Suggestion Few Reasons New Players Quit + Suggestions To Fix It

[JrCheeseBall]

Ok you can guess what this suggestion is about by reading the title of this and while noone would really care to read this, I think a problem you all already know should be addressed, welp here is a list of why players quit herocraft when they 1st join it ( Gonna label them in this colour )

The tutorial for this server is too complex:
Before you start complaining about the fact that some players can't read, that is not true, the tutorial just throws infomation at them and expecting them to type what the server wants and if allowing a option to skip tutorial is a thing, they will skip the tutorial then ask questions of how to do stuff they shouldve learned in tutorial section then they will blame us ( small chance ) and quit the server, While I can't think of a way to resolve this scenario but maybe make them force to take the tutorial and remove the ability to skip it, or find a way to dumb it down further ( and in the case of class scenario, add a little room that gives a small description of what the class is like, its pros ( like how ninja has high base walk speed but frail with lack of AoE or Necromancer having good DoT skills and AoE or Cleric being a good support class for high heals but poor combative skills )

They can't find stuff around the map ( trainers, dungeons )
Beleave it or not, despite the fact that you added the glowing effect to skill trainers making it unable to see their actual skin because they are nothing but white but it dosn't fix the scenario of being able to find them ( you only show their position of theyr location but not a trail of where you walk to find them ) and as for dungeons, how do you expect a new player to find a dungeaon when they don't know the terrain they are surrounded in, A solution to the trainer issue is to instead of making them glowing is to maybe depending on the class colours ( Red, Light Blue, Green, Purple ) you can use a block of that colour to make a trail that will lead to said trainer ( or use teleporters ) and as for the dungeon issues, you can either bring back the portals, you can make a server oriented map that shows the entire servers map ( simular to wynncraft's map ) although only issue would be that while wynncraft's server you cant destroy the terrain to affect it, in this server blocks could change so the map would change alot ( unless you can make a freeze image of the map )

Extra suggestions I could think of:
Alchemist could use a recipe update
Make areas that describe a profession and how it gains levels + its uses on the server
Blacksmith could use a little buff up since crafting armor is useless when these new custom armors exist and repair orbs can repair custom armors


Well, this guide was prob not the best suggestions one, but atleast I tried?

 

[Spirit_Guardian]

You forgot one. With such a relatively small number of people playing (not in the thousands) there have been (in my past experience) too many towns/groups. Most people end up wanting to start their own town at one point or another, but there are not enough members on the server to accomplish this. Without a community they feel isolated and leave. My experience with HC is that it is more like Villain Craft than Hero Craft, everyone is out to gank you; you can only trust your friends. With that being said, I like living on the edge and being a sort of outcast; all alone in the wilderness surviving. I had to stop playing for RL reasons mostly, reasons I wont get into.

 

[plaguevictim69]

Okay, so, as someone who played Herocraft ages ago and had a fun time of it and is now returning to it to see the new stuff and how new players get into the game:

the tutorial is shit. What happens when you get out of the tutorial is shit. How everything is explained to you in help files is shit. How you actually get into playing the game as a Minecraft player who has never played Herocraft before is shit. The game seemingly does everything in its power to prevent you from actually playing it. Allow me to explain, in detail.

The Tutorial is infinitely worse than just having a bunch of floating text or signs that explain what to do (as I remember it being, years in the past). The NPCs which talk to you through the interface seem neat at first, but instead I found myself (a person who ALREADY knew what to do, mind you) just skipping through the walls and walls of pointless, boring BS that made it SO difficult to just skip to the point. The tutorial teaches you the following things:

How skills work
How the economy works
How to fight
How to choose your class and race, I guess

And it does each of these things in the slowest, most agonizingly painful way possible. While the tutorial area is pretty and I appreciate its aesthetic, it is actually just plain terrible as a tutorial and no, that's not just "because Minecraft players are lazy and don't want to read." There is a difference between not wanting to read, and not wanting to read something that is poorly constructed. The tutorial isn't there to make players go "Wow, what a cool game!" It's there to teach them what they need to know, and right now, this vitamin might as well be a six-inch diameter suppository.

Now, after you're out of the tutorial, you're dumped out at your class hall. WHY? There is NOTHING for you at the class hall because you're LEVEL ONE. You CANNOT do anything there, and you don't know the layout of the city, so why would a new player have any idea what to do here? Why would a new player then go, "I guess I'll do /spawn, rightclick the NPCs who use an interface I've never been shown before, hop across the PVP arena I was never told about, and then fight the enemies there," which is what you ACTUALLY need to do to start playing the game?

MAYBE they do /help to see all the commands so that they can learn the systems. That's what I tried to do. NOPE. It pulls up another interface that they haven't been introduced to, and that interface ends up being infinitely less helpful than just a simple /help menu. It looks cool. It's pretty. But that's it. It's not anywhere near as functional as just, what every single other server does.

And on THAT note, why is /spawn where it is? Like, fuck, man. The Herogates? Shops? All of those things at spawn which might be useful? How is a new player EVER going to know that any of those exist unless they just happen to wander into them? Even assuming it's supposed to lead them to the tier 1 forest, they're still NEVER told anything about how to go there. They have to be told by a player, or they have to wander up to it.

So, after all of this, let's say they stumbled their way through everything, and idk, maybe they grinded the Demon Necropolis for sixteen hours and now they want to try a higher level dungeon. How do they learn about /radar or any of the dungeon locations? Well, there's a RANDOM TIP which is the ONLY way the game EVER tells you about /radar, and THEN, if they want to play the ONLY CONTENT THE GAME HAS beyond tier *two*, they have to decide to walk probably two thousand blocks out from a Herogate just to attempt it.

-----

In summary: Despite interesting mechanics and aesthetics, Herocraft does a positively terrible job of introducing players to the mechanics, and the aesthetic interfaces end up destroying any practicality that might have been had in the actual information given to those very same players. Two and a half years ago, when I played, the tutorial was far easier to digest and also more informative, and when you actually got into the game, you were immediately streamlined into the gameplay. If there is any reason, more than any other, that you are not retaining new players, this is probably the one.

Community, if it existed in significant amounts, might be able to mitigate these issues, but they are very real issues and if they weren't there to begin with, I don't think that you would need the crutch of players explaining what a tutorial should be explaining. The new player experience is just really, really terrible and I think that completely and totally re-designing the way the player is introduced to the game would go a long way towards trying to revitalize the server.

I love it. I want it to succeed, and that is why I am being so ball-bustingly harsh about it.

 

[Jrr_]

Okay, so, as someone who played Herocraft ages ago and had a fun time of it and is now returning to it to see the new stuff and how new players get into the game:

the tutorial is shit. What happens when you get out of the tutorial is shit. How everything is explained to you in help files is shit. How you actually get into playing the game as a Minecraft player who has never played Herocraft before is shit. The game seemingly does everything in its power to prevent you from actually playing it. Allow me to explain, in detail.

The Tutorial is infinitely worse than just having a bunch of floating text or signs that explain what to do (as I remember it being, years in the past). The NPCs which talk to you through the interface seem neat at first, but instead I found myself (a person who ALREADY knew what to do, mind you) just skipping through the walls and walls of pointless, boring BS that made it SO difficult to just skip to the point. The tutorial teaches you the following things:

How skills work
How the economy works
How to fight
How to choose your class and race, I guess

And it does each of these things in the slowest, most agonizingly painful way possible. While the tutorial area is pretty and I appreciate its aesthetic, it is actually just plain terrible as a tutorial and no, that's not just "because Minecraft players are lazy and don't want to read." There is a difference between not wanting to read, and not wanting to read something that is poorly constructed. The tutorial isn't there to make players go "Wow, what a cool game!" It's there to teach them what they need to know, and right now, this vitamin might as well be a six-inch diameter suppository.

Now, after you're out of the tutorial, you're dumped out at your class hall. WHY? There is NOTHING for you at the class hall because you're LEVEL ONE. You CANNOT do anything there, and you don't know the layout of the city, so why would a new player have any idea what to do here? Why would a new player then go, "I guess I'll do /spawn, rightclick the NPCs who use an interface I've never been shown before, hop across the PVP arena I was never told about, and then fight the enemies there," which is what you ACTUALLY need to do to start playing the game?

MAYBE they do /help to see all the commands so that they can learn the systems. That's what I tried to do. NOPE. It pulls up another interface that they haven't been introduced to, and that interface ends up being infinitely less helpful than just a simple /help menu. It looks cool. It's pretty. But that's it. It's not anywhere near as functional as just, what every single other server does.

And on THAT note, why is /spawn where it is? Like, fuck, man. The Herogates? Shops? All of those things at spawn which might be useful? How is a new player EVER going to know that any of those exist unless they just happen to wander into them? Even assuming it's supposed to lead them to the tier 1 forest, they're still NEVER told anything about how to go there. They have to be told by a player, or they have to wander up to it.

So, after all of this, let's say they stumbled their way through everything, and idk, maybe they grinded the Demon Necropolis for sixteen hours and now they want to try a higher level dungeon. How do they learn about /radar or any of the dungeon locations? Well, there's a RANDOM TIP which is the ONLY way the game EVER tells you about /radar, and THEN, if they want to play the ONLY CONTENT THE GAME HAS beyond tier *two*, they have to decide to walk probably two thousand blocks out from a Herogate just to attempt it.

-----

In summary: Despite interesting mechanics and aesthetics, Herocraft does a positively terrible job of introducing players to the mechanics, and the aesthetic interfaces end up destroying any practicality that might have been had in the actual information given to those very same players. Two and a half years ago, when I played, the tutorial was far easier to digest and also more informative, and when you actually got into the game, you were immediately streamlined into the gameplay. If there is any reason, more than any other, that you are not retaining new players, this is probably the one.

Community, if it existed in significant amounts, might be able to mitigate these issues, but they are very real issues and if they weren't there to begin with, I don't think that you would need the crutch of players explaining what a tutorial should be explaining. The new player experience is just really, really terrible and I think that completely and totally re-designing the way the player is introduced to the game would go a long way towards trying to revitalize the server.

I love it. I want it to succeed, and that is why I am being so ball-bustingly harsh about it.

Harsh is good. @werwew19

 

[Hai_o3o]

You forgot one. With such a relatively small number of people playing (not in the thousands) there have been (in my past experience) too many towns/groups. Most people end up wanting to start their own town at one point or another, but there are not enough members on the server to accomplish this. Without a community they feel isolated and leave. My experience with HC is that it is more like Villain Craft than Hero Craft, everyone is out to gank you; you can only trust your friends. With that being said, I like living on the edge and being a sort of outcast; all alone in the wilderness surviving. I had to stop playing for RL reasons mostly, reasons I wont get into.

I can't agree with the Villian Craft part more. Its so true that the community had toxic players. Those players pushed out new people by ganking them in pvp dungeons and stealing their kills in non-pvp dungeons. It also doesn't help that the pvp in high-level dungeons was open 24/7, forcing people to fight whether they wanted to or not. I know, "if you don't want to fight don't go in them". But the problem is that leveling took a PAINFUL time to do in pvp-on dungeons, let alone how much time it took to level in the non-pvp dungeons. People didn't feel like they were getting enough bang for their buck. This is supposed to be justified bc the server won't reset anymore, but that didn't stop people from getting discouraged. Besides, I find the beauty of the server is its unique and diverse list of classes. But no one can appreciate them because of the painstakingly long leveling process. Speaking of long leveling processes, professions took a long time to level too. Those, however I do agree with, because it helps high leveled master professions stay valuable. But unfortunately, not everyone sees the big picture and because of that, people left. Overall, though, my main qualm with the server and IMHO one of the reasons this server is kinda dying is because of the toxic people. Its kinda funny to me that the toxic people justified their behavior with "new people come and go but these people will stay and never leave". Well now the most I've seen on right now are 5 and those are good days. And when I do check in its not the toxic people, because the only reason they ever came on was to scare players off by being rude and now apparently theres no one to bully so they lost their sole purpose for being on the server. Don't get me wrong, though, not everyone was rude. There were some people who were mentors/nice to the new people by offering them homes or guidance. Those were the people that helped keep the server alive and populated. Unfortunately, the toxic people won in the end. They exterminated all the "annoying noobs" and the servers empty.
I love this server and its concepts so much and it pains me to see it in this state but considering who made up some of the player base I can't deny I didn't see this coming.

P.S. I understand its not supposed to be an easy server and that its hardcore, but that doesn't bring in the crowds anymore and the people it did bring in don't like new people hence the toxicity. Nothing worth having doesn't come easy, but some things just aren't worth the hassle.

Paragraph in Bullet Points:
Reasons people left/didn't stick around;
* Toxic community -main point
* Forced to pvp -is related to the one above
* Leveling took too long -It'd be fine without the ganking and if there was more comraderie.

 

[Nemean_Lion732]

Just stating i havent done the tutorial in a long time, so this is based off of new players just asking questions in chat.

Points that need to be highlighted in the tutorial in order of importance -->
-Towns provide a vital role in protecting your stuff and helping you level. Suggest Joining or creating a town as a goal for new players.
-Money is made primarily by voting, mining gold, completing dungeon quests, and player trading, used to lock chests, pay town tax, and trade
-You can find all of the dungeons on OUR GLORIOUS MAP hc.to/map !!!!!!! (or the coordinates can be found using /radar list, but this is going to be a backup, using a map is much simpler and gives players a better understanding of locations imo)
-The purpose of the different worlds and where PvP is on (so players understand where they are safe)
-Show players the option of using the herocraft modpack/macro mod, but dont make it seem necessary to scare them off.
-Higher level weapons drop off of the boss mobs in higher dungeons
-Once you reach the appropriate level, you can learn a skill from a book or from a move teacher (Put this location on the online map, i beg you)
-Brief discription of the role a class/profession plays and where it excels (highlight the importance of healers in pve and how melee struggles solo)
-Info about the party system

Of lesser importance -->
-Chat channel usage
-Use of relics
-Full complicated rules (Many rules are outdated, making this very difficult for a new player to understand, as well as giving them the wrong idea about pve combat eg. darkrooms)

Jesus thats a lot of points, I havent heard much about players not knowing how to use skills so i guess that part of the tutorial works. Also please spawn players that select their class directly next to the Forest t1 dungeon quest giver. Dew it.

 

[Byrozy]

I think its mainly the fact little people play, so maybe find a way of getting older players back on and increasing the number?

 

[Kainzo]

So this question is to everyone...
Whats a better way to introduce mechanics in a non-painful way? Maybe helpful tips throughout as you use things?

 

[GYR3]

As someone who recently completed the tutorial (and is very experienced with games and modifications like this), the intro to the server where you talk to someone is very immersive and interesting, however the "Alternate Entrance" for the cave is confusing if you're trying to introduce a questing system as adventurous players won't learn how to do quests properly. Not only that, but the pacing of it is terrible. You introduce spells, then people go and kill a monster, then... read about plugins for 30 minutes where most of it won't directly affect their gameplay, and isn't that interesting to the average player.

I'd recommend teaching them about the spells, railroading them into the troll quest line somehow, then just have it go directly to class and races, teaching them about stamina and mana after they've already gotten their surge of individuality (as they'll know how important it is to them then). Then, afterwords, you can teleport them (instead of to their class hall and hoping they'll talk to a guard) to a place in the city just for new people where you can talk to NPCs about town ownership and gold trading (which are much more specific things).

The room can lead into a room with a bunch of people that are representatives of the class types (support caster warrior etc.) that tells them what their class trainers do and where their halls are with directions if they want to go look at it, and end with advice to go talk to a guard if they need directions to anywhere else.

Sorry if I got a bit ranty, I just wanted to share my ideas and thoughts as a new player.

 

[arcanegrove]

Gonna uh, give my 2 cents since I finally have free time again and can actually contribute a little bit:

There's something intrinsically exciting when a game doesn't hold your hand and assumes you're a piece of shit grunt. ESPECIALLY in the early levels, during the initially impression of whether or not you will like the game. @Kainzo Best way to introduce players to a game IMO is not telling players how to play, but giving them the tools to figure out how to play. I'll write up a long ass thing momentarily, but the game itself should not teach players how to play. The best way to get a new player spun up on everything is to just throw them in the ocean and motivate the community to throw them a lifesaver.

That said, with limitation on UI and direct visual representation, you have to give new players something. A tutorial shouldn't be this time sink where you're ONLY learning how to Herocraft. To really get new players hyped, it needs to be organic and it needs to show people why they should care. I left way early in the design process so I don't know if you guys ended up adding in quests, but quests are easily the best way to actually teach players how to play the game. Have an easy lvl 1 quest line that will always result in lvl 2 if they follow the quests. For the level 2 quest, tell them they might not that big of a piece of shit and to go visit their class trainer to see if they have anything to teach them. Simply giving people a reason to care about reading the tutorial will result in much more resilient new players.

I tend to think that the HC Reloaded design conflicts a lot with my personal ideas of how an MMORPG should run. Talking purely about new player retention though, simply adding earned rewards to playing the opening quests/tutorial should work.

Secondly, the value of {Guide}s can't be overlooked. The ability to ask anything, and to get a response from a human is freaking awesome. Having people willing to teach others is a sign of a healthy game too.

 

[motzoman]

Hey There,

Thought I would chime in.

I'll start off by saying some of my fondest memories in minecraft and even in gaming in general take place in Herocraft, I've always felt this server had huge potential and offered an experience no other mmo ( commercial release or otherwise ) has.

So when Iogged back in today for the first time in a couple of years I was pleasantly surprised to see it still up and running. it didn't take long however for me to realize that I was one of only 2 players online. I wound up here on the forums ( particularly hard to reach this website through google nowadays btw) to see if things were still kicking or if the show was essentially over.

I don't know how much help I'll be but I'll share my thoughts on what brought me to the server, what made me want to stay and what ultimately lead to lose interest on each occasion.

Tutorials
in this regard I always found less is more. I remember at one stage the tutorial was little more than a series of sign posts that outlined the basic rules and I found this iteration most appealing. When you enter a server for the first time you want to pretty quickly assess what you are in for. If you are instead stuck in an alternate map separate from the main player base it can be very alienating. I found that I was most engaged in the server when I was able to get started and almost immediately sign up with a township who were open to showing me the ropes.

As for teaching the more advanced role playing aspects, make it gradual. Give people a chance to walk right out into the world and start exploring, building, engaging with the community ( maybe find out the hard way that not everyone is friendly and that allys are key to survival) then after a few levels introduce specialized classes and trades. by the time the player needs to understand the economy, combat, townships ect ect. they will have most likely encountered these things organically and probably enjoyed themselves in the process. I think atleast for me the main thing I want when joining a new sever is not for it to be a lonely experience. Welcome new players, give them access to communication with the rest of the player base and DO NOT punish them for asking questions. Silence is more off putting than Spam.

What made me stick around?
Townships first and foremost. The combination of working together with a team and knowing that rival groups were out there doing the same. Carving out a little corner of the otherwise dangerous world, eventually to became a landmark for passers by, a target for those daring enough to take you on. Working with architects, Traders, Warriors and of course Miners ( Collecting resources is so much more enjoyable and rewarding when you know your are making a difference for your team)

This is what an MMORPG in minecraft has to offer that nothing else does. Games Like rust or Conan Exiles prove there is a market for this type of experience but none come close to the freedom and personal experience that Herocraft offered at its peak.

What made me lose interest.

I have left and come back to this server maybe 7 or 8 times since 2011. While sometimes real life just got in the way. For the most part I left because one thing or another got in the way of me enjoying what I came to the server for.

On the occasions that I played for no more than an hour or so before giving up, it was down to poor over complicated tutorials or overly large unwelcoming and confusing starting areas which prevented me from getting to the content I wanted. Seeing the server so often wiped was also disheartening but I'm not sure how much could be done about this.

On the occasions that I stuck around for a few days to a week or two. The issue was usually hostility of staff, most notably I recall while mining being remotely killed by a mod with a lighting bolt for voicing my disagreement with a design choice. When I complained about this I was promptly suspended from the server. Admittedly I was fairly immature for much of my time on the server but the conduct of the staff when interacting with players was still far too often jarringly unprofessional and ultimately left me feeling very uncomfortable and unwelcome on the server. A lot of your players are going to be younger and immature. I believe it is a staff members responsibility to set a higher standard of maturity and restraint as an example of the community even if the community does not always reciprocate.

Finally what made me quit on the couple of occasions that I really got sucked into the server and played for months at a time was a level of weakness in certain mechanics that made my long hours participating in township building feel pointless. In one instance it was the realization that enemy players were allowed to remove parts of our castle to enter kill us and take our belongings as long as they replaced the missing blocks as this wasn't considered greifing. this turned my castle from carefully planned fortification to simple decoration. ( in spite of there being mechanics that would have allowed them to lay siege to our castle with more effort on their part and give us chance for us to defend ourselves in a fun and engaging way)

On another occasion it became apparent that our townwalls were rendered completely useless as one class could simply jump over them ( there was a maximum wall height to make sure this was possible) and teleport every other member of the attacking force in with them. we were constantly under attack while building these walls over the course of weeks and it would have been a major achievement if we were afforded some kind protection for our hard work. Even if the enemy could still jump in but had to either open the gate from the inside or only gradually allow their team mates in this would have been perfectly fun for us. It is key that fortifications have some avenue for successful siege but the server leadership seemed adamant at the time that any protection by fortification should be completely nullified. This was enough to see myself and the friends I had made in the course of this project give up on completing it and gradually leave the server.

I'll wrap this up.

I seem to have rambled on for more than I intended to, I hope it wasn't too much off topic.

This may have come across very negative but I assure you it comes from a place of passion for this server and what it has meant to me over the years. I still look back so fondly on my time spent here and I'm very thankful to those who made this server possible.

I truly hope, with the renewed interest in minecraft of late, this server can see a return to its heyday as well.