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Player Retention and Growth
Lusternia as a whole has had a bit of a population decline as of late. While this poll obviously can't display all options, which of these is most important to you and would work to keep you around longer/more often?
If you don't agree with any of these, feel free to state your own issues. Please be polite in all responses.
If you don't agree with any of these, feel free to state your own issues. Please be polite in all responses.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
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(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
In the games that I've shifted to, however, I still mostly just PvE.
The main difference is that they have more interesting systems compared to basically just putting "kill <target>" into your stratagem and set it to repeat.
Similarly, there's a reason to engage repeatedly with content such as dungeons, where honours quests here are pretty much a single time thing.
At the end of the day, providing content that's likely to be engaging in general to the playerbase will hopefully get people logging on and actually sticking around, which then means the social interactions can happen that encourage newer people to stick around.
I also strongly support bashing becoming more complicated. Esp since I can now just config autocuring on pve feels a lot more repetitive and unchallenging. That's a shame bc all the custom attack messages are really cool.
However, for me it was hard to choose to vote on one because I believe it is a combination of several issues - which stems from this particular thing. This is going to be kind of long, so I'll just start with why I selected this one in particular.
So why did I check "more divine visibility and interaction?" Because it's not really about them. It's more about us, and how we treat them and those interactions. What I mean with my vote is: "players can do better in encouraging divine interaction and visibility."
I would like to take the stance that divine visibility and interaction is about how players will interact OOCly/IG with these divine. It should be a positive and interesting experience for both sides.
As a player you cannot DEMAND a divine to appear like some trained monkey who is the solution to all of the problems pending. You cannot blame them for other divine not appearing, not being present, or simply just MIA. I assume they want their time to be fun, productive, and uplifting to their specs of their char. I do not think a player would want to continue playing as a divine with so many negative experiences, and players behaviorally mishandling of what is essentially an adult sandbox game.
We as players sometimes forget that these wonderful people ARE volunteers or they are paid very minimally in some ways for mountains of work because just like us players they love the game, they want it to be successful - They are just as invested as the players who spend huge money on this game. They want us to succeed, I'm sure they do because they are just as emotionally involved. And they want Lusternia to be a good environment for all.
Some players have had a "bad experience" with divine, or admin, and are frustrated with the many things that these people - who are still working on other issues that obviously the players pointed out - are trying to rectify. Just thinking about how I would feel if some players demanded more appearances while other divine are unavailable because of poor treatment, or toxic gossip, and childish player drama makes me nauseous.
People know the turn over for divine and admin is fast because of all of these variables I have mentioned above. And there has been ZERO change as to how we approach it. The population decline is not just reflected in our player community, but the divine as well.
So what's the solution? What can I do as a player?
1. Create a healthier player OOC community. Whatever platform, inside/outside of game. Use common sense and morals to define your playing experience. Promote inclusivity and non-tolerance for those who are not inclusive and welcoming. Be aware of bullying and online harassment.
This can apply to our population problem as well if you think about it. Driving people away will create a poor reputation for any community organisations as well as toxic behavior, meta-gaming and all of those things that turn you as a person away.
These behaviors may be difficult to break because of the pack mentality that often comes with championing an organisation - You get into it, you want your organisation to win and be great, but this only damages all of us. I have experienced both sides, unfortunately. And I have learned from it.
If you want happy divine, you need a healthy community of players. You want new players to come back? Do this. It's not that simple as me just writing it, but it's something we can work on together.
2. Use all of the system set it place by admin to address your concerns in a professional, and caring manner. They are already dealing with a lot. This is not their primary job. Make it easier for them. Yes, you may be frustrated about a mechanic, an issue, an imbalance - But is your frustration isn't worth another person's anguish.
3. Speak fairly and professionally of admin and divine. I believe this could be hard when one is frustrated about the state of things. But these are real people who are coming from our community to serve us and have fun.
They will not want to return to playing if they are not treated fairly and professionally while they are technically OUT of the player community. They will not want to WORK with you if you do not treat them fairly or with consideration to their own lives. Yes, I'm making a lot of assumptions. But if this was my volunteer job - I wouldn't want to be treated like this.
4. Do not assume player favoritism in divine or admin. Just don't. Considering how low population we are, the divine/admin reflect us. They are working on what they can work on, and sadly they cannot get to all of us at the same time. For example. I know many organisations are still waiting on some things, and while that's super tough - it's not a result of favoritism. It's a result of player treatment of divine making people hesitate on applying to be divine or admin.
Lower divine population, the longer it takes for work to be done - The less RP fun we and they will have.
If you think it's player favoritism, reflect on perhaps why you feel that way and how you treat or talk about divine OOCly. Always refer to #3 and remember #1.
5. Events. This is a whole can of worms for some people. Depending on your personal preference of doing/not doing events. Just don't be mean about it. Contribute if you want, but don't be mean about it or assume #4. If you want to critique events, see #3 and #2. I'm sure they would appreciate the feedback.
6. Listen and improve. They have likely been playing longer than you.
I'm sure there is much more, but these are my suggestions to a big problem that has a BIG solution. It involves more than just one change, but many to accomplish and will always be a work in progress.
If we did ALL of this, things would be better for all of us. I genuinely believe that. In response, I think admin would be more open to listening to us and our ideas for continuing to cultivate Lusternia for years to come.
And now, I'll get off my pedestal.
tl;dr Be professional and nice to admin and divine. Use admin systems for voicing your problems and contributions to mechanic/other solutions. Be aware and inclusive of all players, discourage bad behavior. Be welcoming, be open, do not encourage toxic behavior. Contribute, and encourage growth.
I genuinely believe if we did these things all of the variables for these issues would reduce themselves. Be the player your younger self would be proud of.
theatre due to the snowy weather.
hungering malice.
1) Expanding the abilities that players have to attack denizens with.
The simplest is putting in some rotations, while on the other end of the spectrum you could try to replicate the concepts of each class in PvE (in theory, if done right this could help as a stepping stone towards PvP for some)
2) Developing more "Themepark" style content.
Dungeon style things that reward you with rare materials, for example, that let you access harder PvE content, which opens up new options, which lets you go higher.
You could tie this back to demigod as a way to fan your spark further and further. Have it function as a gate to certain abilities, etc.
if you mean instanced type dungeons, I'm all for this.
Since dropping off I've mainly played XIV and GW2, along with a smattering of Black Desert Online and a few other random attempts at stuff.
BDO is realistically the closest to Lusternia cause it's a massive sandbox, but the features that are appealing to me and that I see others talk about is the great combat system. It's just fun to play with, mastering combos can see you wiping out armies of mobs in seconds. But I feel like Lusternia would be more likely able to develop instances rather than something like that.
Aside from dungeons, you could also do stuff like Trials from XIV or Fractals from GW2 potentially.
I think the other side of this is also that getting players back is also important.
The downward spiral where people leave cause there's not enough people to play with, which leads to people leaving for the same reason, in theory can be broken by providing a significant enough reason for large group people to come back at the same point in time.
Realistically, something you can put in the newsletters and spam all over facebook/twitter to be like "check it out, SHINY!" is likely going to be a new system or a significant overhaul. (Like the final archetype or the melder overhaul)
At the same time, a campaign to reach out to the players that have left (even those whose activity has gone to basically nothing but are still logging in) to actively gather data about the cause of this is probably the only thing that's really going to give decent guidance on what to focus on.
To add onto this, the power creep seems to be real right now - lots of wonderitems not a lot of affordable artifacts/ "poor man's" artifacts to counter these new items. I guess balancing these would be better, but I would like to see something 'shiny' that isn't just artifacts or wonderpromos.
theatre due to the snowy weather.
hungering malice.
Events and divine interaction wouldn't really help my desire to play because they typically happen when I'm at work or asleep irl. Which in turn means that it's something you feel like you're missing out on.
Unless the admin go on a hiring spree to get coverage across the time zones, focusing on this over other stuff that could engage people regardless of their play time would be frustrating for me and presumably others who only get see the logs of the awesome stuff that happens when we're not around.
Roleplay: I think that's the core of this genre and while Lusternia has an immensely rich lore with beautiful writers both in players and admins, the game lacks casual-impromptu roleplay. Getting events, interactions with divines, those are all nice. But there's just no catch for me, unless you can 'feel' that you are building a role, in depth relationships, a plan that is in place, and the progress. Even when doing all this earns your character a bad reputation such as "Pushing for an agenda", or "Forming cliques". Unfortunately, while it's possible to get a grasp of such an experience, Lusternia or more specifically some of its orgs seem to be heavily moderated by the administration. It's not really alluring to be really good at everything there's possible to do in the game and sit prettily at a corner whereas your character could do so much more. Create and influence so many more. I felt so heavily discouraged by those interventions I actually stopped roleplaying altogether, despite the fact that my character switched orgs. So it was a huge negative on my end.
Freshness: I think it's admirable the people filling the god roles are trying to be innovative and engaging for all of the playerbase. The events, new quests, casual interactions, even the feeling when your Divine favors your character for stating something clever on CT. Those are all brilliant. Then again, there's a serious problem with trying to satisfy a playerbase that isn't very self-satisfactory on its own (Which I think is heavily connected to the lack of player-driven RP, but I digress). And that problem is when they fail to meet our expectations, despite all the good intentions. Re: PvP Monk Rework. Players were anticipating this for a long time, so you give them that. But the tests weren't done yet, some instakills were wonky. People got worn out by the related bugs and the simple unbalanced nature of the skillsets back then, it really put a lot of people on the edge. Could it be better balanced in the test server with more time? Probably. Re: Chaos Event Megathread. With all the best intentions to spice up something stagnant, things got out of hand really quick. A quick look in the thread can give you an idea. Re: Last Final Ascension Event. I actually just heard about it, because I was already set with my mind to avoid it. Re: Last Year's Wheel Promo. A promotion that obviously got released without thinking much about the numbers and with limited availability to the playerbase, so it caused a lot of strife. My point is, it's usually better to not rush coming up with "more new stuff" just because there's an endless quench for it from the playerbase.
PvP: So here we are... I relegated myself to a pvp-only guy sometime last year and while it is, or it was actually fun, I did feel the powercreep pretty heavily (but only towards the end) and I'm saying that as a guy that actually had no problem while playing with no transcended skillsets and no artifacts for at least 6 months, that didn't even know how most skills worked. But I felt useful, I felt impactful despite all that. Even after that I enjoyed combat at the minimum possible investment level for the remainder of it. In my last few months it felt like the dynamism in PvP was gone because of pseudolocks, a new curio that hard counters mobility and countless getoutofjailforfree cards with wonderitems. Regardless of the reasons, it just didn't feel fun. Lack of raids were never a concern for me, I think I'm well within my rights to say as someone that probably defended over 300 hours of raids they weren't even that healthy to begin with. I've seen a lot of my friends worn out by those and simply became too sensitive to anything negative afterwards because of the physical exhaustion (Because back in the day a raid was only a raid if it lasted for 4-5 real life hours minimum, I'm pretty sure I've seen one that lasted for 10 hours too). Surely the instigator might be thinking that's what the game needs. They can't get their PvP now, give them that. But then again, they need to take a break and think about why their worthy opposition decided against playing a game with them. If someone is unfun to play with that's for them to realize, not for anyone else. Not for administration to come up with something shinier or something more fun to make up for it, even if those players are paying the bills of the game. So were the ones that were driven away by that attitude.
Conclusion
Thank you for actually making this far into my criticisms and thoughts about the game. It might not have been easy, but I hope you can appreciate my honesty if nothing else. Typing this post took me back to the ebb&flow of numbers in org populations. Some orgs casually rise, some orgs casually fall, right? Some players go then some players come. Such is the nature of things. But that line of thinking overlooks that there're reasons for all of these to happen. I think, if this was my game, I'd be more interested in knowing those reasons. Not just trying to understand why the new players are not preferring it over alternatives, but also why the players that actually know the game and liked the game are deciding not to play it anymore. If it's boredom or simply lacking time to play it, that's fine. That can happen to anyone in any game. But I think I know enough players to counter argue that most people I know that left the game had experienced game-related issues over simply losing interest in Lusternia.
-Kilian
I voted as being someone who might come back, but every time I login, I look around and see nothing to do. I just wanted some kind of "progress".
K, bai.
Customer service stuff is a big one, almost all encompassing one.
* People complain about stuff they don't like, resolutions don't happen, they don't like the game so they leave.
* Other people with the same complaint also leave cause that's what people do. (The vast majority of customers leave without complaining when they're unhappy)
* Repeat for long enough and it creates the expectation that when people complain stuff doesn't happen, so why bother complaining, just leave, which then leads to less complaints.
While they've been resolved, the years between people first starting to ask for a guild overhaul or a fix to totems are examples here. But it took sooo long and like... what do you expect happens when peoples complaints aren't resolved or at the least addressed in a reasonable time frame?
That's before you even get to stuff like when there's a negative experience around a complaint/issue, such as a forum thread or not even an acknowledgement from the admin (either in email, forum, or message).