#Long term player retention

20 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

scenic thunder
#

Neighbors has me hooked with the ideas of competitiveness and a future tournament(s). But for your other players, the mentally healthy ones, not me, there are a lot of things that can be their reason to play long term.

Keeping the game fun
Above all, if the game isn't fun, people aren't going to stick around. This is most important when taking into account new players, the plan to only match them against other new players is good. But that only covers the "balance" part, as they won't be getting trashed by much more experienced players. There are still a lot of bugs which can make the experience miserable. This point is something you all know as devs, but it's also the most obvious thing I couldn't have started this feedback without.

Below are actual suggestions

1. Competitive play
Adding a competitive mode achieves a few things:

  • It separates the "sweats" from the "casuals", allowing people to enjoy the game in whichever environment they prefer
  • It creates a long term goal, depending on the rewards, that the competitive players will grind for. I'll come back to this later
  • It allows experienced players to show off their skill while giving them interesting games, not just one sided stomps

But it also creates some potential problems:

  • Splitting the playerbase. Now the players have 2 modes to queue up for instead of just 1. Especially with early access' low playercount this means longer queue times for both modes. Mainly for the competitive one as the casual one I assume will still be more popular
  • META and toxicity. Competitive players love optimizing games. This doesn't have to be bad but it's often the case that players get upset, sometimes reasonably so, when someone just starting out with comp, plays in an "undesired" way, blaming that person for a loss
#

The competitive aspect and "having something on the line" often pushes players towards toxicity. It's always like that in ranked. It would require more attention from your moderation.

Coming back to the topic of rewards, when players are playing competitive, they often do so expecting a reward. Here you have a few options and they don't have to be exclusive:

  • Ranks. A simple number or icon displaying your skill level has worked in many games and for a good reason. It's simple and powerful. I'll touch on this in one of the later points.
  • Skins. Since Neighbors doesn't have global cosmetic items that can be shared between different characters, what I had in mind is creating a ranked token, given to the top x or a certain rank of players at the end of each ranked season or upon meeting a certain condition. That ranked token could then be used to unlock a ranked skin for a character of your choosing. That requires making a skin for each character but also gives a simple way to reward players for their grind, multiple times too if they play a bunch of neighbors instead of one.
  • Titles. Displayed on tab, under the player's name or on your profile (coming soon), titles can be an easy way to reward players and make them "stand out"
  • Leaderboards. This will be a point by itself but a ranked leaderboard, displaying everyone's competitive progress makes the game ooze with the feel of a community. You can see others playing, compare yourself to them and climb to the top to feed your ego.
  • Anything really. There is a lot of potential here. Item skins, unique announcer vocelines, emotes, effects on your emotes. You have a TON of options, some of which don't require much effort to make grinding worth it.
#

2. Leaderboards

You did this with FCT and I remember hearing "Oh look it's J-rex!!, the one from leaderboards" quite often. It was fun to recognize or be recognized. While yes, some people decided to ruin or abandon a match only because of someone "famous" being in it, leaderboards were overall a positive addition (excluding the crashes, whoops).

The same thing I said in the competitive section applies here. Having a way to see other people's progress and achievements in such an easy way enhances the feeling of community in a game. There doesn't even have to be a reward for them. Just displaying player's numbers and maybe resetting it monthly is often enough

#

3. Profiles and in game friends

Neighbors levels, account level, favourite house, some statistics and voilà (oh that's how you write it). Enjoy looking at my profile random people I just played with, also feel free to add me after a match.

I always enjoyed building my profile in... anything really. Steam, League of Legends even freaking clash royale as a teen. Seeing all of my achievements in one place and carefully modifying it to look how I want, I treat my profiles like Americans treat their lawns. The only dfference being I don't just show boring grass, but rather try to fill it with things I enjoy and want other people to see. I also like visiting other people's profiles and thinking "so this is the kind of player they are". Having something nice and personal, while not the biggest priority when it comes to player retention adds a nice touch to the game. If resources allow, I'd love to see profiles in neighbors.

Wait adding players I forgot to talk about that. Steam is cool and all but you have to catch them in either discord or during/after the game ends (assuming post game text chat becomes a thing). This is so much more difficult (for players) than simply doing so through an in game friends management system

#

4. Events, engaging with the community and other things outside the game

People loved community events and giveaways in FCT. Despite the playerbase being almost non existent, whenever you made an announcement, people came. But it doesn't even matter how much attention they got. The fact that the playerbase sees the developers engaging in discussions, organizing events, tournaments, doing some giveaways, just being there is huge. You're not a giant company that has little to no interaction with the community. You have devs that engage in discussions and even troll/trash talk people in discord (looking at you Canr). This is great but it can be even greater. I found it incredible when Crazyman promoted Hendo's tournament (which I won, not to flex, obviously). Keep promoting community events, keep organising them, give us some giveaways, Q&A's and consistently show that you're there, listening and interacting with us.

This also works outside the discord. Sponsored videos and streams, twitch drops etc bring the game "out there". All of the stuff I just mentioned is for people who are in the server and potentially in game. It's equally as important to make the name Neighbors: suburban warfare known. Discounts and free weekends combined with advertisements work great in bringing in players. I remember when steam charts suddenly doubled or tripled for FCT when you made the game free on Epic. On EPIC, not even Steam, there were players who either came back or decided they want to pay for this game. But you already know how advertisements work, so this only serves to tell you to keep it up.

I'm not sure where else to put it but I really like your shorts on youtube.

#

Afterthoughts and notes

Competitive and ranked are the same thing to me, I know you specifically said "competitive" will be added.

Competitive will probably work best as a seasonal thing.

I didn't mention battlepasses and further leveling progression as IIRC you stated that's coming for sure and I didn't have much I wanted to elaborate on.

The playerbase being low now is not something I'm concerned with since this is only early access, but that attitude isn't good as if the game dies before release, who will be here to test it? I trust Neighbors will do well on release as the game will be in a much better state by then, also hoping that is when you pull out all the stops with regard to promoting the game.

I didn't mention achievements as I made a separate post for them

For some things such as more levels and skins I didn't make them into points as I thought they weren't a big enough topic

If I forgot about anything I'll add it here later

junior wind
#

Prezes with the copy pasters that he wrote beforehand

junior wind
scenic thunder
#

I know right

junior wind
#

I miss leaderboards

fervent light
#

Would be cool if we could manage some kind of competitiveness without toxic people. But I assume it would be hard, considering right now game has no competetive rankings yet we still have toxic players that are not punished at all.

placid niche
#

Out of curiosity, what does FCT stand for?

junior wind
worn forum
#

Hey all, picked this game up with a view to running gaming arena's with it. Am i right in saying this is more fun with all new players?

placid niche
scenic thunder
junior wind
#

The game is still is developing stage needs some tweaks here and there but apart from that it’s an amazing and fun gameFCTcocktail

worn forum
#

We do 8 player kids parties but also 32 player bigger lans. looks like it will fit the bill nicely!

#

Party animals works well because it's silly so will give this a whirl 🙂