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General: GDC 2010 MMO Retention Panel
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Of the many panels at this year's Game Developers Conference, none really stood out as so personally interesting to players as the retention panel where developers discussed some of their ideas to keep us playing their games.
One of the really strong MMO panels at GDC this year was the MMO Rention Panel with Gordon Walton and Scott Hartsman. Gordon and Scott are two of the top MMO designers in the world today and both have a wealth of knowledge on our industry, player perspectives, and overall game play with any online game. If you do not know who they are, Gordon Walton is currently working on Star Wars: The Old Republic and Scott Hartsman is working at Trion. True veterans of the industry it was no wonder they tackled the topic of keeping players in an MMO. They addressed things that worked, things that did not work and kept the crowd entertained with some of the triumphs and epic fails.
Read the GDC 2010 MMO Retention Panel
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
This is a very important question and I'd like to see a more in depth summary of the panel. Is there a transcript or recording of ut anywhere available?
There we go: http://www.journeyswithjaye.com/index.php?paged=2
“MMO Retention - Learning from the First 25 Years,” by Scott Hartsman of Trion, and Gordon Walton of BioWare.
Listening to Hartsman and Walton present was like sitting at a bar listening to two industry icons swap fascinating game tales. But a close listen reveals some priceless lessons in retaining players.
Hartsman echoed some of what McWilliams had previously discussed - store and record data, tie it all together, use it to help make design decisions, and then make sure to study how it affects other things once it goes live.
They compared games to buckets with a hole in the bottom: no matter what, you’re going to lose players. But having the right retention strategies can make those holes a lot smaller. I found some of the underrated psychological factors to retention that they listed to be noteworthy, particularly the concept of providing horizon’s of experience (content not yet seen), and masking the grind (offer achievements and rewards to encourage replayability).
Hartsman pointed to two examples from EQ to show that tough changes can drastically help player retention - hell levels and spell levels. Hell levels in Everquest were levels that required 10 times the normal amount of experience to get through. Spell levels were special levels that provided new spells. What they found out from the data was that players were (not surprisingly) quitting during hell levels, and during non-spell levels. Making changes to even out hell level experience, or spread out the spells awarded through all levels, were two potentially controversial decisions, which could backfire and anger the playerbase. Turns out though, that the players didn’t mind at all, and both changes helped retention, with the spell level changes actually leading to the highest subscription level in EQ ever.
Walton discussed aspirational experiences, and pointed out that they didn’t necessarily have to be day to day, they could be things that people aim for over the long term. In Ultima Online, for example, the data showed that people who had houses stayed longer than people who didn’t, so making changes to offer housing to more players became important.
They both included examples of retention failures as well. Walton mentioned Ultima Online’s decision to improve the user interface, in an attempt to increase acquisition. Not only did it fail in that regard, but it frustrated current players who were comfortable with the old UI, and retention went down.
Hartsman used examples from Everquest 2’s early days, pointing to the features that they put in place to make the game challenging to their target core playerbase. So they added in “locked combat,” which removed the ability for others to help you defeat a mob you were engaged with. Downside of course is that there was no opportunity for players to connect - players couldn’t heal another player, couldn’t help attack a mob, and couldn’t share buffs unless grouped. Of course, the downside is that, at launch, people grouped had to share experience debt from death. In the past, he added, the idea of “intended” meant right way vs. exploits, and now intended means having fun. The presentations I’ve seen so far have really reflected that idea, and it’s something that was highlighted by Mark Skaggs of Zynga today. (notes coming soon!)
Played: Pretty much any fantasy MMO, some did not even make it to release ...
Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse
Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2
Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
Walton should know. He was right there in the mix of when the NGE for SWG was coming down the pipe. The question is did he and Vogel learn anything (both were there) and is it being applied to TOR. Time will tell.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
There is one thing that I would put very high on the list (after the basics of gameplay, fluent graphics (note NOT bling bling graphics) and immersion.
That thing is customization of the game. The look of the interface (not just some sliding bars in options on how big or where ) to the font type and colour of the dmg you do.. Even the sound that can be heard when you gain lvl or even kill a mob.
Developers are not the best judges on what gamers want. Just look at what WOW addons have actually changed the entire game - not only look of it -but the actual gameplay. Good luck trying to heal without addons. Or rather ... good luck finding a group that wants to have a healer that doesn't use addons to improve his abilites.
In general we can say - it doesn't matter how much the devs play their game - they are playing the game for DIFFRENT reasons than why the gamers are playing it. To think that devs playing their games can make it better... No
There is one thing that matters most tho. Developers can ruin a game in a split second. Its called nerfing and buffing. When a game turns into players waiting for their class to be buffed before it will be nerfed again (WOW cicle of death) then a game has failed when it comes to retaining players.
Balance is a stupid word. It was created around PVP and in many ways it is the devil of real MMO gaming. PVP is built on "balance"... thats why we see some classes dominate WOW areans... while beeing "balanced" even more to the point of destroying the unique part of the class.
I have turned my head away from P2P MMOs cause I dont think those games deserve my gold atm. I expect alot more than what they are doing atm.
No wonder that the P2P games are crap if all the creative effort goes into thinking about Retention...
First and foremost ( and not mentioned at all in their little list ) is : do not willingly and knowingly mislead or misinform potential subscribers !!!
secondly : have a good support and community relations team in place PRIOR to release .That team should adher to the first rule: to put it bluntly don't lie ....and if you make a mistake say so, don't pretend it came out like you wanted it . The blatant lies we witness these days by the very folks who are in charge of communications ( on directions from management obviously ) is astounding and quite frankly insulting your player-base . That might have worked 10-15 years ago but we know a lie when we see it now .
Yes the problem is we all see the lies that a lot of the devs are propagating now days. Especially having lived throug the NGE. I can watch and see the same tpes of behaviors from dev's and they wonder why folks leave the game.
Let's assume that we are already talking about a game that players are playing because its fun to play.
For me, the first rule for keeping me from leaving is good communications. If changes are planned, let me know before I encounter them. If I report a problem, I expect a timely response. And above all, don't try to mislead me; if I can't trust the game provider, then I'm gone.
The second rule is to keep it interesting by providing variety. There will always be a few tedious quests, but don't keep repeating the same 'kill 10 of this', 'kill 5 of that' over and over again. Scripting can help a lot in reducing tedium.
Next, let me customize my character by having a variety of equipment for each level range. If I'm a level 20 mage, I don't want all the other level 20 mages to be wearing the same equipment that I am. It would also be nice to not all have the same spell sets.
Finally, make me feel like I have my own home in the game. Some place I can show off the stuff I've collected and personalized with my own style of decor. It would also be nice if I can sell stuff out of my home too.
Nearly all the games that I've played for at least 6 months have met these requirements. WoW doesn't have housing, but it has a wonderful scripting system, which allowed me to create a wonderfully personalized UI and kept me enjoying it much longer that I would have without it.
I agree with almost all of these points. I really agree with the customization. It's one of the major reason's I quit AoC
Doing what the public want aka, The Customer is Always Right..
You get this a lot and sadly they don't listen enough to make the games so much better then it already is.. There are tons of players out there that see soo much potential in MMO's they play, but they voice their oppinions and get brushed to the side.. If you wanna keep you MMO's highly active, listen, learn, comply, and put your head to the board about adding these ideas..
Most Developers see this at a waste of time, in the end you find all your costumers leaving, draging the game down "causing nasty reviews" to the point no one will play it.. Let's take this retention and turn it around to something possitive..
The Question we put to the Developers is, "Do you wanna keep the games rolling with minium player cap or do you wanna end up with a massive multiplay online game that blows the minds out of the players?"
Yes I agree with This, It seam that like over at Tubrine the hot topics are radiance, and LI's. While folks have been howling for over a year about these they have not doon anything to help. In fact they keep saying they are growing all out lie. All you have to do is log in to realize that. It is too bad that dev's don't listen to the comunity any more, and do what it takes to make they player base happy. While I have a lifetime account I don't log in any more becasue its not fun. The not fun part is what needs to be addressed by the devs. This goes for any game.
No wonder we have horrible MMO's as of lately. Not one of them understand what keeps most players playing. Anyone who uses metrics to solve this puzzle needs to join Alice in Wonderland.
Well, the NGE wasn't about retention, it was about getting a new, larger (WoW) playerbase. It is well known that $OE knew that SWG would lose most of its playerbase when the unwanted NGE went live. That is what is really sad.
Interesting article.
If I remember well a few others things were mentioned at this panel: one was the player housing and the other was veteran rewards. I'm not sure for the later though.
The point was it's a proven fact they help player retention. They saw that in SWG and EQ II. Although in SWG the issue is player cities removed players from the main hubs. Another good example is LotRo housing system, while nice on paper (being able to customize your yard), was doomed from start as not integrated in the main world and making all neighborhoods feels like ghost cities, but I digress...
As mentioned here by some, the most important thing, for players that care to browse the forums, is communication; and one of the biggest issue is the gap between players feedback and designers feeling of what's really needed.
As such we can really wonder why only one MMO dared to add polls after the in game login screen and keep using flawed voicy forums members posts and biased focus groups feedback. Ie: the data mining telling you players spent half their time travelling or mining or else, does not mean they like that... or they don't either (sic!).
As now most MMO are WoW clones and so have an enhanced Diablo game play. So most studio don't understand the need for character customization based on player's choices (RPG + feeling of ownership) not designer's restricted version with items stats (gear grind + achievement feeling).
The second issue with these clones is quite no MMO lets you play a 100% non combatant class. Since Pre-CU SWG most of this type of players left the genre, some disgusted.
Player made content seems to be the future of MMO, and soon or later we might see things like it's being done in The Sims. While there is free content, some people are creating paying professional quality content. (Shameless plug: if you are in MMO business feel free to PM me about that)
In my experience (lifetime acct in active kin on Firefoot) we have grown tremendously over the past year. But that is my experience.
This illustrates very well a big problem for devs, Your assumption is you are where the player base is. But you cannot know that. By nature when me/you group up in a game we group with folks that like and do stuff the same way we do it. So to you and folks that think like you....the devs are not listening....Yet Turbines tools and metrics (as mentioned in the article) may show you to be a minority and they are in fact serving what the majority wants. That is the problem with "the customer is always right" arguement by a single customer speaking as a group of customers.....which customer..... Any company is in business to make money, if you have done this as long as Turbine has, I bet they probably got some pretty good reasons and supporting metrics backing up their decisions. I think it would be rather silly to assume Turbine knows what "everyone wants" but just will not do it because ....insert your reason.... That is just not rational, If I recal, Turbine has over 400 employees, A company of that size has to have a strategic roadmap including features, tech and infrastructure to support their plans. Each of those will have a cost and justification associated with it.
So in a bit of irony, you could take over turbine, and do away with the things you don't like, and be guilty of doing exactly what you are saying Turbine is doing.
Just fwiw
I hope the devs are aware that using metrics in a wrong way can be disasterous for their game:
1. If alot of players are doing certain content in your game then you need to understand why that is, if its only because its the quickest way to grind xp then you need to have creatice solutions to that.
2. Just because something worked and was popular does not mean it will be again in a different setting or to players who have gone through it all already.
Lets hope MMO development for dummies is not emerging and certain concepts are being set in stone as a guaranteed way to succeed. MMO development has to be organic and creative not just reskinning what works according to metrics and putting it into a new setting.
But I am sure these guys know this stuff better then I do.
I can't believe he brought up air warrior...I used to play that all the time on aol back in the 90's...was a great war game for sure. that and that mech game I can't recall the name of I used to play all the time got me interested in creating online games and set me on my path of developing games today....
I agree w/ some of their points though but one big one missing is players owning the world and by that meaning the players feel tthey have some sort of ownership in the world be that through player housing ala swg or some other like eq2 etc where they have a place to call their own home/abode and they can decorate or do things to make it their own...i..e internal decorators...that and the veterarn rewards program is defintely something that helps with retnetion...
http://www.forceofarms.com/index.php
Personally, I look for 3 things in a game ...
A) Is it fun to play?
I'm experiencing both in Fallen Earth right now .... not only am I having fun playing the game, I constantly have 50 things I want to do, but don't have the time for at the moment.
I was that way in WoW (4 year player). I always had something I wanted to do, but still hadn't gotten to.
C) Finally, Community. What eventually drove me out of WoW and made me start looking for another game was; my guild had broken up (and I wasn't interested in starting fresh in another guild), and the incessant immaturity of the player base, both in their actions and in chat.