Darth Hater

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Retention as it Relates to Star Wars: The Old Republic

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Change Management in Retention

Players having fun is "working as intended" was the recurrent theme throughout the entire presentation. They stressed the importance of not falling into a trap where developers are making the game for themselves, but as one for the players to constantly enjoy. The only reliable gauge of enjoyment is qualitative or quantitative data coming from subscribers of the game, and people who quit usually do it quietly.



Recording and tying all this data together "to find the knobs that quickly recognize development mistakes" is a huge undertaking, but we got the impression that BioWare and LucasArts are fully committed to tackling this through constant data analysis. The reality of data management and analysis is that the more you do it, then more new questions crop up. The data can potentially get unwieldy in a game development situation where changes have to be made quickly, so game developers have to create methods to discern real trends that indicate positive or negative impact on retention from ones that don't really add anything except for development overhead. One of the biggest data analysis pitfalls Walton succinctly pointed out that developers shouldn't glom on to a data point and then amplify it (or reduce it) dramatically, and he stressed changes must be made gradually rather than drastically -- and test the heck out of it in focus groups before rolling it out system wide.

One sign of this is the re-branding of the "beta testing" concept to "game testing." We were shocked to learn that the decades-old practice of A/B split testing wasn't done in the game industry until around the year 2000. One concept we want to stress to the Darth Hater community is that yes, you do need to find bugs and potential exploits if you are selected for game testing, but that doesn't seem to be the primary objective of the focus group testing. The developers absolutely need to find out if the majority of the game aspects are a compelling and enjoyable experience for you. If the data says something different, they need to fix it before the game launches.



Walton's explanation of the retention backlash SWG received over Jump To Lightspeed makes us confident that if space combat is in the game, it will be in at launch and you will learn to master that system as a form of gradual progression. We also think the objective of this system, if implemented, needs to be well integrated with the ground game in a way where it doesn't enable two separate games or a drastic segregation of the community. It is imperative that there is unity and flow between all play styles for it to be successful.

We had the opportunity to ask a few questions at the end of the presentation, and one of them was "do you think MMO developers recognize they are direct marketers?" And the answer was surprising: "not yet, but we're getting there when it comes to keeping customers happy."

While we would love to post the entire presentation for our readers, copyright and intellectual property laws prevent us from doing so.

Comments

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  • Jaswar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #52 Jaswar Posted 4/18/2010 4:03:17 PM
    /cancel LOTRO for one reason and one reason only. Certain dungeons required a gear set called "The Radiance Set" once gear becomes more important for my character to advance I always lose interest. Players pay the same exact amount as everyone else and should never be denied any content whatsoever
  • Mythanotos's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #57 Mythanotos Posted 4/26/2010 6:17:58 PM
    I totally agree with this... Gear should help, amplify, assist, and motivate, but should never ever ever restrict or alienate any of the player base.
  • ArcherAvatar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #58 ArcherAvatar Posted 5/4/2010 12:22:29 AM
    100% agreement. Being knowledgable about your character class and it's skills "should" be the number 1 determining factor in success in a MMO whether it is PVE, raids, or PVP... as soon as it becomes more about the equipment you're essentially "dumbing down" the game to it's lowest common denomenator - time.

    Time spent in game is, and should always be, a contributing factor in player success, but once it becomes the most important factor then you're basically making a game for mindless, grind-tastic, morons.
  • DrHall's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #50 DrHall Posted 4/16/2010 5:38:58 PM
    Community. That is all.

    Seriously, all the new dungeons, bosses and gear mean nothing if there isn't an active community to make it all worth experiencing. It seems like BioWare is aware of this, so we can hope we will see the importants of the game's community take a front seat in the development.
  • Jaswar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #53 Jaswar Posted 4/18/2010 4:04:32 PM
    completely agree
  • Frostbites's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 130
    #47 Frostbites Posted 4/16/2010 5:46:29 AM
    While I enjoy this article I had to make the comment. I really do hope they dont make space something you have to do. Flying around wise an what not. Space combat is very boring an makes me feel as if Im playing some ace combat crap. To me if I wanted to experince space I might as well just go back to my sto account.
    An as for GW talking about UO an what it does well I tend to think if UO was had such good things then the player base would have been better. I didnt find anything good about the game threw videos an reading.. An so I feel I saved money. Just hope that if player house are all instance based if that is put in. An I also hope they dont add in guild perks. I feel that would be horriable an make me feel forced to join a guild.

    Good article though I enjoyed the reading.
  • Jaswar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #54 Jaswar Posted 4/18/2010 4:18:37 PM
    Yes I believe the Devs are totally aware of this. I was reading about it an article about the expansion for SWG "the jump to light speed". They even admitted it didnt work the way the wanted to. The only good thing that i really liked in Jump to lightspeed was the free cruiser you get..hence more inventory space. It was fun decorating the Lando Calrisian Luxury yacht and boy did I pimp that ship out. Bioware knows that they cant makes to separate games within one. Land/Space will have to meld seemlessly together. I would assume you have your ship and when yu take off it would be similar in scope to Mass Effect2 set up. you have alot of areas on your ship that you can visit and hangout in. Maybe even have crafting room there blah blah blah. Then when you leavea planet a cutscene would be activated ......you leave your dock see your ship fly away into space. Then once you are in space you then decide what planet you are goin to next hit the hyperspace button and WAMMO off you go. But, I also see this as a great opportunity for the Devs to make our ship customizable to suite our individual tastes. Our ship would be great place to store extra equipment. have the freedom to walk around your ship, change the engines out or make yur cockpit customizable,things like that.
  • Mayhem's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #49 Mayhem Posted 4/16/2010 4:33:32 PM
    UO was the first MMO and its first 2 years were awesome. If you didnt play it then, its hard to understand how different it was then, and how good it was then. The GM's were heavily involved in the game, like when they spawned 2000 trolls in the north nerfed all the guards and overran all the northern cities. Or when they introduced a new dungeon the had a huge horde of undead spawning at the entrance and spreading over the world from that spot. UO went downhill after they stopped being involved and the top guys left, then it just became a macro a magic user in 2 days and run around in a deathrobe with a handful of reagents.
  • Jaswar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #55 Jaswar Posted 4/18/2010 5:17:26 PM
    that sounded like alot of fun ..yes if the devs are totally involved in the ingame world and have stuff happen randomly like that where we as players worldwide go and try to stop them ...man I see possiblilties there
  • Korrick's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #46 Korrick Posted 4/16/2010 4:41:00 AM
    Loved the article, it gave very good details about what could possibly be in swtor. Please more articles just like this.
  • Mezentius's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #42 Mezentius Posted 4/15/2010 7:39:38 PM
    "Players having fun is "working as intended" was the recurrent theme throughout the entire presentation. They stressed the importance of not falling into a trap where developers are making the game for themselves, but as one for the players to constantly enjoy. The only reliable gauge of enjoyment is qualitative or quantitative data coming from subscribers of the game, and people who quit usually do it quietly"

    I found this part of the article interesting and recently commented on the official forums regarding this same topic. All too often developers get caught up in world building without checking to see if players are actually having fun in their worlds. They could not be more spot on when they say that people who quit usually do it quietly. Most never go post on the official forums complaining and threatening to quit to try to make a point. Most just simply quit.

    Great article DH!

    Mezentius
  • GoHann's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 289
    #44 GoHann Posted 4/15/2010 10:01:05 PM
    I come and go, with regards to WoW. But I will say that there have been many-a-time that I have said to myself "What is this? and why is this here?" with regards to the person in house who thought that it was relevant to put said "game feature/element" in the the game/world/environment, when it really wasn't needed or was pointless. And to me this took me out the immersion I was feeling at that time within the game.

    And I assume this is because the team/person behind it did it for there sake with out truly asking if it was relevant to the gamer playing the game as a whole.

    Good post Mezentius

    Wound in the Force::GoHann (lvl 35 Maurader)

  • homestar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #41 homestar Posted 4/15/2010 7:38:38 PM
    Every time I read something TOR related I get the illusion that this game is going to be perfect in every way. Can Bioware ever do something wrong? It sounds like they know what they are doing.
  • chronium's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 1583
    #37 chronium Posted 4/15/2010 5:54:57 PM
    Well I was bored and finally used my Youtube account for something. Here's all 7 facial animation examples used at GDC.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxIaQevKJBA
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekSzHLYIGR8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShQzV17Vres
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoe2SccDleA
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4X_VMOp2b8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHgMXWscnKII
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7kjepymDqU
  • nedostup's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #45 nedostup Posted 4/16/2010 12:39:02 AM
    Thanks, this is awesome

    I love that Ithorian.
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