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Wurmhole

Livable Starter Towns with Mentors

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I've seen many suggestions for a mentor system over the years.  Gaining and retaining new players is the most important thing for Wurm to survive.  From what I've heard, we have enough new players joining, but far too few ever stick around.  CA help is the best I've seen in any game so far, but we need to take it to another level.  A couple thoughts (may or may not have been suggested before):

 

1. Make starter towns "living towns".  New players start there and see dead towns or no towns at all.  I think many have been finally built on Xan, but they are still dead.  First thing a new player realizes when they start is "this place sucks.  Nobody here.  Must leave and go to the wilds or find some other town.  I must have chosen the wrong town when I started.  I chose the wrong server?"  So to fix this early impression of the game, make the starter towns alive!  How?  Mentors!  Mentors are volunteers, who are issued an account with lvl 70 skills and gear.  Their job is to live in the starter town, expand it if needed.  Rebuild as needed.  Add new player housing, etc.  Every new player that comes through can stay in the town and be a citizen.  This will be a model of all the different "Academy" deeds players created on various servers.  On Pristine, the Wurm Academy was what saved me.  It was only by chance that I stumbled across it.

 

Mentor accounts are perma-prem.  Starter deeds are perma-upkeep.  Mentor accounts can't be used for personal gain and have to be respected the same as any GM account would.  I personally would love to volunteer to run an account and assist arriving players.

 

1a.  New players have a mentor tab, much like CA Help.  In the tab, it shows the mentors for the town as online or offline.  Mentors have forum accounts, so they can continue to assist when not in the game.  Possibly even give mentors some limited GM powers, to help stuck players, or maybe just a direct link to the GM messaging to ask for help on the new player's behalf.  Help priority should always go to the newest players too.  I can wait for a day for help, but they will quit if their first day is spent waiting for a GM.

 

2.  Skill sharing (knowledge transfer).  Under guidance of a Mentor, the new player can receive benefit of the mentor's skill knowledge, making their own skills temporarily higher and skilling greatly accelerated.  The mentor must be within x number of tiles for this to work.  This makes great incentive for a new player to stick around and learn the ropes.  Also gives them MUCH needed rewards for time spent grinding in the early stages.  The more time spent with a mentor, the more likely the new player will be equipped to succeed later on.  Mentorship skill sharing and acceleration caps at 30-40 or somewhere in there, or where total skill points reaches a certain level.

 

3.  Complimentary prem for new players within x range of their starter town, up until they reach x number of total skill points.  Abuse potential, but this can be fine tuned or disabled if it backfires.

 

When you start out in any new game, the starter town is always so full of vitality and energy.  People running all over for quests, merchants, or whatever.  We instantly judge a game's popularity by this early impression.  The second you step foot in Wurm, it feels like the game is already dead.  You have to work hard to find the life.  This must change.

 

Everyone of us needs to become an advocate for "Gaining and Retaining", to insure our survival.  If you have an idea for the game, think "will this be good for our newest members"?  If not, think of ways to make it so. 

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I like the idea of the separate mentor account! I know people can be nervous to take a newbie into their homes because of issues of stealing, griefing, begging, etc. There's so many starter towns, though. I wish newbs could stay in one spot and all learn together (could, not have to). Harder when it's 9 or so different spots. 

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26 minutes ago, NeeNee said:

I like the idea of the separate mentor account! I know people can be nervous to take a newbie into their homes because of issues of stealing, griefing, begging, etc. There's so many starter towns, though. I wish newbs could stay in one spot and all learn together (could, not have to). Harder when it's 9 or so different spots. 

 

This also makes it hard to help new players currently.

Other than inviting them to your deed (assuming they are on your server) there often isn't anything you can do other than provide chat assistance. (Some things like prospecting are exceptionally difficult to explain through text)

 

Having a centralized spawn would at least allow players who wish to help somewhere they can go to be near where most new players are starting. They could travel there and assist for a few days or provide 50ql tools/armor, help newbies build their first house etc, however they wish to help.

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25 minutes ago, NeeNee said:

Harder when it's 9 or so different spots. 

 

And that's only Xanadu.

 

Mentor system is not a bad idea, living starter town is not a bad idea either - though the goal is more to be a showcase of what can be done than lived on, because doh, you have to get your own deed (read starter towns redesigns threads).

 

Maybe this could work on Golden Valley. Sure it would not help with the ghost towns we have as starter towns - now with spirit templars(TM) - but would help to get everyone together and a better coverage done by the mentors (and avoid any abuses since it's separated from the real servers)

 

Mentoring is also a good idea, but will that notion will be enough for the players to stick around, not to mention how said mentors will be able to introduce those players to the wurm world, give them pointers, let them do and try on their own while answering their questions, been there, done that, tried many things, without real success.

 

Which is the last point, mentor burn out. Being selfless and kind tend to get old pretty quickly once you have seen a few hundreds players, that will be something to keep in mind to have the best first impression we can give to any new players.

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This is something that I believe could genuinely help with new player retention.

 

Back when Serenity/Epic was active, I was (and still am) part of the Department of New Player Assistance, right next to the spawn town there. We would take new players in and give them a plot of land and help guide them through the early stages. Some would stay with us, some would move off and found their own deeds, but the one thing that remained consistent throughout was the people who would often say that we were the reason they stuck around longer than the first hour or two.

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I'd love to see a mentor system like in "Entropia Universe" but I can def see a lot of new players just walking away due to lack of input or guidance. The game tutorial is somewhat of a joke and not every interactive at all, but I can def see the addition of a mentoring system being very beneficial in retaining newer players. I've seen some of the replies some players get in the CA channel and some are usually obliviously unhelpful and some just seem rude. 

When I first started the game I logged in for about a week in about 30-40 minutes intervals always looking for someone to talk to and just ask questions and even though the CA channel and all the other channels were available to me, the only person I ever remember feeling was friendly enough was @Ceccishe was just very kind and welcoming. I'd love to be able to supply my time to newer players looking for guidance or just someone to discuss the game or plans with. It would of been nice to find someone like that right off the bat.

I +1 this and sign my self up to be a mentor right away! 

Reigning supreme from my throne made of newbie tears!

Edited by Legios
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2 hours ago, Odynn said:

 

And that's only Xanadu.

 

Mentor system is not a bad idea, living starter town is not a bad idea either - though the goal is more to be a showcase of what can be done than lived on, because doh, you have to get your own deed (read starter towns redesigns threads).

 

Maybe this could work on Golden Valley. Sure it would not help with the ghost towns we have as starter towns - now with spirit templars(TM) - but would help to get everyone together and a better coverage done by the mentors (and avoid any abuses since it's separated from the real servers)

 

Mentoring is also a good idea, but will that notion will be enough for the players to stick around, not to mention how said mentors will be able to introduce those players to the wurm world, give them pointers, let them do and try on their own while answering their questions, been there, done that, tried many things, without real success.

 

Which is the last point, mentor burn out. Being selfless and kind tend to get old pretty quickly once you have seen a few hundreds players, that will be something to keep in mind to have the best first impression we can give to any new players.

The burn out is a very good point.  I failed to mention that we can have several mentors per town, to help make sure we have someone around at most hours, as well as giving mentors much needed break time.  Also, we could do a rotation.  Nobody in a Mentor role for more than a month, then they pass it on to the next volunteer.

 

Maybe max of 10 Mentor accounts per starter town?

 

I also considered this for a GV remake, but I know devs have some big plan in the works there.  I had a legacy account there and used to play it a bit, but not anymore, because I want to be surprised when it gets released.  Managing one giant starter town could prove difficult and potentially give a bad impression if one new player goes rogue.  Everyone living at the town might be affected at once, where if spread to the individual servers, there will be a much smaller negative impact from a single bad player.  Also, you will be much more likely to retain your friendships formed - most volunteers will likely be taking Mentor roles on their home servers.

 

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We have 15 starter towns - 12 month per years (cap. obvious here i come) - assuming we have a rotation time wise and mentor taking the mantle again, going for one per month (yah, silly i know - see that at 4 per days and 4 rotation per year, 1 month of mentoring, 2 of break), which means we need at least 180 different devoted volunteers to tackle the job.

 

I am not sure we will find one third of that amount to help, specially in those days where everything must be rewarded.

 

Once again, not saying it's a bad idea just that the demographics do not allow to have it working properly on that scale right now.

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6 hours ago, Odynn said:

 

And that's only Xanadu.

 

Mentor system is not a bad idea, living starter town is not a bad idea either - though the goal is more to be a showcase of what can be done than lived on, because doh, you have to get your own deed (read starter towns redesigns threads).

 

Maybe this could work on Golden Valley. Sure it would not help with the ghost towns we have as starter towns - now with spirit templars(TM) - but would help to get everyone together and a better coverage done by the mentors (and avoid any abuses since it's separated from the real servers)

 

Mentoring is also a good idea, but will that notion will be enough for the players to stick around, not to mention how said mentors will be able to introduce those players to the wurm world, give them pointers, let them do and try on their own while answering their questions, been there, done that, tried many things, without real success.

 

Which is the last point, mentor burn out. Being selfless and kind tend to get old pretty quickly once you have seen a few hundreds players, that will be something to keep in mind to have the best first impression we can give to any new players.

A place on GV, where maybe there was no place to build a house, but supplies to build your first cart (which you could bring to your new server, because no one wants to have to make another), learn to cook/blacksmith a bit. 

 

I don't know if it'll be enough, because most of the people I see come in and leave have 8 million complaints and Wurm is not going to be their thing. They don't want to pay for prem because reasons, they want to be a wizard, they need to be entertained, etc. It would be nice to get honest opinions on why people don't come back. I don't know if that's possible. 

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If this happens at GV there's no way to abuse it.. if we do not count.. faster grinding for own alts.. and possible free prem time suggested somewhere above..

 

To start something like this... devs first should solve the problem.. why people leave.. and since they are already making new ui... if there's any mailed surveys to solve that question... it's best to send them after that ui's out..

 

There's a problem that's not well understood enough.. without a proper diagnose.. this is only a placebo shot in the dark. :( 

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22 hours ago, Wurmhole said:

...

1. Make starter towns "living towns".  ...

 

In my opinion this is the key point. All else comes second and may even not be needed any more with starter towns that work as towns do, with shops, markets, inns, resources and other people. In Wurm starter towns don't do all this, they are little more than respawn locations - but that's it, more or less. And the largest benefit of a living starter town would be that there are other starting people, to discover the game in a team, with other new players and to try different things together. Wurm can be hard at times, and esp. in the beginning - but the most difficult thing is that the typical new player starts the game alone.

 

Of course to make starter towns like real towns would not only need re-designing them but also making sure that players can actually live in them, have a bed, can cut trees, can farm, can have a cow or a horse and such - and that there's space left around the starting town (for mobs and resources), thus no large player-made deeds just bang next to the starter town's perimeter.

 

It's not impossible to do - but requires a change in thinking first.

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5 hours ago, Eobersig said:

and that there's space left around the starting town (for mobs and resources), thus no large player-made deeds just bang next to the starter town's perimeter.

yes, this is a big issue.  Xana has quite a bit of space around most towns, so easiest there.  Old servers would be a massive challenge to growing a starter town.  I suppose creating an alternate starting location could do the trick, but that might upset the people that invested heavily into their market deeds, right next to the original starter towns.

 

Or, there could be a new server project, that launches with the new UI, new tutorial, new account management (one account for all alts) and living starter town, as an experiment to see how all of the combined changes might improve retention.  No link to old servers for at least a couple years, much like the P&R cluster.  Do our best to keep old players from jumping ship to new server, so the new players are on much more equal footing.

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So I have to ask, if they can do everything on the starter town for free, why leave? 

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23 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

So I have to ask, if they can do everything on the starter town for free, why leave? 

Because they'd be forced to, for instance. Say after two weeks of playtime.

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1qoupk.jpg

Depends how much a the player stays online .. some have 2-3 hours a day.. other have 12/+..

There's nothing and plenty to do in 2 weeks..

 

Easier to limit that with skills like... grinding your first 100-120 skill points.. you'll in theory.. have let's say 4x 20Skills.. and some random ticks here and there.. forming the remaining 20-40 skill points. Newbs could be advised to concentrate on 4 skills. (like carpentry/digging/mining/woodcutting/some hfc)

 

Gathering, building.. all you need.. rest is.. founding a token or being smart about running to nearest guard tower for safety and easy mob meat(as guard towers aren't that easy to make with the amount of work they require)

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I like the idea, especialy the starter towns. They do more harm than good at the moment even with the overhaul. What do most players think when they first arrive in such an empty liveless starter town? "This game is dead, I am out of here."

 

People shouldnt be forced to leave the town. Eventualy they will move out on their own initiative. You can make the areas further away from the starter towns more attractive, stronger mobs might have significant more chance to spawn the farther away from it, fancy resources might spawn more near there too and coastlines are not exactly reaching starter towns,...

Better to give incentives than to force someone.

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Playtime as in the time spent online, that you can check by the /playtime command.

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Learning and grinding curve is different for everybody.. you could be 20 blacksmithing on day 1, I might get there in 3months.

Time itself does not mean anything when it comes to learning, people are going to learn something from doing things.

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We arrive at the same point of The initial golden valley.

 

Golden valley was a free roam server that was non prem only, we had active PA's (prototype of CA) and players could do anything within those limitations of non premium.

 

The issue that arose from that is people got too comfortable, and it wound up being a struggle to convince them to give up everything they had worked on to go to a new server. The same thing would happen here, players would be given too much at a starter deeds and either not leave for the fact everything they need is there, or be driven out into the cold and have to struggle to get back there.

 

 the catch of wurm isnt being handed everything on a silver platter with a GM/dev maintained town that provides all the support needed, it's about those goals that are slowly realised through work.

 

I don't see livable starter towns being beneficial, if that were the case any new player starting deed would work and can be achieved by players.

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Aye it's a nice thought; however, history has shown people will abuse the protections of a starter deed. Granted I've experienced it from a pvp perspective.

 

Didn't witness the issues on GV having started well before that went live and stuck to PvP servers anyways. Though, its natural for people to dislike leaving something they've invested time and work on. Unless there's a benefit... a decent one.

 

There would have to be something that would serve as an obvious incentive to discourage another Gold Valley.

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i think the problem its not really about the starter towns but the sorrounding areas being so empty because of bigger maps and more spread out population or lower population per server than before opening so many servers.when i started back when freedom had 1 server there was a lot of people around,in fact so many people that you had to walk 10 minutes from the starter town to find any not deeded land,which caused other problems for new players,but thats a diferent topic,bottom line is this problems would solved themselves with more players.

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There's definitely room for improvement as to how we can assist new players, however, the idea of buffing up start deeds like that seems overkill to me, and not only because of what Retrograde said.

As this ends up being a community effort either way, as in needing volunteers, I think it's reasonable to approach this with small steps and make bringing in newbies better for both sides in the confines of the current system, rather than completely changing it and altering the fundamental experience of Wurm. This means: It's on us to make this work first, the devs second. I know this isn't how a game should work but it's a very community driven game and given the start of this paragraph, I think it's a fair assessment.

 

What I find "dangerous" about the OP suggestion is how fundamentally different life outside of the starter deeds may seem afterwards, completely taking the new settlers-to-be aback. Designing your game's first impression to appeal better only works if the remaining experience stays somewhat consistent with it, and bustling towns are not something that strikes me as very common. But this is me speaking as a Xanadian.

 

What I also see as a problem from this perspective is the limited mobility of new players. Your ways to get around are: Walking for hours on end(maybe riding a cow for less than hours - but still hours), one village teleport that might bring you some place you don't like, and suiciding. (Which one will rightfully think is bollocks.)

 

That's just me speaking and may be entirely subjective, especially loaded with some "experience" in trying to take in new players, but I'd be a lot less relucant to bring in newbies on my own if I knew that I won't have to either

1) make them walk about an hour from Whitefay over a dangerous highway full of trolls, which I know most people will just "TL;DW" and quit the game.

2) dedicate said hour to pick them up from Whitefay to find they'll just quit the game anyway.

2) make them blow their only village teleport on my desolate refuge that does have accomodations and workshops to start but noone but me around playing. So they just quit without a word. That's something I'll adress in a second once the technical stuff is out of the way.

 

Lifting some restrictions on joining, leaving and teleporting to deeds (even if just temporarily up until X weeks playtime, or as a newbie buff like the ones that already exist) will benefit the newbies' chance to explore the game before dedicating to one place and take some burden off the mayors to worry about scaring off players or having some small shack built somewhere off the deed because the newbie decided overnight to strike out on their own after all. I may seem petty and territorial saying this with all the land mass Xanadu has to offer, but that's exactly the point: I don't to bring people in if they end up making cheap shacks all around my deed where I made some serious landscaping efforts not only on deed, but also for infrastructure all around, when there's so much more space to build but they have no good chance to get there without making substantial efforts that you cannot reasonably expect from ANYONE who isn't even deicded on dedicating time on this game yet.

Whew, that was a sentence.

TL;DR: Make it easier for newbies to explore the actual settlement options and deed offers so mayors don't have to worry that much about taking them in.

 

Regarding theft and vandalism: Permission management. Lock your valuable stuff away and you're fine, but there have been other suggestions like chaining tools to workstations like forges which would make sense to include into this discussion. The current system allows you to protect your treasured belongings for most intents and purposes tho. Vandalism that happens off deed is a concern that I share and mentioned before but I also believe it would be less of a problem if just sticking around wasn't the path of least resistance by such a large margin.

 

While we're at it, there's another point I want to entertain: How DO you introduce someone into the game without scaring them off and have them leave over night without a word? Is the communtiy having any discussion about this, and is it worth discussing at all? This may be a topic for a Town Square thread rather than Suggestions, as it is not technical in nature, but it'd be interesting to share knowledge and experience about which "recruiting techniques" worked best to make new players stick around.

I usually just told them "there be workshops, I'm here for questions, if you wanna start with something you could do X".

X being some task that can be done by a newbie, like making shafts or planks or bricks because you can always use that, or dig up some clay from a flat patch I have designated for that to increase digging. Especially good for newbies as the first levels of digging can be absolutely stupid and frustrating to gain in uncharted lands with the slope restriction.

So...I try to let them run wild and do their thing because that's how you play a sandbox game, you entertain yourself with what the game offers rather than having it handed to you. My idea is not to hold their hands and order them to do stuff, but to provide a friendlier environment to get into the game, like a player established "Mentor town". So far everyone ran off overnight though after doing said task without asking further questions and most of them aren't playing anymore. So apart from the technical stuff I feel like discussing tactics for recruitment is also a topic of interest, but that may be because I have the wrong idea about this.

Edited by Flubb

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5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

So I have to ask, if they can do everything on the starter town for free, why leave? 

Or why bother paying for premium?? That is What Golden Valley was

Edited by Lolabelle

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On 6/9/2017 at 4:47 PM, Legios said:

I'd love to see a mentor system like in "Entropia Universe" but I can def see a lot of new players just walking away due to lack of input or guidance. The game tutorial is somewhat of a joke and not every interactive at all, but I can def see the addition of a mentoring system being very beneficial in retaining newer players. I've seen some of the replies some players get in the CA channel and some are usually obliviously unhelpful and some just seem rude. 

When I first started the game I logged in for about a week in about 30-40 minutes intervals always looking for someone to talk to and just ask questions and even though the CA channel and all the other channels were available to me, the only person I ever remember feeling was friendly enough was @Ceccishe was just very kind and welcoming. I'd love to be able to supply my time to newer players looking for guidance or just someone to discuss the game or plans with. It would of been nice to find someone like that right off the bat.

I +1 this and sign my self up to be a mentor right away! 

Reigning supreme from my throne made of newbie tears!

 As I was reading this thread the mentor system that entropia universe has came to mind. That being another hard game to get into mainly because of not understanding the real cash value to do anything and where to start. Mentors took you under their wing for a small prize at the end which was worthless to the game value wise but to the economy some of those items gained value through time. 

 

A mentor system in wurm would be great.. Give objectives just like entropia where as a new player they have to meet so many objectives like one being premium, and like building a house, teaching certain skill levels and at the very end a small gift for the mentor and the new player for sticking around. 

 

 

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And than.. there be alts.. alts everywhere... mentoring own alts all day long for gifts:wacko:

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