How can we keep our players?
How can we make text-based MUD games have a better player retention rate?
Compare what happens when you first make a new character with a modern graphical MMO game such as World of Warcraft (WoW), Runes of Magic, Warhammer Online, to what happens on most MUD games.
On the MMO, after a brief introductory cinematic, which you can skip, you are usually thrown into the game at some small outpost or encampment. Nearby is a quest-giver who says something like "Welcome Nick. We have a problem with the wolves you see nearby, please kill 10 of them for me and report back". And even if you don't notice the quest-giver you can see the wolves a few yards away, and can just start killing them anyway, for a similar amount of experience.
As you do that you gain experience, will probably level after 10 minutes, and get some useful drops as loot from your first kills. Immediately you are sucked into the game as you are doing things, achieving things, gaining things.
Now compare to what happens when you start a new character on a MUD (and this is only part of the usual stuff):
Ominous Tapestries
You appear somehow within an arcane chamber. Huge hanging tapestries,
each intricately detailed in vibrant colors, cover the featureless walls
of your octagonal surroundings. Wide square bands of white marble serve
to blur the sharp edges of the walls, giving the room an almost circular
appearance. Gazing about your surroundings, your eye is drawn upward by
a much larger round tapestry hanging directly overhead, and you struggle
with your balance as you examine the fabric's images. The growing sense
of wonder which pulls at you is tinged with a dose of trepidation. The
views about you, while wondrous, are nevertheless quite ominous; these
images are of a truly darkened land.
Exits: down.
A spiral staircase leads down from center of the room.
You do not have that item.
A burlap sack is delivered into your hands, type LOOK SACK to use.
Familiar, yet somehow different, your being has changed...
<Type HELP START>
help start
If you are new to the Realms, here are a few help files that will help you
get acquainted with our world. Please remember that during peak times
we host upwards of 300 players online, so we have tried to make the help
system as detailed as possible for everyone's benefit:
GUIDE - Will help you learn to use your Adventurers Guide Book.
RULES - Will lead you through the laws of the land.
SPAM - Will explain what spam is, and why you should not do it.
CONFIG - Will teach you about our configuration menu.
SCORE - Will tell you about your character's personal score sheet.
MOVEMENT - Will teach you various commands for moving about the Realms.
OBJECTS - Will teach you various commands to use your equipment.
CONTAINER - Will teach you about using containers to hold belongings.
CHANNELS - Will teach you about communication with other players.
GROUP - Will help you with grouping with other adventurers.
COMBAT - Will teach you how to choose, start and stop a fight.
DEATH - Will tell you about the death experience in the Realms.
PRACTICE - Will teach you about training spells, skills, and weapons.
INFORMATION - Will cover ways to find certain types of information.
To use these files, type HELP <topic>. Type 'help' for general commands.
<26hp 94m 100mv>
l
Ominous Tapestries
You appear somehow within an arcane chamber. Huge hanging tapestries,
each intricately detailed in vibrant colors, cover the featureless walls
of your octagonal surroundings. Wide square bands of white marble serve
to blur the sharp edges of the walls, giving the room an almost circular
appearance. Gazing about your surroundings, your eye is drawn upward by
a much larger round tapestry hanging directly overhead, and you struggle
with your balance as you examine the fabric's images. The growing sense
of wonder which pulls at you is tinged with a dose of trepidation. The
views about you, while wondrous, are nevertheless quite ominous; these
images are of a truly darkened land.
Exits: down.
A spiral staircase leads down from center of the room.
<26hp 94m 100mv>
down
Ok.
An Unsettling Reception
Muted sounds and the scent of cedar assail your senses as you enter this
stately chamber. Thick carpeting competes with leathered chairs in a bid
for your comfort, and a huge painting of a barren desert occupies the wall
behind a large desk of oak. Four small luminescent globes float aimlessly
about the room, and you notice that though seemingly free floating these
globes always manage to remain equidistant from one another. The huge
bust of a fantastical lizard has been set upon the wall, an amazing
hunting trophy of some sort.
Exits: north up.
The Realms of Despair hostess is here to greet you.
Samylla is shrouded in flowing shadow and light.
Samylla smiles at you.
Samylla says 'Welcome to the Realms of Despair reception chamber, Nick.'
Samylla says 'You have yet to enter the actual game, but will soon...'
Please take the time to read everything you see along the way.
- use Newbiechat to speak to the Immortals for assistance:
- type "new <message>" to use the channel.
Please, look around -- just type 'look <object>'. (look bust)
<26hp 94m 99mv>
l bust
Your mind clicks! You know what this is, though your mind takes a moment
to digest the information. You are staring at a bust of a dragon, closer
to such a thing than you have ever been before. Its eyes seem to glare
menacingly at you, but a shiver courses the length of your spine as a
sigh of relief passes your lips. It is thankfully dead, and you are safe.
<26hp 94m 99mv>
n
Ok.
The Path of Knowledge
You travel upon an open pathway beyond the confines of the reception area
to the south, heading toward your future. After a time, you see a stocky
man leaning casually against a large tree to the side of road. Your path
leads on to the north, or you can return to the structure to the south.
Exits: north south somewhere.
Towering beside the pathway is an enormous tree, a large opening at its base.
The statistics teacher sits here, guiding you towards your future.
Xouwasi is shrouded in flowing shadow and light.
Xouwasi bows before you.
Xouwasi says 'You appear to be a visitor, Nick.'
- Type "look <item>" or "look <name>" to see things here.
- Type 'eq' to check your equipment (items you are wearing).
... to see your unused belongings, type 'inventory' or 'i'
... to display your statistics sheet, type 'score' or 'ol'
Xouwasi says 'Type 'look tree'...'
<26hp 94m 98mv>
l tree
This tree is huge! On the southern face you see a large opening, it
appears big enough for you to enter. You wonder what is inside.
HINT: Type OPENING or LEAVE OPENING to enter and leave the tree.
<26hp 94m 98mv>
opening
Inside the Tree
This is a small house, sparsely decorated. It looks as if the dwarf who
resides here prefers to spend all his time outside rather then indoors.
The table is covered with a few dishes and the bed is unmade, though the
rest of the place is relatively clean. Against the north wall you see a
large chest. Upon closer inspection you see the chest is open, and you
wonder what it might contain. The opening is back to the south.
Exits: somewhere.
An opening in the tree, leading back to the path.
A weapons chest rests against the northern wall.
<26hp 94m 99mv>
l chest
This chest is made from a thick carved oak, it is sturdy but not locked.
You feel you must examine it closer to see what it might contain.
You get a heavy, iron-forged broadsword from a weapon's chest
You wield a heavy, iron-forged broadsword.
<26hp 94m 99mv>
examine chest
This chest is made from a thick carved oak, it is sturdy but not locked.
You feel you must examine it closer to see what it might contain.
When you look inside, you see:
A weapon's chest contains:
A finely honed weapon lies here, waiting to be carried into battle.
You get a heavy, iron-forged broadsword from a weapon's chest
You stop using a heavy, iron-forged broadsword.
You wield a heavy, iron-forged broadsword.
<26hp 94m 99mv> <26hp 94m 99mv>
In other words you are hit with a "wall of text". You spend the first 20 or 30 minutes reading, reading, reading. Learning how to "get", "drop", "inventory", "wear", "wield", "equip", "chat", "say", "tell", "consider", "kill", "flee", "look", "examine" and so on. Boring.
B.o.r.i.n.g.
As my son said, when I tried to get him interested in Smaug: "why do I have to do all this?". Why indeed.
Compare to graphical MMOs, you basically don't have to type anything for quite a while. Or read anything to speak of. Maybe a bit of quest text, enough to get the gist of "kill 10 wolves".
But it isn't because graphical MMOs have 3D engines - that is only used for showing your current "view". The rest is done by design, and use of buttons, minimaps, health bars and icons. And buttons and icons are exactly what you can do with recent generations of text MUD clients (MUSHclient being one example, there are others).
We can make things much easier for the player, like this:
Icons and views
- Instead of typing "inventory" - click on a bag icon which shows what you are carrying.
- Instead of typing "equip" - click on a character icon which shows what you are wearing.
- Instead of typing "score" or watching prompt lines scroll by, show a health bar window.
- Instead of having room descriptions fly by, capture them and put then in a separate window.
- Instead of having to "get all corpse" or "take sword" just click on a description of it (or an icon of it) in a "room contents" windows.
- Instead of typing "kill minotaur" just click on the minotaur icon or description to start attacking it.
- Instead of typing "consider all" or "consider minotaur" have the mob's appear in a list, colour and level coded. For example, coded in green - easy to kill, coded in red - hard to kill. Plus with their level number shown, you can directly compare to your level number.
- Instead of having to learn different attack methods (e.g. "kick", "punch", "cast fireball") just have icons on the bottom of the screen with an attack method "bound" to each one.
- Instead of typing "quest list" have a quest button that brings up a quest log window.
- Have a scrolling window that shows your current location, and where nearby things are, like shops, trainers, healers etc.
- Instead of typing "practice" to see what abilities you know, click on an "abilities" button that shows your current skills, and your level of knowledge.
- Instead of typing "spell list" to see what spells or skills you can use, click on a button that lists them all.
- Instead of giving the player a lengthy rigmarole to go through to get some low-level gear like some simple armour and a beginner's weapon, just start them off with them already equipped.
All these things are reasonably easily implemented - I have already demonstrated a number of them in an earlier post, supported by client-to-server protocols that hide this extra information from appearing in the normal text stream.
For an example of some of this see:
That shows health bars, a "current room" window, a automatically-updating map, an XP bar, and more.
Another example is here:
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=9580
That shows quests in their own windows, and an inventory window with "mouse-over" for details about the item you are looking at.
This page shows a "big map" (world map) with mouse-over info of areas you might want to visit:
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=9622&page=2
This page shows "action buttons" which you click on:
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=9280
Starting location
The other important thing to do to make MUD games easier for new players is to start them off in a better place than the usual one, which in most MUDs I have seen is the middle of the main city (or one of the main cities). Immediately the player is hit with a confusing mess of shops, players, and a large town with lots of streets to find their way around. On top of that is a lot of city-based chat which can be confusing for beginners. Things like "LF2M HoT DPS pref" or "WTS 20 blue shards PST".
In fact a major problem with starting in a city is that it is hard to know where to find low-level mods to start your career as an adventurer with.
Contrast that to starting in a small outpost (like you do in WoW). Now you only have a small building or couple of tents nearby, a low-level trainer, a vendor, and a quest-giver or two. Oh, and right nearby, some level 1 or level 2 mobs just waiting to be slaughtered.
In fact, to make it easy you want a minimal amount of things to worry about for the first few levels:
- Leave choosing optional skills for a little while, until the player has some idea why they might be required
- Leave choosing optional professions (like mining, smithing) until the player has a chance to decide which would be best
- Initially only offer one or two quests to the player - otherwise they start wondering which one to do first
- When you want them to move on from the starting area, give them a quest to "deliver a package" to a nearby larger town
- Minimize the number of things on offer at the starting area (like banks, mailboxes, auction houses, exotic vendors). This also gives players an incentive to move on when they want to use them.
- Design the starting area so it is hard to stumble out of without realising it. For example, have a single "choke point" which leads to harder mobs, and station an NPC there to warn players if they are trying to leave too soon for their own good.
From what I have seen when visiting a few well-known MUDs recently, they have good help files, and energetic, friendly and helpful people on the "newbie chat" channels, and a lengthy "beginners tutorial". But the thing is, they shouldn't need them! If you go onto WoW, they don't have a newbie channel. Why not? Because they don't need one. They don't have lengthy help files with lots of cross-indexing. Why not? Everything is obvious. You equip items by dragging them from your inventory window to your character window. Or reverse that to unequip them. To see what something does you simply hover the mouse over it and an information window pops up to tell you what the item does. Items are colour-coded to indicate which ones are, overall, better than others (for their level range). To use something you RH click it (e.g. RH click a potion to drink it, RH click a bandage to apply it, RH click a piece of equipment to wear it).
This simple model of user-friendliness can be replicated on text-based MUDs with a bit of work at the client end, to make the little windows, and some work at the server end to make communication unambiguous and easy to decode. For example, the server can identify every item with a globally unique ID (GUID), so that if the player wants to equip an item there is no dispute about which item it is. When the player changes rooms the server can send down the new room description, and what its exits are, as a special message that won't be confused with other messages, like player chat.
Get rid of annoying things
You could also consider losing some of the more annoying requirements that just make life tedious, like having to eat and drink all the time or you lose health. Why bother? If you are going to do that, why not make the player visit the toilet, fill in his tax return, babysit his little brother, and take out the garbage as well? You are there to have fun, not micromanage your avatar's life.
Also consider losing annoying things like:
- Rooms with no exits
- Rooms that "impossibly" get you lost (e.g. leaving west from a room and coming back into the same room from the east door).
- If you die while you are still learning the game you lose all your gear and have to "run back" to get it, thus probably dying again from the same high-level mob that killed you the first time.
- Losing all your gear and not even realising it until you wonder, three days later, why you are having trouble killing stuff, meanwhile your corpse has decomposed and you can't get it back.
- Losing most of your experience when you die, so you have trouble getting up a level, which is the very thing you need to do to avoid dying.
- Losing control of your character during tutorial sessions, with messages like "You can't move right now, wait until you get more instructions."
- Ridiculous messages about room contents, like "You are in a oasis with a large rock here". You type "look rock". It says "There is no rock here".
- Mobs with hard-to-guess names, like "You see a dwarf miner here". You type "kill miner". It says "There is no miner here".
- Not being able to leave the town (and therefore quest) because it is "night" and "the gates are closed". Hey, your players may only have a 30-minute window of time to play your game, and you are not letting them out of town?
- Making it impossible to see things at "night", so players have to muck around buying lanterns. I can understand maybe limiting visibility a bit, but not seeing anything? Again, some players in some parts of the world will be playing during your MUD's "day" and others during its "night". Why should you be disadvantaged just because of where you live in the real world?
- Letting other players kill you while you are level one and probably immersed in reading the help files. Save that for when you are level 10 or so, or make PvP be consensual.
- A backpack that is so small you can only carry about 3 or 4 things.
Some of these issues could be fixed by having clickable room contents, and clickable mobs. If the rooms contents are "important" you can click on them. Ditto for mobs. Then you don't have to guess what names the designers gave them.
Summary
In summary, I suggest:
- Client interfaces that simplify most of the things you commonly do, like:
- quest log
- what you are carrying, and your gold
- equipped items
- known skills and spells
- friends list
- ignore list
- maps (minimap, area map, city map)
- health/mana status
- what your target is and its health
- action buttons for things like attack, heal, stealth, spells
- if you are grouped, who with and the status of group members
- FAQ or help information
- showing what is on sale at shops
- showing what trainers can teach you
- interface with banks and auction houses
- interface with quest-givers
- what room you are in, what its exits are
- who and what is here in the room with you (players, NPCs, objects)
- a path-finder or way of locating important things, like shops, nearby towns, cities
- Start players off in a "starter zone" with lots of low-level mobs nearby and some quests to encourage them to kill them
- Quests that teach things, e.g. a gathering quest to encourage them to pick things from the ground, and a loot quest to encourage them to get loot from mobs
- Get rid of annoying things like needing to eat and drink all the time, or losing all your gear when you die
- Give players some "get me out of here" ability (like the Hearthstone in WoW, or "recall" ability) which can recall them to their home town or some friendly place if they get hopelessly lost (with something like a one-hour cooldown so it doesn't get abused)
- For early quests, or indeed, all quests, show on their map the general area where the quest is to be done (e.g. by colouring the relevant rooms in a different way)
- Make it easy to find important things, e.g. by marking or colouring map squares to show shops, repairers, trainers, quest-gives, portals etc.
- If possible add to the game immersion by having some sounds that play automatically, e.g. sword hits, combat music, rustling sounds when your bag opens, drinking sound when you quaff a potion, and so on.
I think we have to get away from trying to support every possible client. I have no vested interest in saying this, because although I am a client developer, the client is Freeware, and the source code is available to anyone that wants to download it.
There is still a lot of scope for text-based games, because they have a lower development overhead than 3D games. As my existing experimentation has shown, you can take the basic data that existing game servers work with (the "room" model, text descriptions) and automatically generate fancy maps, health bars, button bars, and generally a lot of the sort of client interactivity that the graphical MMOs already have.
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