ajqtrz
Chef - loquacious Old Dog
The following is 14 paragraphs, including this one. If that's too much for you, please don't read past this and don't complain if you do, as you've been warned. --AJ
Let's go back to the beginning here and look at the progression of things in this game. In the beginning, and here I mean the very beginning, of the first server there were a small group of players clustered in the center of a great big map. As new payers were added the level of play went up in the populated area as long as the number of new players exceeded the number of players leaving. However, as the space occupied grew and players continued to drop out the "active density" of the map began to go down. If you think about it, the level of activity in any area can be calculated based upon visits, logins, trade and all the things that make a player more or less active. If you had, at the very beginning 100 very active players in the center you would have a 100 active density score. But as those players eventually dropped out the score of that area would decline, and, in fact, would eventually reach 0 unless you removed inactive players. Thus, to keep that area at a level high enough to encourage players to continue you would need to replace inactive ones ASAP. But that's not what happened, and to some degree isn't yet happening.
Declaring a player "inactive" is probably a difficult thing to do considering there are few losses when you are gone. Your city doesn't deteriorate if you don't log in. Yoru scorre doesn't go down. Your city, left to day, will be the same a month from now. So the incentive to not return after being gone a month, months or years, it pretty high. In other words, you can return when you want to return and are under no pressure to do so any earlier. From experience, no doubt, the devs have probably figured this out and are reluctant to declare and remove any player, since there is no real firm understanding as to how long you can be gone, and if you remove a person who desires to return after thirty, sixty, or even three months, they may be a bit miffed to find their city gone. Without a clear understanding of how long your city will be saved it is difficult to force yourself to return before you lose it and since we know of cities abandoned for years, we all tend to think, "I can return later." Which contributes to the problem of active density.
In addition, if you can't move the larger players they begin to form a sort of web of activity that becomes more and more sparse as time goes on. This, in turn, lowers the active density of the entire map, and, in the long run, means larger and larger areas will appear where the lack of activity discourages new and old players from continuing. "Dead zones" no doubt appear,
To solve this problem there are some things the devs have done. The first is allowing people to move. This mechanism allows the devs to move active members into tighter formations and thus raises the active density of that area. But it also lowers the active density of the area from which the person was moved. Overall it may help one area, but not another. And moving is a very difficult thing to do.
First, it's difficult because you can't just move one player from one spot ot another -- the spot from which they move must match the spot to which they are being moved in it's boosts. This eliminates 8 out of 9 free spots. Second, the player you intend to move must be moved to a spot more active than the one they currently occupy. This may sound pretty easy to do, but with people becoming inactive all the time and new players showing up, it may harder to actually calculate. And finally, as noted above, if you move an active player from spot X to spot Y, you raise spot Y's active density, but you also lower spot X's..... which may lead to people around spot X becoming inactive because they are now in a "dead zone."
So it's complicated. I think it wouldn't be so complicated if there were clear guidelines as to how long your city would be retained once you stop logging in or if your city were to somehow deteriorate so that not logging in actually cost you something. There might be a 30 or 60 day period where it doesn't, but certainly after so many months some deterioration could occur.
The fundamental problem here is that the game was not built with this long term view to active density. Some games beat this by moving players toward the center as a matter of course -- as part of the ranking system -- so that the "top scores" are always at the center. That would work here but only if moving or being moved was understood to be a normal part of the game and expected. Giving players the ability to refuse to move was probably necessary when moving was introduced, but it's too bad because it truely hampers this method of fixing the active density problem.
Another way to increase active density is to increase the rewards for activity. One way might be to encourage trading by changing how and with whom you can trade. For instance, perhaps you could add a "trade list" to each person's view of trade....they could add some players not in their fellowship with whom they wished to trade. Limit it a bit rather than make it everyone -- maybe 10-25 people -- and while you do add some work, you also increase active density of that player because you, in effect, add that many more cities to his/her trade list. Now he/she can trade with the discovered area, their fellowship, and their trade partners. At least that's one possible idea.
Another way to increase activity is to raise the rewards. Perhaps about once a month a consistent visitor would have the chance to win some reasonably significant reward rather than the standard ones now offered in the three chests. "Significant" is, of course, difficult to say, but something beats nothing and the more significant the more it would impact the rate of visitation.
A third way to increase active density is to lower the penalties for taking trades "outside" your neighborhood. They are, in my opinion, counter-productive because they are too high for many small players. If you want more trading, make it cheaper. It's really a pretty simple thing to do and should have some impact on keeping members who have a difficult time getting the goods they need, especially when they are small and just starting out.
A fourth way would be to encourage more "gifting" by making it easier. Perhaps for a certain amount of time players in chapters 1-3 (or whatever chapters you wish to name) could receive "gifts" from any player on the board -- but small enough to insure things don't get out of hand. Just an idea and a lot of uncertainity here.
Other ideas are, no doubt, available but the fundamental problem is active density. An insufficient density of active players in any area or a collective low level of activity, will make it difficult to retain players. Raise the active density and increase player retention.
At least that's my perspective.
AJ
Let's go back to the beginning here and look at the progression of things in this game. In the beginning, and here I mean the very beginning, of the first server there were a small group of players clustered in the center of a great big map. As new payers were added the level of play went up in the populated area as long as the number of new players exceeded the number of players leaving. However, as the space occupied grew and players continued to drop out the "active density" of the map began to go down. If you think about it, the level of activity in any area can be calculated based upon visits, logins, trade and all the things that make a player more or less active. If you had, at the very beginning 100 very active players in the center you would have a 100 active density score. But as those players eventually dropped out the score of that area would decline, and, in fact, would eventually reach 0 unless you removed inactive players. Thus, to keep that area at a level high enough to encourage players to continue you would need to replace inactive ones ASAP. But that's not what happened, and to some degree isn't yet happening.
Declaring a player "inactive" is probably a difficult thing to do considering there are few losses when you are gone. Your city doesn't deteriorate if you don't log in. Yoru scorre doesn't go down. Your city, left to day, will be the same a month from now. So the incentive to not return after being gone a month, months or years, it pretty high. In other words, you can return when you want to return and are under no pressure to do so any earlier. From experience, no doubt, the devs have probably figured this out and are reluctant to declare and remove any player, since there is no real firm understanding as to how long you can be gone, and if you remove a person who desires to return after thirty, sixty, or even three months, they may be a bit miffed to find their city gone. Without a clear understanding of how long your city will be saved it is difficult to force yourself to return before you lose it and since we know of cities abandoned for years, we all tend to think, "I can return later." Which contributes to the problem of active density.
In addition, if you can't move the larger players they begin to form a sort of web of activity that becomes more and more sparse as time goes on. This, in turn, lowers the active density of the entire map, and, in the long run, means larger and larger areas will appear where the lack of activity discourages new and old players from continuing. "Dead zones" no doubt appear,
To solve this problem there are some things the devs have done. The first is allowing people to move. This mechanism allows the devs to move active members into tighter formations and thus raises the active density of that area. But it also lowers the active density of the area from which the person was moved. Overall it may help one area, but not another. And moving is a very difficult thing to do.
First, it's difficult because you can't just move one player from one spot ot another -- the spot from which they move must match the spot to which they are being moved in it's boosts. This eliminates 8 out of 9 free spots. Second, the player you intend to move must be moved to a spot more active than the one they currently occupy. This may sound pretty easy to do, but with people becoming inactive all the time and new players showing up, it may harder to actually calculate. And finally, as noted above, if you move an active player from spot X to spot Y, you raise spot Y's active density, but you also lower spot X's..... which may lead to people around spot X becoming inactive because they are now in a "dead zone."
So it's complicated. I think it wouldn't be so complicated if there were clear guidelines as to how long your city would be retained once you stop logging in or if your city were to somehow deteriorate so that not logging in actually cost you something. There might be a 30 or 60 day period where it doesn't, but certainly after so many months some deterioration could occur.
The fundamental problem here is that the game was not built with this long term view to active density. Some games beat this by moving players toward the center as a matter of course -- as part of the ranking system -- so that the "top scores" are always at the center. That would work here but only if moving or being moved was understood to be a normal part of the game and expected. Giving players the ability to refuse to move was probably necessary when moving was introduced, but it's too bad because it truely hampers this method of fixing the active density problem.
Another way to increase active density is to increase the rewards for activity. One way might be to encourage trading by changing how and with whom you can trade. For instance, perhaps you could add a "trade list" to each person's view of trade....they could add some players not in their fellowship with whom they wished to trade. Limit it a bit rather than make it everyone -- maybe 10-25 people -- and while you do add some work, you also increase active density of that player because you, in effect, add that many more cities to his/her trade list. Now he/she can trade with the discovered area, their fellowship, and their trade partners. At least that's one possible idea.
Another way to increase activity is to raise the rewards. Perhaps about once a month a consistent visitor would have the chance to win some reasonably significant reward rather than the standard ones now offered in the three chests. "Significant" is, of course, difficult to say, but something beats nothing and the more significant the more it would impact the rate of visitation.
A third way to increase active density is to lower the penalties for taking trades "outside" your neighborhood. They are, in my opinion, counter-productive because they are too high for many small players. If you want more trading, make it cheaper. It's really a pretty simple thing to do and should have some impact on keeping members who have a difficult time getting the goods they need, especially when they are small and just starting out.
A fourth way would be to encourage more "gifting" by making it easier. Perhaps for a certain amount of time players in chapters 1-3 (or whatever chapters you wish to name) could receive "gifts" from any player on the board -- but small enough to insure things don't get out of hand. Just an idea and a lot of uncertainity here.
Other ideas are, no doubt, available but the fundamental problem is active density. An insufficient density of active players in any area or a collective low level of activity, will make it difficult to retain players. Raise the active density and increase player retention.
At least that's my perspective.
AJ