Meridian 59

kaeebonrai · **Joined:** Thu May 08, 2014 12:11 am **Posts:** 53

I recently decided to play through all the Ages from scratch, to get a feel for how Uru plays again and revisit everything.

In Teledahn, I got stuck more than once - the first time on the back of the elevator call button in the workroom, pretty sure I got stuck on collision there, irritating, but not too bad. But then, when I tried to open the fish tank, I had to log out because clicking my Relto book did nothing. It happened again when I went back and tried to open the fish tank a second time, but the same thing happened - stuck in the animation. Had to log out, again.. and this time, I went "screw it, I'm done for now." and quit out. =P

Frustration due to bugs like this also affects player retention pretty severely. =/

A good bugfix pass on all this stuff might also help - a bit of spit and polish, I guess?

Now, I've been told this is a network issue - but even if it is, I don't have a poor network setup - its actually quite good. XD 5.39 Mbps down and 0.72 Mbps up. This is fairly reasonable to expect for any online gaming >.> (and online music broadcasting is pretty fine for me too, soo... =P)

So even if it /is/ network based - that's something that needs a tune up - because players getting frustrated by things like being unable to complete a puzzle, while they have the correct solution - to the point of having to log out and come back in - that frustration is likely to lose you players, in the end - it's not great for player retention at all. =/

Just my $0.02AUD

tommyap · **Posted:** Sat May 17, 2014 2:28 pm

@Nalates:
It is fairly obvious that we are at opposite ends of the spectrum here. To you it is hard science, to me
it is some sort of religion but not mine. Lot of fuel for conflict and eternal debate. Lets keep it at that and put it to rest. I can get to deeply involved. I can also be a hothead from time to time.
There are no personal issues towards you from my end. Instead i would like to see you on this forum more often.
@everyone else:
Sorry for rant.

I would like to react to some things mentioned earlier:
Bots.
Using bots as greeters is the worst idea i have heard in a long time.
When i first met OhBot i was in the game less than a week. A few days earlier his insistant odd and
humorous intended responses to every typo, every spelling, and every syntax error i made would have
convinced me that i was dealing with a zenofoob griefer playing some private game at my expense. If it had been my first or second day i probably would have left the game. I had buddies by then and this is not my first MMO so i did not. Not OHB's intention surely.
People are much more flexible in their responces than any bot could ever be by far. No bot can recognize a misunderstanding and fix it.
Do not ignore, forget or underestimate the ignorance of a newbee.
Do not underestimate how vulnerable a newbee can be.
For some this will be the first MMO they have ever been in.
Keep bots as far away from newbees as you can put them, better yet keep them out of the game.
(Banning bots would put unrealistic restraints on grey hats, i accept a compromise.)

Modern advanced chat system.
As i see it the first priority should go to fixing the design flaw that causes newbees to remain isolated
until they understand a particular machine and use it. Since they know nothing about instancing and many newbees have never played a Myst game before this design flaw is a major problem. If the Kadish galery bahro stone led to the public instance of Ae'gura newbees would have two ways of getting there instead of just one. If the Kadish galery panel in their book led to public Ae'gura as well, they would have three. Some info on this particular machine or instances availlable in Relto in the form of a journal, brochure etc. would be helpfull as well. We have been losing newbees continously from day one onward because of this one issue alone.
This problem could be solved with giving newbees a Ki right from the start and add an all-player channel availlable to all. True. (if they figure out how to use their Ki)
I am dead set against that particular idea.
An all-player channel causes more issues than it is worth in every game that has it, except where that
channel is only availlable to moderators, game masters etc. as far as my experience with MMO's goes anyway.
Having the option for a text window alowing you to drag-drop a prepared text would be welcome but no high priority.
One extra channel "teamplayers" would be excellent. With that you would have an almost perfect balance between flexibility and ease of use. Adding a whole lot would complicate use for no particular gain at all. Again no priority.
There could be technical reasons why this "modern advanced chat system" would be needed that i am not aware of, please inform me. As it stands i see no reason to grant that particular idea any priority. Move it to the bottom of the list please.
Move "prevent isolation of newbees" to number one.

Nalates · **Posted:** Sun May 18, 2014 6:28 pm

belford wrote:

Quote:

So, if you mean getting people to accept Uru in new formats, I’ll point out they need a reason to.

Okay, so I built a system which is Uru in a new format. (All text.)

Getting a lot of people to use it has been a challenge. On the other hand, *nobody* has posted telling me that I'm a terrible person or that I'm ruining Uru.

What-if forum threads attract arguments, but actually getting something up and running is a positive thing.

True. And it is a very positive thing. I think your challenge getting people to try it has several aspects. But, without a motivating reason to try it, all the challenges have to be over come. In my experience that takes effort, possible considerable effort.

As to calling you a bad person for changing Uru, consider the posts where people suggested changes and were belittled for their ideas. This forum was hard on people that disagreed with 'no change crowd' and 'my way crowds'.

I think we are fortunate there are people that went and did rather than discussing (beyond some point).

=========Later Addition==============

ChloeRhodes wrote:

...he doesn't disagree that player retention is an issue, but he disagrees with your use of studies in relation to predicting human behavior. …

Tommyap disagrees with me about studies based on opinion and bias keyed to personal experience. It is ok that it is done that way. My experience is different but still based on personal experience, my baises and opinion. But, I can provide far more information in a debate supporting my opinions than he can. Tommyap and I disagree on the value, nature, motivation for, and execution of scientific studies. I see ignoring them as ignoring knowledge and history.

Studies are not the absolute answer to Uru's challenges. But, they do help people avoid repeating the mistakes of others. My study would give weight to Tommyap's objection to using bot greeters. We both think it a horrible idea. Tommyap bases his reasoning on personal experience and opinion. I base mine on personal experience, industry experience from support phone systems to web based AI systems, and academic studies of dozens of games and literally millions of people. Which is more convincing? Having a rational explanation for why something is unlikely to work or an opinion it won't?

ChloeRhodes wrote:

...the nature of studies is to collect from research from a small pool of individuals …

That somewhat miss characterizes studies. Studies generally work to get statistically significant numbers of people involved. Those dealing with games usually have large numbers of people involved, often millions. But, we would need to define small and large to be clear in what we are saying.

A point you both seem to disbelieve is that humans in general are predictable, even down to the time they will do things. I get you don't believe it. But we (humans) have the data to prove my position. We now have the ability study hundreds of millions of humans and find commonalities and majority preferences. Businesses and politicians are exploiting it. We too can learn from it. While I can prove my point I am pretty sure you can't provide reason or proof to ignore knowledge.

People think any single human can be an exception to a rule. But, the more we learn the less true that seems to be, that just puts them in another group of hundreds of thousands making same choices. Science and Discover channels have shows reveal how we thing

No has to believe me. Tommyap comparing my beliefs to a religion seems to imply the presupposition that religions are accepted at face value, as provided. But, an unexamined belief system usually unsupportable, which I think Tommyap's is. But, I've dug for evidence supporting my beliefs and often changed them for lack of evidence or a preponderance of evidence for another position.

ChloeRhodes wrote:

Market Research etc into a specific area and trying to predict what humans will buy, six months, a year into future is a sound practice on paper, …

No actually P&G has it down to the week... and they have taken it far beyond paper as have other industries and political systems.

My point has been and is that it is common practice in Myst-Uru circles to ignore information and knowledge that can help and go with opinion instead. So, those that want to start a new labor intense activity to inform people about other aspects of Uru as a player retention move, that has repeatedly failed, and are obviously unware of game design knowledge and Uru history, are targets of my posts... people, like you, jump in to debate me and often seem to take it personally, which seems a bit self centered. That just adds support to my point of people making assumptions with out bothering to find facts.

I do find it surprising that so many people refuse to even look at what knowledge we have because it conflicts with what they want to do or believe, then debate the value of studies and past experiences so they and justify not looking at them. Both you and tommyap are arguing for letting people remain ignorant and ignore hard won knowledge because of your opinions and assumptions rather then digging into facts and existing knowledge.

ChloeRhodes wrote:

To have you come push us in and try to tell us that what needs to be done to fix Uru is researching in depth game development speaks volumes on to how LITTLE you know of what we as developers are doing.

Again you assume I am talking to those doing development work. Also, you think I want to tell you WHAT to do. I don't. Go develop whatever you want. If you have well considered it, your resulting work will take off. If it doesn't... you missed something and can try again. I am more interested in helping new people avoid the repeating the mistakes we have already made.

ChloeRhodes wrote:

You by your own words are out of touch with the development of the engine, and fan content, and most of the efforts going into fixing Uru.

True. But I do not need to be up to day on everything to know someone repeating a previously failed effort needs to be clued into what is going on and try to get them thinking. You also make too many assumptions about what I do or follow.

ChloeRhodes wrote:

And again, if you're paying a modicum of attention to this thread you'll notice that no one has objected to any of these ideas,

...and again... this thread is mostly objecting to having people learn from studies and past experience. Agreed, not my point on player retention. I previously pointed out I posted this thread because another was locked where people were discounting information in favor of trying things already known to fail.

I've made no assertions as to what developers are doing. You seem to have taken personal offense at something and try to go down a path I never addressed.

One of my points is people imagine how things are rather than finding out. You imagine what you think I think about those developing improved ages and overall game play in Uru and begin inferring from there. You are reading far more into my writing than I am putting in there.

I'll make it as simple as I know how, none of my recent posts about using studies were targeted for you. These recent posts addressed to you are about debating the value of using knowledge gained by others. I've never said you aren't making use of outside information. I am saying I think it is valuable for those about to repeat our mistakes of the past. Surely you don't think you are doing that?

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sun May 18, 2014 10:27 pm

For what it's worth, Nalates, I fully believe you in the power of scientific studies to inform us on how people behave, having observed the fruits of such studies being incredibly powerful tools (such as pinpointing the house of a criminal, or predicting flu outbreaks). Generally, individuals are unpredictable, but crowds get more predictable the larger they are.

ChloeRhodes · **Joined:** Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:29 am **Posts:** 520

Nalates wrote:

That somewhat miss characterizes studies. Studies generally work to get statistically significant numbers of people involved. Those dealing with games usually have large numbers of people involved, often millions. But, we would need to define small and large to be clear in what we are saying

Okay, let's talk some numbers. There 7 billion people on the planet. Even if a hypothetical study was done that involved 7 million of those people. It would account for .001 percent of the population. Or, to put it another way, there's over 200 million registered voters in the US, if a political originization polled say 2 million of those Americans and asked them "should we abolish the first amendment" and 30 percent said yes. That doesn't mean 30 percent of the population thinks that we should get rid of freedom of speech. That means 30 percent of 1% of the population does. IE 600,000 of the 200,000,000 or to put back into percentages. .003 percent of registered voters. However the mass media will instead use the polling figures and say "30% of those polled" put the poll number of 2 million regsitered voters, without saying how small of the percentage of registered voters that is, and thus how small a percentage people think that way actually is. That my friend is why these studies tend to skew the numbers in favor of a particular idea or theory.

Quote:

A point you both seem to disbelieve is that humans in general are predictable, even down to the time they will do things. I get you don't believe it. But we (humans) have the data to prove my position. We now have the ability study hundreds of millions of humans and find commonalities and majority preferences. Businesses and politicians are exploiting it. We too can learn from it. While I can prove my point I am pretty sure you can't provide reason or proof to ignore knowledge.

And again, even if you studied the actions of 700 million people, you've cracked 10 percent of the population. To get any kind of accurate view you'd IMO need to study 3.5 BILLION. That's 50 percent.

Quote:

People think any single human can be an exception to a rule. But, the more we learn the less true that seems to be, that just puts them in another group of hundreds of thousands making same choices. Science and Discover channels have shows reveal how we thing

Yes and Science and Discovery channels also have shows like "Secrets of Secret Societies" and History Channel puts out things like "Ancient Aliens' and "Book of Secrets". So I really wouldn't suggest using anything you see on TV as something to bolster one's argument anymore than quoting from wikipedia. It may be a lot harder to track down the actual science and facts but at least you know those are reliable.

Quote:

No actually P&G has it down to the week... and they have taken it far beyond paper as have other industries and political systems.

That's because there's a very big difference between what companies like P&G and Google do as far as being able to predict human behavior. Google for example does it by your individual searches through their engine. They can predict your behavior because your google account saves the information on your searches so that they can tailer ads etc to the individual themselves. In other words they don't predict it based on studies but rather on you actually putting information, on a daily basis, into their search engine. Which BTW is the same information they then feed to the NSA etc via Prism.

Quote:

Both you and tommyap are arguing for letting people remain ignorant and ignore hard won knowledge because of your opinions and assumptions rather then digging into facts and existing knowledge.

Please do not assume I'm doing anything of the sort, thats your opinion not a fact.

Quote:

Again you assume I am talking to those doing development work. Also, you think I want to tell you WHAT to do. I don't. Go develop whatever you want. If you have well considered it, your resulting work will take off. If it doesn't... you missed something and can try again. I am more interested in helping new people avoid the repeating the mistakes we have already made.

Just because YOU believe something is a mistake doesn't make it a mistake. That's akin to saying Uru failed because the idea behind it was flawed. Obviously that's not so because we're all still here because we believe in that idea. Uru failed for a number of reasons but the core idea of it is sound, but the technology behind it was not feasible yet. Just because one type of bot didn't work out doesn't mean ALL bots are not going to work out.

Quote:

True. But I do not need to be up to day on everything to know someone repeating a previously failed effort needs to be clued into what is going on and try to get them thinking. You also make too many assumptions about what I do or follow.

Again you use the term failure. Until you can prove with verifiable evidence something is a failure. You don't say it's a failure. You say "You believe it's a failure" but not that it is. That is the difference between opinion, and fact.

Quote:

...and again... this thread is mostly objecting to having people learn from studies and past experience. Agreed, not my point on player retention. I previously pointed out I posted this thread because another was locked where people were discounting information in favor of trying things already known to fail.

Yes I know, I posted in that thread before it was locked.

Quote:

I've made no assertions as to what developers are doing. You seem to have taken personal offense at something and try to go down a path I never addressed.

I haven't taken personal offense. I don't get personally offended by what anonymous people post on forums or message boards. You however have a bad way of putting out generalized statements sometimes that one can easily read into as being something different than what it actually is.

Quote:

One of my points is people imagine how things are rather than finding out. You imagine what you think I think about those developing improved ages and overall game play in Uru and begin inferring from there. You are reading far more into my writing than I am putting in there.

Then I would suggest you not put generalized statements in and try and do a better job of enunciating your beliefs so that people don't read too into them.

Quote:

I've never said you aren't making use of outside information. I am saying I think it is valuable for those about to repeat our mistakes of the past. Surely you don't think you are doing that?

When you respond, to someone you know for A FACT is a long standing community member, and content developer, someone who is consistently pushing to put new content into Uru, and working on a consistent basis to try and improve the game, and you respond to that person with things like this:

Quote:

You seem to have missed the thrust of what I am pushing, that what needs to be done to improve Uru and make it more interesting is a well researched subject, game development.

It can give the impression that you believe the person you're conversing with hasn't done just that. Now if you had perhaps added to that statement something like :

Code:

There are some of course, that I don't think have done that research yet, and I'd like to try and push them to do so.

It isn't so generalized anymore more.

tommyap · **Posted:** Mon May 19, 2014 7:31 pm

What i wrote can be understood by anyone. Call it opinion if you must.
It does from time to time make people look at a situation from a new (for them) angle, at least i hope it
does. That is the opposite of keeping people ignorant. Again i wish to state that i did NOT say these
studies are not worth reading. But i do support scepticisme. I have never told anyone to ignore hard won knowledge. Patterns are not always meaningfull however. The canals of Mars are a good example.

The biggest problem retailers have, is preventing empty shelves without ending up with to much unsaleble surplus. This problem has existed since the beginning of commerce and has never been solved.
Despite the enormous experience that should have accumulated over time.
Despite the vast capital spend on consumer behaviour research recently.
The problem is as acute as it ever was, in fact more so.
The amount of consumer goods (not just food) that is not sold but destroyed dayly is enormous.
The overwhelming evidence that these studies are a waste of time is nevertheless completely ignored.
We continue to pour money into this bottomless pitt in ever greater amounts.
We are destroying resources in such vast quantities it is sickening.
We have refrigerators nowadays, empty shelves from time to time should not be an issue anymore.
With a slightly different attitude the problem solves itself.

Just an opinion.

Strangely, none of the examples of retention related problems posted here has gotten any response. No
question. No answer. No comment. No thought. No science. Absolutely nothing.
Debating the value of studies only is stopping the clock. This way there will be no progress.

Again an opinion.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Mon May 19, 2014 8:30 pm

Chloe, the fallacy with your numbers argument (beside the fact that you got one wrong, but I'll ignore that) is that because you only polled 1% of the population, you can't say for certain that only the 30% who said yes are of that viewpoint. However, statisticly, you would expect a similar proportion of any arbitrary 1% of the population to say yes, if the population is large enough. In this case, it is large enough. Therefore, we can conclude that about 30% of the population would say yes. (For the record, this does only hold if your sample was random).

ChloeRhodes · **Joined:** Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:29 am **Posts:** 520

KathAveara wrote:

Chloe, the fallacy with your numbers argument (beside the fact that you got one wrong, but I'll ignore that) is that because you only polled 1% of the population, you can't say for certain that only the 30% who said yes are of that viewpoint. However, statisticly, you would expect a similar proportion of any arbitrary 1% of the population to say yes, if the population is large enough. In this case, it is large enough. Therefore, we can conclude that about 30% of the population would say yes. (For the record, this does only hold if your sample was random).

Fixed to correct my 20 percent error

. But the fallacy with my numbers argument isn't that it's 1% of the population. Even if you scale up the percentage of the population to 100 million voters out of 200. IE 50 percent of those registered. And kept everything else the same (So 30 percent of your 100 million people (half the population) said yes. That still only accounts for 15 percent of the population in general think that way.

Artic_Wagon · **Joined:** Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:00 pm **Posts:** 4095

Because of the anthropic principle, all of you have to first decide at what "time" and in what universe you choose to make your survey in. According to the anthropic principle since the big bang and with every bit of time we are moving toward maximum chaos. Humans will become so different from each other that it will impossible for them to really understand what the others will talking about. Check the very old knowledge who spoke about that. (Babel tower)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

From my point of view this universe is slowly going down the drain. :twisted:

Btw, this thread is a very good example of the principle.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Tue May 20, 2014 4:20 pm

ChloeRhodes wrote:

Fixed to correct my 20 percent error

. But the fallacy with my numbers argument isn't that it's 1% of the population. Even if you scale up the percentage of the population to 100 million voters out of 200. IE 50 percent of those registered. And kept everything else the same (So 30 percent of your 100 million people (half the population) said yes. That still only accounts for 15 percent of the population in general think that way.

No, no, you're doing the same thing again! You're taking your sample to be the population. No, it's representative of the population, meaning that it is a fair assumption that for whatever proportion of your (large enough) sample that says yes, the same proportion of your total population also says yes.

Nalates · **Posted:** Wed May 21, 2014 7:06 pm

ChloeRohes wrote:

Okay, let's talk some numbers. …

Are you making the argument that studies cannot be accurate because they never have a large enough sample size and thus are always erroneous or at best misleading?

KathAveara points out the major fallacy in your writing regarding numbers.

You seem to consistently miss the point that if one is to disagree with information/facts the person needs to present their facts. That was the point of my OP. You can presuppose that only studies of large numbers can predict the behavior of large groups and all other studies are therefore deficient. The facts don’t support your presupposition and you continue to offer only opinion blinded by your presuppositions.

ChloeRohes wrote:

To get any kind of accurate view you'd IMO need to study…

There you are with an opinion again. How about some facts?

I find you both, ChloeRohes and Tommyap, make statements of opinion that are not supported by fact to support prior or current opinions. I believe that behavior is counterproductive for the Uru community. So, I disagree and challenge you. You seem to have no counter argument.

For an instance of opinion Tommyap makes the statement inventory management has been a problem since early times and says it is acute as ever, never been solved, and is actually worse than in times past. The facts do not support Tommyap’s statements. (Reference, Google)

For me such statements frame Tommyap’s credibility and set a value for his opinions. That doesn’t mean I dislike all his ideas. You do the same damage to your credibility by failing to support you opinions with facts. Readers will make their decisions on who is or is not credible.

In my OP I said disagreeing with a point supported by studies and history requires more than just opinion to be of significant value and to move things ahead. Tommyap is right that divergent or counter opinion can generate thought. I agree that has great value and is a good thing. But, contradictory opinion is only a starting place.

Following up with fallacious examples of how bad inventory management systems are doesn’t move conversation forward. Arguing that studies aren’t accurate enough to predict human behavior is so far behind the times and out of mainstream thought I am wondering if you are just trying to win a debate?

Your argument style fits well to: Advanced Debate Tactics. The ideas appear to mostly be taken from the Left’s Rules for Radicals handbook. They are not interested in truth or knowledge, just winning a debate and persuading the ignorant. I prefer people be educated and make up their minds based on understanding. How and why does one argue against that?

To oppose my OP position that we should discuss design and promotional efforts based on knowledge and awareness of past experience over opinion seems unassailable on the face of it. But, here we are with you two arguing against doing that and exemplifying the behavior I oppose… opinion after opinion, several erroneous that I’ve rebutted with references to what I think should be pretty common place knowledge and included the references. Strikingly, I hope, different than your attempted rebuttals by opinion.

If you are wrong on so many points, why should I accept your opinions and arguments regarding Uru?

Others missed the OP point entirely. My post was not so much about HOW to improve the promotion and design of Uru as the suggestion to discuss those things from a place of knowledge over opinion.

--------------------
Just to give some closure to the predictability argument let’s see if this focuses the quantification of numbers and predictability.

YouTube Video

The individual bird is the size number I am only somewhat interested in. The show’s scientist’s point is the individual birds behavior in the flock as part of chaos theory is predictable. As Morgan says, if you understand the patterns, seemingly chaotic events become predictable. You, I think, are arguing that only the flock’s behavior is predictable. I am arguing that flock’s behavior is only predictable by understanding the individual but common nature of a single bird, which I think is well illustrated in the video.

The truth is out there. It is just a matter of will people look at it. And my point is will people change how they discuss the subject here in the forum?

ChloeRhodes · **Joined:** Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:29 am **Posts:** 520

Nalates wrote:

Others missed the OP point entirely. My post was not so much about HOW to improve the promotion and design of Uru as the suggestion to discuss those things from a place of knowledge over opinion.

Or in other words:

Quote:

"I want you to discuss this my way, but heaven forbid you discuss it in my topic. My topic is just about how you should discuss the subject, but definitely not about actually discussing the subject"

As for the rest, do not assume that my objections to the use of studies alone is based upon opinion please. It is based on the three fundamental limitations of statistics when used in studies and research. Because there are limitations to it regardless if you agree with the overall value of the study or not, the facts are that they:

1. Do not reveal specific information about individuals themselves.
2. You are providing data on a subset of a population, not on a population that you've fully measured, so you cannot guarantee that your measurements will be correct.
2b. Some, not all, of the tests done to make these studies require the user to make educational guesses based on theory to run the tests themselves, which can cause certainty in the results.

By the way, those facts are from a reputable company Laerd Statistics that does these types of statistical tests on data for studies. And are paid to do them.

EDIT:

And by the way, if you really want to imply that I'm trying to debate you rather than have a discussion, you would know that your entire OP is flawed on the face of it. Discussion requires the audience to participate and way in with their opinion's not facts. Debates require facts, discussions do not, but they can use them.

tommyap · **Posted:** Thu May 22, 2014 11:50 am

@ Nalates
You presented research into Second Life and one MMO.
You did not indicate, explain or even theorize HOW or WHY this research would when superimposed on Uru improve retention in your OPINION.
You have apparantly arrived at a conclusion how to INTERPRET this research.
You are apparantly of the OPINION that your interpretation is scientificly sound.
You are of the OPINION that crafting what APPEARS to work for Second Life onto Uru would have the same effect on Uru as it MIGHT have on Second Life.
You are apparantly of the OPINION that that is scientificly sound as well.

In other words:
You are covering your BELIEVE under a thick blanket of pseudoscience, and you are hiding that particular fact behind yards of complicated text, judgemental remarks regarding the "uneducated" status of the opposition and unfounded accusations left and right as well as proclaiming opinions of others unfounded.

Lessons can be learned from all kinds of research. What lessons however remains debatable.
That was the point of my first post here, and still is.
(The fact that we disagree on the value of this type of research is of no particular importance.)

Myst was not a great succes because meticulous research showed that it would.
If that research was done and had played a major role in designing the game it would not have sold as well as it did.

An opinion?
Sure.
But am i wrong?

Debating the value let alone applicability of certain studies will not improve anything.
Rand has personaly informed all of us that Cyan has no intention of abandoning Plasma, and no plans to port Uru on several ocasions.
As long as that does not change, further discussing other engines is a waste of time, if you, i or any one else agrees with that decission or not.
Considering the amount of work and likely cost, in addition to Cyan protecting their assets, i think it best to abandon the thought.
At least for now. Pushing for another engine again and again, overshadowing other things we could do is counterproductive.

I believe that a more practicle, proactive approach is more likely to produce results.
In order to move forwards it seems far more productive to me, to propose changes and additions that may improve the game for some, analize said ideas with a critical eye, scratch ideas that could have the opposite effect to others, and arrive at a list of proposition that no one objects to.
If some of those ideas are doable or not is something yet to determine, for that they need to be discussed.
The actual work would start from there.
There is no guarantee these changes would improve retention of course, but it would fairly certain do no harm.
Adding content will increase the time needed to finish the game, more things to do and have a small effect regardless.
Solving problems like isolated newbees remains critical.
Recurring posts of new players asking "where is everybody" prove that issue.
I have dropped a few ideas and responded to some ideas proposed by others in an attempt to get the ball rolling again.

If it is needed to repeatedly address the same issues because it appears awareness of them is lacking, or the proposed solution is problematic, fine.
Lets do that.
It may takes a bit of effort to bend, beg, and, or bully theoretic inclined minds to practicle proactive thinking, fine.
Lets do that to.
I think it worth the effort.

Let me add a little amateur research, just for laughs:
DATA> -The fan run shards have a lower number of visiters than the official one.
CONCLUSION> -It appears that adding fan ages would be detrimental to retention.
It would take a lot of meaningless work, writing a lenghty comprehensive study that most readers would take serious to the same effect, but it can be done.

(I have cut so many corners that the conclusion i jumped to is obviously worthless.)

What ever brings in the crowd for a football match is not likely to work for a theater or Disneyland.
The people who would go to the cinema to watch the next version of Titanic will not be the same people going to the cinema to watch Terminator IV.
Your favorite sitcom will most likely have more viewers than a documentary on weaverbirds.
In what way is it logical to make a sitcom about weaverbirds?
I eagerly await Lillyhammer season III.
If that series was changed with the intent to increase the number of viewers by means derived from research into the succes of Hollywood blockbusters (f.i.) i would no longer be interested.
I would mourn the loss.

You did not respond to, warn against, or comment on the original Bot greeter proposition in any form, despite being active in that thread.
I did.
If no one had, bot greeters would have become reality.
You may agree after the fact, it does not show you were aware of the problem before i posted it.
Pardon my arrogance, but who is educating who Nalates?

Hannah · **Joined:** Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:41 pm **Posts:** 130

Looks like this conversation needs to end now.

EDIT: Just in case the reasoning for locking this thread wasn't very clear:

Debating a subject is ok on the forums, but not when it begins to mask personal attacks. Not that anyone in particular was the sole cause of the thread being locked; it's just that we are trying to encourage healthy discussion that influences others to take part and have their opinions voiced in a safe, welcoming space.

As you all probably know, we appreciate our community greatly and have only interfered when there is a great need to do so. We encourage discussions like these to happen, and would like to let you know that you are free to continue this conversation on improving player retention & mass appeal in URU in a new thread, but please withhold from digressing from debate to defamation.

If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to message me or Tor'i.

Meridian 59

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