Drizit
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Posted - 2006.04.04 05:02:00 -
[1]
I think to say the average would be 7 months is about right although there are a lot that stay on to become veterans and probably a similar number that don't even finish the trial. I believe this to be a pretty conservative figure since the amount of players overall has grown significantly of late and the numbers online at any one time have almost doubled in the short time I have been playing.
While making the game attractive to new players may help increase the actual numbers playing, it runs the risk of making things too easy. This is due to many people's idea of being attractive meaning it is a lot easier to get started. One of the main reasons for people not staying is the fact that it is so hard to start off but it has it's own balance by keeping out those who would cause trouble in-game. My reasoning for this is that those who want it easy to start with are usually those who get bored quickly and would make trouble through boredom when they have reached a quick goal.
The learning skills has been an issue for debate for as long as I can remember. Starting a new player off with lvl4 in the basic learning skills is not really the best idea. Since most are told to train learning skills first, their first experience of skill training is going to be 5 days long or more... A definite put-off, epsecially when they see how many skills there are to learn and automatically presume that 5 days for each level is the norm.  In addition, the blood patch saw an increase in the base attributes of nrew players so thay already start with a bigger advantage than the older players ever did. Someone mentioned to me that they could create a player with 9,9,9,9 starting attributes (excluding Charisma) and taking all the basic and advanced learning skills into consideration, could increase this to 22 across the board. That would be more than I could ever achieve in all but memory, even with implants and my charisma is only at 6. My memory attrib with +3 implants could reach 22 with advanced learning to lvl5, the others reamin at 19 with +3 implants. So even compared to my attributes, they could easily train well past my level in a short time and I have been playing this character for nearly a year now.
I can't say I have really had much experience with the buddy program, except to say that the only two I ever sent out never got there and I had to point them to a games mag site that offered the trial key instead. As for prizes, I honestly don't think anyone has ever got anything for introducing people to the game, or at least I have never heard of anyone getting anything. Since it appears that it doesn't even send the emails out, I can't say I am surprised about that.
Overall I'm sure that the increase in players that CCP has had over the last few months is a pretty good indication that more players are coming to stay rather than stopping by to take a look before shooting off to play WOW, EQ or some other MMO.
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