Player retention/New Players
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US Join Date: 2013-11-08 Member: 189165Members, Reinforced - Shadow
US Join Date: 2013-11-08 Member: 189165Members, Reinforced - Shadow
July 5th, 2017. This is what a brand new NS2 player experiences.
He was very forgiving of the game and unbelievably lasted a full hour. I doubt he'll ever play it again. I remember when I first started, there was no tutorial, no bots, no rookie mode/servers, etc. I jumped right in and learned from top tier players among other rookies and friends. What to do about it...hmmm.
Off base: What if a new person joins (under 500 elo let's say) and they're "tagged" or matched with a higher skilled player (2000+ elo perhaps). Tagged meaning they see their "mentor" as a colored/highlighted player on the field and map. It's indicated on the scoreboard as well. The "mentor" would see who they've been assigned on the scoreboard. Now get out of base, work together and have fun!
He was very forgiving of the game and unbelievably lasted a full hour. I doubt he'll ever play it again. I remember when I first started, there was no tutorial, no bots, no rookie mode/servers, etc. I jumped right in and learned from top tier players among other rookies and friends. What to do about it...hmmm.
Off base: What if a new person joins (under 500 elo let's say) and they're "tagged" or matched with a higher skilled player (2000+ elo perhaps). Tagged meaning they see their "mentor" as a colored/highlighted player on the field and map. It's indicated on the scoreboard as well. The "mentor" would see who they've been assigned on the scoreboard. Now get out of base, work together and have fun!
Comments
Tutorial videos existed for a long time... most still do I believe.
The problem is they are steadily going out of date and not being replaced due to low numbers in staff and no real funding. The videos would pop up on your screen in game and describe something... but I believe you can turn off the tutorial videos in your options, and I don't know if they are now off by default or not.
Yep. That Guy has no idea at all what kind of game this is, he Starts playing with zero knowledge about anything and then skips the tutorial and plays with bots. The biggest problem here is that guys attitude.
This is the usual one.
There was a well written post about coaching/mentoring from @NousWanderer called RECLAIMING THE VALUE IN ROOKIE SERVERS: INTRODUCE NON-ROOKIE COACHES & COMMS. If you would like to read a more in depth response, read there.
NS2 has almost always had annoying newcomer pop-up style hints. The used to even used to be little videos that described what was going on in Hugh's voice. Those are gone, but we still have pop up hints. Go to your Settings -> General and turn on hints to see them. The problem is that almost any hints or text on the screen is ignored by most players.
It wasn't so much about the guy in the video, but the gameplay with bots. It's sort of a mess for someone new. I started with zero knowledge by playing marine because it's easily understood for the most part. I played on regular servers that all skill levels played on. I believe new folks are forced to either start with tutorials, bots, or rookie only servers. Instead, I propose we let a brand new players enter any server they wish to. This is the way it used to be. But, if they want tutorials and bots, then fine.
That's how it is currently. Any new player can play on any server.
Using playnow will steer them more towards Rookie Only if it can.
Any time they launch the game and click on "Play" there's a popup that reminds them to play the tutorial.
So this person skipped the training button at the menu, skipped the training button at the play menu, and had to manually close the popup telling him to go to training.
And yeah, the problem is people expect to be able to just jump into the game and know what's going on, because most games nowadays are just point and shoot. NS2 is more like a board game or something, you need to learn the rules beforehand or you have no idea what's going on. If you willingly skip all tutorials, there's no helping you...
How does a win/loss ELO not matter? I understand that hive is not perfect, but how does a person justify the following two statements.
" stack!! It's 1500v1800 hive everyone shuffle"
And
"Hive doesn't matter" (I'm not going to listen to you even thou you have 3x my hive"
I love being told "we lost because I didn't go where I was told" when that same player said the previous round that "they lost because I joined the other team and stacked the game midway..." somehow I can totally unbalance a game and have no idea what I'm doing.
Oh sweet summer child, don't you know? It's never their own fault.
Back on topic: I just can't empathise with this player in the twitch link at all. He has no intuition to do ANYTHING.
His movement is not efficient, and I don't mean he's not strafe jumping in combat, I mean the way he walks down a corridor is literally like how a toddler walks in real life. He has an idea of which room he'd like to go towards (sometimes) and but sort of aimlessly stumbles down it like he needs to take his afternoon nap.
He sees a blue print and builds it, then sees the power node blue print and doesn't?????????????? Then later he says he understands that you have to build the blueprints.
His crosshair placement is careless like he just doesn't expect anything to come out of any corridor/door/vent and he certainly doesn't expect bad people to come in the direction they've been coming in before.
He even chases a fade out of control to topo who is out of energy and he has a jetpack, and decides to start shooting a cyst instead of finishing his mate, the fade, off. [20 mins into the stream more or less]
He shoots every cyst he sees despite not actually seeing any direct impact on the game by doing that. He shoots cysts when his teammates are being engaged by things that can kill him. You'd think you'd rather shoot and kill something that can kill you instead of a little orange glowball.
He has no inclination to open his map or even ask how to open it. He plays like he thinks it's a single player game and if you just follow the path you'll get somewhere, which I suppose is true in NS2, but there doesn't seem to be a thought process of "Where am I, Where do I need to go, How can I get there". He's just aimlessly walking around not doing anything.
"I have to press G to pick up my f*cking weapon" - like hello? Is that a big deal? Have you never played something like counterstrike?
It would be interesting to see how this guy plays literally any other online FPS because he lacks any of the fundamentals required.
How on earth do you help people like this?
Exactly. You can't hope to get these people into a game like NS2. Let them play the CoDs of the world. If this person plays for 3k hours (unlikely) they'll still be that person running into 5 marines as a lone skulk, dying instantly, instead of bypassing them and biting RTs.
There is a distinction between being bad and being stupid. You can be good, mechanically, but make very idiotic decisions. We were all bad when we started out (assuming you didn't come from NS1), but not all of us were mindless.
As far as I can tell he's playing with a more experienced guy and I assume it was his idea. Terrible idea, honestly. They were talking; if they had gone to a populated server where people are known to have mics and talked via ingame, they could have had a blast.
His friend was as experienced in that he had tried the tutorial once. The player in the video will ask a question, and his friend will give him an incorrect answer. When the guy asks for a more detailed answer, his friend says "I don't know." At some point his friend even told him the tutorial explains this stuff, but the guy said, "tutorials are for babies." Then his friend called him a baby.
I would not be surprised if his friend had only played the game one or two times on top of playing the tutorial. His fade play was better than a walker fade, so who knows.
The player did not use Quick Play or go to the server browser. He must have joined off of his somewhat more experienced friend. The server had bots for a simple reason. Playing with bots is better than playing with 3 people total. Bots aren't ideal, but it is better than an empty server.
At about 36 minutes in, yes I watched it all, they joined a new rookie only server with real people. He joined aliens, which he had not tried yet. The alien team was down 3 players down with exo's in their hive. They joined near the end of a game while being spawn camped.
After that they played a real game with people, from the beginning. This game also ended in them being spawn camped. He rated this game 1/5 stars for the reason "Round was not fun."
Yeah, I noticed that too. That's where my assumption came from.
I rest my case. These people are simply in the completely wrong mindset for NS2. It would have never worked out.
Honestly, I don't understand people like that. I assume these are the same people that skip all the cutscenes in story based games. Why do these people even try out new things? What's the point if all you want to do is point and shoot?
Most of the new player generation is like that though. They grew up with other types and an abundance of games. Also really noone wants to play a tutorial, that's why often new games integrate it into normal gameplay or are self-explainingly simple.
The dev team would do good to study the NS2 demographics before implementing features. So either they give up on the current remaining userbase and appeal to a new generation of players (hint: too late) or stop dumbing down the game any further and go for real retention of whats left.
I'm sure there's still enough people willing to put more effort into their games out there. The problem is: How do you find them?
There are about 10,000 to 16,000 unique players in NS2 every month. 40-65% of players are new players to the game, with a higher proportion of new players after a sale. That leaves about 6,000 regular non-rookie NS2 players every month. This is how NS2's player demographics looked throughout the last year. NS2 has many new players trying the game, most of which leave the game. The 6,000 non-rookies seem to stick around for a long time.
Since January 2015, NS2 has had roughly the same peak concurrent players counts daily of about 400. The active player base has remained roughly the same size since January 2015. It is like there is a real world asymptote. The player base has remained fairly stable in size for years now. The rate of decline is extremely slow, compared to the exponential decline of a game like Evolved.
I do not know the proportion of rookies to non-rookies in 2015. Maybe the proportion of rookies has increased. I do not know. Either way, we are seeing a turnover of the veterans. Many of the veterans we know or remember have left, but they have been replaced. If they had not been replaced we would have a greater decline.
The non-rookie turnover rate may even be quicker today than it was then. I have no evidence to support or deny this. My point is that there is turnover. I have heard players say the quality or skill of the player base has declined. I have nothing to support or deny this. It sounds similar to a no true scotsman fallacy, but I could also see some truth in it.
@Nordic any idea why out of those 10-16k people only like 400-500 play at the same time? It feels like the game has a nice playerbase but is not played very reglary (including myself here)
If the game would represent that playerbase even by having like 2000 or 3000 playing at the same time other people who would see this on the steamcharts might pick up the game again.
Because you can eat only when commanding aliens.
Those 400-500 players happens only at peak times. The average is 240 concurrent players
The 16k players seems a high number because we all play at different hours and different days.
The average playtime is only 3 hours per week
Total ns2 players = 240 average players * 7days*24h/ 3 average hours = 13k players
To have 2000 concurrent players with our current total of 10-16k total players you would need one (or more) of the following insane and unrealistic scenarios:
3 hours is only weak when viewing from a competitive mindset.
Most people play games for fun, casually. There are many games that I play that I only put an hour or two into per week... its how I can play so many games. NS2 and Paragon are the only 2 games that break that rule, I play them much more often.
But no, 3 hours is about right, some people will play daily for 4+ hours a day, others will pick up a game once in a while and play for an hour or so... Some people have lives outside of NS2 Meph :P
Why did I chose those games? No reason. They're just the ones I know
I was about about to say that playing NS2 is only worth it if you can play ~2 hours in a row.
I feel like playing NS2 pretty much every evening but I know it's not always worth it: if I'm unlucky, I'll have wait a long time before playing (finding the right server, waiting for the current round to end, then picking comms... then "oh we need to shuffle again"). Plus rounds can be pretty long, and if I lose a round, I just have to keep playing until I win at least one, right ?
TF2 and CSGO don't require the same commitment (you can just play for 30 minutes and move to something else). I don't know how long DOTA rounds are though.
Around 45 minutes (may be 20, may be hour and a half).
Also, I think that it's a bit unfair to compare hours/week of NS2 to DOTA2 because Valve applies some pretty aggressive strategies to boost the playtime. For example, the wagers of the "Battle Pass": you're getting a fixed amount of tokens every week that you've got to spend by playing matches during that week. (rewards are cosmetics)
The data I have shows monthly unique players as low as 12,000 and as high as 16,000 after a halloween sale. Ghoul once said somewhere around 10,000, so I used that as my low number. I provided a range. About 13,000 average monthly unique players is within this range.
Monthly unique players is a useful number in that it shows a reasonable estimate of the total size of the community. Concurrent players is the important one. NS2 needs more people playing at one time.
Between five and three years ago I would come home and play NS2 2-6 hours almost every night. Now I play about 3 hours a week. That is spot on for me.