Poll: for an idea to raise newbie signup retention rates

[bigcakes]

good basic idea.
kbye
john

[b4ronin]

I am actually very interested in this idea, and would love to find more and new ways/incentives to keep new players playing.

I think some of the one that drop out do so because they don't understand the game, and need help, but no-one to turn to. When they don't understand, they just quit

Great concept weilandsmith, I hope something comes of it

Seconded.

I agree a system needs to be put in place to offer help/assistance from the game i only registered for the forums after several months of playing and randomly messaging people that looked like they knew what they were doing

[weilandsmith]

bumping a good topic for newbies

[weilandsmith]

I just discovered a thread where you can find an example of someone who's been playing SGW for a long time without signing up for forums. this only reinforces my belief that SGW is losing a lot of players because there is no in-game mechanism to allow veteran players help out the newbies. follow the link to view the thread. you can't miss it. it's the first post.

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=113676

[Basic]

I think some of the one that drop out do so because they don't understand the game, and need help, but no-one to turn to. When they don't understand, they just quit

I had the same thought when I started. I looked all over the place for a staff list for someone to answer a question I had and found none. The Contact email addresses I did find were a turn-off considering they claimed not to expect a responce for anywhere between 48 hours to up to a week or more. And I thought the DMV was slow. Beyond that, I still have no idea who the owner or other staff members are in this game. With the thousands of other games out there, why should anyone have to deal with the incoveniences of asking for support here when they can just go sign up for some other game that has better newbie help systems in place or not so hard to figure out how to get started.

I too quit chaos because of the confusion of all the conversions required to get something done.

[weilandsmith]

that's exactly the point. more often than not, people will quit. 89,000 listed accounts and only about 5k to 7k are moving up and down the ranks. the rest are static. if there were a newbie safety net in game, then the number of active players would be higher than 7k.

here's what can be done.

1) determine a place in game where helpful players can post their willingness to accept newbies as officers or as members of an alliance. the current alliance page doesn't do the job. most of the listed alliances are inactive.

2) on top of the list is a paragraph or two stating what the list is for so that newbies don't get confused. the list of helpful players will include race, rank and a short description edited by the helpful players.

3) a link is placed in base page to the helpful players' page. the link must be prominent so that the newbies don't miss it.

4) same thing can be done for alliances that are willing to take in newbies.

it doesn't matter whether the newbie help page has it's own page or it is connected to the market as someone suggested. what matters is that there is a newbie help page so that we can grow the SGW population.

[Lore]

what matters is that there is a newbie help page so that we can grow the SGW population.

A good and valid point.