Exit interviews. (in General)

I have often wondered why people leave CB.

I have my thoughts and stated a few but really wonder if they are fact or fiction.

What if we developed a questionnaire that we send to people's email accounts when their accounts are not logged in for about 1 month?

Standard type questions to see the reasons they stopped playing.

Like an exit interview at a job.

Thoughts?

I'm all for it, spammy as it might seem.

some do somewhat of this already : http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002vRK

But it would be interesting to say the least.

I hate when games do this to me. I just go "why would that be any of your business", and delete the e-mail. Just like I never answer when FB asks me why I want to terminate my account. All people surely don't share my opinion though, and if many don't this could be a good way to improve the game.

I agree. Simple and effective.

I can probably guess the most common reasons however.

Completely unnecessary. We have you to tell us, repeatedly/indignantly/vehemently and with absurd hyperbole,that nobody joins, nobody stays and everybody leaves because WoW doesn't have an exbow.

And you to remind us of our incorrect use of the English language, and belittle us when we make grammatical mistakes.

A more simple and quicker result to your exbow theory would be to just ask Shade or an admin to make a poll. I do like the idea of giving the players the option to answer and take the time to give voice if they so choose, and maybe the feedback would help improve things. The general concensus from the people I have talked with isn't about the exbow but the lack of change / attention to the game. Some are holding onto some cash and their tat and say if there is change or something new and interesting they will come back, others are getting out of dodge completely.

But shall we move on to more constructive posts instead of posting the cheapest of shots at people?

I enjoy this idea.

I agree with most of what Kevlar is stating.

However a poll would only get those who answer on their way out the door.

However, I really would like to see those who have left for a while to see how they felt about the game and the reasons they left.

I know it would seem to be spam, however, I hope that the information would be useful to make CB overall a better experience.

It is pretty simple actually.

This is my 3rd time through the game (was fairly high up CB1, dabbled when CB2 came out, have actually hung around for 2 months as John has made massive improvements to the game).

But

The same issue still exists with the game that has always been here:

You must invest all of your time and resources into a strategy for quite some time. For a long time you can still find people to 'blend' with your strategy, but eventually you will hit a wall if you don't have 'the' strategy or the $ to compete.

It's not as simple as changing your strategy as in most MMORPGs by 're-specing'....you have to start over. Your gear doesn't scale...your tatto's don't scale...you don't have all the right gear to fit your strat....you can't go from a 1 minion team to a 4 minion team...no way in hell you will fire a minion from a 4 team to a 1....

Basically CB is a shooting star....you just have to hope you're in the ballpark when it comes to making a splash.

Regards

No, it seems the reason for this post was to prove your theories about why people are leaving... the poll suggestion was for you to ask an admin to ask the community what they think about the exbow. Would give you a quicker result.
If you are sincere about wanting to know every reason possible as to why people are leaving and not just why you think they are, then this is a good idea.

Kev,

I am very sincere about my initial post.

I really do wish to know why people leave. Be it the lack of changemonths, the bugs that stay unfixed, the NUB and its aftermath, the drop system, the auctions, etc...

So perhaps information can be discovered or confirmed for the developers. Perhaps to eventually make the game better for all.

I don't think it would be spam if it had its own forum that active players can NOT post in, only the exit entries are submitted with each name of the individual as a different entry. Not all of them together in one thread, no way.

Typing about spam to those leaving the game.

An email to their inbox may possibly be construed as spam as someone stated above.

However, I feel it is a small price to pay (someone getting upset) for the information that can be gotten.

oh I thought spammy meant a thread would be overwhelmed in here with all the different posts and people commenting on them. Would be chaos and spammy to say the least :) I took that a different way. I wouldn't view 1 email if I quit a game that seemed genuine to really know why I left spam. I would think more highly of the game actually.. just me though. I got a "birthday" email from a forum I haven't frequented in over a year from the date I joined.. was pretty cool that they acknowledged that were encouraging their players to drop into the forum and remain active.

I'm leaving this game for a few simple reasons: Not enough active players, constant whining and nagging, drop system and the development of this game is so slow...

And the fact is that the NCB is horribly expensive and the NUB is too much of a bonus for a new player while the old timers are left out.

Ow and after reading JS's remark: the same reasons that come back. If that is A then you don't mind B C or D crap.

Jon did this once, I believe. So the system is in place.

Random: did the broken, gross, ugly, messed up, not working, tutorial ever get fixed?

I remember when I joined that I BARELY made it through that, I was close to just exiting the page... (oh how some people would love that)

:P

Two things.

1) Sunzu has it right. Totally right. Of course, in the finest fashion of CB, no one commented on it. If something doesn't inflame, it's just ignored. I read it though. Wish I could do more than just wholeheartedly agree with it though.

2) Slayer, I think you're right as well. I could have SWORE Jon said something about this a long while back. Some kind of email or questionaire sent to players who quit, or started... Or he made a reference to the idea. Not sure if it ever came to fruition.

As for the idea, it's a fine idea, but pretty meh. Perhaps it would be a better idea to give players the ability to simply cancel their account? Yes, I know people are going to be irrationally upset by this, but why not? Just. Let. People. Quit. Give them the survey when they choose to delete their account.

Yes, yes, I know. People will delete their account to get the NUB. Whatever. Let them. It doesn't MATTER. It really doesn't. It will have no negative impact on this game if a player can just swipe the slate clean and get a doover. And I can think of many ways it could help. There. We get our survey, we get to make mistakes without paying for it forever (AKA, a badly run NUB), the ability for a new player to get a feel for the game, then just start over for a competitive run.

Voila. Game fixed. /bow

I think a poll or an email are both good ideas... you would have to trust active players not to abuse the polls everytime they get a hair twisted, but I'm sure a high percentage of players who have been on for more than a month or two would be willing to post some feedback if the poll system were well known and easy to get to.

The email idea would be easier to manage from a standpoint of only getting feedback from players who are truly leaving (or have left) the game, but I am afraid many people would ignore the emails. I would imagine there are also a high number of people who use an 'alternate' possibly non monitored email account when originally signing up for CB.

Either way, I think there would be a great deal of value toward the continued improvement of CB.

I know I am taking the thread off topic with this, but as a recently rejuvinated CB'r I can say that when I stepped out roughly two years ago it was because I had hit the preverbial (sp?) wall, and the game felt like it was becoming more work than fun, just logging in every day to tread water, not truly making any progress. I did not see a massive strat overhaul that would really benefit me, and the idea of an NCB just seemed unatainable, and way too much effort to get back to the position I had held for quite some time.

Anyway I am back poking around again. Everyone feel free to say hi!

Fel;

"Voila. Game fixed. /bow"

Instead of giving all my stuff away as a Tourny prize, I would have sent it all to Johnnywas, deleted my account, made a new GentlemanLoser account with the NUB, got it all back again.

Fixed?

GL, I hadn't thought of that. And now that I have...


Your point? Yes, you could do that. You could also multi. Might be a bit easier, but it'd also be much more easily traced.

I mean, you bring up a good point. This system could be exploited, and only the work of the admins would limit it...

And how many other ideas are like this out there? Ideas being rejected by the community because they could be exploited by users? And, yet, is that not one of the things so often lamented about the CURRENT system? That the NUB encourages players to break the rules?

My point isn't to excuse a weak point to my idea. I acknowledge it. But I want to make clear that there will always be cheating. You cannot avoid it. This idea is not so open to being abused as the current system. Or, honestly, any game that allows transfers.

Disliking the idea for being a bad idea is fine. Welcomed. Encouraged, even! But let's not worry about what the dishonest and worst elements of CB will do with it. Because they're going to be here regardless. Just think about what this idea would do for everyone else =)

Thing is, (from what I read, sorry if I've misread it!) it wouldn't be exploiting or cheating.

You were offering all players the ability to delete thier current account and make a new NUB one.

What would the admins be able to police? You wouldn't be able to have any transfers after deleting and recreating.

As for the fix to stop cheating. Rolling bonus and removal of cash increase on NUB. Free BA is enough.

We had wanted to be doing something like this for users that left within the first week. This would be more broad, though.

What sort of questions would you recommend? This is something that should be easy given OpenACS's spam interface.

Sunzu,

Some of that is addressed with the ability to convert tattoos and large melee weapons.

I've effectively quit.

Reason:

I don't have the money to invest in a team to get it to the top. And before you give me that non-sense about how easy it is, look at Zenai's logs about what it cost him and the amount of BA he missed. I know CB is a game where the dedicated rule, but even then, I'd like to stand a chance of making it into the top 50.

"What sort of questions would you recommend? This is something that should be easy given OpenACS's spam interface."

in this case i think simplicity is the key and don't presume anything by giving them fixed choices. in effect simply ask:

We notice that you haven't logged into Carnagbe Blender in a while. What could we do to make the game appeal more to you?

perhaps we could spell carnage correctly though! ; )

I think we also need to ask the following:

What do you believe is the best feature(s) of CB?

What do you believe is the worst feature(s) of CB?

The reason we ask is that we value your opinion and wish to make CB a more enjoyable experience for all players.

the fist step of any marketing research is to determine what the goal of your research is. in this case i am assuming we want to know why people aren't sticking around.

the idea behind one open-ended question is that we aren't leading them with canned responses and they can be as simple or verbose in their response as they wish.

also with one question, they would not be intimidated by the time taken to respond. many people have best intentions and see several questions and think that they do not have time and will come back later but rarely do.

regarding ranger's additions i am just not sure the info gained would be worth the replies possibly lost due to asking more of the recipients. the info gained by adding those two questions would be:

what they feel is the best feature ~ they are leaving though so evidently the best doesn't matter all that much to them

&

what they feel is the worst feature ~ if they only had one thing to put down for making the game appeal to them more couldn't we assume they would address this here?

In every exit interview I have done and been asked to do, the 2 questions I proposed were asked.

Not in those simpliestic terms but variations of the theme.

I feel it is essential to find out what people like and dislike about the game.