Attracting new players / preventing exodus

[Junesun]

Hi,

I think Cantr, especially the foreign-language versions, has a huge problem with people who join the game only to abandon their characters or let them die within the first week.
The reason for such behaviour may be not boredom but being unable to understand the interface and making the right interactions - which would also explain why e. g. the Russian group, who has the most trouble making sense out of the English captions and descriptions (because of the different script), has the most trouble to get established.

I have thought of several things that could help solve this problem:
1. Create a tutorial that explains the interface
2. Write a newbie guide whose purpose would mainly be to tell people the things every Cantr player should know, e. g. that they should first make sure they have some food, that hitting people or stealing things isn't a good idea at the start, nothing earth-shattering, you know. A friend of mine for example, who joined Cantr very recently, didn't see anybody of interest in his starting location and started travelling immediately, now his character will probably die either during the travel or in the new location, if he lands in the mountains for example. That is very discourageing.
3. Alternatively, program Cantr the way that the very first character a new player creates automatically lands in a civilised place, where more experienced players can help him to get familiar with the game.

Just my two cents.

Judith

[new.vogue.nightmare]

There have been attempts to write such guides, many of them quite good, but they have mostly vanished into the mists of the forums and such...

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

maybe a search should be done for these lost fragment's of wisdom and the best part's dragged back into a single post that could be made sticky. or even make a newbie section of the forum so that new player's can go there to specifically ask there question's and the more experienced player's can go there to answer there question. other games i've played have done this and it's been very successful in keeping new player's around. some new player's feel like they'll be treated like idiot's if they ask question's in the main section of the forum. if possible put a newbie section in for each language so that they can ask in their language aswell if that makes sence

[Junesun]

I think one of the registration pages or the confirming e-mail should include a link to that newbie guide, because people don't necessarily go to the forums at first. I don't think a new section dedicated to newbie questions is necessary, because there aren't that many vital things that people would ask about; it'd suffice to compile a document with the most important things. If there are more questions, they can be put in the General forum and the document can be updated if necessary.

[Ash]

But would people actually click this newbie guide link? There should be a page that come up when they start there first chars, like the page after they just spawn there first chars, slap bang, there.

[Sho]

We have a topic on this in the general discussion forum, with a draft guide.

[The Industriallist]

Of course, there is also the problem that some people just don't care. I've had people say they tried it... once And maybe checked back a week later and found themselves dead. They should know better, there is enough information shoved in front of them to know better, but they don't read it.

This really annoys me...

[grayjaket]

Yeah...my dad did that. And a couple of my friends. Course, most of them started a second account and now they are obessessed with the game...hehe