The 3-Month Players
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@MisterBoring said in The 3-Month Players:
@Ominous Have there been any games previously that ran on a seasonal format? If not, it might be something to take a chance on. If nothing else, it gives the people who are going to stay around more things to be interested in as time goes on.
The Network and HorrorMU had seasons, I believe.
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@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:
While that’s how you and I might mean it, I have quite legitimately seen the term used in discussion to tar all social “non plot moving” RP with the negative brush. As if the best bits of DS9 were the explosions and not the conversations between Garak and Bashir.
Sure, no definition is ever going to be universal. Also I’m certainly not going to WrongFun anyone who doesn’t like social RP. I just think it’s useful to highlight that distinction. Social scenes can absolutely move a plot forward if that plot is “will the Duke of Nowhere undermine his rivals” or “will Mary reconcile with her estranged brother”. If all you want to do is RP flying a fighter jet and shooting Cylons (no shade, btw) then anything in-between can feel like fluff.
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@STD Ah, then I’m curious as to what their numbers looked like through the various seasons. Might help to answer some questions about the 3 month thing.
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
This has all been a fun tangent to the topic of the thread, but steering things back, is there any reason to believe that a server with “seasons” will in any way draw back the 3 month players at the start of every season?
More pertinently, would you want to? These are people who already don’t want to play your game anymore, for whatever reason. Why are you trying to appeal to them? Your efforts would be better served serving the people who actually want to play there. Appeal to new people as they arrive, certainly, but don’t try and coax back the “tried it, didn’t stick with it” crowd.
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@Pavel Well, it was kind of the point of the idea. Run a seasonal server so those who aren’t feeling the current season can get a new experience a few months later and maybe have it be more their vibe. I would much rather run and/or play a L&L server that is long running with deep politics, intrigue, economics, etc. They only other reason that I can think of off of the top of my head to go “seasonal/anthology” is if you’re doing a generational theme and want to timeskip rather than wait a few years for the next generation to age up.
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@Ominous said in The 3-Month Players:
Well, it was kind of the point of the idea.
Sure, and I’m asking why is appealing to the 3-Month players something you’d want to do? If you make each “season” different enough in order to appeal to the people who gave it a go and weren’t interested, you’re essentially making a new game every six months. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do, but why is appealing to the influx of new people a thing you’d want to entertain?
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@Pavel No clue. I am floating ideas relevant to the thread. Though, it could be good because the churn of players may keep the game fresh and keep the population from dwindling.
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The Network did essentially recreate ‘the Bubble’ every new season. This was part of why it wasn’t my thing, but it maintained a decent playerbase and closed on its own terms.
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@MisterBoring As @Third-Eye mentioned, there was a mini-bubble at the start of each new Season on the Network, and at the beginning of each Hiatus between Seasons. Some people preferred the Hiatus time in the Dome, some people preferred the Seasons, some people came back whenever a particular Season interested them.
Since most Seasons were 4-8 months, there was definitely a tail-off partway through most Seasons, but it did capture the burst at the beginning.
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I’m going to go on a little rant here but stick with me, I promise it is on topic.
DarkMetal was the most well designed WoD MUSH to ever exist. Wanna fight about it? Here we go!
The reason your players are burning out after 3 months is that there are no stakes in your game.
I hate to sound like one of /those/ people but… game devs today are too soft on their players.
It practically takes an act of God to kill off someone’s character so they get stuck with the same character for long periods of time, or they make alts and that results in burn out just as quick because they can never find in-depth character development with their focus divided between multiple alts.Dark Metal got a few things right that no one else did.
- Anyone could die at any time.
- There were safe zones for each sphere if you wanted to just do soft RP. You never needed to be in danger as long as you stayed in your zone.
- Making a new character was fast and easy! If you died it wasn’t a big deal.
- Staff didn’t give a s*** what you played, as long as you played, so approval was automated.
On Dark Metal you had to fight tooth and nail to survive long enough to get to a point you could walk in the mixed spaces without being in danger of being made into someone’s midnight snack and you were never fully safe.
You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.
People want their actions and choices to matter.
When they don’t, people get bored and they wander off.
It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.If you want your game to survive, learn to crush your players hopes and dreams. Learn to let players kill each other off.
Character churn will save your game from player churn.
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@RedRocket Man, I’m a little sad I missed this game. Sounds like something I’d have tried.
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.
Many players enjoyed DarkMetal.
Many other players wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole because that style of gameplay holds no appeal to them.
TGG was a game with permadeath, trivially easy chargen, XP-based progression, stakes, drama, rotating “seasons” to keep things fresh, and the some of the most impressive immersive code systems I’ve ever seen. It still had a lot of player turnover. (and about 10 very passionate core players)
People want their actions and choices to matter. … It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.
This I agree with, but routinely killing your PCs off is not the only way to accomplish this. There are plenty of successful TV shows that avoid the Game of Thrones style of knocking off main characters left and right.
There is no one-size-fits-all game.
