Discussion: Player Retention Rates

Once upon a time in a EMC time so long ago. People seemed crazy to get on here and every SMP was at a steady 30+ people without events occurring. Fast forward a few years and I hardly find an SMP above 15 people at high player peaks (non event). What are we as a community missing that we had before to get people to stay that we seemed to have lost? Has attention span of the average user dropped and the tutorial become obsolete again? What am I not seeing here?

Rules of the discussion/debate:
No insulting other users ideas/theories. Its rude and pointless.
You may combine your idea with another as it builds upon better thoughts.
Constructive criticism is welcome as long as you use it appropriately and not a loop to violate the first rule here.
Use common sense.

Now for my opinion on this matter:
What is fun? "I am looking for fun" Joins server *sees tutorial* Disconnects.
Take2: Looking for server *joins server* Reads through tutorial *joins town* disconnects.
Take3: *joins server* guesses way through tutorial *joins town* asks tons of questions. "go read wiki" disconnects.
take4:*joins server* cannot grief right off bat - disconnects
take5: *joins server* does tutorial *joins town* starts residence, cannot make efficient money as market is inflated for starters *disconnects after 3 hours of joining*
take6: *joins server* "come join Mob arena on smp5!" "how do I get to mob arena, what is smp5?" *disconnects due to lack of answers* (this one happens not too often but IT DOES happen)
take7: *joins server* enjoys first 4 months of server - gets bored of lack of diverse activities over the time - *disconnects for final time*
take8: *joins server* Registers to forums, becomes avid user of forums- engages in regular server activities - plays for about 4 years - *Creates thread "Twas a fun 4 years" *ends up leaving anyways*
take9: *joins server* active for 4-5 years - only plays to talk to people as nothing else interest them on the server - contemplates quitting in mind day to day
take10: *joins server* Mines everyday for 2 years - uses auctions - makes living - Mojang 1238712893712 update comes out - Takes too long to update - *leaves for final time*
take11: *joins server* Reads tutorial - Progresses to forums to give opinion on Tutorial - gets mixed feed back - Unsure whether to continue playing on server *50% leave*
take12: Comes back after 1500 days *Goes through tutorial* asks "Whats a great money method?" Response, "You're 1500 days old! You should know!" *disconnects again*
take13: *joins server* sees theres no factions *disconnects*
take14: *joins server* waits 2-3 years for Games Server that's been sitting at spawn *disconnects for loss of hope*
take15: *joins server* Enjoys it everyday - Joins a Team - Does work for said Team - Gets bored of repetitive play style - Plays steam games in meantime/when bored. Goes to IRL job - "He must be inactive".
take16: *joins server* Only comes on for promos
take17: *joins server* Just another alt
take18: *joins server* Buys perm derelict - gets spawn res *quits in spite of knowing that nobody can ever get said lot* (this one is more of a joke)
take19: *joins server* Has successful run of playing - Has money - 4 plots - Only gets on in hope of new content and has a endless cycle of hope within head to keep self on - does not play as often as used to.
take20: *joins server* closes minecraft because Battlefield 1 got another patch
take21: *joins server* makes lots of friends *friends quit coz of boredom* is lonely for x time - becomes inactive and eventually quits.
take22: Who really read all of this ?

If I could have a graph of users based on player join times and retention statuses - it would look like a swiss alp. Starts from high altitude and slowly goes down and comes up on some slopes every now and then.

What does the community think is missing? I dont even know anymore. It was a poppin' good place when I joined and was for 2 years after that. In the middle of the 3rd year for me is when I noticed less people than usual. Is it just that Minecraft isn't as fun of a game as it used to be? Is it out of EMC's control is previous sentence is true?

Ask yourself this: What was the first think you were looking for when you joined EMC. Was it going through the tutorial/Finding a way to skip it? Or just Getting through it to find out what this place was even about? What made you stay - no generic answers - Detailed analysis only.

when i first join i wanted a community feel with some sort of completion thankfully i found this place. That people what now days is to grief build bases and destroy bases with i hate.
i looked through 7 servers when i first started online.
this server was 7
i was looking for:
not too laggy server
nice community
towny
economy
custom coded

What Got Me TO Stay:
the first time i saw a momo
when aeris208 adopted me and taught me about Promos (i miss u "mom")
Pot of gold
Kryssy's awesome expiation of what all the colored names Meant
custom items
Residence systems

Do you remember how many servers you looked through or joined prior to EMC? If its above 6 then your priority list is detailed. If you want to list the priorities, It would greatly help the feedback.

What got me to join the server:
-I have no idea
Why I still stay on the server:
-I have no idea

I don't entirely know. For a period of a few years, I was entirely inactive with the exception of logging on to save my property, because I felt that Minecraft in general just wasn't fun any more. I'm still not too attached to Minecraft, but the only reason I still do play it is because of EMC. And I don't even know why I still play on EMC to be perfectly honest. I guess it just gives me something to do and people to talk to.

EMC still typically has 100+ people logged on every day, but I feel that the reason it doesn't look like there's so many is because back when you joined there wasn't even an SMP6. Now people are just more spread out. I can't say the same for retention rates, though. I feel like a lot of it has to do with how welcome new or returning players feel. I've seen many of them log on with nobody talking, so the server feels relatively quiet with not much to do.

(New player here who has been on the server for like 2 hours)

Remember Minecraft itself is getting old, this isn't specific to this server.

4 years ago: "I noticed you can flush your farmland with water so you just need to replant and don't need to harvest yourself!" "Oh really? Need to try this out." Today: "I built a villager breeder and made a villager-powered automatic wheat farm." "Yawn .. lots of YT videos about that".

4 years ago: "I found a huge structure in the midst of the ocean, and when I came closer, something attacked me. Got away as fast as I could". Today: "Turned a sea temple into a guardian farm again. It gets old when you do it the 5th time".

For me, the first 4 weeks on a server are typically the best. Find a nice spot, try not to starve, avoid monsters, go mining, find diamonds, build an enchantment table, gain exp, maybe build an exp grinder when you find a spawner somewhere, build a farm or two. This gives people something to do. After that, you have plenty of everything, mobs aren't a challenge anymore. Boredom starts. Build anything big, like "creative build but gather stuff in survival"? What for, there's plenty of YT videos and schematics that have better builds than I could ever build myself. So what?

What I'm looking for in a server is mature staff and players, no "can I live with someone? Omg, does someone have some wood for me, I'm too dumb to fell a tree" kids. I like dynmap. I hate PVP and griefing. And I really dislike the servers that change some MC mechanics, like "sorry, no minecarts with hoppers on this server", "villager griefing turned off so you can't breed them", "Changed hopper mechanics to avoid lag so sorry, your sorter won't work here", "No redstone clocks here, sorry" and similar. Can't count how many servers I quit after a few hours for one of these reasons.

Honestly i don't know why i stayed... I guess I had some goals for what I wanted to achieve but I also found some friends on SMP4 so i stayed and learned how the server worked, but as many have left or don't play as much i find my self playing less but coming back because of the goals i set. Wanting to see them though and make a name for myself, though with playing less things are of course getting done slower .

(and for those wondering my goals are/were taking the empty lot called smp4 spawn and making it nice and in general making it look less like and empty plane of long gone players)

Agreed.

Although some players will state (and they have) that the whole Minecraft playerbase is somewhat in decline I actually have to disagree on that. For the simple reason that I still see plenty of players who are pretty new to Minecraft on a regular basis. I've also somewhat moved my interests a bit when it comes to Minecraft and I took a deeper interest into the Spigot project. Well... Same more or less applies I think: there are plenty of players who start looking into servers and plugin development. BUT... A bit offtopic here, but I wanted to add this for context sake.

In my opinion EMC has a major problem at the moment: keeping new players around. Now, some of that is simply beyond EMC's control. Let's be honest: EMC isn't for everyone.

But I still cannot help feel that EMC is also a bit sloppy in some cases. If I got a rupee for every new player who wandered off into the Frontier after finishing the tutorial and then leaving without having set one foot in town and without coming back I'd be rich.

And the reason I use the word sloppy is because in general I can back up my comment that this event alone is giving the majority of players a completely wrong impression of the Empire. What they see is a server where you cannot chat, where no one talks to them, where no one is around to help them and where apparently also nothing happens.

Worse yet: while EMC advertises that there are usually 100+ players around they only get to see a handful. Even during prime time where we got 150 players going (weekend) you'd only see the players on the SMP itself (10-15) and for a new player that can be very confusing at first.

Just for context: this is coming from someone who (usually) actually takes effort to PM a player when they ventured out into the Frontier and to try and steer them a little bit without becoming too intrusive (2 PM's tops is my rule, some people prefer to be left alone). And all I'm doing here is relaying what some of those newer players who I did manage to get out have told me.

But yah, this has been commented and suggested time and time again and nothing happens. So I can only conclude that staff considers it a non-issue and therefor we still see plenty of potentially new players take off.

All that's left is to do the math: older players leaving because... maybe getting bored, maybe not liking it, etc. Potential new players not staying because of confusing issues and you'll have an obvious end result.

That's my theory at least

Another theory I have, but this is fully hear-say and based on assumptions (you have been warned!) is that some players seem to consider the Empire to grow stale a bit. I heard too many stories from veterans about JustinGuy and IceCreamCow who often would hold events "because". Not because they're organized, not because of anything other than "lets do this!".

If you were lucky you could participate and have fun. If you weren't lucky you missed it.

Yet it seems that the emphasis now is fully on a nice clean tight schedule where everything is more or less perfectly organized and ruled out. It works, people enjoy it, but it also takes some of the previous suspense away. Or so I think.

And I think that too makes some people lose interest.

Sometimes you shouldn't bother with a nice clean organized event. Just go out and DO something, even if it is small and makes no sense.

Of course... there is a problem with that: some people will like it, and some will dislike it. If you try to cater to all of 'm.. Yah, then you probably can't do that.

Some people might have heard this already but might as well say it again.
My brother started playing on this server, I got fascinated by the server and sat and watched him play for hours #nolife
I actually hated on minecraft when he played, but, after a few days of watching him play I bought my own account and logged in to EMC. I bought a Minecraft account JUST to play on EMC.

I mainly got fascinated how the server worked. The way the economy was working and the plot system! oh, I loved EMC. I still do love EMC but I don't really feel that same exciting love for it anymore. I basically login to talk to the community and friends and maybe attend some Events as well.

My guess to why people leave is because they either grow up and realize they don't have as much fun with minecraft as they used to. I think people also leave because their friends leave so they leave as well. I guess I got lucky, still have some friends from the past which I always enjoy talking to but some players don't have those older friends from back in the day.

Hard to say what the problem is because there's most likely multiple factors that you have to take into consideration.

I did.

For me the criteria was simple in finding EMC. What is the best ranked non-pvp server out there? It was EMC, may still be, and should be, but I am not certain. I was looking for a place in which my family (wife, kids, and I) could play minecraft in a family friendly environment. We had played on our family server for well over a year, and I even thought it would be cool to start a server to host for others to join us on. Since finding EMC, I have decided to simply let Aikar and team handle the server side stuff, and I will just have fun with the family and friends here in the Empire. I like the overall format, and the customization's that the Empire has made. Yes, it may take a little while for new content, but I am older, and not really fond of always having to change quickly, so it works well for me. I am sure there is still a lot of content, I have not even fully explored as of yet, but I do have fun.

To me, I appreciated the tutorial, as it showed me this server really cared. I was in no way put off or confused by it, and have returned a few times on alts to collect easter eggs I will agree with what ShelLuser said though about new players winding up in the Frontier and then not being able to communicate as a potential problem. If the tutorial is still the same as it was, maybe taking down those waste / frontier portals at the end would help prevent such an occurrence.

Personally, I often find myself content to be the lone wolf type. I don't mind doing group events, and I do love to have help with a project, but if no one wants to lend a hand, I don't mind doing something by myself. Similar to what ChristopherJay said, I have some overall goals in mind that I keep working towards. From early on, I have set the goals far out, so as to make the project one that will take a considerable amount of time. It probably only took one good waste reset for me to realize that while it is fun to harvest material in the waste, the long term is not an option there. Shortly after that happened, I began to research just what the frontier was all about, and what outposts were, and how to start one. Then unlike others who prefer to have everything quick, and simply switch smp's to have a town life, and frontier life a /smp# away, I decided it would be best to be on the same server that I call home, and in time we could make it more fun to come out to the frontier.

I searched the live map for darkness, plotted my path, and set out to start an outpost beyond the 100k mark. Have I made mention I like to do stuff the hard way, and don't like short-cuts? Well, needless to say, the idea of going through the nether seemed like a cheat to me, so we went over land. I guess also the fact that griefing at the time was a big deal, and I figured who would want to travel over 100k to grief? Well, so far none to date.

To help facilitate travel to our outpost, we started a project of constructing roads through the frontier. My son SUPERI0N has really chipped in a lot here. The roads we made are more like sky bridges at either y-80 or y-90 height, so as to not interfere with the terrain as much, and to also make the road safer for travel. Ever so often we would make a tower for land access so people could check out the surrounding terrain. The initial stretch has helped many explorers find a plot of land I would like to think. There has even been one well known establishment (even though it is technically too close to spawn) spring up along that road known as UnderHelm. It makes me happy to know others have been able to utilize the road to further their endeavors. As such, I feel a nice road system would help many would be traveler's explore further out and the frontier outpost claims would grow.

So I guess the staying power of EMC lies in the family friendly community and my earnest endeavor to build a grand outpost for others to enjoy. The game I played before this was a 2-D Side scroller game that continually pushes the end-zone further and further out of reach. I actually made it to the end level once, but they raised it 25% a few months later, and I was like bleh. Plus that game did not tap into my creativity the way Minecraft does. I like the opportunity here in the Empire to build something cool, and then share it with an awesome community. I plan on being here for the long haul, an have invested in several Alt's for such an endeavor (9 Alts for Outpost Town Headquarters). I also proudly support the server with supporter subscriptions, and hope to do more in the future.

As stated above, this server may not be for everyone. I like to think if you are willing to actually take your time, and work towards something great, then it can be fun. If you are, however, one who likes to push everything to the limit and you hurry through obtaining all the stuff you can, and your goal is actually not very far reaching, then you will find yourself disappointed. If you have to rely on someone else to entertain you, then your destined for boredomville. I usually keep myself busy building at one of the points of interest in our family outpost, but if I were to get tired of that, I am sure I would go see who I could help as something different to do that I feel would be fun. Trust me there are many fun things here that beat grinding on the same ol' monsters for weeks on end just to obtain one measly level.

Maybe I haven't taken notice of the decline as OP states due to so much block laying,but I continue to hold to that age old saying: "If you build it, they will come." ( Yes, I know that is from a movie Plus, I guess it doesn't help that I am usually on after midnight. I personally feel the Empire is on the right path, and it's greatest days still lie on the horizon in an update called "Empires". When this takes place, I think we will see growth once again, as moving from one outpost to the other will become much easier, and people will be inspired again by all the awesome builds that have been previously out of sight.

I look forward to what others say on this topic.

KnightZer0ne
Tempered Outpost Founder

A happy and lucky start
EMC has started with a bunch of friends and friends of friends. The primary idea, AFAICT, was a server that would be tuned to suit the community. JustinGuy was there and has tried his best - that was the fast growth phase. But there was also the idea to give in-game currency to supporters, and also to sell the rupees for IRL money on the website. The older "core" players didn't mind too much, they didn't care, and enough of the new players did see this as a possibility to catch up in-game. EMC partially shifted towards pay-to-win. The inflation was not very big, because of the influx of new players.
Mistake #1: pay-to-win.

Broader community forms
Fast growth has changed the community, but JustinGuy was less and less present, and the new staff in charge had little idea about how to respond to changes. Instead of tuning the server to the needs of the community, they tried to tune the community to the needs of the server. "We know how this game shall be played."
Mistake #2: failed to adapt to the changes in the community, failed to serve the community.

The organization of the community life was very authoritarian and also totalitarian to some degree. Big Brother was supreme authority in all questions, the staff was organized as a secret service. Forum threads got locked if criticizing the leader or the staff, or for "drama" and even for some unrelated opinions that the leader didn't like. Staff rules were secret, so that "members wouldn't abuse them." There was no "civil law". Punishments were harsh, mostly permanent ban. Decisions of the staff are final and shall not be discussed. There was even a cult of personality (something like Great Leader JustinGuy and Dear Leader ICC). "This is just what the on-line kids need, we know best." The Staff didn't understand, that this is not a good idea for an online community.
Mistake #3: authoritarian style, secret rules, police system, "hard and impenitent heart".

Most decisions about the life of the community came from the top staff and were presented to the community as already enacted. "Because we say so, and we know better." Polls for comments and suggestions were an exception and were reduced to questions like "how do you rate this or that".
Mistake #4: failed to involve the community.

The great depression
EMC went into a big depression, so big that even the staff had to admit it. There was also a depression in the EMC economy, the inflation was raging. Instead of creating new challenges and involving the community, the staff tried to please the players by making the game easier. Rupee was devaluated (compared to US$) on regular basis and has seen even bigger depreciation in-game.
Mistake #5: Making the game easier instead of adding challenges.

A new start
EMC was sold to Aikar and one of the first thing he did was to invest in advertising - both money and player time through voting. You get in-game rewards for voting. This did bring a significant inflow of new players and has stopped the depression, also in the EMC economy. He has also replaced the head of staff with Krysyy (ICC was expelled for having his own server project). Krysyy took the title of "Community Manager" giving some hope to the community, but then did little to depart from the old ways, and did that far too slow. Authoritarian style continued - "Nobody shall belittle our staff", "We know best, we care about the players who can't or wouldn't vote."
Mistake #6: missed a good chance to rework the system and make it better.

A third chance?
That's where we are now, but the influx of players is not as great as it was a year ago. Perhaps there's still a good chance to change for better.
General idea: to succeed, EMC (the staff) has to serve the community.

This is very simplified and leaves out many important details, but I hope you can get the idea - you can get my opinion about mistakes that caused depression and that are preventing EMC from growing.
This is not to say that EMC staff didn't do anything good. They did plenty, but perhaps not enough.
On a server like EMC, there are two, I'd say equally important parts - the game itself and everything around the game what supports the community. EMC does the first part very well, but neglects the second part.

I think part of the issue is that a lot of players have school and school related work with little time to play video games. With winter break starting (or starting soon), I think EMC might see a slight increase in player count.

I joined while I was testing through a bunch of different servers, I stayed because I liked the town and economy system, and more explained later.
The real problem honestly is that Minecraft is dying, and the few new players usually are very younger and only attracted to servers that they've seen the big youtubers play on, basically minigame ones. I actually decided to go on one of those servers, which I used to play on a lot a year ago-even that one was dying. It used to have almost 100k players at a time, there were barely 6k now.
So this dying base obviously affects emc in ways they can't control. It also seems to have resulted in a rise of exclusive cliques or groups of players who don't interact much outside of their said groups. This is off-putting to the new players who come online and ask for help or just ask if anyone is there, and nobody replies so they leave (I've seen that happen myself a lot). Back when I joined smp4 town chat was alive like crazy, it wasn't just one group using it either, everyone was chatting and joking and it was a really friendly and welcoming atmosphere. It wasn't hard for me at all to make some friends in my first few days. That's the long reason I stayed. You just don't see that anymore, now chat is always dead and nobody's doing anything with each other.
Now I stopped playing not because of anything emc did but because Minecraft as a game is so boring now. I did basically everything that a person could do in a year, and then only stayed to chat with friends. Now most of them are gone, and the ones who still play aren't on a lot.

Since other people are doing this....

I don't know why I'm still here.

I don't like Minecraft anymore (I've been playing it for six years, what do you expect lol) and I don't find the in-game portion of EMC very fun either. It was late 2012 when EMC started to turn into something else (*cough* Dragon Tombs *cough*), and it was early 2014 that I realised it was trying to be something it wasn't. Nowadays both Minecraft and EMC are completely different things than what I signed up for. Truth be told, I don't know I'm even still on the forums. I guess it just became such a big part of my daily life I got addicted to it - an addiction that I managed to break this year. At this point I'm just waiting for the right moment to leave.

I'm take9 lol.

I'd say something about newer player retention rates, but I haven't played enough in the last year to say I have any proper judgement on the subject. The only thing I can say is that player retention has been an issue since around April 2012 - that's the time when SMP3 went from constantly full to around 15 players on at a time. The few times I've logged in there over the past year, there's never been more than ten online at once - most of them are new players in the tutorial, who don't stick around for very long after completing it.

Doesn't mean it isn't on decline (which it is). It's still pulling in a lot of new players, yes, but that growth is nothing compared to a few years ago. Everyone knows what Minecraft is - most of those who want to play it have already played it. It's already reached its maximum population growth.

Why did I stay? Well I stayed because I was tired of having to kill other players just so I could mine some diamonds, also go pretty tedious creating traps to make a living on servers. In all due point I stayed because I was getting annoyed with PvP based servers.

As for new players, you may notice barely anybody makes it to one year on this server anymore, if my assumptions of how many people actually join this server then leave soon after is correct. For all honesty I do believe that many people just don't have the care to go over all these rules. The rules are there for reasons, they pretty much make EMC what it is: a no PvP survival server. If you ask me, lots of people who play Minecraft want to ruin another person's day. EMC doesn't allow that.

I've been in the wild and new players have tried to kill me with a sword for whatever reason, I've even almost fell into a trap, which I did disable. Makes me wonder if people are not reading what the server is about or truly don't care. I wonder how many of the griefs to frontier bases are by new players.

Anyways, if you guys want to keep new players around, I think that may be difficult. Since there is no world PvP and no griefing allowed, but I think that's what makes EMC appeal to so many more people who wouldn't have a server to stay on, if it weren't for EMC.

I've been playing the server for almost 5 years, and I've seen a LOT of people come and go.

I agree with kryssy on a lot of the things she said, lots of them are probably just joining to grief and leave, or hack and leave. I do see a lot of people stay too. I think the ones that do stay for looking for something different from the game. Which is why I think a lot of people are switching to modded games now. Plugins can only do so much to the game and it could be that it isn't enough to satisfy them.

Why is chat turned off for new players in tutorial? We can't tell them anything like welcome, or pay attention to the tutorial, or invite them to town after the tutorial. Was town chat too distracting? Maybe have it to where new players can only see direct messages in town chat? They are just kind of on their own in there. Maybe people respond better to people than signs? Keep the signs in case of no people. Just my guess as to how to help out. Not really thought out too much.

It seems you're asking those of us who stay on EMC why others leave and I'm not sure, although I like points that Sheluser and Krysyy have brought up regarding new users going to the Frontier.

My personal opinion is that EMC can only do so much, in the end it's about the game of Minecraft. Either new players want to actually play the game, or they don't. Minigame servers keep some players attention by constantly having something going on in the form of a game... but this server here is a Survival server at it's core. Either a player wants to play Minecraft in this style or they don't... there isn't going to be constant stimuli in your face, you have to make your own fun sometimes. If you be patient then there is a ton of fun to have on this server... there is the basic Survival aspect but there are also group builds, PVP arena, various group events (including spontaneous ones like Sheluser wants), and the shop aspect where you can try to gain the most rupees. But all of these things only exist if you're going to stick around and become part of the community rather than expecting to log on and instantly be thrust into a minigame and be able to log off 30 minutes later having been entertained the entire time.

I think the biggest problem right now could be stagnation. Every month we get a ton of posts and it is actually pretty fun when it happens, but between then we have dead silence. I realize that work is going on a ton behind the scenes, but it really doesn't matter if players don't hear about it. There needs to be more reasons for hype in the community. As of right now, there isn't really anything to hype about in EMC's future. Sure, 1.11 is coming, but that is a given and is more of a bug fix than something new. There should be more staff events (both planned and spontaneous) that aren't just the usual events. There should be more transparency in development. Seeing "surprise, this thing is finally done" is fun when it happens, but everything before then isn't. More "here is a screenshot or progress report" would be fantastic. It would also be cool if the staff drummed up hype around things by "accidentally" leaking some progress in a creative or interesting way. There is a reason why tech companies purposely leak information before and announcement. There could also be events surrounding new updates. Currently we get a forum post and that is it. A new feature or update should be a fantastic chance to get lurkers back into the game and an event surrounding a feature is a great way to do that.

These are things that I think can overcome the inevitable boredom that comes with a game.