Today I have come to learn that one of our biggest spot lights in the community @Wes Furtive is going to be taking a break from Darkfall. For anyone who dosn't know Wes he is the voice behind Unofficial and professionally looking made Darkfall Tutorial Videos. Spoiler: Wes Furtive YouTube Spoiler: Yucky FB ClipArt While this may be alarming to many, it is vital that we as a community maintain a strong line of communication towards the needs of others. If anyone has feedback, what keeps you playing or what would like to see? The worst thing you can do is let the lines of communication go silent. My qustions for @MWTaylor is - What is the state of BPG. 1. Without giving away hard numbers what is the percentage of active subscriptions appose to inactive? 2. Out of the 18 posted members on the BPG what is the current Sitrep 3. What kind of new content, sound, animations, objects would BPG like to add and how long will it be? If anyone has any other questions post em, and maybe we can get a new Q&A posted. _____________________________________________________________________________________ As for anyone Streaming Darkfall, Hosting Events, and Advertising Darkfall it is my hope that BPG gives ya'll some support. Growing the community is actually more important then working on the game IMO, and while I have been seeing a steady stream on new people starting up, statistically only 2% of new players stay for a long term. The fight for higher player retention starts and ends with a single choice, Log On or Log Off.
its not player retention that is really the problem, most of the current players are people who have been retained very effectively. the problem is there is no influx of new players.
The thing that would bring me back is a queue fighting system. I want to log in and fight a random person as soon as I log in the game. I shouldn't have to spend an hour at a village for the possibility of having a fight. There is too much time wasted in this game for me to continue to put time into it. People don't like having their time wasted. If they did this it would usher in a new age of Darkfall. Suddenly, Darkfall would be streamable. Your move BPG...
All I want to know is how many players are currently logged into the game. I think its only fair. I DO NOT want to log into a game where im the only one playing. Andrew said this is not true...but has not provided any proof. Now who am I gonna believe? Im the one running around for hours to find no one. I do play at off hours so i get that but its only fair to tell the player base if there's a player base.
In my opinion, the most under appreciated change was the removal of almost all character grind. Casuals make up >90% of any successful game’s paying subs. And with only “gear grind”, this sort of progression will be taken away the minute a casual stumbles across someone stronger than them. While I understand the intent, IMO, this is simply a recipe for financial ruin. I remember casting Volcano for the first time, and it Surged on that very first cast. I logged off two minutes later, feeling disappointment. But what was surprising to even me is that I never felt the urge to login again. The lack of character progression goals meant the end. And keep in mind that I love pvp and am half-decent, so those MORE casual than I are likely to be much more influenced. This ship has sailed, but given that it is THE reason that I left ROA, I felt it worth mentioning.
You must be referring to alpha when skills instant maxed. It takes quite a while to get a skills to max now.
There's been thousands of players to play this game. only less than 200 stayed. Player retention is the problem. Nobody want's to keep playing. It boils down to not enough playing at once.
I took a long break myself when Skill progression was removed Only came back when I heard that custom house placement was going to be a thing. Id really like to see combat skills reset and replaced with a level progression system. Id also like to see factions added to the game that have a progression system like how alignment works. Maybe you want to live out of a faction strong hold near the center but in order to get the towers to not hit you your going to have to PvE or spend a ton of gold, but your alignment with other factions will get hurt.
Game needs advertised as well, but i keep hearing the game isnt in a finished enough state to do that. But I guess it was good enough to release... Call the current state a beta 2.0 or something start advertising it then give it a new launch. Its much more casual friendly right now. How do expect new player retention if new players only hear about the game from the 100 .... if that... of us left. You git plenty of pvp videos with exciting coms and what not you can use for trailers
You could not possibly create a more toxic, more self centered, degrading bunch of jerks to drop new players into than what they are met with if they decide to give this game a try. There are some great people that play this but the loud annoying squeaky ones are the ones that I am referring to. It is the equivalent of deciding to take up basketball and even the people playing in their yard are as good as Michael Jordan but him also being a bully with a terrible attitude, slapping you and yelling "why do you even bother trying!!". Or going to a pool room to see if it might be fun and finding the place full of thugs, which all play at a world class level and laugh every time you try a shot, pointing at you and yelling "look at this loser!!", and throwing pool balls at you if you would not gamble and give them your money. I am only slightly exaggerating. If they could possibly ban every single player that has ever played, then launch it free on steam to an entire new player base it would be a huge success. Guaranteed.
Even though testing your "Guaranteed" claim is impossible, I do agree with you that that would fix a lot of issues. However, it is literally impossible, so the question becomes how do you fix the problem a different way. How do you change the community, change the attitude of people, so that when new players come into the game they are met with welcome arms?
Facebook ads work wonderful for my side business and moms business. $5 a day reaches a shit ton of people a day.
Thousands is nothing, even the most succesful game only retains a sliver of those who try it. the biggest problem with this game is that other players are the content, and as such for the game to be appealing at all it would require like 10k active players, something which it will never have because nobody wants to give this garbage title a try.
Removing toxic players is something BPG tried once and It didn't help much. There is a theory that the universe always seeks to balance itself out its called "The Upper Limit" When people are in a super clean friendly environment it spurs others to randomly become more aggressive or toxic. We need a solution in enhance player Retention not to annihilate it. The best way to increase retention is go around and find out what people want in Darkfall. A lot of you say you want more population, but the Dev look at that as players whining because they don't have a big enough imagination to solve this problem. The solution to increasing the population is so stupidly simple that a child could figure this out. "Increase Player Retention." When a group of players say the population is bad and they want more what they are really saying is that they feel ignored. Posting updates, adding bug fixes or posting weekly makes players feel like they are not ignored. New Content is like giving gifts to a child on Christmas and Lore is like when a parent leaves a loving message behind for their kids to find. The more you interact with your community the more your community interacts with you and if you want the Toxic crap to just go away, then don't feed it. Everyone feels great getting compliments or encouragement and giving those things doesn't feel bad either. If you want to improve the game, you have to first improve the creators.
Removed a bit as I really wanted to point out the above comments, BPG could improve a good margin by looking into the concepts above. Get your staff in line and let the game speak for itself. Its made it this far.....it has the bones.
