How to make that game more popular?

[Z-Man]

I don't think attracting people to the game is the problem. Look at the SF download stats, we're getting 750-1000 downloads each day (there were times when it was twice as much). If this was a free-to-play commercial game and we'd get around 10$ for the 1% of downloaders deciding to stick around and buy hats in the shop, that would be a respectable income. The problem is that those downloaders hit barriers along the way to becoming long term players:
- they don't even install the game, the perpetual "I'll try this later" barrier. Nothing much we can do.
- they install it, but it doesn't work for them. I hope this one isn't actually much of a problem.
- it works, but they are turned off by the ugliness. Again, we can only hope those aren't too many people, they should roughly know what they're getting into.
- they can't figure out how to play. Well, we have the semi-tutorial now, but it's not yet in a version presented to newcomers (for good reasons). I suppose the unexplained 'weird' default keyboard layout in 0.2.8 is costing us a lot of players.
- they go online and have a problem with the game type ecosystem. For example, while HR may appear newbie friendly, the true gameplay of it simply is invisible because it happens on the .1 mm gaps. And of course, there's this:

Barrier of entry to Fortress: Find a server where people are playing. Get asked to leave, because it's a clan practice or clan challenge. Or, if your lucky, go to MB53's server or a Ladle server where people are playing. Oh wait, how do I join a team. If somebody tells you how to auth, and usually they don't, get setup with auth. Go back to the server, if people are still there. If they are, within 10-15 minutes they leave to go play pickup. So, you go to the pickup server, or maybe you start there. You can't play there either. You give up and go back to playing in a server that you normally play in. Obviously this "Fortress" stuff looks fun, but whats the point when you can't play.

it's not just a problem costing us Fortress players, it's costing us players because it probably describes quite a few general first contact experiences. I'm currently working on code that should keep new players away from servers they can't actually play on (simple in theory: export some settings to the server browser, display potential problems and incorporate them in the sorting once epsy is done with his stuff), so at least it gets turned into a pure Fortress problem.

Off to do a user history histogram from the master logs. You made me curious how many players stay how long and what percentage of downloaders actually arrives online.

[Word]

Here are my observations of a sub-culture of Fortress that you all have completely ignored.

we haven't, Fragile's team takes part in the TPL.

They probably wouldn't have known much, if anything about TPL had I not told them. By ignoring, I am referring to the lack of interaction on the part of most regular Fortress Players. Of course, the lack of a venue for this contributes to the problem

thanks, i told fragile too. i do agree with the rest except that it doesn't even need all fort players to explain them the basics. Around ladle 18 when we CTFers started to play fort it were Radian, hoop, Vanhayes and Concord who explained the things we saw but didn't understand. Just a few "good souls". I wasn't asking for help and I didn't want the whole community to 'teach' me. I still wouldn't grind and get polled if I didn't know what can happen to a team if I don't. I think it's enough if players collect these simple experiences and connect the dots, they don't need a lot of help from outside even if that accelerates the process.

I just want to point out to you something you seem to be forgetting, OpenFort was not really played much by the larger community. If it was a success, then please name 2 players or 1 team that developed from it.

Players I can name isn't a relevant criterium.There were lots of players like "Jimmy"/"John"/"Frank" - average noob names. I and the others who were there tried to help them a bit. How can I know what happened to them? Maybe they have different names now, maybe not - but at least they know some of the basics. It's true that only few people from the pickup/ladle/mb community played there - but the server was full every second night. It hasn't been that bad.

More exclusive than Fortress? I have to beg to differ.

Fortress (after you entered the game): Grind and split without killing your mates, kill all enemies, get the zone.
HR/DF/CTF: (after you entered the game): Kill all enemies, but don't stab, don't run, don't camp, don't rim, don't lag, fix your ping, respawn the noobs, don't basecamp, don't close...and remember to doublebind, otherwise you have a real disadvantage.
and have you never noticed that virtually all Dog Fight/HR/CTF servers have a start round message along the lines of "cursing is forbidden"/"we kick people for verbal abuse", yet many regular players there (some even with mod level) break these rules the most and kick people as soon as they make a 'mistake'? Fortress is relatively harmless compared to that - it would be far less exclusive without the burdens of pickup and auth.

[þsy]

That's interesting Z-man, and I apologise for aiming my post so much at the fortress side of things. And I totally agree with comp's quote that you've highlighted there.

the issue now is not that pickup ruins the fun of public fort, but that it is preventing the fortress community from expanding

Don't you see that you're confusing cause and effect?
Less games with newbies = less fun for newbies = no point to play or get better for 99% of the newbies.

That particular quote of mine was talking about players like us, not newbies, so no confusion. It was directed more at the "selfish" tronners like insanity (you sonofabitch)

And MB53's Mega Server is not public fort, even if you don't need to be on IRC. Fort Cafe was public fort.

I agree with you here, and I think this is a problem in itself. To continue from what Comp and Z-Man were talking about - I believe the only barrier that should exist to participating in a game should be a full server. Anything else needs to be removed - this authentification thing for example is a joke. What's the point in it if you can have a hidden login? It's just to prevent newbies from playing which is a terrible thing!

I don't think we should really officially "restrict" it, let's just stop using it so often. Every time I'm in MB53s/Empha's I get msgs to add for pickup.. we're a enough small community to just make a deal.

I think that this is our best option for now, so - how about this:

When you feel like going on fortress - head onto IRC and encourage people to not sign-up, but come play in a public* fortress server. I'll do the same, and maybe we can strike up a much better balance. If it doesn't work out though, I think restrictions would make both tron more accessable, and pickup more fun (we could two servers running at once with more pickup-hungry players)

*(Public being MB53s or an equivalent. In the meantime, let's try and get rid of authentification so it really is public)

[Z-Man]

Data mining complete, period about one year plus a bit (2010/06 to today).
Number of dowloads: 571535
Number of unique IPs seen by one master: 280992 (keep in mind, this includes recurring visits from players on dynamic IP or using several PCs)
Number of big brother information on one master: about 50000 (guesstimated, the big brother logs don't contain datestamps so they can't be correlated with IPs and users), so about 200000 for all four masters; this number is our best guess at the total number of installations that make it online, each install only reports once.
So that's about all right, around 30%-50% of downloads make it onto the net, depending on how you count.
But then!

Code: Select all

1 280992
2 64391
3 33079
4 22461
5 16634
6 13076
7 10732
8 9129
9 7925
10 6979
11 6338
12 5756
13 5260
14 4849
15 4504
16 4217
17 3931
18 3711
19 3507
20 3320
21 3163
22 3010
23 2858
24 2736
25 2618
26 2522
27 2427
28 2324
29 2227
30 2144
31 2065
32 2006
33 1940
34 1868
35 1810
36 1757
37 1714
38 1661
39 1624
40 1572
41 1524
42 1487
43 1437
44 1387
45 1344
46 1311
47 1273
48 1241
49 1212
50 1180
51 1153
52 1124
53 1094
54 1070

The first column is the number of days, the second is the number of players seen by one master on at least as many different days. Let's ignore the drop from one to two days, chalk that up to dynamic IPs. Further on, only 50% of the players sticking around for two days come back for a thrid, and of those that make it, only 50% return for two more days or more. Things stabilize after a month or so; players who are 'hooked' for that long leave with a half life of about one month. In that 'long tail', the only thing that can keep players play for longer is a better game, I think, which is always desireable; if the goal is purely to increase the number of players, though, it's clear the focus needs to be on the 99% that drop off during their first month.

The attached plot is a log plot of the above numbers continued all the way to the end (the green crosses); the blue and red things are from two smaller datasets (subsets of the large one), each about six month. Interestingly, those have a much steeper slope: that means a lot of long term players play sparsely, maybe once a week or in montly bursts. The one addict logging on every day would be the php querybot, of course. Not so sure about the 100 of you logging in every other day on average...

tl;dr: carry on the discussion. The area where you, the community, can have a large impact on the overall player numbers, how you receive new players, is also the area where most players are lost on the way from downloads to long term players.

[þsy]

Good work! That is really groovy

So what do people think - do we need to make tron more accessible? Is tron hard to understand and get into? Issues such as pickup, authentification and tournaments are preventing players from participating. Do we feel the need to change some of these?

Suggestions so far have included:
- Making a group effort to cut-down on pickup
- Making restrictions on days when pickup is played
- Removing authentification
- Creating a tutorial for new players

Other suggestions? Things are fine the way they are?

[Phytotron]

Phyto, if you don't have anything constructive to say, why not say nothing at all?

So, you didn't bother to read the posts I linked to in my first post, either. Do it. Tell me it's not constructive (especially the oldest one on the subject).

I think even the second post is constructive if you understand the point(s), even if you don't approve of the "tone."

You're underestimating the amount of work a proper in-game tutorial takes.

Well, I'm not. Rather, I think it's a shame that the time and energy that could have been devoted to an in-game tutorial, as part of a larger single-player experience, was and continues to be basically dismissed in favor of working on all the special features and game modes. And now the very same sorts of people who were clamoring for special features and game modes (ramps and flying cycles!)—and still want more; don't think there's anyone in this thread who would approve of abandoning development of them in favor of an in-game tutorial—are bemoaning the lack of a tutorial, or some such thing to introduce new players to the game. Priorities. I get it. I've always said that "perfecting" the core game should take precedence over development of special features and game modes (especially ones with no real conceptual tie to a lightcycle game). They, on the other hand, want it all—NOW!

I remember Lucifer talking a few years ago about how he was going to move to development on single-player exclusively, but I don't know anything beyond that.


By the way, all this griping about pickup—why isn't it in that thread?

[szopin]

Easiest way to make arma more popular: develop the game for other platforms. Finished GLES version could bring tens of thousand of new players in, maybe to stay. If mobile platforms get all +200 ping maybe some highping server setting would accomodate it and be popular (intercontinental play-like). Tron is perfect for hevy traffic in a bus, or during a train ride. Serious challenge on desktop version when you're back...

[syllabear]

Phyto, if you don't have anything constructive to say, why not say nothing at all?

So, you didn't bother to read the posts I linked to in my first post, either. Do it. Tell me it's not constructive (especially the oldest one on the subject).

I think even the second post is constructive if you understand the point(s), even if you don't approve of the "tone."

Your first post was fairly useful, but your second was simply scornful and dismissive of the topic (have you re-read it before posting this?), instead of suggesting ways to attract new players to the game, or critiquing already suggested ways. Thus it is not useful in any sense. Perhaps in your eyes, putting the rest of us down is useful?

Also, Zman probably knows what he's talking about. I'm not entirely sure how much time went into creating fortress/zones/other stuff, but I am aware some of what is used now is CT (kyle?) based, so its not 100% draining the devs time. Speaking of which, this isn't a profitable venture, so they are under no obligation to work on anything they don't want, especially if they don't have the time. Perhaps zones was more fun than a tutorial? If I had limited time to work on a project like this, I'd rather include things that are going to be more fun. Zman says its also easier, and I have no reason to doubt him.

Not to mention, about half of this thread is about attracting players to the game as a whole, and making up crap about the rest of us sounding like impatient, easily amused 10-year-olds with the attention span of a squirrel shouting "OHH FLYING CYCLES" is not an accurate description at all. Try reading, you'll see lots of intelligent suggestions and conversation.

AND some of the people in here ARE calling for more development on the core game/tutorial, but again, you're blinded by your hate for all things entitled "fortress" that you can't see it.

Seriously, try taking a moment to actually read what's been typed here.

And I know he's going to take my post apart bit by bit, possibly destroying some context in the process, just to belittle my response, instead of just bowing out of the conversation since it's obvious he doesn't want to help out in it.

[Phytotron]

Your first post was fairly useful...

So, you admit that here, but later, at the end of your post, say the opposite.

...but your second was simply scornful and dismissive of the topic...

Er, no it wasn't.

...instead of suggesting ways to attract new players to the game

Because on that particular subject, with respect to mobilizing and embarking on some big venture to attract new players and (re?)popularize a supposedly dying game, I don't really think it's necessary—or at least urgent, as Fofo suggested—because I think that premise is flawed. Get it? No? Read that first paragraph of the second post again.

So, I still contend that the main thrust of that second post was useful, relevant and constructive to the conversation. What's the use of having multiple pages of hand-wringing over a nonexistent peril? Just because a few of your buddies don't play anymore doesn't mean the game is on the brink of dissolution.

(If only you people could get so passionate about mobilizing behind something that actually matters. Now, that was a scornful and dismissive statement.)

Also, Z-man probably knows what he's talking about.

And? Where did I suggest otherwise, or contradict something he said?

I'm not entirely sure how much time went into creating fortress/zones/other stuff, but I am aware some of what is used now is CT (kyle?) based, so its not 100% draining the devs time.

So the people who worked on the sty+ct branch don't count as developers? And by the way, that branch wasn't where fortress, sumo, maps, multiple axes, the cockpit, etc., originated.

Speaking of which, this isn't a profitable venture, so they are under no obligation to work on anything they don't want.

Who suggested otherwise?

This does bring up a couple related questions as an aside, though:

Why is it you and those with whom you agree are allowed to lobby for this or that course of development, no matter how outlandish, but I'm not?

Or, why it's totally unacceptable for me to lament the decline in "old school" servers and players, but it's perfectly fine for you all to get all in a tizzy about Fortress supposedly dying out?

Perhaps zones was more fun than a tutorial? Z-man says its also easier, and I have no reason to doubt him.

Yes, OK, and? What of what I've said does that rebut?

[yadda yadda...]Try reading, you'll see lots of intelligent suggestions and conversation.

I see a lot of complaining about 'pickup' and people asking other people to do things for them, now.

And there's nothing fictional about my noting that people regularly clamor for all manner of special features, and assuming (even expecting) they can be implemented 'just like that.' By the way, the specific line, "ramps and flying cycles!" is lifted from the server description of dlh's defunct "In Limbo" server—a sort of inside joke/reference. But even that line was based on reality—people have asked for those features, multiple times.

AND some of the people in here ARE calling for more development on the core game/tutorial

OK...?

but again, you're blinded by your hate for all things entitled "fortress" that you can't see it.

Yes, that's it. Talk about mischaracterising other people.

Seriously, try taking a moment to actually read what's been typed here.

I always do, every word, then consider it before responding—unlike some folks.

...just to belittle my response, instead of just bowing out of the conversation...

And yet, who took a shot at whom, first? There was nothing compelling you to start shit with me. Now you want to tell me to shut it? You easily could have ignored it, but, no. Your high horse has no legs. Please, get off it.

...since it's obvious he doesn't want to help out in it.

So, was my initial post useful/helpful, or not? Make up your mind.


Picked apart enough?

[compguygene]

Obviously, from the information that Z-man has presented, the problem truly does lay with the manner in which new players come to the game and such. It appears that the developers are busy to the limit of their available time stabilizing .2.8.3.2 and working toward a .4 stable release. It also appears that none of them can really put the time toward creating a tutorial. So, as I see it, we really have two things that we can do to help. One thing would be to recruit more developers. Perhaps we could get some new developers to focus on building a tutorial. Or, perhaps they could take over some of the needed fixes while one of the current developers could focus on a tutorial. The other thing we need to do is to figure out what we as server admins and players can do to "guide" new players.
What I wonder, is would it be possible to create a server that by the use of an external script, would guide the player through some sort of tutorial?

[Phytotron]

The other thing we need to do is to figure out what we as server admins and players can do to "guide" new players.

One very simple thing is to encourage novices to play regular servers first. Learning the basics of the regular game translates to Fortress et al, not the other way around. Learn how to play the dang game first, then worry about the "special game modes." Plus, one can go into a regular FFA server and screw up and no one will care or kick them out just for sucking, contrary to the vindictive crap we know occurs in Fortress et al servers (and, yes, DF too). Of course, the risk you run there is they come to prefer the regular game and don't take interest in all the "special game modes." Well, that wouldn't bother me.

Of course, another issue is that most people, first time they play the game, will just go into whatever server(s) happens to be populated at the moment, and that's mostly "special game mode" servers these days. Well then, what do you expect? Game mode sorting in the server browser could help. Also, what Z-Man mentioned about actually limiting the sorts of servers one could join could help—or even restricting them from coming online at all until they've played a certain amount locally (and, ideally, through a playable tutorial—obviously, a ways off even if anyone decides to do make one).

What's really troubling is that there simply isn't any documentation included with the game anymore. Not even something basic, a short, simple "read me"—nevermind some elaborate manual. I talked about that in one or two of those posts I linked to on the first page, and encourage you all to read those.

That's the first, simple, obvious thing that should be done, before anything else—all this talk about blogs (again, how's that better or different from the wiki?) and stuff. At the very least, that. So, you see, same principle applies: Do the basic, obvious thing first, then worry about more elaborate things. A new player doesn't need to know how to play Fortress, and definitely doesn't need to know "advanced fortress strategies." A new player needs to know the basic concept of the game, basic game modes, basic physics, and how to control the lightcycle—and no, I don't mean doublebinding.

Of course, there is that absurdly common category of new players who inexplicably come into an online game without even having learned how to turn first—who will even say, "what is this game?" (That's simply beyond my comprehension.) And you may be thinking, "just like those people, there are the types who will ignore even the most basic documentation." Yes, but they're not even given a chance at this point.

There's also something that can be done about that. Shove it in their damn faces. To wit, there was also talk at one point about having a first-start screen—countless games I've played (including simple, open-source, even single-developer games) have these. There's already a bit of a setup screen, so it's apparently already possible to partially implement now (I assume), but it mostly (exclusively?) concerns screen mode stuff, if I recall correctly. Anyway, regardless of what's possible now, what there should eventually be is a screen, even multiple screens, that gives that aforementioned description of the game concept and so forth, with some basic instruction including pictures. Old arcade games had static screens like that. Then actually take it to the player settings and keyboard configuration. Make the player see and interact with all this before they can do anything.

At the very least, and eventually in addition, have a screen that pops up the first few times someone tries to go online, admonishing them to RTFM (whatever and wherever it may happen to be at a given point in this process) before joining an online game, especially those that involve team play.

Then there's the idea of having a non-playable demo mode that automatically runs at startup. Many games also have this—all the old "golden age" arcade games had this, too. Some involved actual gameplay being demonstrated (an initial, generic version of which I would think could be "easily" implemented just by running bots, similar to what GLTron does). Others would have, well, little (unplayable) tutorials. They called it "attract mode"—which would also contain much of what I was describing about concept and basic instruction. Look at Defender, Robotron 2084, or Galaga for good examples. Oh wait, and Tron.

But, I'm going on and on now, and I think I've touched on most of this before, and a good bit of it is in those posts I linked to on the first page, to repeat myself again. at myself.

[matchbox53]

I was thinking about what responses we had regarding this topic and its pretty clear there are good ideas to implement but will it be possible to do so ?.


Regarding Pickups : Some views have revealed that it doesnt favor the newbies which is quite understandable and i doubt if pickup accepts newbies then pickup would have reason to stay . I am not objecting to the fact that allowing newbies will make pickups less fun but it does make it less enjoying for what pickups are . Pickups were made for serious matches were players put their best or high performance during the matches and if you get someone who doesnt know anything about any game type mode like fort/sumo etc what do you expect the results will be.

@psy Suggesting that pickups should be limited to few days in a week is a good idea but we have to remember 2 Things which could be an obstacle in implementing it :

1- Epsy leads pickups or administrates them i think we should also accept whatever judgement he has to say regarding it and even if that turned out to be a negative answer for many who wanted your idea to be implemented. And i understand it will be for a good reason.

2- Even if Epsy accepts there is another rising issue which is which days will it be played ? what timings will it be played ? All of these are enough to just say no cause you cant make sure that many players are free on daily basis so that cant work out.

@word you said that Mega fort isnt public for the authentication reason . Well it is public because anyone can join it and play and not because the name says Mega Fort Pro that means only good level players could play in there . I have always encouraged the newbies to play in my mega fortress and i have asked my admins/mods to make sure that stays because if not this community will shrink . And we have helped alot of people before to create a forum account to login into the server and it worked really well.

Now i see your objection regarding the authentication in servers and you think that could restrict but nonetheless authentication in servers have been put for a good reasons that i am not going over them because it could be seen in many different point of views.

Solution:

The way i see it , Its quite simple pickups and authentications will always be there . The solution is what i propose is the following:
As What Ai and Roze said we need tutorial despite the efforts that have been put into advertising the game on facebook etc.

Tutorial will be really good idea to implement I see that Z-man saying that it might be hard to implement something huge cause it will take alot of time to add whatever tutorials can be added to the client itself so my suggestion is : Is it possible to add a Help option in the Arma client where people can enter there and they will find few links that link them to youtube which some of us will work on using Embed ?

[apparition]

I think what FoFo is really saying is he's bored of us. He wants different people, different players, different clans, and ultimately different competition. I don't blame him

I once had an idea about doing some Arma t-shirts. That, and the whole storefront and logo stuff went haywire. It was kinda cool at the time though. It came right around the Armagetron Revitalization thread.

I still think some great things to work on would be:
- Community Growth
- Website
- Forum
- Development Teams
- Feedback from users
- Feedback from developers
- Game Navigation
- In-Game Menu
- Tutorial?

I think there are many people who have the ability (way more than myself, that's for sure) to do some cool things to promote the game. compguy sounds skilled in this. The developers and people who run the Arma show, too. But hey, I don't really know shit about shit. I enjoy Pickup. I enjoy regular games. I'll continue playing Arma as long as I enjoy it.

[þsy]

MB53: Yeah you're right - it'd be interesting to see epsy's take on pickup vs new players. Also, I'd like to hear your opinion on why authentification is a good thing and should stay? I can understand how it'd be useful in ladles and other competitions, but on your server it seems to just keep the noobs out.

Also, last night there was a public fort game. A lot of people came on and seemed to be supportive of my views regarding pickup. A few were like "where are all the new players lolol?", and they disappeared to go play a pickup match.

One night may have passed, but it seems that everyone is reading this, and the usual pickup criminals (of which I used to be) are still gonna be picking up. Let's give it a week or so, but come on people! do not /add fort6.eu !!

[saragei]

What's really troubling is that there simply isn't any documentation included with the game anymore. Not even something basic, a short, simple "read me"—nevermind some elaborate manual.

It's been a while but I remember having read every single word (or at least the parts I managed to understand) in the read-me accompanying the software soon after first install. Later on I even translated parts of the read-me for the wiki at a German Armagetron forum, because I found it helpful and a necessary read.
And now there is none at all coming with the download?
I'm sure even with all the changes implemented during the last few years most of the old read-me file's content would still apply and thus help players understand the basics.