Getting/maintaining new players

those of us who have been in this game for a while are very concerned that players don't stay with the game. there are many reasons for this that have been well documented here in the forums. one of the major problems seems to be in maintaining new players and holding onto players that have been in the game for a while. this will not address the problem of maintaining those of us who have been here for a long time.

as it stands a new player or a player that buys an extra country with gc's gets gifts from the gm. if they acquire a country through war they don't get those gifts. the cost benefit ratio of war acquisition of a c3 is hardly worth it and stiffles empire growth. i propose that for new players, that all c3 acquisitions have the same benefits as acquisition through purchasing from w3c. w3c won't get as many gc's this way but i believe they will keep more new players as they will not immediately go into debt that will eventually drown them. new players can also feel that they're doing something positive to build their empire and for them the war game will be both fun and profitable. i'd like to hear your thoughts on this and if there seems to be a conscensus i'll post it for a vote.

Documentation that explains more than the current documentation.

Give a tutorial example, and not just a little tutorial: give a tutorial (okay, optional) that lasts for a few real time weeks. Or a tutorial that fully explains what it is trying to explain.

I've been playing 2 weeks, I have read the documentation, I have about 30 corporations in my 1 country on FB and will have a decent defensive military so as to make war on me very expensive. Granted on FB one must buy some population and cash with coins to grow fast (particularly the defensive military).

But you know what? I still don't know what I'm doing. Lack of documentation. This is a complex game. What "should" I be considering? Some documentation/tutorials would help. People quit, I suspect, because they have no idea how to proceed. This game is not intuitive at all. Not in the least bit. It's a mess when it comes to that.

I'm a Gary Grigsby fan so I know complex from totally unintuitive (and Grigsby can be unintuitive as well). Let's take HoI 2 DD (google it if need be, the acronym will suffice for a search). HoI 2 DD is a very decent game. Can be single or multiplayer. A war game somewhat like this but without the corporations. I've played games there that lasted several weeks. I have patience. I can read. Why did I like the game? Documentation and a player community that had 50 expert players posting and answering all questions "fully." Fully. I read the Help forums here and I see people giving up trying to ask, and people who explain but not everything since it's either complex beyond need, or they just don't know.

If you teach people how to play the game, they just might play it. If you don't, they surely won't. Sort of easy concept.

i agree that the documentation leaves a lot to be desired, even when players read it, which many do not. however, we've been trying to get documentation updated for years, to no avail and the "news" pieces are so hard to find on changes, they're almost useless too.

the point of making c3 acquisitions more profitable for new players is that they are not immediatley called upon to use those gc's for building up newly acquired countries, learn a little of the war game and feel the accomplishment of taking out a c3. being able to make acquisitions in this manner would enable new countries to quickly develop an empire that they could then build on.

Bring back raiding dammit!

Eliminate all cash out and let us have as much sim-cash as we can steal earn honestly.

Sam, raiding is good, but i like cash out. that's one of the things that keeps me in the game. but i know i'm not in the majority.

even if they don't bring back raiding of c3's for everyone, to have it for new players would make the game a lot more appealing to them and help them build empires quickly and hopefully would encourage them to stay in the game. and yes, i'd like to keep 500t in my ceo's too. hehe

Parsifal, cash out can be done privately.

You sell GC via paypal and buy a conquered C3 or something of that nature for the agreed upon amount.

Also conveniently bypasses GM's red tape. Buyer gets a better rate than GM's $.10/GC rate, and seller gets a better rate than GM's $.05/GC cashout rate.

Cashout is redundant, unneeded, and the #1 driver of game changes that stifle the (former) fun of the game. And I speak as someone who's planning to do it in the 2-3 months before my membership expires.

The Pope is right, as much as I might hate to admit it... The joy of the c3 raid with trillions of cash in! You can actually enjoy clicking away against a c3 knowing the booty awaits. It encourages players to play the game, you invest the time you get the rewards.
Get rid of the cash out feature if need be.

the game has a definite socialistic bent. don't let anyone make too much money and raise all boats to the same level. IT DOESN'T WORK! it only makes everyone angry, stifles interest and doesn't maintain the player base. it has unintended consequences by not really helping those who the game is trying to intice to stay--new players, while at the same time penalizes and drives away seasoned players.

it may be that there are changes that have taken place that needed to be implemented but a return to features that will facilitate empire profitability would be of great benefit.

If anyone wants to buy my gc on paypal I will sell for less than $0.05.

Every game I have ever played had a turnover rate. If the log in page is believable then there are almost always several hundred people online. There are only 577 countries without presidents on LU.

dunno if it matters but checking "who is online?" from Communication menu shows for example 10 same names if player has empire/CEOs.

there is about dozen of players posting regularly on the board, there is perhaps another 20-30 who post occasionally.

from that, and from experience from other games, i would assume theres less than 100 players who are active and willing to participate in any kind of interaction.

100? on 5 worlds

every game i played either was growing, dying or stagnating. dying is obviously negative, growing positive and stagnating depends on number of players.

it was said many times before that every game, every business, every community needs to reach the so-called self-sustainable mass and if such a mass was reached here everyone is free to decide for her/himself.

final note. i suspect there are quite few people who are kept in-game only/mainly because of their financial "investment" and want to get their money back somehow, else they would quit right away. yet again, if this is good or bad mechanism, if this is good or bad game design, is for everyone to decide.

i'm only familiar with KB. but there are several large empires that are inactive and have anywhere from 6 to 20 countries. most of those have large debt upwards of 20t (why haven't they been bankrupted?) and stay on until their membership runs out which can be upwards of six months rl. this doesn't count those smaller empires and the single countries that are inactive. this would confirm Zdenek's assumption about the small number of players that are really active. on the other hand there are a lot of players who don't interact much but that are active and in there on way contribute to the game. i again would suggest that new players be given more incentives to build empires by taking c3's and receiving gifts from the gm. i'm now putting a voting proposal on the vote site and recommend that you vote for it.

Tuco my guess is around 200 guys left playing.

I am actually not much interested in earning Cash, but are willing to pay to play a fun game.

But looks like in this game the dominant goal IS to earn cash.

I am still lost in why certain action happens in country and corp management. ( I have been playing for over 6 month )

Things that puzzles me ( following examples )

> There is no clue as to why some C3 country costs minimal casulties to take over, while others can kill off several Long Range Divisions, and several attack wings.

> Exchanging diff classes of workers between countries sometimes will just not solve the shortage of the worker class. ( I have been exchaging into this one country of mine over 150k High Tech Eng. and I am still short about 20k of them like when I started the exchange transfers last month )

> Now the newest problems I face is that in my largest country and the one with the most corp. the hiring is all at 100%, production has been at 114% for the past couple month for the majority of corp. Now something has happened and ALL the corps are showing production rates ranging from the low 20's to 60-70's % in production rate. ( another game change? )

> After spending half of my original GC buying pop for my Original Country, I am just stuck at 58 mil pop. 2 month back every time I buy pop to get to 60 mil pop, they die off at a rate of 100k per month so I gave up and just let it be. Now it is showing my pop is growing at 20k per month. but its been a month my pop is still at 58 mil ( All indicators are green ). So basically I hit a ceiling and Population will not grow.

I check out the forums, and most answers are just guesses on what might be happening.

I actually spend alot of time during the pass week click to manually ordering supplies for my enterprise corps. ( kept getting warning saying produciton was limited due to supply shortage ).

I am only managing less then 80 corps in my Enterprise and having to manually update ordering twice a day is starting to wear me out.

I think My membership expires in Sept.

I am already starting to think about giving up on this game. When I decide I will just give what I have assembled to someone that wants to play the game for a while.

Even through I have been playing this game for over 6 month I still consider myself to be a new player, just took over my 6th C3, and I am just letting it grow organic by itself if possible ( Actually I cheated by transferring in $1.2B )

I still have not explored other continents with Naval expeditions, and trying to take a C3 far from home using Air Transports or ship landings, I think my resources are far away from having the money to buy the equipment to do those things, and Population is a big limiting factor on building more corps or creating a large army.

I think I am a good and informed player, but this game got me stumped.

Sim ceo, here are a few suggestions, but not knowing your full situation, it's a calculated guess.
1. c3 losses. if you haven't taken out all fighter and helio cover, that will mean you're going to lose a lot of off weapons. so, be sure they're all gone. attack the defenses of a fort and not the icon of the fighter/helio.
2.exchanging workers and still not having enough is a feature (glitch) of the game and many of us have complained about this to no avail. basically you just have to put up with it and
keep trading. if you haven't opened back to school and rehab hospitals, that might help. also, setting your education priorities feature higher.
3. losing pop may be that your health index is not high enough. you should probably build more hospitals with a hi of at least 120.
4. production may drop when corps become unprofitable. this is probably no fault of yours as corps tend to come and go with the market availability of products. just be patient. they mostly come back except for food and ag corps. they tend to be losers.

hope this gives you something to work with for awhile. message me at The Knights of the Round Table for further discussion or just post here.
good luck

Knights of the Round Table. not The

As we all know, Newbs offends. The presumed monopoly warehouses the marital custard. A hardship muddles the tea. Noobs treats newbs. The out cramp furthers noobs.

I am never on the "who is online". But I am in fact frequently causing problems.

hummm.....very mysterious. must be a cabala. i'll probably stay awake all night trying to transpose and crack the mystery that Princess Fluffybritches has presented.

Parsifal dreams of removing britches and using the transposition.

look,


If the log in page is believable then there are almost always several hundred people online. - Ravenous Cannibal

if its not clear to you that those several hundreds could include same players multiple times, just as in case "who is online?", then your problem probably is that you like to believe the game is growing and has several hundreds of active players.

fact or fiction?

jason: i said active players who are willing to participate in any kind of interaction. not those who mind their own business, playing SimCity online, till they are attacked and then start to cry on the boards. so no, i dont count those who log in for few minutes to check their stuff, at best post on the board once a in while asking CEOs moving to their countries. interaction is kinda point of MMOs.

any one ever follow some of the books and stuff after "return of the jedi" boba fett escaped from what ever it was that he was tossed down... and the way he did it... he thought "how many people tried to obvious exit, and failed, maybe the "wrong way" is the right way" so basically rather than trying to climb out, he climbed in, until he came out the bottom... i know that it is fiction, but maybe every one is looking at this backward. the game is advertised as a war game, but when you start to play, people who want to fight are all but shunned. where their are games that literally thousands play, and fight each other daily. maybe we should embrace the war game. sure their are people who will get frustrated and leave, but many more will stay...

just a run on thought, shrug

@ Orbiter - interesting. if everyone learned about your jeeps, they might stay and play ;)

honestly, what kept me playing this game when i started was reading about af/uc conflicts and all the heat on the forums between uc/ameche. While I wasn't part of it, drama and controversy shows new players that people care about the game.

As a new player, I immediately hostile bid on 2 players' corps and nationalized another. I didn't know better, but got threatening messages from those I hostile bid on. What made me decide to keep playing was one of the players (Austia) took the time to explain to me what I had done and why it was looked down on. He then asked me to message him with any questions I may or may not have.

While helping new players isn't always 'fun' or 'worthwhile,' I see great value in offering advice to new players from time to time. It doesn't take long, and if new players experience ANY success such as making a small profit or conquering a c3, they are ten times more likely to continue playing.

yeah, i got those jeeps on a discount, they were last years model, and all painted pink, i wonder why they didn't survive long...

any of you ever pay attention to all those n00b c3s?

they are potemkin my friend, potemkin. most of those presidents are fake, for show, no real president actually owns teh country.

i tested and randomly messaged a crapload of them. no replies. not one. no activity either. they are just made to look like more people play than what is teh reality.

tis gm pulling wool over our eyes.

/end conspiracy theory

Orbiter you will die till you pay up! no one busts a deal with the Government!