Hello, im terrible at marketing games and was wondering what the best ways to keep people playing this game. I have recruited several friends already, some of whom i know in real life, others online, and they mostly seem to like the game, but they dont play unless i tell them to play the game with me I want to see them play battles on their own, without me having to tell them to play. You know, become part of our epic community. I am the only person ik of that plays zk actively (outside of obvious places like the zk discord and these forums)
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There were several ideas over the years, and I guess some had success considering there is still a community. For some numbers you can check for example: https://steamdb.info/app/334920/graphs/ I think you should just keep trying and you should not expect sudden changes. Games such as ZK are complex, require lots of investment to understand and play so many people will not like them just due to that. If you find 2-3 new players that hang around (and if some of them would find other players and so on), we would already get very far ...
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I have the same expierience. My guess is that it is the complexity that either resonates with people or not. Whenever you put out a product, you need to aknowledge that some people simply wont like it because it doesn`t fit their taste. quote:
I think you should just keep trying and you should not expect sudden changes. |
I think fundamental changes might be detrimental. Our community is build up mostly of players that are here because they like the game as it is. If you change it, you risk losing your old playerbase with the possibility of gaining a new one. That could be done if things don`t work out at all or you are under severe financial pressure. No such problem that we have currently.
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If you want wild lobsters, you gotta use a trawl. [Spoiler]
(and stop banning Firepluks)
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He wasn't banned and honestly probably didn't help player retention.
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If you login with steam, then you can turn on the live broadcast so any steam user can watch you play. I know the devs would be happy to put up a deve broadcast, but putting together the videos with commentary and uploading them is a chore. Devs get preference in list of live broadcasts - and they don't even have to be live.
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sfirepluk clocked so many hours into ZK that he ascended. It turns out that with enough time it's possible in all games, not just Nethack.
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We should make a survey to find out why people left.
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And you analyse it for us   mrdetonation?
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Well I tend to mention Z-K at whatever other places I hang out online. can't do any harm.
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We could offer more rewards for investing time so there's a bigger hook. Some ideas around that area: + Monthly tallies of achievements and ranking tables + Aggregate elo for clans (also monthly) + Encourage small team 2-4 per side play. Lobster room isn't the best introduction. 1v1 is intimidating. + Give the highest ranked player an interesting buff that they can bestow tactically on the team - e.g. attribute multiplier for 30s, a free unit, ...
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I think unlocking units with levels would be nice, real sense of progression and we can lock storage away from lobster's first few games, like a tutorial. Still I think in a strategy game, the most important thing is retention not new player acquisition, so I still think we should look at what makes players leave, with some data hopefully. Send an email survey when players stop playing.
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quote:
and we can lock storage away from lobster's first few games
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Agree with you on all points but this. Keep the storage at all times!
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quote:
I think unlocking units with levels would be nice, real sense of progression |
I think that this idea might be better for the campaign or something? I'm not sure what the best idea is for the real game. quote:
Keep the storage at all times! |
Ya I don't think that anything should be locked, Storage can be quite useful, you just have to know when and how to use it. quote:
Send an email survey when players stop playing. |
I think that this is a bad idea, because I feel like some people would not like that, and would not respond to the email, and might even leave because of the email, because they like to keep their privacy or something. Some people would definitely respond, but I think the majority of people would not, but maybe not, I don't know. You also wouldn't know when to send the email, what if they just went on a month long vacation? or their computer broke down and they'll start playing again in a few months? or they just took a break?, you could send an email every time it has been a week since they haven't played, but that might just make them annoyed.
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Realistically, there are a lot of youtubers in the "games with complex mechanics" space, reaching out to them for sponsored reviews could be productive, but not free (though we may get a big discount for being open-source and non-commercial). Some RTS youtubers too. For new player outreach it's important to target the right audience that will "click" with ZK.
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I remember BrinkOfInsanity (SupCom caster) tried Zero-K briefly 2 years ago:
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When zk was out on steam we got massive influx of new players and many streamers trying the game out,sadly stremers just playtest and move to the next game,streamers usually play "hot" games because those games have a very high audience potential its probably why zk is not very apealing to them and it makes sense. Publicity is also one of the most expensive things to do in the industry,look at cyberpunk i think like 70% of the games budget was on marketing.Theres simply not enough money.Honestly the best thing to do is try to get some famous youtubers to give the game a review but they want money for promoting stuff so thats out of the question,but maybe some would be happy to do it for free who knows...
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I periodically namedrop ZK in forums, blogs and reddit discussions of RTS and game AI for having the best noncheating RTS AI on the market. Those kind of breadcrumbs will pull in a few people over time.
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Word of mouth seems good. We sent some things to youtubers and magazines at the time but it seems hard to catch their attention without fancy website graphics up front.
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Mod edit: Shitpost by compromised account removed
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