New players are leaving quickly

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Gireen
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New players are leaving quickly

Post by Gireen »

In the recent month we had more player activity
Image

But 50% of this are 25 players
And the 100 most active players amount for 80% of the time played.

In the last six months we had 1885 different players. 56% Of them played less then 10 minutes

Code: Select all

Players  Minutes played  Percentage of players
3        more            0.16%
59       1000-10000      3.13%
233      100-1000        12.36%
516      10-100          27.37%
799      1-10            42.39%
275      1               14.59%
With 30% even playing only 3 Minutes and less

Code: Select all

minutes	players	percentage
4         122         6,47%
3         150         7,96%
2         214        11,35%
1         275        14,59%
I think this requires further investigations if these are technical or other reasons.
Something i often observed is that players join a match, are killed by bots and leave again.

fear ma engrish :granger:

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illwieckz
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by illwieckz »

Gireen wrote:Something i often observed is that players join a match, are killed by bots and leave again.
That is similar to what I noticed in 2017 in my thread How to make people stay and met together?, lots of people come, but we retain few. Knowing they even leave in the first minutes confirm my personal impression about what I observe in game.

Since bots are likely what most newcomers met, we have to look at bots indeed.

I know there are multiple thinking about making bots better for anyone including newcomers, about different things like: making them easier, making them more forgiving, making them less frustrating, making them more challenging, which are questions that does not not necessarily oppose themselves, making bots more challenging does not opposes to making bots more forgiving for example, even with a smarter bot, all the enjoyment of a smarter bot can be destroyed by feeling being unfairly destroyed by something that feels like an aimbot.

We have to reward players by any mean in the first 2 minutes.

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lamefun
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by lamefun »

illwieckz wrote:We have to reward players by any mean in the first 2 minutes.
Finally it's dawning on you, after all these years!

Another thing that would be nice is a cooperative server where players of all skill levels can have fun together, like the old training server.

And please, PLEASE consider getting rid of the floor head-bite mechanic CHEAT, I mean, having to know a mechanic CHEAT so counter-intuitive that new players won't even know it exists until told about it, and that is also required to use the starting class of the very team that makes Unvanquished stand out is probably costing you players as well...
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Gireen
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by Gireen »

There are multiplayer games that give new players an advantage for example they receive less damage the first few rounds.
The server could maybe give first time visitors a small hp boost and flag them that bots are less aggressive and try to avoid them.

@lamefun would it help if humans have only one damage zone against dretches?

The training server could be reactivated. One would have to create new layouts and modify the old scripts for the training server.

fear ma engrish :granger:

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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by lamefun »

Gireen wrote:The server could maybe give first time visitors a small hp boost and flag them that bots are less aggressive and try to avoid them.
Then they'll just quit the second time around...
Gireen wrote:@lamefun would it help if humans have only one damage zone against dretches?
I don't know, your game, your rules, I haven't played this for a long, long time anyways... But what's true and obvious is that the replacement mechanic for this CHEAT has to be intuitive and easily discovered by new players without reading the wiki, etc.
Gireen wrote:The training server could be reactivated. One would have to create new layouts and modify the old scripts for the training server.
Here's what I think is an even better idea, basically a mission mode, but reviving the old training server would do as well if you don't have the necessary resources to develop anything major anymore...
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Gireen
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by Gireen »

lamefun wrote:Then they'll just quit the second time around...
I would count that as an success. :grin: Its easy measurable. We could test if a longer newbie buff would also increase the playtime and then improve on that.
lamefun wrote:I haven't played this for a long, long time anyways..
you should try it out again. many things you suggested here in the forum are incorporated by now :smile:

There are always talks about single player or coop maps with missions. If we have these, only then we could think about making a campaign.
Reviving the training server could be a first step to it, depending about how much it would be used.
If we make a complicated campaign and no one plays it we waist only scarce resources. :bugeyes:

fear ma engrish :granger:

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illwieckz
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by illwieckz »

lamefun wrote:
illwieckz wrote:We have to reward players by any mean in the first 2 minutes.
Finally it's dawning on you, after all these years!
This is a first warning, if you're taking the route of toxic behavior toward people, actions may be taken to protect people.

It's ok to whine it's part of life, but if someone starts developing toxic behavior toward other people, we may think about taking actions to protect people. I make a general statement there.

For example outside of this thread I have seen recently a player complaining in game about this or that not being good (statement we may agree with, in fact) and while it's fine to share an opinion, at some point the behavior of that player was turning toxic in a way his behavior was making people leave the game, preventing people to have a good time, and discouraging newcomers to play the game, so basically in the end some players would leave the game not about the intrinsic defaults of the game, but because of such toxic behavior of such player.

Most reasons why people leave the game may be be gaming-related but
at some point players or contributors may also leave because of toxic behavior of people. That wording of you and that other example I quote are two fresh examples of toxic behavior that cross my mind. The best you can get when acting with such toxic behavior is to get contributors quit the project, that would mean less chance for you to see being implemented for free and by others what you would like to see being implemented.

It's OK to share your opinion on how to make the game better or what could be fixed, but if someone jumps from discussing problems to doing acts targeting other people or being prejudicial to someone by any mean, we may have to take actions. We are very very permissive, much more the ordinary mean, don't abuse this benevolence.


My next message is on topic and you are welcome to respond to it and to contribute to the discussion politely.

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illwieckz
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by illwieckz »

lamefun wrote:Another thing that would be nice is a cooperative server where players of all skill levels can have fun together, like the old training server.
This is an opinion that regularly surfaces and is generally shared by everyone (I never seen someone disagreeing with that idea, ever). The problem is that doing invocations is not enough to make things happen.

Basically it's known since maybe 10 years or more that (among other things) :

1. It is precious to have some kind of mission maps to bootstrap a game when a player is a alone, this is why some contributors did the training server. This is to retain the player for at least one game and also retain him long enough for other players to come.
2. It is precious to have a mechanism to migrate from the training mod to the regular game when there are enough players on the server in a transparent manner (when we had training servers, we had to switch servers and usually half of the players did not followed… killing the momentum).

One important thing is that this project is a fully volunteer project, so implementation of this is only dependent on the free will of people you cannot even name: you as lamefun can't yourself expect someone you would name to implement something you would like to see implemented, also because of that fact you can't assume that if something is not implemented it would be because it is not known yet. Having ideas is the floor level of contributions, you can safely assume unimplemented ideas are already known, because what's missing is not the ability to have ideas, but the ability to implement.

The solution in 1. was already implemented in the past in the form of the training server, but it died because of lack of manpower (not because of lack of ideas), at some point people move on to other topics and we can't blame them for that, some other people would have to take the initiative to revive it, but then if no one does, the effort dies (and having ideas cannot prevent that sad fact).

The solution in 2. can be a game type vote screen. We had a contributor who also was a contributor of Xonotic and who was, if I'm right, the one who implemented the game type vote screen in Xonotic, after having contributed to Unvanquished many things unrelated to map vote screen, he wanted to implement a map vote screen at the end of the game for Unvanquished, something he or someone would have been able to extend to make a game type vote screen. Unfortunately at some point he moved on, which is something that is perfectly normal in a free volunteer project based on good will and personal availability : no one can owe someone else (including you) anything.

Everything you repeat may have been said not only by you but also by others than you and maybe also before you. What is needed to see the ideas implemented is someone implementing the things. So basically you need someone to implement the things. You either need yourself to implement the things, or you need someone else to implement the things, but others can't owe you anything.
lamefun wrote:
illwieckz wrote:We have to reward players by any mean in the first 2 minutes.
Finally it's dawning on you, after all these years!
As I have said, what is missing is not someone having an idea, what is missing is someone having the workforce. So, you are maybe yet another time misjudging what's happening by assuming that if something is not done it's because what's missing is the knowledge or the ability to have ideas. Anyway you may know by yourself that having the ideas is not enough to turn them into implementation (otherwise your forum posts and other's forum posts, including mines, would have been enough to fix things)…
And please, PLEASE consider getting rid of the floor head-bite mechanic CHEAT, I mean, having to know a mechanic CHEAT so counter-intuitive that new players won't even know it exists until told about it, and that is also required to use the starting class of the very team that makes Unvanquished stand out is probably costing you players as well...
Outside of the opinion on that particular game mechanism and the specific talk about it, you're pointing out one other accessibility problem that is well known : it is needed to help new people know how the game works and what to do. It's common to have uncommon behavior in games (it's also part of gameplay identity), what is important is for people to be able to discover them and enjoy them if that's the purpose.

For this we have something very basic, the in-game tutorial instructions displayed on screen. This may not be enough as more complex interaction and feedback may be better, but someone has to do it (we always lack manpower, we rarely lack ideas). I improved the tutorial instructions a lot for the 0.52 release (I had to take on my own time for that which may have cost me money because that's the way the world works), I also helped to improve a bit the in game manual (which is still really perfectible). If there are things missing please contribute.

Also, one big problem is that those instructions, when they exist, are not translated, which is a very strong barrier for many people. It looks like native English players are a minority, even contributors are rarely native English people, we are currently working on making translation of the game doable again, we now even have work-in-progress (not merged yet) implementation that makes the game entirely translatable again, and after that we would need translation contributors.

About this kind of “cheats” as you call them, video games are full of them, this is part of the concept of video games, even the fact the life loss is linear and that you don't get disabled until your life account is empty is a cheat, the fact you can respawn after having died is another cheat, hitscan weapons are cheats, crosshair being always at the same place on screen is a cheat, the way the first person weapon is drawn on screen is a cheat. We may even think about adding yet another first-person cheat to make the headbite obvious. The talk about the pertinence of this or that game mechanism and the pertinence of this or that cheat is welcome, but at some point the big problem there is to help people discover the game mechanisms, whatever the game mechanism is (and cheats themselves may be used to make the game easier and more easy to discover).

At some point we may want to do more than just on screen instructions, but also a real tutorial mission, that idea is really not uncommon and is very old, but there is no one having enough manpower to do this right now. To give a comparison, Xonotic is 11 years old and their tutorial level is still work-in-progress and unreleased, If I'm right the tutorial map for Warsow came in 2016 while the project had seen first release in 2005, so it took 11 years to this other volunteer project to get a tutorial map. I'm sure it did not took them 11 years to have that idea anyway.

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Gireen
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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by Gireen »

A separate topic for damagezones
viewtopic.php?p=18634

fear ma engrish :granger:

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Re: New players are leaving quickly

Post by Gireen »

Don't know if the sample size is to small for it but there seems to be slight differences depending on the map.
This ignores Experimental because there its always plat23 if the server is empty. I should maybe try how this changes if vega is the first map. :confused:

Code: Select all

+─────────────────+────────────────+────────────────+─────────────────────+
| mapname         | 1 min players  | total players  | %                   |
+─────────────────+────────────────+────────────────+─────────────────────+
| UTCS            | 1              | 92             | 1.0869565217391304  |
| urbanp2         | 1              | 88             | 1.1363636363636365  |
| nano            | 1              | 87             | 1.1494252873563218  |
| ctcs            | 2              | 173            | 1.1560693641618498  |
| arachnid2       | 3              | 228            | 1.3157894736842106  |
| atcshd          | 3              | 208            | 1.4423076923076923  |
| niveus          | 2              | 100            | 2.0                 |
| peorongateb3    | 2              | 98             | 2.0408163265306123  |
| usstremor       | 4              | 189            | 2.1164021164021167  |
| uncreation      | 1              | 46             | 2.1739130434782608  |
| ptcs2           | 2              | 89             | 2.247191011235955   |
| spacetracks     | 6              | 253            | 2.3715415019762847  |
| parpax-mini     | 2              | 83             | 2.4096385542168677  |
| karith          | 5              | 201            | 2.4875621890547266  |
| vega            | 6              | 229            | 2.6200873362445414  |
| perseus         | 11             | 389            | 2.827763496143959   |
| chasm           | 14             | 415            | 3.373493975903614   |
| station15       | 12             | 334            | 3.5928143712574854  |
| forlorn         | 17             | 443            | 3.8374717832957113  |
| plat23          | 15             | 366            | 4.098360655737705   |
| parpax          | 18             | 418            | 4.306220095693781   |
| antares         | 16             | 367            | 4.359673024523161   |
| yocto           | 23             | 522            | 4.406130268199234   |
| mission_one_b7  | 2              | 20             | 10.0                |
+─────────────────+────────────────+────────────────+─────────────────────+

fear ma engrish :granger:

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