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New player experience improvement idea.

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boring_player

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Hi.

It went thorough my mind yesterday that we could implement quick resolution for new players who are lost after first couple of hours and mostly resign and never come back.

Why couldn't we grant new player a mentor automatically after tutorial?

Why new players, including me, are not even aware at the beginning that mentoring system exists and graduation involves nice armor and jeep prize. Why mentors have to fool around Camp Icarus and stalk new and lost players with mentoring invitations.
We have mentor register - we could implement quick solution in which mentor and new player would choose preferable languages, planet, time-zone etc and system could associate proper mentor with new disciple.
Idea is not polished, there are some barriers like players registered as mentors who left the game or mentors who login only form time to time but I am sure all the adversities can be overcome somehow.
Maybe new player should receive a MsgBox in which he would be informed: Avatar Henrik Jerkrot Nel is your new mentor. Mentors are experienced players who provide bla bla bla. Click here and there to send him a message bla bla bla.

After some time it's clear for me that MA don't have enough resources to implement fresh new solutions that could solve one of the biggest problem of this game - lack of new player retention.

If you don't have any internal resources at MindArk to improve new player retention, use your most valuable external resource - experienced players.

Mentors can easily explain things that are too complex for new players and tutorial does not explain it at all - bankroll management, deposits, item descriptions etc.

Remember, often it is a mentor who encourages new player to make first deposit. This is just a quick idea, feel free to comment and post some additional improvements.

Regards,

boring_player
 
Interesting thought, one big problem for EU is indeed new players retention. But i can't figure out a good way to implement this. How would the mentor be selected, how would every mentor get the same fair chance to be mentor of a new arrival?

Mentor skill or rating based would mean only a small group of mentors would apply for this and no room for new mentors. There are some disciple farmers you know, just in it for the rewards.

But the idea is good!
 
SuperKanjo said:
How would the mentor be selected, how would every mentor get the same fair chance to be mentor of a new arrival?
Click to expand...

Probably just Random Number Generator - let's say that potential mentor would have to meet some requirements like on-line in past week, never banned account, account older that X months etc.

Disciple should be able of course to kick the mentor chosen by RNGesus and apply to other mentor. He should be informed that "Henrik Jerkron Nel is your current Mentor - if you need another one please click here and there to check the mentor register". Disciple farmers still could stay at Camp Icarus and advertise themselves "I graduated 250 disciples, come to me because I offer small PED support and I am the best, look how great I am."

The idea is to provide new lost player support of experienced player as asap as possible - before he dumps his account to trash bin, forgets about EU and never come back.

New players are essential, it may help them decide to stay.

As probably amount of graduates would increase, the mentor prize pool would need an overhaul to avoid inflation of prizes which are currently high markup and rare. Maybe, just maybe, mentor could receive 10% bonus of the total deposits of his disciple during mentorship (although it might cause mentors to make some aggressive deposit advertisements) or some fancy L and UL stuff, not necessarily super uber stuff - some unique clothes, statues, pets etc.

For now, coding and testing would prolly take less than 20-25 workhours as Mentor register etc is already in game. The design of such system is important & subject to discussion.

Edit:

I just realized that actually 10% bonus during mentorship could be easily exploited. Perhaps, this bonus could be granted after graduation - 10% of disciple deposits but no more than XXX PED in total.
 
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The selection would need to be random, with some criteria. RNG could be a solution for that.

I'm not a fan of huge rewards for mentorship, we need mentors that want to help people, not that are after some fancy (or even PED) rewards. Collectibles like clothing of pets could work i guess.

Again i like the idea, and anything that can help to keep new people aboard is welcome.
 
The biggest problem, is that if you close a window asking you what to do, there is no easy quick way of finding out what the original text said.

All they need is a tutorial thumbnail, where a new player can click it and see what needs to be done, and previous tutorial texts.

I think people don't know what they are meant to be doing and don't know how to find out. So they just give up relatively quickly and quit.

Just my two pecs.

Rgds

Ace
 
Love the idea !
 
I am a mentor. To be honest I mentor when I feel like it. There should be choice from both sides. Some information for new players that there is a mentor system will suffice.
 
From a disciple perspective, it takes away the option to ask around about the mentor of their choice. Rating is not infallible, I know "mentors" with perfect rating who barely ever respond to their disciples, and also know a lot of mentors whose disciples didn't pay attention to the rating stars on graduation and gave their mentors the default 3 stars; many good ratings were ruined only because the mentors were afraid that their warning will be taken as a begging for good rating.

From a mentor perspective, I personally ignore random requests from the register from people who didn't even bother to pm me first to see if I'm really someone they'd like to appoint for this serious role.
 
I agree with your idea of a suggestion system to the new disciple.

The mentors that are suggested should only be ones that are online currently and match certain criteria , such as language , how often they are online and ratings.

What we have now is very clumsy and unfortunately those that are actually looking for a mentor and might actually stay with the game, are often found by the disciple farmers.
 
It would be enough if an NPC just directs them to the mentor register, where they can browse for a mentor themselves.
 
Its a sandbox.... you are not required to mentor or even go through a discipleship.
Why not just have a dialog box in your communication center for your first 50 logins reminding you if you do not have a mentor yet.

Very simple and unobtrusive to everyone involved, and something even MA can probably figure out how to implement this year.
 
Also not sure how to implement it.
NO to Random... knowing MA some will get preselected mentor who hasn't logged on since 2002-2009!

Perhaps automatically add as memo for each newbie
And have a simple popup at end of tutorial area (Thule/PP starting area) just before leaving.

#1. Choose Mentor by Time Zone!!!!!
#2. Choose mentor that is Active
#3. Choose mentor that plays within the same spending bracket.
#4. Choose mentor that is in same areas of interest: Hunting/Mining/Crafting/Texturing/Fruit+Stoning/etc.
#5. Choose mentor that is like minded, playing for fun/socializing/making ped/getting globals/etc.

Memo and popup are so simple even MA can't... oh nvm. :/
 
Ace Flyster said:
The biggest problem, is that if you close a window asking you what to do, there is no easy quick way of finding out what the original text said.

All they need is a tutorial thumbnail, where a new player can click it and see what needs to be done, and previous tutorial texts.

I think people don't know what they are meant to be doing and don't know how to find out. So they just give up relatively quickly and quit.

Just my two pecs.

Rgds

Ace
Click to expand...

I think this is an important point as well!
 
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