Fleeing The Game

[kitex]

I am not going to have some long winded speech about how I piss and moan and blame people for why the nation count is decreasing so much. What I want to hear from you is, what do you think are the root cause(s) of why so many people are leaving the game and how we can reverse this population decline.

So let's hear it

[Bill Wallace]

More war. More drama. Less reparations. Just my opinion.

[remembermistersmythe]

When I first joined the game in late 07 it was rapidly growing. Now that I've come back some fundamental things I've noticed that coincided with the state of nations now:

-The highly inflated NS of nations that have been around forever-- numbers I never thought would happen when I was first playing. It's just plain time-consuming to become a real player nowadays.

-The rise of tech deals and the sale of donations--something that hadn't played nearly the role it does now in nation growth and expansion-- also feeding into the high NS phenomenon.

-Let's face it, it's just not easy to come to this forum and find one's way around Bob. I was a well-experienced player when I left, and upon returning I still have so much to catch up on around the forum area, on stuff I missed, from new developments to new alliances, wars, and even the terminology is INCREDIBLY difficult to keep up with unless you're around a lot.

Also, I feel the number of nations is a bit cyclical. The number of nations in the game has been rising since what is, at least in the West, the new school year. Makes sense that the game would hit a bit of a lull in the summer, what with people having stuff to do.

Personally I don't feel it's as much an ideological issue as some do, but rather the result of a game with evolving mechanics, combined with the real-life coming and going of the RL "busy season"

Just my rambling, take from it what you will. I do look forward to reading what other more thoroughly experienced CNers have to say.

[Jay Z]

Too many treaties.

Also the # of people isn't declining as some might think. Deleted multies is a huge cause too I'm sure!

[quigon jinn]

The gameplay is lame.

Impossible to catch up in any significant fashion unless you want to devote years to CN. No end game. No punishment to "bad" players at high levels with only age being the reason they got there; if skill was required to maintain a 20k infra nation or risk bill lock/etc this would create a much more competition friendly environment. Now all you have to do is log in once every 20 (or even 25) days, click "pay bills" and "colllect taxes" and you are good to go. No huge reward for people who are active every 10 minutes vs 20 days and certainly no punishment. The "reward" is that after several years you will perhaps be ahead of them.

[Mathias]

The game isn't bringing in enough new players to replace those that are quitting/deleting due to inactivity. It's a promotional problem, not a political problem.

BUT REALLY IT'S ALL GOONS FAULT BECAUSE THEY TECH RAID!

[ktarthan]

The higher the top nations get, the longer it takes to catch up. While it is true that a small but proactive nation can make political ripples, but there really is no in-game way to be "relevant" in war until you've been playing for a year or two. And despite how much everyone harps on "The community is the real game", the people that say that are ones that are active in the community. I'm going to guess it isn't these people that make up the majority of nation deletion.

[quote name='Mathias' timestamp='1285959422' post='2471287']
The game isn't bringing in enough new players to replace those that are quitting/deleting due to inactivity. It's a promotional problem, not a political problem.

BUT REALLY IT'S ALL GOONS FAULT BECAUSE THEY TECH RAID!
[/quote]

All according to plan.

Edited October 1, 2010 by ktarthan

[xoindotnler]

Overall decline in popularity of web-browser games.

[Jens of the desert]

[quote name='ktarthan' timestamp='1285959534' post='2471288']

All according to plan.
[/quote]
I kind of hate it when people humour terrible jokes like that.

[Uralica]

[quote name='Jay Z' timestamp='1285957178' post='2471256']
[b]Too many treaties.[/b]
[/quote]Agreed, and it's something I touched on by implication in another thread. Some alliances in particular need to drastically cut down on their number of military treaties. I think TOOL is pretty safe with only four MDP+

[quote]Also the # of people isn't declining as some might think. Deleted multies is a huge cause too I'm sure![/quote] Wouldn't surprise me. Some people never learn.

[quote name='xoindotnler' timestamp='1285960567' post='2471298']
Overall decline in popularity of web-browser games.
[/quote] Also not surprising. The last two newish browser games I've played barely got off the ground.

[Aurion]

It happens when new nation creation falls off to the point where it isn't replacing losses. Doubly so when the new people look up the mountain and realize just how long it'll take for their nation to actually be of any real size. You can call for more drama all you like, but most of the people who aren't hooked into the community and political drama actually like building nice pixel collections, so...

Most other browser games don't literally take [i]years[/i] to build a nation or kingdom or whatever the heck worth the name.

Edited October 1, 2010 by Aurion

[LegendoftheSkies]

[quote name='quigon jinn' timestamp='1285959175' post='2471285']
The gameplay is lame.
[/quote]

I agree.

Ever since I've been here, this has been a game in which the players have been required to create their own fun due to the fact that the game itself provides very little of it. In fact, many aspects of the game are pointless and annoying (trades are a prime example).

I stick around only because I've befriended a lot of people who the game by now and my nation gives me an excuse to stick around and hang out with them. The large community is really the only redeeming factor. Even then, said community is steadily shrinking and becoming more sedentary and less willing to shake things up.

[Biazt]

Like others have said it's the length of time it takes for new nations to build up anywhere near close enough to be relevant.

Edited October 1, 2010 by Biazt

[Necromancer V4L]

MK tanking the game because they can't get the #1 spot.

/me puts on tinfoil hat.

[kentsfield]

Its a spreadsheet web game living in a modern world.

[xoindotnler]

[quote name='kentsfield' timestamp='1285975461' post='2471609']
Its a spreadsheet web game living in a modern world.
[/quote]
"Mommy's why isn't it in 3D and has text and stuff?" "Oh this is one of these ancient browser games."

[ChairmanHal]

[quote name='Jay Z' timestamp='1285957178' post='2471256']
Too many treaties.

Also the # of people isn't declining as some might think. Deleted multies is a huge cause too I'm sure!
[/quote]

It was in 2006. These days it's pretty much a non-factor.

Indeed, people finding that they are unable to play due to IP restrictions because a family member is playing, or someone at their local high school is playing, is keeping the number of players artificially lower. Handheld, Internet-capable devices may actually turn the tide somewhat as they become increasingly capable of navigating the CN web site and the cost of their use continues to plummet.

I do worry though that a combination of factors I detail in another thread may be leading to further nation loss, including treaty web ossification, player frustration over raids and other factors, player boredom, etc.

[ChairmanHal]

[quote name='xoindotnler' timestamp='1285975605' post='2471612']
"Mommy's why isn't it in 3D and has text and stuff?" "Oh this is one of these ancient browser games."
[/quote]

I'm actually glad it isn't. Those people nursing old PCs until they can afford a newer model (and the US economy being what it is, that might be a while...) could give a crap if a game takes advantage of all the 2 gigs of processing power offered a video card they don't have. I can fire this game up and multitask to my heart's content.

[Cortath]

Far and away, it's due to the incredibly bad economic system.

The economic system doesn't scale at all. this means that the largest nations get so big simply by living for a really long time. There's no skill involved, only perseverance.

This has profound military effects: alliances are loathe to go to war where the damage incurred in a brief time takes years to rebuild. Thus, wars, when they come are much much larger and involve huge reparations, because that's the only way to keep an alliance down. Three years ago, an alliance could be utterly crushed and be rebuilt within a month because even the victors' nations were not much larger. There's no way to rebuild a large nation other than to hunker down for a year or two and not get crushed. Again, three years ago, the aid system was such that nations could be rebuilt to be equal to their victor-peers within a couple aid cycles.

Edited October 2, 2010 by Cortath

[The MVP]

Boredom. I mean who plays a game out of boredom? Who leaves a game out of boredom? There you go.

[Denial]

[quote name='quigon jinn' timestamp='1285959175' post='2471285']
The gameplay is lame.[/quote]
Pretty much this.

The moral crusaders and propagandists can harp on about tech raiding or whatever else driving hordes of people out of the game, but any impact tech raiding may have is a drop in the bucket compared to the [i]thousands[/i] of players that quit the game because: i) the gameplay does not hold anyone's attention for that long, ii) it is bordering on impossible for a new player to catch up to the largest nations, and iii) there have been zero meaningful updates in the last 18 months.

[SpoiL]

The nails been hit right on the head. The game is boring for one. The only fun part about it is the politics, debate, and war and war is too costly.

[Vanilla Napalm]

i'm not sure when people weren't fleeing the game. The only thing thats been consistently high since 2008 has been the frequency of threads about people 'fleeing the game'.

[Kevin McDonald]

These threads.

[Mathias]

If there was an update that made the speed/ease of nation growth based on how much smaller you are compared to the largest nation, that could help draw/keep new players. That way, they'd be able to build their nations quickly, and alliances would more readily go to war knowing that they could quickly rebuild what was lost.



[size="1"]
Note: If that doesn't make sense, ignore it. I don't usually put forth ideas like that since I can never be sure if my ideas are actually possible/logical. [/size]