[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[Acius]

Paul Schwanz wrote:

> I put off or otherwise try to avoid cleaning out my cat's litter
> box, but I look forward to Christmas morning.  One I find tedious,
> but the other I find compelling.  Imagine a paradigm where the
> character did a lot of the sweat, toil, and boring work offline
> and I, the player, got to log in and enjoy the fruits of his
> labor.  Imagine if I got advertisements in my inbox telling me
> about the wonderful item my character just made or the skill
> points he'd accumulated.  I think that at this point, logging in
> would feel more like Christmas morning and less like cleaning out
> the litter box.  Once I logged in, I'd use those items and skill
> points to go on fun quests, which, upon successful completion,
> would open up additional options for items or skills that my
> character might pursue.  This would give more of a flexible
> episodic nature to the feel of the gameplay.  Of course, we tend
> to value items based upon the work needed to aquire it and this
> new paradigm could indeed cause players to value possessions or
> skills less.  However, I don't believe that the entertainment
> needs to suffer greatly, especially in light of the fact that TV
> can be very entertaining with very little investment.
> Additionally, less presure to spend time "skilling" could lead to
> a sense of greater freedom to socialize, which would also benefit
> retention.

Very much agreed.

I'm working on my MUD as a hobby, so the financial aspect of this is
not as compelling for me, though I do want player retention. OTOH, I
have a serious problem with being a factor in someone else's
addictive behavior on a game I wrote. Yes, it's their own choice,
blame the parents, etc., but if there's something I can do to help
that, I'm interested.

The only desired behavior is regularity -- I want someone to log
into my MUD regularly. That way, they're participating in the world,
and I have an active player. What I *don't* want is for them to stay
logged in for hours and hours. This, I feel, is a direct consequence
of the reward structure of MUDs. The MUD provides you with something
you want (the ability to complete ever more difficult and
interesting quests, kill ever more powerful monsters, kill other
players, etc.). But to get the reward, you have to pay for it, and
the currency is time spent online; more specifically, it's time
spent online killing monsters. If there were a more optimal way to
get experience, would players use it?

Paul's idea is very good -- attach some value to offline time. And,
to encourage player regularity, the offline time only remains
valuable for the 24 hours following your last login (or some other,
fixed period). You could do it something like this:

  - Provide in your game-world a series of "quit" points. These
  could be martial arts studios, magic schools, craft shops, or
  whatever.

  - When the character quits, have the character sign up for an
  offline activity, which they'll do while the player's
  away. Courses to improve skills could be paid for with money
  earned while online; alternately, you can offer to work in the
  stables while offline, which doesn't give you any skills, but
  would let you earn a little money. Great for newbies.

  - Players could check on their character's progress from a web
  page, or they can log in and see how things are going. I'm not
  sure if it's better to enforce a fixed course time, or allow the
  course to be interruptable (so you can leave the school and start
  playing whenever you want, without hurting your progress in
  offline activities).

One of the common reasons I've heard for quitting an MMORPG is "I
got busy," "I got married," "I joined the navy because it was eating
my life," etc. Their friends in their guild continued playing, got
20 levels ahead, and they lost the ability to keep up. If they can
continue their character's progression by playing a 15 minute
session to find a good training spot every evening, maybe you could
hang on to these players until they get a chance to start playing
"for real" again.

-- Adam Helps


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