Indie-Resource.com

I wrote some code to look at the statistics of players. Looking at it, they seem to take on the first few games (my PBBG is basically a series of linked mini games) but then rapidly leave.

I suspect that it's because I put a cap on my first couple of mini games and they hit it and don't know what to do next. Because in alot of games, the thing you start doing from the start of play, you pretty much do forever. And I disrupted that habit with my design.

I'm writing up code now for looting, which pretty much lets people loot for ages and ages, if they want to do a sort of GTA bandit lifestyle. One that they can keep doing and doing, if they want. I'll see if it syncs up with punter expectations and keeps them in - I'll check its stats after it's been online for awhile. Just gotta finish it's code first. Mostly done!

Anyway, do you guys code up programs to look at your players behaviours, statistically?

Well, after adding the farm expansion, the very next registration put their farm up to 6 out of 6 acres and harvested or looted $200 worth of goods. They took the loot option 24 times! Though currently, there wouldn't be very many farms to loot - either people have to manually build their farms, or there is a small chance each day their farm grows by one step. And it's only been one day so far, of course!

I rather suspected the whole GTA 'wreck other peoples crap' style play would be appealing. Of course, they are only wrecking something the other players didn't have until I coded it in. The farm just boosts a players advancement, in the end. You never have to touch it and you can do fine, so you can do fine if it gets robbed utterly, time and again. Also, I rather suspect that it was the farm I built that would have been looted.

I'll have to consider the numbers. To advance in the game, they need 200 hard wood logs, gained from other players. Each log costs $10 worth of goods. So really they have to aquire $2000 worth of goods, which would take awhile. As you can see, the first guy got to $200.

That might be too much, but at the same time it's part of the theme of the fiction in my game. There might be some other option I can find in the fiction/thats part of the fiction I'm shooting for, that also lowers the requirement. As a side note, I think this is what designers need to consider in designing - you don't just toss out the fiction for game balance, nor do you make a game that just sticks stubbornly to the first bit of fiction that figure out. Sometimes when you think about the fictional world, you can see a way to advance in that world that helps to also aid the real life player in this new game they've found.

Training your players with rewards could be a good way to keep them around. What I mean by that is you could create an optional tutorial they can go through, and advise them they will be rewarded by going through it. They get some perks as they go through it, and then continue to gain perks for the first few hours of gameplay. And I don't know if it fits in your game, but this is one of the instances where having a WoW/Diablo style of item ranking, where items are colored by their rarity can be handy. Pretty much every player understands these systems nowadays, and even if you have no point of reference to compare how good an item is, players can really feel they are really getting somewhere if you give them "special" purple-rarity items. I have actually been suckered a couple of times into staying in games longer than I would have because I felt the items I got as a bonus would be a waste not to use lol.

I get your point on items, Jack, I think it's a strong thing to implement. Howeve, I had a thought about it, and at the farming level, what items are there? A purple shovel?

Heck, maybe? Maybe I'll consider having such and storing them in session values, because I don't really want to take up database space with such items. Could have the items listed in a line on the page and maybe a cash in option for them a player can take before log out (because obviously there aren't going to be there next session)

That's why I said I didn't know if it really would apply to your design since you talked about farms. But something similar, or at least along the same vein of thinking could work