Nerfbat » MMO Lessons

MMO Development Lesson #36

Ryan Shwayder — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:22:16 +0000

Without the risk of failure there is no risk of success. You need a balance of positive reinforcement and negative punishment–too much in one direction is a bad thing. For the most significant feelings of accomplishment, there must be significant risks and significant punishment for failure (not that I’m necessarily recommending significant punishment, but the more significant the punishment for failure, the more significant the psychological reward for success).

MMO Development Lesson #35

Ryan Shwayder — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:58:13 +0000

Players are the x factor of MMOs. If a player can do it, they will do it. They will behave badly if you let them, they will exploit if you let them, they will ruin the experiences of others if you let them. It’s best to mitigate undesirable behavior through reward/punishment or by altering a system’s design to prevent it. But, while heavy-handed artificial restrictions should generally be a last resort, sometimes they are unavoidable.

MMO Development Lesson #34

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:00:26 +0000

Finish your game before launch. If the launch date can’t be pushed back, remove the unfinished portion of the game and get it done right. For example, if the last 20-30 level chunk of your game has (basically) no quests, and quests were previously the method to gain levels, change the level cap to end when the quests end. If the content can’t fill out as many levels as the mechanics, you pretty much have to go with the weakest link and temporarily lower the level cap.

MMO Development Lesson #33

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:00:29 +0000

If a decision can logically be altered, let the player change their decision. Certain aspects of a character are essentially set in stone in most fiction, such as race choice; these aspects don’t need to be changeable. But, anything that makes sense to change (and is technologically feasible) like talent or achievement choices should be alterable by the player later in the game. Other examples are hair style choices, faction selections (depending on their importance in a game), and where their home recall point is.

MMO Development Lesson #32

Ryan Shwayder — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:00:46 +0000

Players should be making informed decisions. If a player is asked to make a meaningful choice, such as selecting their class or race, they must be informed. Give them all the information they need to ensure they’re making a “good” choice (in their perception), or they’ll be anxious about making it in the first place. This applies at every step along the way, particularly if the choices are permanent, and it can be quite tough to do effectively at character creation. But, whenever a player is making a decision, they need to know what the consequences and possible outcomes are before they are asked to make it.

MMO Development Lesson #31

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:45:52 +0000

Too many options are too many. A lot of us experienced players love having options. We like to choose our skills, increase our stats manually, and micromanage every little detail of our character and play because it’s part of the fun for us. For most people, that isn’t the case. Even for the people like me, there’s a point that there are just too many options, and I become gun-shy about making bad choices. Too much of anything is simply too much, and if you want an accessible game, avoid giving players too many options.

MMO Development Lesson #30

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:00:04 +0000

A “required feature” for your game’s genre may not be required for your game. Sometimes new features appear in almost every new game of the same genre. Mounts, for example, seem to be required as a baseline feature for a traditional MMO. Are they? Of course not. Not all burgers need cheese to be delicious, and not all MMO games need mounts to be great. An example in the FPS genre is BioShock — it doesn’t have all of the features of an FPS (or any other genre), but it’s still an amazing game. Never include a feature in a game because you think it’s a core feature to the genre; always include a feature in a game because it’s a core feature of your game.

MMO Development Lesson #29

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:00:05 +0000

Play your game. It sounds natural, but it isn’t always easy. Play your game like a player does, not just on your GM account, because the lack of power makes it a whole different ballgame. You need to at least understand the perspective that players have, which is hard to achieve when you know all the numbers — all the intricacies of the game — but lack the insight about how players really play. I know it’s hard to play your game that way when you made it (and to find the time to do so), but it’s a skill that you have to nurture. And, your employer better let you play while you’re at work, or they don’t know what’s good for them.

MMO Development Lesson #28

Ryan Shwayder — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:30:19 +0000

Perception is reality. When it comes to game balance, what really counts is how it feels while playing the game, not what the numbers tell you. It may be perfectly mechanically balanced–you have all the numbers, you’ve made all the calculations, and it is balanced. But, if that’s not how it feels when you’re playing the game, it isn’t balanced and needs to be changed. This is one of many reasons that it’s 100% vital that you play your game as a player does (a lesson unto itself).

MMO Development Lesson #27

Ryan Shwayder — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:00:40 +0000

Make it easy to come back. If someone has quit your game (See: Lesson #26), make it so easy to come back they can’t believe they quit in the first place. I’ll apologize right now for not making this lesson short and sweet like I usually do, but this one’s worth elaborating on. I’ll start with what you shouldn’t do, then I’ll give a few ideas for what you could do to make coming back easier than ever.

First off, playground peer pressure doesn’t work, and it’s just a bad idea in the first place. Your former players don’t like being talked down to when they’ve already quit your game any more than you liked being talked down to by an AOL customer service rep circa 1992. That talking down to is a (fortunately) unique case, but it’s worth noting so nobody else pulls such a foolish stunt.

Second, don’t sound too desperate. Nobody likes it when someone sounds desperate, and it’s really not a very good motivator. Don’t try to butter players up and make them feel like they owe you a second chance, because they don’t. You owe them.

Next up, don’t get rid of incentives that you used to bring players in. For example, if you rewarded pre-order customers with a reduced subscription rate of $10/month, but increase that to $15 if they quit and resubscribe, that’s not a good idea. I’m calling you out here, LotRO (actually, Genda is). Reward them for pre-ordering your game forever, not for a brief period of time. Doing that left a bad taste in the mouth of a number of people I know (including myself) who will not resubscribe to the game because of it. And, if you have any other incentives given to a player for any other reason, don’t strip them from players for quitting.

Now, here’s the most important rule. Clear your mind and be ready to absorb this. Never. Ever. EVER. NEVER delete someone’s character. There is no excuse for deleting a character someone has spent time developing and becoming attached to. If you ever delete my character, I will never ever resubscribe to your game. I’m looking at you FFXI. Yeah, I’m calling you out. If you ever delete a character, it better be one that they haven’t spent much time on (less than a few hours).

Honestly, that’s the main don’t. That’s the dumbest thing you can do when it comes to player reacquisition. On to a few recommendations…

Don’t make a person use a credit card to resubscribe. Give them some free time to try the game out again after they’ve been unsubscribed for a month or so. No credit card needed, just the game and their username/password.

I’d also suggest that you send them an email 60-90 days after they quit. But again, don’t tell them they are losers and don’t sound desperate. Make it short and sweet.

“Hello, [character with most playtime's name]! [iconic character name] hasn’t seen you around for [number of days]. He offers you 7 free days of play time if you reactivate your account within the next 30 days. If you don’t have the install discs anymore, you can download the game here. And hey, if you want to bring some friends along, here are 5 buddy keys so your friends can try [insert game name here] out with you!”

Then list all of the pertinent game updates since they left. All the headlines from your update notes since the day they quit. Finish it off with something like, “We look forward to seeing you in [insert world name] again soon!”

The important information to absorb: Make it free. Make it easy to download. Don’t make them put their credit card number in. Give them buddy keys so their friends can play with them. Tell them what’s gone on since they left.

You can feel free to pull a few more tricks from up your sleeve too. You already know what character they played more than any other. Do you have a screenshot or portrait of that character? If you have a service like EQ2Players or portraits like WoW, you probably do. Put it in the letter. They’ll see that and remember some of the good times they had. And you should give them a link they can click on to give you feedback (and let them send feedback throughout the entire free resub period).

So, there you go. That’s a lot more than most companies do to make it super easy for a player to come back to your game. And, if you made cancellation easy, they won’t have as bad of a taste in their mouth about your game as they otherwise would, and may even consider trying it again to see how much more fun it is than when they left.

Oh, and did I mention that you should never delete their characters? Yeah, don’t.