[Update 2009/07/04 - I've posted an updated version of this post as an article on the Alter Aeon web site.]
All too often, articles talking about gold balance do little more than state simply that 'most MMOs have problems with gold balance'. Rather than waste your time, I'll describe a successful example of a gold economy, and what it took to get there.
Alter Aeon handles its gold economy fairly well, after many years of tweaking. The foundation for this stability is accurate gold tracking:
- All gold sources and sinks are tracked and understood
- Real-time gold stats are available
- Unexpected or 'dangerous' gold changes are logged
- Large gold changes, even valid transactions, trigger notifies just in case
- There's a single global value representing all gold in circulation
Just tracking the flow of gold through the system was useful, but completely ineffective in actually managing the economy. Usually when a game manages to get numbers, they have active immortals adjust things on a continuous basis to keep the economy under control. We decided that this would be a complete waste of time for an immortal; we have computers to do boring tasks like this.
Therefore, we don't bring immortals or builders into the picture at all. Nearly all gold drops are calculated from statistics and game parameters. Adding this helped tremendously, but was still not enough to stabilize the economy on its own. In the long run, we ended up with several layers that each contribute to the whole system:
- Mobs drop gold based on their death or theft rates; object gold is similarly modified with every looting of a treasure object. The purpose of this dynamic feedback is to prevent one source from dominating or becoming the 'easy gold'.
- Large quantities of gold are taxed. Characters holding more than a million gold are taxed on the amount above a million gold, to the tune of about 2% per week. The purpose of the tax is to prevent packrats from accumulating unlimited hoards.
- Clan and guild bank accounts can only hold a limited amount. Since the very existence of the clan indicates that gold is being paid in dues, this limited amount is fairly high (on the order of 50 million gold.)
- Player shops can hold an unlimited amount, but generally shops have high rent rates, so gold turnover has so far not been a problem there.
- Dynamic pricing of items alters the price of items for sale in shops based on how often they are shoplifted. If a particular item is stolen too often, the price is lowered and the theft difficulty is raised to make the price more cost-competitive.
But by far the most critical part of the system is the global offset controller. This control system monitors the total quantity of gold in existence, and subtly tweaks the gold sources based on that value. The short-delay term of the control system looks at local deviations from the long term expectation, and fairly aggressively modifies the global gold sources. This short-delay term can change total gold influx on the order of 50% in a one week period if necessary.
As the total quantity of gold in existence changes, the long-delay term of the control system slowly adjusts the set point for the short-delay calculations. If a large amount of gold is in circulation, the short-delay set point will be lowered, globally lowering the input of gold into the system.
The net result of all this is that we have a system that allows for fairly substantial deviations in the short term, but always returns to long term stability. Total gold in circulation has varied by approximately 10% (peak of 528 million to trough of 482 million) over the last two years, and I no longer hear the once-common complaint that gold is worthless.
Showing posts with label statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label statistics. Show all posts
Friday, July 3, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Newbie Statistics
I had a brainstorm the other day for how to pull a certain class of statistics from the various logfiles and other data we track in the game. The idea is that we grab all the new characters created in a one month time period, then see how many of them continued to log in for successive months. I decided to try this on four month time periods to filter out storage characters and other infrequently used but legitimate pfiles.
Here's a chunk of sample data, looking at how many of the players we got in January continued to log in for February, March, and April:
Total created in 2009-01: 230
Total last saved in 2009-04 or earlier: 198
Total last saved in 2009-01: 146 Average Total Levels: 8
Total last saved in 2009-02: 21 Average Total Levels: 22
Total last saved in 2009-03: 16 Average Total Levels: 28
Total last saved in 2009-04: 15 Average Total Levels: 30
Some quick observations to distill it down:
- Of the 230 characters created in January, 198 have not yet logged in for May. Only 32 of 230 (14%) have been active this month.
- Nearly all of the dropouts are in the first month, with 146/230 logins (63%) never bothering to log in again.
- Once you get past that critical first month drop out period, we lose people at a relatively steady rate.
- The first month players actually get more than one level. They get 8 on average. Even having leveled multiple times, they still don't return.
When I looked more closely at the data, I found some obvious patterns for nearly all of the people that drop out in the first month. In particular, they play the game for a reasonable period of time (15 minutes to two hours), get a handful of levels, learn a few things, then log off. About half of these never sign in again. The remainder sign in a small number of times, generally for only a couple of minutes, then sign back out.
There's a really obvious reason: The game isn't fun enough to hook newbies at low levels. They're bored, and don't know what to do when they return.
Ways to improve this:
- Add more really low level quests in the encampment. (I already have a couple ideas for this.)
- Add more quest guides for the Vemarken and other Sloe quests.
- DClient changes to make quests and other things more obvious and interesting (in progress.)
- Build the low level generic skills (cooking, skinning, etc) and make them useful. This may involve some form of low level crafting.
- Possibly give return bonuses. I believe I saw a game at one point that gave increased experience if you returned after a long absence.
This is more than enough stuff in the short term to keep me and probably several other people busy. Unfortunately, the only things I can offload onto others are the first two, and I'll probably still end up being involved at least incidentally to do cleanup and monitoring. I generally have a better idea of where the dropout points are for really low level players, because I spend more time watching them.
If I get all of this done before the end of May, I will be very surprised. It's a good short term goal though. (The return bonuses are excluded for now, as I don't know if we want to go that route. I'll have to think about that one a bit more.)
Here's a chunk of sample data, looking at how many of the players we got in January continued to log in for February, March, and April:
Total created in 2009-01: 230
Total last saved in 2009-04 or earlier: 198
Total last saved in 2009-01: 146 Average Total Levels: 8
Total last saved in 2009-02: 21 Average Total Levels: 22
Total last saved in 2009-03: 16 Average Total Levels: 28
Total last saved in 2009-04: 15 Average Total Levels: 30
Some quick observations to distill it down:
- Of the 230 characters created in January, 198 have not yet logged in for May. Only 32 of 230 (14%) have been active this month.
- Nearly all of the dropouts are in the first month, with 146/230 logins (63%) never bothering to log in again.
- Once you get past that critical first month drop out period, we lose people at a relatively steady rate.
- The first month players actually get more than one level. They get 8 on average. Even having leveled multiple times, they still don't return.
When I looked more closely at the data, I found some obvious patterns for nearly all of the people that drop out in the first month. In particular, they play the game for a reasonable period of time (15 minutes to two hours), get a handful of levels, learn a few things, then log off. About half of these never sign in again. The remainder sign in a small number of times, generally for only a couple of minutes, then sign back out.
There's a really obvious reason: The game isn't fun enough to hook newbies at low levels. They're bored, and don't know what to do when they return.
Ways to improve this:
- Add more really low level quests in the encampment. (I already have a couple ideas for this.)
- Add more quest guides for the Vemarken and other Sloe quests.
- DClient changes to make quests and other things more obvious and interesting (in progress.)
- Build the low level generic skills (cooking, skinning, etc) and make them useful. This may involve some form of low level crafting.
- Possibly give return bonuses. I believe I saw a game at one point that gave increased experience if you returned after a long absence.
This is more than enough stuff in the short term to keep me and probably several other people busy. Unfortunately, the only things I can offload onto others are the first two, and I'll probably still end up being involved at least incidentally to do cleanup and monitoring. I generally have a better idea of where the dropout points are for really low level players, because I spend more time watching them.
If I get all of this done before the end of May, I will be very surprised. It's a good short term goal though. (The return bonuses are excluded for now, as I don't know if we want to go that route. I'll have to think about that one a bit more.)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Clients and Newbies
I recently released a new client update for Alter Aeon, one that includes (but is not limited to) the following cool changes:
- vastly upgraded automap
- vote menu
- 'last command select'
- various settings now save
- function key alias mapping
This really is a big step forward in the evolution of the client, and I've received a lot of compliments on it. Unfortunately, there is a problem with this client release, and it all goes back to the problem of newbie retention. But before we go into that, here's some background on the current state of newbies on the game.
-----
There appears to be three primary types of new player right now:
1) Sighted players from mudlists, who generally already have a client. These players usually don't download the custom client, and if they did they probably would go back to their own client anyway.
2) Blind players who use blind clients. They generally don't use the AA client, as it has crap for blind player support.
3) True new players who probably have never mudded before. These people are the long-term future, as the number of mudlist players is shrinking and blind players will eventually get their eyes fixed. This is also by far the largest market to tap. You don't compete with World of Warcraft unless you're hitting up ordinary sighted people.
The mudlist players will pretty much do their own thing. There's a limit to how much you can do with them, as they have their own opinions already. Many are unrecoverable, as they have been damaged by some other mud.
Blind players we seem to be doing reasonably well with. I have no complaints here, other than making the AA client work really well with readers would probably help a good amount.
The third category, by far the biggest market, is the problem. Since they have no prior mudding experience, odds are very good they downloaded the client, which shows up easily in my stats. I can also track logins based on web page hits. If this class of player is sticking around, I'll see it by looking for newbie players using the client.
This is exactly what I don't see. I see the expected players log in with the client, just as they should. There's a large initial dropout rate, but a good percentage of them level and play for a while. After that they all disappear. We're not keeping people entertained.
I suspect what's going on is they play for a while, run out of stuff to do or don't see the point, and bail. That pretty much describes my first mudding experiences; I got a low level character and basically just wandered around looking at stuff. None of the text meant anything in particular to me, and I would wander ridiculous places because I didn't know where to go or what to do. I didn't even know what the point of the game was.
I clearly need to add a lot more statistics tracking and try to see where the dropoffs are occuring - what level ranges, number of logins, etc. With this information in hand we can improve the introductory areas; but so far, my initial numbers indicate that the dropoffs happen for the newbie areas that are well tested and considered in good shape. So what is really going on?
-----
The final piece of the puzzle revolves around the massively improved automap function in the new client. I tried really hard to play with the mouse for a while, and it worked as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, when using and concentrating on exploring using the map, the entire text window (which contains everything that's important) disappears. Not from the client, but from your mind. It simply isn't as important as the automap. Looking back at it takes effort.
So say you're exploring with the map. You see unexplored spots on the map, you know you can go that way, and you click the button to go there. Nothing happens. You click the button again - you just want to go explore that part of the map - and nothing happens again. How irritating.
Nothing happens because you're fighting. But unless you take your eyes off the map and look back to the main window, you don't notice it. You just get irritated that you didn't move when you clicked the button. And all the scrolling crap in the main window, highlighted and all, really doesn't mean anything to you.
I've got a few things in the works to combat this, including audio sounds for fighting, changing the buttons in combat, and changing the area description to list various positions such as "Combat!", sleeping, resting, etc. That will have to wait until next week though, as I've got a lot of web work to get caught up on as well.
It's definitely a good problem to chew on.
- vastly upgraded automap
- vote menu
- 'last command select'
- various settings now save
- function key alias mapping
This really is a big step forward in the evolution of the client, and I've received a lot of compliments on it. Unfortunately, there is a problem with this client release, and it all goes back to the problem of newbie retention. But before we go into that, here's some background on the current state of newbies on the game.
-----
There appears to be three primary types of new player right now:
1) Sighted players from mudlists, who generally already have a client. These players usually don't download the custom client, and if they did they probably would go back to their own client anyway.
2) Blind players who use blind clients. They generally don't use the AA client, as it has crap for blind player support.
3) True new players who probably have never mudded before. These people are the long-term future, as the number of mudlist players is shrinking and blind players will eventually get their eyes fixed. This is also by far the largest market to tap. You don't compete with World of Warcraft unless you're hitting up ordinary sighted people.
The mudlist players will pretty much do their own thing. There's a limit to how much you can do with them, as they have their own opinions already. Many are unrecoverable, as they have been damaged by some other mud.
Blind players we seem to be doing reasonably well with. I have no complaints here, other than making the AA client work really well with readers would probably help a good amount.
The third category, by far the biggest market, is the problem. Since they have no prior mudding experience, odds are very good they downloaded the client, which shows up easily in my stats. I can also track logins based on web page hits. If this class of player is sticking around, I'll see it by looking for newbie players using the client.
This is exactly what I don't see. I see the expected players log in with the client, just as they should. There's a large initial dropout rate, but a good percentage of them level and play for a while. After that they all disappear. We're not keeping people entertained.
I suspect what's going on is they play for a while, run out of stuff to do or don't see the point, and bail. That pretty much describes my first mudding experiences; I got a low level character and basically just wandered around looking at stuff. None of the text meant anything in particular to me, and I would wander ridiculous places because I didn't know where to go or what to do. I didn't even know what the point of the game was.
I clearly need to add a lot more statistics tracking and try to see where the dropoffs are occuring - what level ranges, number of logins, etc. With this information in hand we can improve the introductory areas; but so far, my initial numbers indicate that the dropoffs happen for the newbie areas that are well tested and considered in good shape. So what is really going on?
-----
The final piece of the puzzle revolves around the massively improved automap function in the new client. I tried really hard to play with the mouse for a while, and it worked as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, when using and concentrating on exploring using the map, the entire text window (which contains everything that's important) disappears. Not from the client, but from your mind. It simply isn't as important as the automap. Looking back at it takes effort.
So say you're exploring with the map. You see unexplored spots on the map, you know you can go that way, and you click the button to go there. Nothing happens. You click the button again - you just want to go explore that part of the map - and nothing happens again. How irritating.
Nothing happens because you're fighting. But unless you take your eyes off the map and look back to the main window, you don't notice it. You just get irritated that you didn't move when you clicked the button. And all the scrolling crap in the main window, highlighted and all, really doesn't mean anything to you.
I've got a few things in the works to combat this, including audio sounds for fighting, changing the buttons in combat, and changing the area description to list various positions such as "Combat!", sleeping, resting, etc. That will have to wait until next week though, as I've got a lot of web work to get caught up on as well.
It's definitely a good problem to chew on.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Google Page Rank
As I posted a while back, the AA website's page rank recently went up; since the site went from 2 to 3, there's been a factor of 1.5 increase in overall traffic to the site. Newbie logins, and Google Analytics stats all seem to reflect this general increase.
However, I'm not sure I buy it. When I look at the competitive analysis trend lines in Analytics, I see a pretty regular pattern leading up into December, then things start to look a little different. Going into January, it appears that the global amount of traffic in all categories has increased by the exact same factor of 1.5 I'm seeing on AA. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. I've seen January increases before, but I never paid much attention to it. I always figured it was people waiting to go back to school, bored and without much to do.
One possibility is that the competetive analysis numbers I'm seeing are related to reclassification of the web site. When a page/site changes page rank, does Google reclassify the site to compare it to the new group? It's possible that the wierdness I'm seeing is simply the new competition in the new page rank category. It would be nice to have more information on this.
Whatever the reason, this influx of newbies is really refreshing. I can only hope that it's not a temporary blip, and that it continues going forward. For too many months did I work on the web site to see no gain whatsoever.
In other news, I found out the reason for the massive drop in players around the October time frame: competition. A rather large group of dedicated blind mudders for all intents and purposes got bored and left to go to another (very large) mud. I've learned several things from finding this out:
1) I need to pay more attention
2) My mortals are bored
3) It's possible to do what I want to do. The target mud has on the order of a thousand players on it. That's the short term goal for AA.
4) I'm slacking. This is my fault. See #1 above.
So I suppose I have a belated new-years resolution: I will pay more attention to the competition and what they are doing.
However, I'm not sure I buy it. When I look at the competitive analysis trend lines in Analytics, I see a pretty regular pattern leading up into December, then things start to look a little different. Going into January, it appears that the global amount of traffic in all categories has increased by the exact same factor of 1.5 I'm seeing on AA. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. I've seen January increases before, but I never paid much attention to it. I always figured it was people waiting to go back to school, bored and without much to do.
One possibility is that the competetive analysis numbers I'm seeing are related to reclassification of the web site. When a page/site changes page rank, does Google reclassify the site to compare it to the new group? It's possible that the wierdness I'm seeing is simply the new competition in the new page rank category. It would be nice to have more information on this.
Whatever the reason, this influx of newbies is really refreshing. I can only hope that it's not a temporary blip, and that it continues going forward. For too many months did I work on the web site to see no gain whatsoever.
In other news, I found out the reason for the massive drop in players around the October time frame: competition. A rather large group of dedicated blind mudders for all intents and purposes got bored and left to go to another (very large) mud. I've learned several things from finding this out:
1) I need to pay more attention
2) My mortals are bored
3) It's possible to do what I want to do. The target mud has on the order of a thousand players on it. That's the short term goal for AA.
4) I'm slacking. This is my fault. See #1 above.
So I suppose I have a belated new-years resolution: I will pay more attention to the competition and what they are doing.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Logins and players and statistics, oh my!
I just pulled some stats for the last few days and did some crunching on them. I need to do this more often so I keep in mind where the easy gains are to be had, and how to be more productive with my limited time.
These numbers are with a pretty pessimistic stripping to eliminate existing players, and to try to only take into account totally new players.
182 + 19 = 201 total newbies
19 (9.5%) of incoming connections resulted in a saved newbie. Of the unsaved players:
182 unsaved players
29 (16%) made it to entering a name
24 (13%) made it to login
-------------------------------------------------------------
People using the dclient did a bit better:
36 + 12 = 48 newbies using the dclient
12 (25%) of incoming dclient connections resulted in a saved newbie, instead of 9.5% from other clients. Of the unsaved players:
36 unsaved players using the dclient
13 (36%) made it to entering a name
13 (36%) made it to login
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to gather from the above that improving the login screens and mechanisms could easily double the number of new players in the game. I've been meaning to rip up the intro screens anyway and reorganize things, and now I have a bit more incentive.
Samon's idea of getting the client improved and more widely distributed is also a good one.
These numbers are with a pretty pessimistic stripping to eliminate existing players, and to try to only take into account totally new players.
182 + 19 = 201 total newbies
19 (9.5%) of incoming connections resulted in a saved newbie. Of the unsaved players:
182 unsaved players
29 (16%) made it to entering a name
24 (13%) made it to login
-------------------------------------------------------------
People using the dclient did a bit better:
36 + 12 = 48 newbies using the dclient
12 (25%) of incoming dclient connections resulted in a saved newbie, instead of 9.5% from other clients. Of the unsaved players:
36 unsaved players using the dclient
13 (36%) made it to entering a name
13 (36%) made it to login
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to gather from the above that improving the login screens and mechanisms could easily double the number of new players in the game. I've been meaning to rip up the intro screens anyway and reorganize things, and now I have a bit more incentive.
Samon's idea of getting the client improved and more widely distributed is also a good one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)