[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[Freeman]

From: Acius

> 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.

Though definitely not a MUD, the gamecube game Animal Crossing does
a pretty spectacular job encouraging players to "login" again but
without encouraging players to play for very long at one shot.

Lots of the things you do in the game are limited on a daily (or
even weekly) basis:

  - You shake the trees for the fruit to sell.  Once you've shaken
  all the trees and collected all thr fruit, it's gone for four
  days.

  - There are three fossils buried somewhere for you to dig up, per
  day.  So once you've found all three and dug them up, you're done
  with fossil-hunting for the day.

  - The shop stocks a limited number of items, so one you've bought
  all the items the shop has in stock, you're done shopping until
  tomorrow.

  - Three weeds grow in your town per day.  Once you've found and
  pulled those weeds, you're done pulling weeds for the day.

  - The animals have a handful of fedex missions for you, but once
  you've done them all, then they don't offer any more for the day.

You can still run around and fish, catch insects, chat with the
animals or do some landscaping (chopping down trees and planting new
ones, planting flowers, etc.), but basically once you've completed
all of the above, you're done.

Then there are some incentives to "login" again the next day:


  - The store restocks items.  If you don't login to see what's for
  sale, then the next time you do login, these items won't be there.
  So if you're looking for a particular carpet or wallpaper or piece
  of furniture, you need to login each day so as not to miss it.

  - The weeds keep growing.  It's easier to login for 5 minutes
  every day and snatch-up the three that grow than it is to let them
  grow all over the place.  So, there's maintenance.

  - If you don't login for a week or so, then you gets bugs in your
  house.  You have to move or pick-up all your furniture to chase
  the bugs down, which is a hassle.

  - Those fossils you found are mailed to a museum to be
  "identified", and then mailed back to you.  So you login to check
  your mail the next day and take those items to the local museum
  (or sell them).

  - The fossils, unlike the weeds, don't keep getting buried for
  you.  So if you don't login and find your three fossils today,
  then you just don't get them (three max buried at any one time).
  If you want 21 fossils per week, then you have to play every day.

  - If you've ordered an item from the in-game catelog, then it's
  delivered the next day via in-game mail.

So, the game has two things working in tandem:

  1) You play for a bit and then you're done.  There's some
  busy-work you can do if you just want to hang-out and mess around,
  but the rewards for doing so are petty.

  2) You want to login the next day to collect some of the rewards
  for the previous day's work, and to snatch-up that day's rewards
  before they go away.

On a side note, the in-game email thing giving you something to do
immediately upon entering the game is just brilliant.  You login and
the mailbox is flashing.  You get a fossil back from the museum to
take to sell, or to put in the local museum.  On the way there you
see more buried fossils to dig up, weeds to pull, or animals asking
for a favor.  No more than an hour later and you've done everything
you "need" to do, but you've probably done something that promises
you a reward for logging in tomorrow.

Long term, there are additional incentives to return to the game:

  - Sales at the local shop.  They'll send you an email well in
  advance of the sale letting you know that December 9th everything
  is half price (or whatever).

  - Travelling merchants.  Again with an email notification or a
  post to the town bulletin board, they let you know to login on
  some future date because the rare-item merchant (the carpet
  salesperson or the wallpaper specialist or the rare furniture
  dealer or whatever) will be in town.

  - Special events: Holiday celebrations like Halloween, "Toy Day",
  etc.  promise you a reward for playing on certain specified days
  in the future.

  - The seasons change: So you at least want to login to see what
  the town looks like in the Winter as opposed to the Spring, Summer
  or Fall.

  - Recurring Monthly Events: For example, November was "Fishing
  Tournament"-month, so every Sunday in November if you played for a
  bit in the morning, you had a shot at catching the biggest fish
  and getting a prize.

So, lots of incentive to return to the game, but not much incentive
to stay playing the game for very long once you're in it.  Even
purchasing a house upgrade, for another example, doesn't encourage
you to play longer and go decorate your (now larger) house, but
instead encourages you to login tomorrow (when the upgrade is
complete).

Anyway, not a MUD, as I said, but it's worth checking out.

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