Player Retention

FindingHeart8

How easy is it for you to keep players in your coalition?  What is your player turnover rate like? 

My semi-competitive coalition has a fantastic bunch of super loyal, fun players.  Many had been active in the coalition for a year or longer.  However with many of the changes that have happened over the past half-year (a lot of them being negatively-perceived), almost half of our long-term players have left on grounds that they are quitting the game.

Made me really wonder what other players experiences has been in their coalition, and what they've done to keep players engaged.  What has your experience been like?

Julie71

In the last year I have seen long time veterans of this game.  Quit, retire, move to casual teams.  It's a constant battle each week to fill a top ten team. 

Mburn7

We have a serious problem.  Brand new players are cracking the Extinction roster in events and we still can't get a full 20 to put up scores.  Old players have almost universally stopped playing (including myself) and have dropped to our more casual coalitions.  For the first time ever (not counting the year of 52 consecutive RoTGP) we've made some coalition events participation-optional.

Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.  Its simultaneously really sad and really terrifying to see.

FindingHeart8

Mburn7 said:

We have a serious problem.  Brand new players are cracking the Extinction roster in events and we still can't get a full 20 to put up scores.  Old players have almost universally stopped playing (including myself) and have dropped to our more casual coalitions.  For the first time ever (not counting the year of 52 consecutive RoTGP) we've made coalition events participation-optional.

Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.  Its simultaneously really sad and really terrifying to see.

Coalition-events participation optional?? 
Oh geez....I haven't done that yet with my coalition (though I'm super lenient for special circumstances because life happens).

My team has a FB group we chat in, that helps keep us active (and nobody wanted to use Slack or Discord lol), but even that's not enough to keep players these days.

Pantagruel

It'll be interesting to see what happens to YH1J when they overtake GoblinPile at the top of the overall leaderboard.

thesmallesthuman

Re: Extinction...not ALL events have gone participation optional. 

Just all of the new events (RAW, TE, and TGT) that give little to no rewards for time spent. Doesn’t bode well for moving forward if they keep up this trend tho...

Seriously, why bother competing if there’s no incentive for doing so? Bragging right are great and all, but many of us work on the weekends, or have families or social lives. We’re happy to devote time to this game to help ours and our friends’ collections grow, but time spent no longer seems to = rewards granted. 

Mburn7

thesmallesthuman said:

Re: Extinction...not ALL events have gone participation optional. 

Just all of the new events (RAW, TE, and TGT) that give little to no rewards for time spent. Doesn’t bode well for moving forward if they keep up this trend tho...

Seriously, why bother competing if there’s no incentive for doing so? Bragging right are great and all, but many of us work on the weekends, or have families or social lives. We’re happy to devote time to this game to help ours and our friends’ collections grow, but time spent no longer seems to = rewards granted. 

Thanks for the clarification lol.  I'm mad and tired, not a good state for coherent posting 

Gabrosin

Pantagruel said:

It'll be interesting to see what happens to YH1J when they overtake GoblinPile at the top of the overall leaderboard.

We'll get to update all our promotional material!

madwren

Pantagruel said:

It'll be interesting to see what happens to YH1J when they overtake GoblinPile at the top of the overall leaderboard.

I've been sort of wondering if they'll all just spontaneously retire, and that chasing us is the only thing that's kept them going for 3.5 years. It's easier to hunt when you smell blood in the water. 

It's been a pretty fun rivalry. I just wish--and this applies to both teams--that so many events weren't fraught with freezes or crashes or people being locked out of their accounts. 

madwren

Mburn7 said:

Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.  

We lost a lot of people with the coalition event reward nerf.  Who wants to spend literally hours finishing all of their nodes over the course of a weekend for a first place reward of 5 jewels? It makes it very hard to care. 

The dearth of functional, rewarding, and fresh content has been the issue with this game for years.  I don't play a lot of non-coalition events because I'm tired of playing the same iteration of the same event from two years prior, and coalition events are frustrating because the payout isn't commensurate with the effort required.

Honestly, aside from friendships, the main reason I'm still around are because I love Magic THAT MUCH. If it wasn't my favorite IP I probably would have quit long ago.

Mburn7

madwren said:

Mburn7 said:

Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.  

We lost a lot of people with the coalition event reward nerf.  Who wants to spend literally hours finishing all of their nodes over the course of a weekend for a first place reward of 5 jewels? It makes it very hard to care. 

The dearth of functional, rewarding, and fresh content has been the issue with this game for years.  I don't play a lot of non-coalition events because I'm tired of playing the same iteration of the same event from two years prior, and coalition events are frustrating because the payout isn't commensurate with the effort required.

Honestly, aside from friendships, the main reason I'm still around are because I love Magic THAT MUCH. If it wasn't my favorite IP I probably would have quit long ago.

That's something I think we can all agree on.

If this was a generic-named CCG style Match 3 game we would have all quit years ago.
If we haven't spent 4 years of our lives playing this game we would have quit months ago, even with the MTG IP.

I'm reasonably sure that D3/Oktagon knows this, and they're trying to exploit that to get people to pay 30 bucks a month for absolutely nothing and keep playing a buggy mess of a game.

Gabrosin

madwren said:

Pantagruel said:

It'll be interesting to see what happens to YH1J when they overtake GoblinPile at the top of the overall leaderboard.

I've been sort of wondering if they'll all just spontaneously retire, and that chasing us is the only thing that's kept them going for 3.5 years. It's easier to hunt when you smell blood in the water. 

It's been a pretty fun rivalry. I just wish--and this applies to both teams--that so many events weren't fraught with freezes or crashes or people being locked out of their accounts. 

It is indeed much easier to motivate people when chasing something than when keeping something.  And it's sad that you can get more expected value from carefully paying attention to the bug tracker than you can get from any strategy guide.

FindingHeart8

Mburn7 said:

madwren said:

Mburn7 said:

Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.  

We lost a lot of people with the coalition event reward nerf.  Who wants to spend literally hours finishing all of their nodes over the course of a weekend for a first place reward of 5 jewels? It makes it very hard to care. 

The dearth of functional, rewarding, and fresh content has been the issue with this game for years.  I don't play a lot of non-coalition events because I'm tired of playing the same iteration of the same event from two years prior, and coalition events are frustrating because the payout isn't commensurate with the effort required.

Honestly, aside from friendships, the main reason I'm still around are because I love Magic THAT MUCH. If it wasn't my favorite IP I probably would have quit long ago.

That's something I think we can all agree on.

If this was a generic-named CCG style Match 3 game we would have all quit years ago.
If we haven't spent 4 years of our lives playing this game we would have quit months ago, even with the MTG IP.

I'm reasonably sure that D3/Oktagon knows this, and they're trying to exploit that to get people to pay 30 bucks a month for absolutely nothing and keep playing a buggy mess of a game.

You might be onto something there.  But I hope that isn't the case.  Even 'we' have a breaking point.

madwren

Gabrosin said:

madwren said:

Pantagruel said:

It'll be interesting to see what happens to YH1J when they overtake GoblinPile at the top of the overall leaderboard.

I've been sort of wondering if they'll all just spontaneously retire, and that chasing us is the only thing that's kept them going for 3.5 years. It's easier to hunt when you smell blood in the water. 

It's been a pretty fun rivalry. I just wish--and this applies to both teams--that so many events weren't fraught with freezes or crashes or people being locked out of their accounts. 

It is indeed much easier to motivate people when chasing something than when keeping something.  And it's sad that you can get more expected value from carefully paying attention to the bug tracker than you can get from any strategy guide.

Well said, sir. I salute YH1J's persistence and dedication. 

madwren

Mburn7 said:

madwren said:

Mburn7 said:

Nobody wants to spend any amount of time on this game anymore.  

We lost a lot of people with the coalition event reward nerf.  Who wants to spend literally hours finishing all of their nodes over the course of a weekend for a first place reward of 5 jewels? It makes it very hard to care. 

The dearth of functional, rewarding, and fresh content has been the issue with this game for years.  I don't play a lot of non-coalition events because I'm tired of playing the same iteration of the same event from two years prior, and coalition events are frustrating because the payout isn't commensurate with the effort required.

Honestly, aside from friendships, the main reason I'm still around are because I love Magic THAT MUCH. If it wasn't my favorite IP I probably would have quit long ago.

That's something I think we can all agree on.

If this was a generic-named CCG style Match 3 game we would have all quit years ago.
If we haven't spent 4 years of our lives playing this game we would have quit months ago, even with the MTG IP.

I'm reasonably sure that D3/Oktagon knows this, and they're trying to exploit that to get people to pay 30 bucks a month for absolutely nothing and keep playing a buggy mess of a game.

Very possible. And, as we've all commented numerous time, there's really a great game hidden inside the buggy mess.  I remember after the first couple of months, how Hibernum was tinkering with cards and talking to us on the forum, how thrilled I was. 

But essentially, if there's a Magic game I can play on my phone intermittently that doesn't involve live competition, then I'm going to be playing it.  I really miss Duels of the Planeswalkers. That was a fantastic set of games. 

Bringing it back to player retention, though, it's hard for me to find reasons that people would want to stay long-term, particularly when they start cracking packs and realizing how difficult it is to catch up.  I might just be too divorced from the new player experience to be a good judge of that anymore, but a couple of months I logged into my alt--which has a few good cards from the old days--and tried to play a current event, and it was such a terrible experience I just quit.

jtwood

madwren said:

Honestly, aside from friendships, the main reason I'm still around are because I love Magic THAT MUCH. If it wasn't my favorite IP I probably would have quit long ago.

This has been me nearly from day one. The bugs in the app would have destroyed any other game with a less-valuable IP.

Mburn7

Kind of unrelated to this, but look at how MTGPQ is described on Channel Fireball.
If this is how the greater MTG community sees this game, no wonder it isn't super popular.
https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/magic-manastrike-released-on-mobile/?_ga=2.90000536.2086285341.1580131948-337197286.1534346453

FindingHeart8

Mburn7 said:

Kind of unrelated to this, but look at how MTGPQ is described on Channel Fireball.
If this is how the greater MTG community sees this game, no wonder it isn't super popular.
https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/magic-manastrike-released-on-mobile/?_ga=2.90000536.2086285341.1580131948-337197286.1534346453

"Magic: The Gathering,  PuzzleQuest used Magic lore as a background for a series of puzzles."

Ooof that really makes me feel like a toddler building sand castles in a sandbox

Kinda related: Is Manastrike just another 3 tower Clash Royale?

Volrak

Mburn7 said:

Kind of unrelated to this, but look at how MTGPQ is described on Channel Fireball.
If this is how the greater MTG community sees this game, no wonder it isn't super popular.
https://www.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/articles/magic-manastrike-released-on-mobile/?_ga=2.90000536.2086285341.1580131948-337197286.1534346453

Looks like the author has no idea what the game involves, and is relying on none of his readers having any idea either to avoid being called out on it.

Risky strategy?  Maybe not - because now it's certain that at least some readers do know he has no idea, yet still none have made a "Be honest, you've never played mtgpq or have any idea what the gameplay involves" response. :P

jtwood

The puzzle: How to win in a game with ever-changing bugs

mayor

Why does a game deserve support when the companies responsible for it are doing a terrible job, having money as the main concern instead of a healthy gaming environment. Continuously they fail to realize that money will come if they begin caring for the game and the players for real. Creating any project with dishonesty and greed is bound to fail.