Reasons new players don't keep playing.

[hm shark]

If you do not want to read this huge block of text explaining everything in detail, there is a small conclusion in the end.

Total amount of downloads ( at the time of posting this)

3̶1̶7̶0̶5̶ 3̶1̶7̶1̶1̶ 31717 ( wow over 12 people downloaded this game while i was typing this, see? There are new players !! But they are not staying, if the active playerbase rises at this rate, then the game will be famous in no time.)

The question is: why don't people/new players keep playing this game?

I have invited many friends to play this game with me, but after playing it for the first time, they don't want to give it a second chance and play it again. Some played it more than one time, but it was because I kept telling them to play it with me. I gathered some reasons of why my friends don't play this game again and what I think is the reason they don't play it again.

What they said: What I think about what they said:

-Repetitive gameplay. -I think that it does get repetitive especially when I play the same map for 2 hours without it changing.

-The same maps get selected over and over again. - My friend thought that this game had like 5 maps because people kept voting for the same maps.

-Not alot of players are playing. - Seeing little players does discourage people from playing the game, sometimes when I see 5 players in a map, I don't join because it will not be fun, but if people actually see alot of players, then they WILL JOIN. Today my friend and I joined a server that had 12 players and in like 15 min, the server player count went up from 12---->36. Unfortunately, what scares new players from playing is the small playerbase and that decreases the playerbase even more.

-The map never ends and it gets really boring playing the same map for 1-2 hours.( Marathon servers) - I do 100% agree with this. What made me quit this game when I first downloaded it was the Marathon servers (don't worry I came back ). I think that marathon servers make this game worse by amplifying the fact that the gameplay gets repetitive after a while. Standing outside someone's base and farming for points by spamming the left click of a mouse is NOT fun.( That is why I never play as a tank, tanks battles are fun, but standing outside an enemy's base is not.)

-Players are either too pro or too new. -When new players ( like my friend) join the game and get destroyed by a̶i̶m̶b̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶n̶i̶p̶e̶r̶s̶ veterans, they get discouraged to continue playing the game because there is a large skill gap.

Friends' reactions when they first play the game vs when they quit it.

When they first play:Everytime I show a friend this game's trailer, their first reaction is "cool, this game look's awesome" and they have the same reaction when they FIRST play the game.

When they quit: After 1-2 hours they get bored because we are stuck on that repetitive map called FIELD and because people refuse to change it to another map.

Maps I think bore new players to death:

-Field

-Under

-Mesa II

-Goldrush

Reasons I think people keep selecting these maps:

-I dont know any reason, can any person that loves boring maps tell me why? I am assuming they are veterans that like sneaking up past enemy defences w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶t̶i̶b̶e̶r̶i̶u̶m̶ ̶g̶u̶n̶( hah you can't buy that anymore you boring lone wolf). I understand that once in a while, maps with defences are fun, but come on, playing them all day everyday sucks.

Message to s̶e̶l̶f̶i̶s̶h̶ players:

-Before you vote for maps that takes hours to complete, think about all those new players playing the game for the first, second, and third etc... time. Would they enjoy playing the shitty map you want to play? Think about the consequences of your s̶e̶l̶f̶i̶s̶h̶ actions if you want to keep this game alive.

I do understand that there are non-marathon servers, but the problem is, this game has a very small playerbase, so all players either play in MARATHON or all players play in NON-MARATHON servers.

Maps I think make this game awesome:

Any map that lasts 15-45 min ( any map without the obelisk or adv. guard tower)

One of my friends even said that he thinks the game would be better if each map lasted 15 min instead of 1+ hours.

My opinion about advertising this game more:

Many players over the lifespan of this game kept suggesting, " ADVERTISE THE GAME, EXPOSE IT TO MORE PEOPLE". Now it is right that this game is not exposed to a lot of people but imagine if all the 3̶1̶7̶0̶5̶ 3̶1̶7̶1̶1̶ 31717 players kept playing. If they did keep playing then they would invite their friends to join and the playerbase would increase exponentially. ( 31717 is still a huge number of players in my opinion). So I think that the main problem is keeping players playing, not getting more players.

I think that if someone already tried this game and he/she didn't like it, then they would NEVER give this game another chance, even if every problem has been fixed. Now that is a lot of potential players lost. Most of the 31717 players that downloaded this and then quit will not give it another chance, would you guys want to lose even more potential players? SO I think that the current problems must be fixed before mass advertising this game.

I know that some of you may argue that if we expose the game to more players, then more C&C players will find out about this game, and as a result we will get more loyal players, but that is a very small % of current gamers, so that would not be effective. ( A lot of potential players would be lost by doing that)

In the end, I think that it comes down to one problem that causes a chain effect and that results in the other problems. This causes players to not come back to the game. Here are the problems just to remind you:

-Repetitive gameplay.

-The same maps get selected over and over again.

-Not alot of players are playing.

-The map never ends and it gets really boring playing the same map for 1-2 hours.

-Players are either too pro or too new.

Conclusion:

The source of all of the problems I stated at the start (in my opinion) is the long repetitive maps that keep getting selected over and over again.

Same repetitive long maps ---> repetitive gameplay ---> people leave the game because it gets boring ---> less people playing -----> since there are less people playing, people will be reluctant to join ( only 5 people in the server so no one will join) ---> even less players ingame----> only the veterans are left playing --->large skill gap---> new players getting destroyed by a̶i̶m̶b̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶n̶i̶p̶e̶r̶s̶ veterans that have played renegade-x for hundreds of hours.

Remember, this is not the only reason new players quit this game.

Possible solutions to keep players playing:

-Removing marathon servers and long maps from the map list temporarily, or stop voting for long maps. (they could be brought back later when there are a lot of active servers, so people can choose if they want to play in marathon or non-marathon servers and in long or short maps.)

-Helping new players out by guiding them ingame and being nice to them.

Thanks for reading through all of this and please state your opinions/solutions down below because I would love to read them even if you disagree with me.

Edit 1: 5+ of my friends refuse to play this game again because they got bored while playing Field or Under.( marathon). Yes all of them played one of those and got bored even though their first reaction of the game was "awesome, this game is cool"

More solutions:

-Mic system ingame so players can communicate their ideas. ( If you want, only commanders can have this to avoid mic spam)

- Ingame tutorial, even if it is a text tutorial that clears up any confusions then that would be awesome. A great first sentence for that would be "Teamwork is very important to win games and have an enjoyable experience"

-Maps without bottlenecks ( it is explained down below in my response post) ( There are a ton of map makers and not one has thought of an open area battlefield, like the game battlefield. )

-Commander mod !!

Now I know that my solutions could be too much to ask from a busy dev team that only develop renegade-x in their free time, but they are obvious problems that are causing this game to lose players.

Edited July 9, 2016 by Guest

[voltex]

I think I can answer some of your problems, it wont be very organized and will probably jump back and forth between topics and contains MY OWN opinions, so bear with me.

For starters one reason there is a small player base is because the servers are ddosed on a regular basis and there seems to be only 1 or 2 servers that can handle it and if they go down the majority of the players will leave and might not be back for a day or so. Why is this happening? I have no idea, probably just some loser with no life that gets his/her kicks from ruining other people's fun.

As for the maps yes Field along with Walls and Under are some of the most played, as for why maybe because other maps like Eyes tend to require more teamwork to win, which is severely lacking in public matches. I don't see Mesa and Goldrush played that often, maybe there being played more recently idk, I don't play public games that often, as for some other maps such as Tomb, GrassyKnoll and Crash Site, their kinda broken, one heavily one sided and not too fun.

Now most of your complaints were against the marathon servers and the long game times, for one there will always be marathon servers, their just the better choice. Why? I'll explain later. Its up to the server owners which type of server they want to host, if you think marathon should be removed take it up with them.

The long game times are not the Server's fault, its the players fault, this is a heavily teamwork based game and if you do nothing to help the team then of course they will last forever, as you said sitting in front of a base farming points might not be fun for you at least but others love that, me included, and in an AOW server that can win the game but Marathon I think encourages more teamwork. There has been times where I have joined a marathon game that has been going for 2 or 3+ hours because there has been no teamwork, immediately started organizing an attack and within 15min we've won or were on the verge of victory, and even on those long games just 1 person successfully sneaking in can win the game.

On teamwork, as I said this is a teamwork based game, yes a single player can sometimes carry a team but for the most part good teamwork will always win, which is why I prefer Marathon servers as it requires a base destruction to win which requires teamwork, not simply a few artys or mrls farming points for 30min which anyone can do, it makes points useless, I've won games where my team was 20k+ points behind because people finally got their heads out of their ass and started working together.

You mentioned helping the new players, and yes that would be nice if more of that happened as they wont know some of the strategies or how to properly mine a base, but its not that easy as I'm honestly convinced that half the people that play are incapable of reading, there have been many times were me and others have tried to help the new players, show them what to do and not to do, but they just don't seem to listen, they don't respond to a building being under attack, don't join in for an attack or if they do and it fails they give up.

All of this leads to no teamwork, which leads to people giving up or quitting which leads to repetitive game play and the same boring maps.

One other thing I would like to add about AOW vs Marathon, I think others will agree with me when losing in a timed game without a scratch on your buildings simply because the other team was better at farming points is bs, especially considering how one-sided the maps can be, its great to be the underdog and have a comeback because you had good teamwork.

Now about advertising I think the devs are waiting until the game is complete before doing any major advertising, you have to remember that this game is still in BETA and there is still a lot that will be added to the game (looking forward to that 5.2 update!) some of which will be more maps, some I've helped test and cant wait to play, new features such as veterancy and more game modes.

I know I've talked a lot about teamwork and how lacking it is, if you and your friends want a good game with people actually working as a team try joining our weekly PUG's, information here viewtopic.php?f=13&t=75419 , they can be really fun with some of the weird strategies we come up with and as teamspeak is required to join (don't have to have a mic, just listen) there's usually great teamwork and the games are pretty much always being recorded by at least one person (me being one of those).

If I've been unclear about something I have said please say so and I will try to explain further, I could be totally wrong about this, but this was just my opinion.

[TheOlsenTwins]

Well IMO one reason that the marathon server is often favoured is because it facilitates filling up the server. if you wait 10 minutes on a aow server to get the required players, the game is inbalanced afterwards. (or ends too quickly)

And boring maps are often selected, as they can be played better with fewer players. 2 vs 2 on non base defence maps is usually not very fun to play.

If something like a lounge mode (buildings not killable until X players present) would be implemented, this would help AOW servers IMO...

[Henk]

Those maps would be over sooner if there was a better way to communicate, to get rushes going, to get a large part of the team focussed on 1 objective.

If the commander mod would be added to the base/main game, and the role of commander would always be assigned to someone (preferably not someone on his first day of playing), I think there would be a lot less short matches, and it will be way more fun to play, because of these objectives you get from the commander.

The boring maps you named are all maps with advanced base defences btw, but I think the base defences aren't always the cause of stalemates. I hope Field X will play well.

[Glacious]

Maybe to stop with selective map voting we could go back to have a map rotation that is set by the server, this way all the maps get played not just same repetitive ones.

On the note of new players and pro players sadly you will get this with any game, it's just a case of trying to give the new players enough fun and gameplay to engage with so they stay and learn.

New maps are on the way and soon (fingers crossed) alot more can be added at will, just new maps require alot of testing and balancing.

Regarding the advertising and push to get more players, we want to get the game in a more polished state, the time will come

[j0g32]

when it comes to repetitive gameplay, I think that this might be due in large part to map-design. A lot of the maps (especially the original Renegade maps, hm shark mentioned earlier) only have 1 base entrance => bottleneck.

Again the Dev's improved some of those maps by adding additional infantry paths in Under and Field, yet for vehicles you have only one way to go.

having 2+ vehicle base entrances, could result in having to defend on one route, but attacking/rushing on the other.

Normally, once you join a rush or whatever team strategy and it fails, you may seek for other options (because the planned one didn't succeed), yet there are only limited other options of what you can do (gameplay wise):

base defence? if everything is mined and nothing needs repairs - fine. main entrance looks clear - fine. generally very passive, and no points for just guarding and being on the look out

Tunnel/infantry path? it takes some time to get around the map, and is frustrating if it fails - low success rate if you go on your own. sneaking - as thrilling as it sounds - is usually not working out too well

Main route? already stuffed with friends and foes...

So I believe it comes down mainly to Map design, which needs to be carefully balanced, of course...

Give the players more options to attack the base, and some vantage points for the defenders, that only allow to cover one direction / base entrance

Communications is important - maybe streamline the chat bar, and don't allow spamming the same message "repairs needed" e.g. just refresh/display it again on the top or sth.

And I would love to see the commander mod in the default game as well!

Maybe even some group/squadl ike sub-organization could be helpful...

If something like a lounge mode (buildings not killable until X players present) would be implemented, this would help AOW servers IMO...

interesting idea, but what's the point of playing with few players in the first place^^

[hm shark]

Thank you everyone for taking your time to post your opinions here.

As a response to every person that talked about how teamwork is important to win in a marathon server: I do agree with that point and I know that this is game is heavily based on teamwork, but it gets really hard to convince people to listen to your ideas ( most people don't even notice the chat or vote message). The commander mod would be a great addition to the game because people will be more inclined to listen to the commander.

I think that if the map is AOW and it does not have FULL base defences, then games will last a short time which keeps the game refreshing. ( or even marathon and no/basic defences)

The long game times are not the Server's fault, its the players fault, this is a heavily teamwork based game and if you do nothing to help the team then of course they will last forever, as you said sitting in front of a base farming points might not be fun for you at least but others love that, me included, and in an AOW server that can win the game but Marathon I think encourages more teamwork. There has been times where I have joined a marathon game that has been going for 2 or 3+ hours because there has been no teamwork, immediately started organizing an attack and within 15min we've won or were on the verge of victory, and even on those long games just 1 person successfully sneaking in can win the game.

Well, I created this topic to explain why my friends thought the game is not good. 5+ of my friends refuse to play this game for ANY reason because they get bored fast. I know that teamwork is important but, imagine a server ( field map) with 40/40 new players, the marathon server would never finish lol. They wouldn't know how to end it. I do agree with your point of organizing attacks ( those are fun) but it is hard to get everyone to agree with you when they are busy doing their own thing. a̶i̶m̶b̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶n̶i̶p̶e̶r̶s̶ .

All of this leads to no teamwork, which leads to people giving up or quitting which leads to repetitive game play and the same boring maps.

I dont understand how people quitting leads to repetitive gameplay and boring maps.

Now about advertising I think the devs are waiting until the game is complete before doing any major advertising, you have to remember that this game is still in BETA and there is still a lot that will be added to the game (looking forward to that 5.2 update!) some of which will be more maps, some I've helped test and cant wait to play, new features such as veterancy and more game modes.

Yes I suggested to leave the advertising till the problems are fixed. More gamemodes? I have not heard of those. What are they?

I know I've talked a lot about teamwork and how lacking it is, if you and your friends want a good game with people actually working as a team try joining our weekly PUG's, information here viewtopic.php?f=13&t=75419 , they can be really fun with some of the weird strategies we come up with and as teamspeak is required to join (don't have to have a mic, just listen) there's usually great teamwork and the games are pretty much always being recorded by at least one person (me being one of those).

Yes i have played a PUG 2 times. When I played them, there was soo much teamwork and it was a really fun game. That is why I would suggest implementing a microphone system ingame. If people are busy shooting, then they wont see other people's messages or even votes, and because people keep spamming "repair that building". The usefull messages will be flooded with spam. I know that you can argue that people can join teamspeak, but many people wouldn't do that when they are new players. If you can talk with your mic ingame, then the whole team will hear you and that would be awesome. This may result in a lot of 12 year olds spamming the mic and ruining the gameplay, so I think that this feature would be best fit for the commander in the commander mod ( if that is going to be implemented in the game).

Well IMO one reason that the marathon server is often favoured is because it facilitates filling up the server. if you wait 10 minutes on a aow server to get the required players, the game is inbalanced afterwards. (or ends too quickly)

Great point, no not choosing marathon servers, but choosing AOW to get imbalanced games. If the server starts with lets say 10 players, then in 10 min, they become 30 players. As a result the game will be imbalanced as u stated so it will end too quickly and the map will change. If it ends too quickly then a new map will load and everyone will enjoy a balanced AOW game !!

And boring maps are often selected, as they can be played better with fewer players. 2 vs 2 on non base defence maps is usually not very fun to play.

If something like a lounge mode (buildings not killable until X players present) would be implemented, this would help AOW servers IMO...

I disagree with "boring maps can be played better with fewer players" but, lets say that it is true, ( for this argument). If there are 4 players playing a boring map and in 30 min, the player count becomes 30, then we can now change the boring map, right? Wrong, people will refuse to change the map and the new players will suffer

Those maps would be over sooner if there was a better way to communicate, to get rushes going, to get a large part of the team focussed on 1 objective.

If the commander mod would be added to the base/main game, and the role of commander would always be assigned to someone (preferably not someone on his first day of playing), I think there would be a lot less short matches, and it will be way more fun to play, because of these objectives you get from the commander.

Yes the commander mod would be awesome, and as I stated above, enabling microphones ingame would be nice ( could be only for the commander)

The boring maps you named are all maps with advanced base defences btw, but I think the base defences aren't always the cause of stalemates. I hope Field X will play well.

Yes I know, that is why I picked them, and thanks for calling them boring You are right. Well for base defences, it is 2 times harder to destroy a base when it has advanced base defences, so yes that is a major reason why games are long and boring. Now not only does the attacking faction have to face a full defending army, but they also have to face the base defences. Now you may ask, " how do face a full army AND an OP base defence?" good question. To do that, we have to have much more money than the enemy, and how do we get more money? Easy, lets just stay outside their base for 2 hours and keep destroying their harvester, eventually( hopefully in less than 5 hours) we will have more money than them and that will allow us to completely destroy them because we have 20x more money than they have. Remember Command and Conquer RTS games? Even if we had 1.5x the money the enemy has, we would be able to destroy them, but why in renegade x, do we need to have 100x more money to destroy them? The answer is bottlenecks, last time I was playing in X-mountain ( no base defences) and we defended against like 200 medium tanks I think, how did we do that? Because of the bottleneck, they couldn't attack us with all the tanks at the same time ( like in C&C games). So all we did was stand inside out base and destroy their tanks 1 by 1 because they kept coming in 1 by 1. That is a problem that we have in renegade-x. Honestly I think that if we have an open area map then it would be ACTUALLY simulate the C&C experience ( ofc with some obstacles like mountains and other stuff, but it shouldn't have a bottleneck to enter the enemy base. Remember in how in C&C games, there was more than one non-bottleneck entrance to the base? Imagine yourself playing C&C and trying to destroy an enemy base by sending in 1 tank at a time through a bottleneck. i̶m̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶.̶

Maybe to stop with selective map voting we could go back to have a map rotation that is set by the server, this way all the maps get played not just same repetitive ones.

On the note of new players and pro players sadly you will get this with any game, it's just a case of trying to give the new players enough fun and gameplay to engage with so they stay and learn.

New maps are on the way and soon (fingers crossed) alot more can be added at will, just new maps require alot of testing and balancing.

Regarding the advertising and push to get more players, we want to get the game in a more polished state, the time will come

I totally agree with you, and as I stated above, yes we need to fix the problems before advertising.

@j0g32, yeah I agree with you.

Edited July 8, 2016 by Guest

[vandal33]

I think the maps have a time limit of 40 minutes before it ends and declares team with the most points wins. If people can't bear to play a full-length 40 minutes maximum per map, then I guess it's hard for them to adapt to the game. Anyway, I don't think this is a problem because most people will feel 40 isn't enough, even if the map ends earlier than that (through base destruction), it does feel like a short game.

If you're talking about marathon, it's just a community rule remake for the game, there's a reason why time limits exist in renegade, to prevent stalemates and reward teams when their players contributed points. Real game is AOW, marathon is a broken game mode only for people who enjoys playing for hours and decide it's a stalemate (by voting to change map) or when their team finally destroys the opponent base because the other team had either left or just troll with boredom. It's like playing chess until you take away all the opponent's pieces instead of check-mating the king to win.

[hm shark]

I think the maps have a time limit of 40 minutes before it ends and declares team with the most points wins. If people can't bear to play a full-length 40 minutes maximum per map, then I guess it's hard for them to adapt to the game. Anyway, I don't think this is a problem because most people will feel 40 isn't enough, even if the map ends earlier than that (through base destruction), it does feel like a short game.

Yeah those are called AOW.

[RoundShades]

As far as maps, I keep saying we need to stretch the "map removal" period to 6 maps. That way, if Field is played, players cannot select field until 6 other maps are played. We have 10+ maps, there is NO REASON we can't go without field for 6...

[hm shark]

As far as maps, I keep saying we need to stretch the "map removal" period to 6 maps. That way, if Field is played, players cannot select field until 6 other maps are played. We have 10+ maps, there is NO REASON we can't go without field for 6...

Yeah, but imagine yourself as a new player ( a very unlucky new player) first trying the game on field. Honestly, if we had more active servers with a lot of players, then people who don't like field ( or other maps) can leave the server they are in and join another server with a different map, but unfortunately, this game's low active playerbase results in an even less playerbase and the cycle continues.

[TheOlsenTwins]

If something like a lounge mode (buildings not killable until X players present) would be implemented, this would help AOW servers IMO...

interesting idea, but what's the point of playing with few players in the first place^^

The point is to fill up the server. So either force a restart after X players are there. (AOW)

Or allow building attacks 1 minute after X players are logged in. (or also force restart)