Changes to Increase Player Retention

• Background

So earlier today, I witnessed a very familiar scene in Tutorial. Two new players (who clearly knew each other) joined at about the same time. Doing what I usually do, I warped there to talk to them, and get them started. As I was helping a third player who had joined right before them, they said something, then immediately left right after that.

• The Problem

What that noobie said is why a lot of new people leave; "Wow, this server is so dead. There's only four people online???" Before I could even type anything else, they both logged off. Bear in mind, this was at 6:00 P.M. EST, so there was around 60-70 players on at the time. Here's the problem: because the Tab only shows players in the same world, they thought the server was empty! Bear in mind, this is Tutorial, so why should any experienced player be there besides those who come to meet new players? As a result, we get a lot of possible players leaving simply because they think the server is empty. Why should they play on an empty server?

• Solutions

-First Idea
So my first idea is to change the way the Tab works. Change it so it shows every player on the server, no matter what world.
Advantages to this would be: 1. It shows new players exactly how many players are online, not just those in Tutorial, for example. 2. This would make cross-world chatting/teleporting easier, as you can type part of their name, hit Tab, and it'll try to fill the name in automatically. So, for example, say you are trying to message me. You type your /msg, /pm, or /m, then type "clue" (FYI, my IGN is CluelessKlutz), then hit tab. Unless there are other people in the world with "clue" in their name, it will fill in the rest of my name.
Disadvantages to this (that I foresee, please point out any others) are: it could be hard to see all of the names in the Tab.
-Second Idea
So my other idea is to enable the full server Tab only in Tutorial. Honestly, I don't know if this is possible, so I would like the opinion of those more familiar with code. This would therefore only affect players in the Tutorial world, which would alleviate this issue, while keeping everyone else's Tab the same.

• To Be Discussed

So, now I turn this idea over to everyone else. Here are things I feel need to be discussed:
Are there other issues that you can think of?
How easy would this be to implement?
Which variant of this works better for everyone?
Are there other ways to do this?

Thank you all for reading, and have fun!

 

Good idea and it doesn't seem like something that would be too difficult to implement. I know dblo could do it with his eyes closed but he's away at this moment so.. Hopefully our current techs can input? ( @Spyda6 ) Nonetheless, I'm a big +1 on this. I do agree that it would help.

 

+1
This would be good to the server!

 

;-; that story breaks meh heart +1 maybe not all worlds but at least at spawn.. Or is tutorial at spawn? : o GET WITH THE TIMES BURRITOH

 

+1, also I actually like servers with 20-30 people on them because you know everybody and it just makes the experience for me better. But I still think meep is better with lots of people on it.

 

Tutorial is a separate world from spawn, by the way.

Just a reminder, Meep usually has 50-70 on these days, but it feels different because of how close everyone is.

 

No it should be all worlds, cuz spawn is also usually empty.

 

+1

 

Love it.

 

I believe the rebuilt tutorial will be placed in new (old) spawn when it is released. This spawn will have more things to do and hopefully a larger player count in it.
As for those individuals they must not be familiar with non vanilla servers as tutorials with near no one is extremely common.
-1 I feel this is not necessary.

 

+1

 

spawn has barely any players in it as well
this is a towny server with minigames, the vast majority of people are in those worlds

Spawn was never intended to be somewhere where you spend a lot of time. It will still have no more than maybe 20 players on a good day

 

I think the tutorial should simply be added to the spawn world. The spawn should also be changed to something a lot more community feel like instead of this one we have now!

 

Fairly sure there is a new spawn in the works. Maybe a new tutorial should be built into that one.

 

None of this changes the fact that there will still not be many players at spawn

It was never intended to be a place where people spend a good amount of time in and it is very hard to change that. Towny and minigames are currently integral to the server and I don't feel it's right to not show the players there but only show the ones in spawn. It's not enough.

 

I still agree with @kcschmidt , but I also agree that tutorial should be built into spawn. Why waste money on a whole different world that barely anyone uses as it is? This merge would not only provide a stronger first impression to new players, but also save some money.

 

I was under the impression the new Tutorial would be the same world as it is now, with reworked holograms and such.

I am not necessarily disputing this, but I have seen it several times. Towny is a gamemode that appeals to a lot of vanilla players because it is generally very peaceful. The fact remains, this happens, and I want to do everything I can to not get players to just join, but stay.

I completely agree with this, but while I was privileged enough to talk about it a lot with the one actually redoing Tutorial, @Lady_Hestia , I was unaware it was going to be released with the new spawn.

Again, I agree. However, this does not change @XxX_SpiderStrike_XxX 's point:

The majority of players spend their time doing one of two things: making money, or working on towns. Both of which cannot be done efficiently in the Spawn world. Spleef is not an effective way to make money, and neither is Terrarium. I feel that unless the new spawn has more ways to make money built in to it, it's never going to have many people. Usually, if people just want to sit back and relax with friends, they do it in either Towny or Creative. If this is as easy as @Jalapenos describes,

then I think this would be beneficial overall. Besides increasing player retention, it also allows cross-world tpa'ing to be faster, and just makes things feel bigger. It feels good to look in the Tab of say, Beta, and see most of it filled with so many friends.

Just a reminder, if I disagree with anyone, it is because I don't agree with the idea, not the person.

 

+1

 

This is accepted, waiting to talk to a tech about it