising new people for RPïng well would be motivating. At least it was for me.

Sometimes people write OOC in main, because they don't understand the /tell function. And that's a pity and slightly annoying for others than the new players.

But really, I know that you guys have a lot to do, but isn't it possible to change the chat settings to show at least all the most relevant tabs from the start? (I would say main, system, help, whisper and gossip)

And I do see this as a way of getting new players as a result of the "see, I found this cool new game and people are nice"-effect.

I would like to second the issues about the tutorial as well. Especially the magic training point. I don't know if it was changed, but the purification part is hard to understand if you are not English-speaking. I got help to get through it, but if I didn't it might have gotten me to give up and move over to one of the two other mmo's i downloaded at the same time.

[verden]

Doing a search on "free roleplaying game" on Google results in no results that point to PlaneShift. Any articles that do describe PlaneShift are way out of date. Many forum posts that come up when digging for PS information are woefully outdated and often negative.

Before anything will start to happen, there needs to be new and current information and perspectives about the game posted wherever possible. New conversations, new articles, and things that highlight the benefits that will get people interested enough to try it out.

The tutorial will not put everyone off, though probably 7 out of 10 at least. Considering that roleplay is rather a specialized niche with players, I would knock off 2 for that. This is probably being a bit pessimistic, or optimistic depending on your point of view, but I would say that to retain 10 players in the short term, 100 players need to join, at least.

If the number of people who are registering and trying the game can be driven up, then there should be a corresponding retention of new players, even if the retention rate is very low. But keeping the 10 that do stick around for more than a couple of hours or days is a serious challenge. It is only partially due to client and tutorial considerations. Many people are willing to overlook these things, or at least suffer them.

The other part has to do with the community, how people behave to one another in game, and how they use roleplay (whatever that means to them) to interact with others. I have seen players leverage their roleplay in an OOC manner to threaten other players and bully them, I have seen people attack each other OOC over the assumed "quality" of their roleplay, I have seen people intentionally throw off other people's RP due to OOC reasons.

I am not going to debate any points or name names. I have been in here a long time and I have seen it all in this game. PlaneShift players need to act better to one another and foster a more positive community. Roleplay in PS too often becomes an OOC pissing match that boils over into guild, alliance and gossip and stresses everyone else out. Until it is fun, nobody is going to stick around for it.

[Illysia]

I am not going to debate any points or name names. I have been in here a long time and I have seen it all in this game. PlaneShift players need to act better to one another and foster a more positive community. Roleplay in PS too often becomes an OOC pissing match that boils over into guild, alliance and gossip and stresses everyone else out. Until it is fun, nobody is going to stick around for it.

This this this. 

Never underestimate how much pull a good community, that makes players feel welcomed and accepted, can have.

[Pathogatha]

I find some of the points mentioned interesting. And agree myself about some of the things causing new comers problems. I happen to have been around long enough to have learned how the game worked. Before the chat tab bit changed (not sure why they did it in the first part) and before the starting area. And when it was added it took me a day to even get through it.

[Venalan]

I agree with Taya about the chat thing. I do a lot of RP with new players, when I spot them. Afterwards I often try to thank them for the RP in /tell, but I rarely get a reply...... But really, I know that you guys have a lot to do, but isn't it possible to change the chat settings to show at least all the most relevant tabs from the start? (I would say main, system, help, whisper and gossip)

In regards to the chat tabs I do remember speaking with Talad about such important tabs not showing as default and I was sure he adjusted the default tabs that show. I have just tested the latest full install (0.9.5.1) and I have main/tell/system/help tabs showing. So this means players can easily see new tells. Having gossip there would mean talking to people in game while going through the tutorial and early game would be much easier and would probably help people who are stuck who then stick about and not give up. I personally think all chat tabs should be there as logically its easier to look to find a way to remove a tab that you can see, than to try and decide to see if there are tabs missing when you have no idea that they are missing. The same is true for the option bar at the top of the screen, the default view of that should be with all 15 icons you have.

In regards to being more visible we could do with someone joining the team whose sole job is in PR to go around all the forums and chase people like those at MMORPG to make sure all of our game information is up to date. This like so many things isn't done... mainly due to the fact we don't have someone responsible for it and everyone else is too busy.

We have however just got hold of PS' twitter account https://twitter.com/planeshift which all the Devs have decided to try our best to keep up to date with all the things we are making/testing/trying/adjusting/bending/folding/cooking...etc So once we have decided exactly how we will do this (directly tweet on one account or each dev tweet their own stuff and have it retweeted on the main one) we now hope that this will make what we are doing much more visible.

[MishkaL1138]

I honestly had a good crack out of the SA post. But does anyone read that mid-2000's website anymore? This

Code: [Select]

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> made me cringe.

Anyways, on to our topic. I had my "girlfriend" (long distance sucks regarding commitment) try out PlaneShift and she got out of the tutorial with no problem at all. She even got a shiny mace - she should've grabbed a dagger though. I think the problem is we're not telling the people what PS is. PS isn't commercial, PS isn't WoW (gameplay), PS isn't Skyrim (graphics), etc. What is PS then? A roleplaying game. Maybe that's what we should use...

[Rigwyn]

That's part of the problem. Even players dispute what Planeshift is. Its not strictly a role playing game and not strictly a shooter or grinding game. IMHO it is a somewhat disharmonious blend of the two. Its oil and water, but not mayonnaise. If only there was an egg yolk big enough to emulsify the two.

[hulla]

hello
me i think ps not realy need a "twiter" acount  but perhaps more a "myspace" acount ( ps have a lot of nice music  and manny picts ) and dont forget to use the
banners

in your web pages from the http://www.planeshift.it/goodies.html pages
and remenber the last time i have looking at the page who give the number of acount opened i have read more than 600 000 perhaps the problem come from somewhere else ?  the "work in progress " part of the game ?

[Zazhia]

I agree with Taya about the chat thing. I do a lot of RP with new players, when I spot them. Afterwards I often try to thank them for the RP in /tell, but I rarely get a reply...... But really, I know that you guys have a lot to do, but isn't it possible to change the chat settings to show at least all the most relevant tabs from the start? (I would say main, system, help, whisper and gossip)

In regards to the chat tabs I do remember speaking with Talad about such important tabs not showing as default and I was sure he adjusted the default tabs that show. I have just tested the latest full install (0.9.5.1) and I have main/tell/system/help tabs showing. So this means players can easily see new tells. Having gossip there would mean talking to people in game while going through the tutorial and early game would be much easier and would probably help people who are stuck who then stick about and not give up. I personally think all chat tabs should be there as logically its easier to look to find a way to remove a tab that you can see, than to try and decide to see if there are tabs missing when you have no idea that they are missing. The same is true for the option bar at the top of the screen, the default view of that should be with all 15 icons you have.

YAY 

[Taya]

Venalan - that is really good to hear. The tab issue was such a small thing yet might help player retention.

Mishka - while I agree that we're maybe not showing what PS is well enough, I still think the tutorial is an issue. Two out of the three people I showed this game to were long term RPers from elsewhere and both felt the tutorial was annoying and basically just a delay keeping them from chances to RP. It's not that it's difficult or uninformative, it's just so boring. The real joy in this game is interacting with 'players' and it just seems like a wall that gets in the way of you jumping in and doing this. I know it can help as a buffer to try and explain what RP is and minimise the chances of people entering the game world completely clueless, but it does drive perfectly good RPers away from the game as well.

[Cirerey]

Well in my case I came to PS after (mumble) years away from RP. The tutorial was helpful for me, if a little silly. IIRC people can jump to the end of the tutorial, so what's the problem anyway? Does it need to be clearer that the tutorial is an optional introduction?