Ideas to bring in some more players

I thought I saw Dave mention in recent QA that it would be well after Aug? I hope I am mistaken.

 

Dave did mention at the recent Q&A here that treasure hunting will not be included in the August update.

 

Just give to people possibility to shot stuff all day: alternate fire to "sweating tool" - 1 shot 1 sweat bottle , 0.5 dmg ,20 shot/min , 5m range.So new comers can do SOMETHING in this game for free,they can sweat,they can shot puny mobs.Loot gained with this "sweating gun" can be reduced for 50% from normal loot .

I don`t help new comers anymore ,because I tied to clean my FL from dead names.

 

marketing is really just a matter of exposure. the more saturation of people, the higher the % of retention. even if its 1 in 10,000, thats 1000 per 1,000,000. there is a wow or EVE ad on every freaking news or information site you find these days, there are hundreds of MMo sites for geeks like us. hell, there is an american cable network STATION devoted to gaming, and gamers, G4. why arent we there? why dont we see arkadia banners on c-net? how come ND isnt splashing ridiculous ads all over the web?
in a pure business frame of reference, it doesnt matter how bad YOU think the game is, you all still stay here (me too). the means to the end is simple numbers, get. them. here. once we can get a BUNCH of new blood in game, then we can weed out the lookie loos and the QQers. the rest will stay..lol you did.

 

Wanted to add my 2pec here too.

New players are attracted to EU for the chance to succede in a virtural, real cash economy. That's what MA advertises right? Most don't really understand how to do that untill they've spent some time here, talking with other players, exploring the planets, understanding how to go about begining one or more of the professions, reading the forums for help, etc... They see the chat window full of ppl getting globals / HOF's / ATH's in all the professions, and start thinking they have a chance to do that too. When they realize they need to build skills to be successful in their new profession(s), and except the reality that it will take some time to do that, most want to start without depositing by sweating (is there any other way), to gather enough ped to purchase necessary equipment for hunting and mining. These ARE the two main professions that support everything else in EU. But at current market levels for 1k of sweat, disenchantment starts to set in early for a new avatars life in EU.

After days and weeks of sweating for the low return on their time, and to have aquired barely enough ped to buy tt equipment, many new players realize that getting ahead will only happen if deposits are made. Some will refuse and not spend much time in EU, while others will make a choice to deposit. Those that do soon find out that without skills, your ped from depositing has vanished pretty quickly. So now their faced with continued deposits or going back to sweating. Faced with this decision, MA now losses another group of new players, and as the cost of playing in EU continues to rise, new players will leave at an increasing rate.

Sweating for ped is a great way to supplement a new players ability to get ahead in EU. After some time, once the new player is hooked on the game, deposits become a natural progression to skill building and a deeper insertion into their avatars virtual life. A new source for using sweat in the game could increase it's value, providing a firmer, supplemental foundation for new avatars.

MA made a big mistake when they introduced synthetic ME. The new chips could have used sweat instead, giving a boost to the value of sweat and a longer retention of new players. By selling synthetic sweat from TT's, MA gets all the ped. But had sweat been used, new players would have purchased more equipment and armor (think decay MA), ammo/probes (think profit MA), and had a better experience in EU, leading to a longer commitment to the game and more directly, more eventual deposits from a larger player base.

By finding a way to increase the use of sweat and hence, it's value, you help suppliment a new players ability to invest the time it takes to be fully immersed in EU, which could lead to a longer term commitment to developing their virtual life.

 

Puny weapons make peds go a long way. Much better way to spend time than sweating.

 

Sighlentz, synthetic me in no way effected the sweat value, this is because barely anyone used attack/heal mindforce chips due to the markup me gave. They tried using sweat for attack/heal for many years and it didn't work.

What did effect the sweat price is the vu9.4 sweat exploit that allowed people to trap mobs in server boarders and gain unlimited amounts of sweat without being attacked flooding the market with millions if not more units of sweat, add in resellers misinforming newbies, newbies foolishly thinking if they sell for less it sells faster and other long term things, such as there only ever being one real use for it, tp chips, it soon hit rock bottom.


What's being done?

Mindark and planet partners are adding sweat to blueprints increasing usage

 

Stave, I said MA missed a chance to increase the use of sweat by not using it as the fuel/ammo for MFchips, not that synthetic me effected the value of sweat. Didn't know MA tried to use sweat with chips in the past. But I do agree that MA needs to find a way to increase the use of sweat and hence, it's value. Adding sweat to BP's is a good start, now they need another use or two for it.

 

Im loving the posts on sweat, its refreshing to see some positive ideas on sweat and its potential use as a way to get people embedded in the game. It is like the housing market in the UK. If the newbie house buyers dont get on the ladder it effects the whole chain

 

my friend left this game because the lack of storylines

so i think that at least some more ppl will join this game if it actually had some kind of storyline.

 

Arkadia does have a back story that is still ongoing @ http://www.arkadiaforum.com/content.php?153-arkadian-storyline

The backstory also have a few translations in diffrant languages thats been done by the comunity.

 

i agree BUT...

if the tool wont break all newbs will keep that gun for a LONG time

i would have been hunting with it if it would never break and diddnt need ammo
i would atleast make a profit without risking something

i would have easly been hunting them and after some time i would have had 1000 PEDs only to take them out later but of course i would have bought some stuff too mostly vehicles and clothes and other stuff.

could even make hunts on bigger mobs with that gun for example owekos.

but great idea and ofcourse i would afrer a while stop using the gun and when i im low on peds i use it again

 

Hi again,

guess "retention" is the key word.

I'm quite sure that, with even not so much money, Arkadia could easily generate a big influx of new players in an instant (on line ad prices are quite low ...). But would this really help, now?

Or would this only mean to "burn" possible new participants, now, when the environment isn't really done yet to reach a sufficient "retention" rate? Guess this is why we don't see Arkadian ads in the gamers portals yet, and why they don't spent their Ad budget yet, possibly in vain.

These guys know what they do. I'm impressed more every day about the professionalism of the Arkadia team. I have more trust in them then I ever had into any other MA related crew.

When the time is ripe, we'll see Ad campaigns, marketing actions, media coverage, all over the place. I bet all of my common dung on it.


But the time isn't ripe yet. We have yet to create a flourishing economy, numerous features have yet to be implemented, it's too early to spam the world with Arkadian Ads.


Quite a lot problems left that only MA could resolve, meanwhile.

The difficulty to sell your loot, for instance. I forgot the shop owners in my proposal, Atlan pointed to the problems arising. How to enable a vivid trade without shifting those that have invested substantial sums into their shops?
I'd just dream of shop contents listed in the auction interface. Pay a fee to get it brought to you, or read where this shop is - waypoint?

But selling loot must be made easier. So much stuff we loot that cannot be auctioned because of prohibitive auction fees, when not in huge amounts!

EU is an international game. Time zones. So even a trading town wouldn't work, as long as your in a rare time zone. Auction, or an automated selling system, could help here.

Maybe auction for non-stackables, and a trading network for the stackable loot, with lower fees?

Dunno. Maybe you have ideas?


Have a good time!

 

on Xandra's note, perhaps a area/shop where u can put items to sell but the shop is a general one owned by Arkadia, but anyone can place items to sell there with own markup. Just idea not sure if can be done. then I can put my sweat for sale in it

 

>if the tool wont break all newbs will keep that gun for a LONG time

its UL and not need to be repaired

>i would have been hunting with it if it would never break and diddnt need ammo

with dmg 0.5 (maybe less) ?

>i would atleast make a profit without risking something

if you will hunting with this gun you loot will be less then 50% of common loot (maybe no loot at all)

>could even make hunts on bigger mobs with that gun for example owekos.

12 ppl * 0.5 dmg -> 6 dmg per shoot , loot splits for 12 ppl -> no profit

>but great idea and ofcourse i would afrer a while stop using the gun and when i im low on peds i use it again

this gun not for profit ,it for spending time in game "for free" ,now you can only sweat,and who the hell want to sweat? people want to shot something .Add some achievements or missions with rewards, kill 1000 puny mobs with this "sweat gun" and get stupid hat .Game already have "puny achievements" and reward with hat.

Main point to hold new ppl in game ,let then to do SOMETHING in game for free

 

Yes but there is nothing ingame that resembles a story. That is the reason why MIND's friend left, and that is the reason why i am back at calypso. I think quests and storyline is the way to keep people ingame. Not a few pea-shooters or higher sweat values.

 

I also agree that storyline and missions built around the storyline will play a big part in the overal experiance but keep inmind that the planet is still quite new and as such is still under development. The dev team is bussy with creating more missions and such that will follow the storyline while also working on the new player experiance, just give it a bit of time and all will fall into place

 

Just to say that Fopsie said it all really. The dev team is working very hard on focusing on the new player experience as the most important thing to get smooth so early on, and the marketing is actually ongoing with AsiaSoft, the chosen target market for this time period. Personally I'm very happy not to see major marketing being done at this point on more traditional gamer spots or aimed at the Western market, the planet isn't ready for that yet. Come August MA will be back from vacation, and we will get to see some more of the many things the A-Team has been working on for us

 

See my post here ... market trading ...

On Calypso, this was done mostly on the Gateway, which Arkadia do not seem to have, at least during the first week of launch. But since all of the experienced players and Advisers are on the main planet, something like this needs to be implemented on Arkadia as well, not just the new player trial planet.

I like the idea of a "sweat gun". By limiting its dmg power so say 0.5 or even at 0.2. You want it so it will take a team effort of a few shots to even kill the basic Carabok with only 10 HP. Maybe we can limit its stats to max SIB of Lvl 1 or less, 10 ammo burn per shot, with 0.2 dmg. This should reduce "skill harvesting".

The store line missions are currently work-in-progress. The A-Team is working on them, but they can only be seen as quickly as patches are release by MA. The Arch Soc missing interns is one quest, Celeste Quarry will also be worked into the story line.

jc

 

I agree that to bring in new players and make them *stay* is one of the most important parts to do. But thats not all. We need also more medium level or high level hunters, miners and crafters which also want to stay *long* at Arkadia.

At the first rush after launch it was like expected. Ppl are coming to see the new planet, hunt the new mobs, mine and craft. Then it turns more down each week that follows.

A look at the tracker shows where we are now. Make ppl stay on a planet is not an easy job for planet partners. Look what has happend short after the launch of Arkadia: Space was build in and a part of ppl are moving there. Others went back to Caly because they think it is easier to survive (PED card not empty so fast) there. With the next big VU something new will come to Arkadia, but at same time a new (maybe large) landmass will be added to Caly, the bridge between Eudoria and Amethera. Including new mobs. Additional the yearly migration will start, which also will bring more ppl back to Caly.

The landmass of caly will be (or is already) as big as all other planets together. It looks like a competition between caly and other planets, where every move a pp makes is answerd by Caly ASAP. Remember there is a big advantage of Caly. MA runs Caly again, *and* has knowledge what comes next from each pp.

Now have a look at the playerbase. Nearly all of us are having limited PEDs and we can give away each PED only once. So with all this new content in a short timeframe at different places, we have an ongoing competition between planets where only one part can "win". With the great advantage caly has, you can imagine which planet that will be ( if pp not having a very good answer to all this).

So we need some more action on Arkadia. And we need it *fast*. If needed, bring up some of the stupid grinding missions (kill xK of mobY). Bring it up fast. Hunters will do those missions, for sure. Events at already player-owned LAs are also can help to bring ppl back.

As said before, new players are needed, but we also need more "old" players comig back to Arkadia.

What I would like to see (in that order,soon):
1. More missions (not only with low-level mobs)
2. Events
3. Re-Design of mobs, to not make each hunt looking same
4. new mobs
5. treasure system

I really love Arkadia but atm I have a big problem to survive (PED) there. I hope that this will change soon, with ppl that have left coming back to Arkadia when enough attraction is offered.