Should NarutoMUD Advertise More?

[Gatz]

We've had ups and downs over the past, and I think things like the Facebook App have helped us out. However, should NarutoMUD move to paying for advertising to get our name out there? If we did that, I'd probably need to post ads on the FB App and on the webpage to help in generating some income to help pay for things.

I feel like if I went that route, we'd be selling out a bit, but the upswing in players and potential builders would be nice.

[Gatz]

I'm bumping this topic, as I feel like it needs more input. I think we have enough content to possibly get a lot more players and, possibly, more Immortals. However, the how and where are key. If anyone has ideas for advertising, free or otherwise, post them here, or maybe even spots you go to find MUDs or other games and think others might look to find us there.

[Giyoku]

I have a few things to say, even though I am new.

If you're on facebook, you might as well use the crap out of it. There are a handful of Naruto related pages that get constant streams of posts. I'm not sure how good it will do, but it only takes a little bit to post up the info and link to the various pages and it would cost you nothing. Not that I have much faith in Facebook or the potential players you'll gain (though having a client is nice just in case i'm on someone else's machine.)

This mud is a niche mud, so you definitely need to wind up against your direct competition. At best, you may be able to draw players from other muds in the anime genre, but most likely you just need to showcase how you're different (and better by it) than them, specifically. More specifically, on TMC, you have 3 Naruto listings. One is a MUSH. I cannot really stand MUSH's. They give an incredible number of tools to aid in role playing, yet take away any real ability for me to immerse myself. The bigger question with the MUSH is if you really want a truly role playing game in -their- sense, and I doubt you do. Most "RPI" Muds don't even meet MUSH standards, and this is where I have some experience. I will say that there is, clearly, interest in a serious role playing naruto game, but you have miles to go before you'll keep role players interest.

Honestly, you don't have a lot content - but it may be enough . While I underestimated how much there was originally, with newbie school issues addressed and a lot of focus, you can just power through a bunch of levels and have fun playing with the different abilities, but I am not sure how much there is after 10. There are a couple quests, but these are 1-offs and i'm not even sure how much replay value they have, but I know 1 seems to cost 50ryo to even start.

Beyond that, the gear seems really rough low level, but i've heard this is being addressed recently too.

Something you can always do after content is just have a presence on mud community sites. Participate in conversations that are relevant and make sure you have links to information about your mud. I cannot stress how many muds i've tried simply because I read a thread on unique systems, much like some of the ones you have here, where a mud owner posted how his worked and I thought it was cool. I'd have never found or heard of it any other way.

Word of mouth campaigns are nice too. The best way to ensure you keep a player through growth phases where things are changing and new, not completely document or even finished, is to have people they know there with them. It may seem obvious, but providing some incentive may help. You'd have to carefully consider just how this happens, but it can work. Even just -having- people around is a big first impression to a new player. I can't say how many muds i've quickly left because not a soul was on.

All in all, I would say now is not the time to spend money on advertising, but it's not my money :p

[Gatz]

I have a few things to say, even though I am new.

Never be shy! I love people who speak up. Not saying anything is definitely not good. Fresh eyes are always a nice thing to have on something, as well as views from the grizzled, such as myself.

If you're on facebook, you might as well use the crap out of it. There are a handful of Naruto related pages that get constant streams of posts. I'm not sure how good it will do, but it only takes a little bit to post up the info and link to the various pages and it would cost you nothing. Not that I have much faith in Facebook or the potential players you'll gain (though having a client is nice just in case i'm on someone else's machine.)

Interesting...I think I might try to explore that a bit. My issue is a lot of Facebook people don't stick around very long, so I never felt there was a great value in trying to pursue that.

Honestly, you don't have a lot content - but it may be enough .

We have a lot of content, but it has become obvious that new players don't realize it. Partially because at least 40% of the world is locked until you become a Genin. Then the amount of content explodes. However, this does make it obvious where content is missing really and also letting players know that a larger world awaits them once they become a Genin.

This mud is a niche mud, so you definitely need to wind up against your direct competition.

I see that. Honestly, I love Naruto and have tried hard to make NarutoMUD not just another 'Anime' MUD, but I think our niche hurts us because I feel like, in the sphere of MUDers, there are a large chunk of people who'd love to play and build for us, but may never try because of our theme.

Word of mouth campaigns are nice too.

Agreed, tell your friends! NarutoMUD is a lot more enjoyable when you can group up with buddies! However, I'm not sure how to help with this, since it is pretty player driven.

All in all, I would say now is not the time to spend money on advertising, but it's not my money :p

That is what you think... . However, I think part of it is needing potential builders to help us work on content. We have a ton of new areas in progress and area concepts in the works, but we could use all the help we can get or else it'll take awhile to get through them all with the degree of quality that NarutoMUD demands. I think things like the Race to 300 Area Challenge is great, and I'd love to see more people wanting to step up and try out our content generation tools, and for a bonus, they're pretty easy to use too.

[Giyoku]

Re: Encouraging Friends, etc.

This doesn't have much to do with advertising but one of the things that encourages friends to play, that I don't think is utilized enough here, is benefits to grouping (though not universal to just friends, either, which is nice)

Many muds give you the majority of the experience you need to level when a monster is killed, and generally grouping means you can kill faster, some even offer bonus experience for grouping with like-leveled players.

You can do all kinds of things to restrict it however you wish, but I know between my couple friends we just go solo because it's too much to manage for no clear benefit to us.


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I still disagree that you have a lot of content in terms of advertising for new players. Myself and 2 friends have already sunk days of playing time and it feels like i've more or less explored the content that exists for us. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think I am very far off. A new players experience would probably be much the same.

But before we get into it, when I am referring to content:

Low level gear: I'm not sure if the gear is level-based, as some of it doesn't seem to be so far, but as far as what is readily available? I've seen the reed set of gear, and few pieces scattered on a few tough mobs but I wonder if there is even enough to fill all the slots (are most of these ninja's naked?)

low level quests: The newbie school quests gets you a level. Not bad. After that all there seems to be is collecting the shinai parts and the quest on the west island, which basically equates to spending 50 ryo on a weapon that you might (probably) don't even want if you want to use anything but taijutsu. This is not much content. I understand that there are missions and more once you reach Genin, but anyone making it that long isn't part of your target advertising nor new players.

Areas: Maybe we just have different ideas of what 'enough' is, which is fine, but in my opinion, there just isn't much. For a newbie you have the West island, the East island, Hidden Forests, and Mansion? Most of those areas recycle the same few descriptions several times (with spelling errors) , looks like most of the mobs have no descriptions, most of the gear has no description that i've seen as a newbie.


Char-gen: The cool thing about a character here is that for a new player, the decision is really only which village to come from, but that's also a double-edged sword. They have a lot of flexibility as a new player to try out a bunch of skills and abilities, but just how much?

In Taijutsu, you have several skills that are all basically the exact same to a new player. Kick, Double Kick, Triple Kick, Punch, No-Shadow Kick.. nothing special there really. Boukenka is passive, haburi isnt even selectable to a newbie, dragon punch isn't usable until level 18, chikara is passive, Fukutsu is passive.. Ishiryoku is also not selectable. The skills that require specific styles limit you even more, especially because anything but kame style has no kata, so it cannot be trained up.

Ninjutsu, By far the strongest jutsu for a newbie with the souken mizu and kasui mizu combo, but everything else that a newbie could really get to (~45 level) is either again useless or close to it. It also has anki which is incredibly handy if you're lazy, but the relative small newbie zones make it fairly simple to get around.

Genjutsu, I realize this is a new one, but again, for a newbie, this is frustrating. I was told if I didn't have a few hundred chakra, which isn't that easy to get as a newbie, it was pointless. Even further, it takes 1 practice to get custom genjutsu, and then I know sabaki stamina didn't even give me experience, nor did it even last more than a couple rounds. I have no idea how effective it gets by adding more, but this doesn't even become a viable option until you are well into building up your stats which can make it rough.

NPCs: Simply put, there isn't much going here either. If there were mobs that used specific jutsu's, some of the jutsus I listed above as pointless could be really handy, allowing some variety in leveling. Going around in circles, killing cookie-cutter ninjas for 25-40 levels before you can even attempt to become a genin is not my idea of 'content'.

Admins: I heard an admin declare that he was going to run some event on Saturday if enough people showed up, but I see no posts about it and have no idea of what happened. The only events I have heard of are the race to 300, which im not even sure if I am confusing two different contests of both building 300 rooms or getting 300 levels. Neither of these appeal to a newbie. While I am impressed that there are -often- admins on, and generally active (except the Afkosaurus Rex ), simple quests or games or anything really can help break up the monotony of grinding through the same mobs over and over.

These things are all areas in which successful muds, especially those that encourage role playing, all have in abundance, especially for new players.

So, while I don't mean to be super critical, after all I am still playing, I have the benefit of friends to hold my interest where these things fall short of -my- view of what should be a priority before sinking money.

Further, what kind of statistics do you have and will you be taking for where new players are coming from, how many, etc? It may be a valuable tool for deciding where time and money should be spent.

[Nakamura]

Whheeeeee! Post:

I'll defer to Zetsuke on this one. Not sure how much I can talk about.

--Nakamura

[Daizaburo]

Many muds give you the majority of the experience you need to level when a monster is killed, and generally grouping means you can kill faster, some even offer bonus experience for grouping with like-leveled players.

We do have XP bonuses for being in groups with other players. If you'll look at HELP EXPERIENCE you'll see that in the list of bonuses are some nice ones for grouping.

[zetsuke]

Low level gear: I'm not sure if the gear is level-based, as some of it doesn't seem to be so far, but as far as what is readily available? I've seen the reed set of gear, and few pieces scattered on a few tough mobs but I wonder if there is even enough to fill all the slots (are most of these ninja's naked?)

low level quests: The newbie school quests gets you a level. Not bad. After that all there seems to be is collecting the shinai parts and the quest on the west island, which basically equates to spending 50 ryo on a weapon that you might (probably) don't even want if you want to use anything but taijutsu. This is not much content. I understand that there are missions and more once you reach Genin, but anyone making it that long isn't part of your target advertising nor new players.


Areas: Maybe we just have different ideas of what 'enough' is, which is fine, but in my opinion, there just isn't much. For a newbie you have the West island, the East island, Hidden Forests, and Mansion? Most of those areas recycle the same few descriptions several times (with spelling errors) , looks like most of the mobs have no descriptions, most of the gear has no description that i've seen as a newbie.

You're fairly spot on about most of these things, and I shall address each in turn:

Gear: There is absolutely not enough gear for low level players. However, up until recently, there was literally no gear for high level players. Now that that situation has been addressed, though, the next step is to completely revamp the gear for low level players.

Quests: In my opinion, there aren't enough quests in the game in general. However, we strive to make quests interesting, challenging, and generally rewarding in more than just an xp/ryo kind of way. As such, we try to avoid churning out meaningless quests that don't have any real point other than to shove the player to an even higher level. (Shouldn't it be about the journey as well as the destination?) This is something that is also being addressed already.

Areas: Again, there definitely is a need for more areas. Many of the areas, especially newbie areas, are fairly old. NarutoMUD had a pretty long dry-spell with no builders at all, so things didn't expand for awhile. Now we're working on some pretty big things, and newbie content is a focus for us right now. Also, many of the older areas aren't as rich with content as we strive for now because, when they were implemented, NM just needed places for people to actually exist.

In Taijutsu, you have several skills that are all basically the exact same to a new player. Kick, Double Kick, Triple Kick, Punch, No-Shadow Kick.. nothing special there really. Boukenka is passive, haburi isnt even selectable to a newbie, dragon punch isn't usable until level 18, chikara is passive, Fukutsu is passive.. Ishiryoku is also not selectable. The skills that require specific styles limit you even more, especially because anything but kame style has no kata, so it cannot be trained up.

Most of those skills aren't designed as "newbie skills"...especially the ones that require specific styles. Those skills were not originally designed to even be accessible until after one would have had plenty of time to master a style. As for Haburi and Ishiriyoku, neither is unpracticeable...and have been complained about far more times by people who practiced them thinking they wanted to use Taijutsu, then later changed their mind, but couldn't get the practice back.

Ninjutsu, By far the strongest jutsu for a newbie with the souken mizu and kasui mizu combo, but everything else that a newbie could really get to (~45 level) is either again useless or close to it. It also has anki which is incredibly handy if you're lazy, but the relative small newbie zones make it fairly simple to get around.

Again, these aren't designed as "newbie skills." Only recently was the ability to exchange practice points for ability points implemented. Prior to that, players had to actually reach a combat level of sufficient height to attain said skills. These skills were designed and balanced more for that than the current situation.

NPCs: Simply put, there isn't much going here either. If there were mobs that used specific jutsu's, some of the jutsus I listed above as pointless could be really handy, allowing some variety in leveling. Going around in circles, killing cookie-cutter ninjas for 25-40 levels before you can even attempt to become a genin is not my idea of 'content'.

I completely agree with you about this, and I have in fact been working to remedy this as of late. So, very soon things will start visibly changing in this area.



You seem to have much the same take on things that I, and as such I appreciate your thoughts Please know that a lot of these things are already being addressed and will hopefully be fixed, or at least much better in the very near future. Some of the things, such as the skills you mentioned, are simply in a weird limbo-esque state as an unavoidable side-effect of growing. You should definitely keep going through NM as the experience only gets better (In my opinion).

[Giyoku]

Many muds give you the majority of the experience you need to level when a monster is killed, and generally grouping means you can kill faster, some even offer bonus experience for grouping with like-leveled players.

We do have XP bonuses for being in groups with other players. If you'll look at HELP EXPERIENCE you'll see that in the list of bonuses are some nice ones for grouping.

Right, but my comment is that they generally aren't worth it. You see, you cannot double up on any moves that seem to combo off of each other because only -1- person gets the exp or it just doesn't tell you, either way, these are all examples of things I think should be addressed before trying to attract new players.

Also, the fact that the system of converting ability points is new and from everything you guys have said the skills aren't meant to be gained, that would pretty much have to mean the game made the system very narrow with what newbies can actually do or hopefully had another system and the implementation of this change should have gone smoother. Everyone is basically saying that the handful of skills a newbie could attain aren't -meant- to be attained? So what is there here for a newbie that would be brought here by advertising, which is to say, doesn't have friends here or a returning player, etc.

[Yamashita]

In Taijutsu, you have several skills that are all basically the exact same to a new player. Kick, Double Kick, Triple Kick, Punch, No-Shadow Kick.. nothing special there really. Boukenka is passive, haburi isnt even selectable to a newbie, dragon punch isn't usable until level 18, chikara is passive, Fukutsu is passive.. Ishiryoku is also not selectable. The skills that require specific styles limit you even more, especially because anything but kame style has no kata, so it cannot be trained up.

Most of those skills aren't designed as "newbie skills"...especially the ones that require specific styles. Those skills were not originally designed to even be accessible until after one would have had plenty of time to master a style. As for Haburi and Ishiriyoku, neither is unpracticeable...and have been complained about far more times by people who practiced them thinking they wanted to use Taijutsu, then later changed their mind, but couldn't get the practice back.

Ninjutsu, By far the strongest jutsu for a newbie with the souken mizu and kasui mizu combo, but everything else that a newbie could really get to (~45 level) is either again useless or close to it. It also has anki which is incredibly handy if you're lazy, but the relative small newbie zones make it fairly simple to get around.

Again, these aren't designed as "newbie skills." Only recently was the ability to exchange practice points for ability points implemented. Prior to that, players had to actually reach a combat level of sufficient height to attain said skills. These skills were designed and balanced more for that than the current situation.

I'd like to add that, from an immersive perspective, one cannot expect an 8 or 9 year old (as all newbies are) to be using such advanced jutsu as Dragon Punch or Suiryuudan. In Naruto we don't see many (if any) of the young ninja, especially the non-Genin, using such high-level jutsu, therefore making them either unavailable or not very useful (via lack of stat points to support such a high level skill) makes perfect sense.

[Giyoku]

We're not talking about immersion when we're talking about whether or not NarutoMUD should advertise, and therefore support and more importantly -keep- new players. The opinion I presented is that spending money when all these things are lacking would be less effective than first fixing these issues - and at least one other imm agrees with the building and says it's being addressed, so a good start there.

However, if we do take a moment to look at it from that perspective, you're technically right. The 8 year old characters in the show are basically what you would expect, terrible. So let me ask a serious question - why does the game force people to play one, especially for so long?

With the current system, sure, a few months into the game with casual play (~20 hr/week) you'll be around the series' characters ages and be able to pull the moves we're talking about, but that just means someone has to play for -that- long before they even have a chance to, according to these posts, see the other 40% of the game.

My suggestion here would be to fix the converting system by changing the level you need to learn the skills that 8 year olds shouldn't even be able to get, and then consider where you might need to add skills or change the system to allow new players at least some variety.

Next, as I mentioned above with the age consideration, you could then allow characters to pick their age when they write their bio and set it (as well as height/weight). My reasoning here is that for 1, as a whole, people are generally terrible at roleplaying children, and 2, many of us never want to anyway. For me personally, I know I won't enjoy playing a pc younger than middle-teens. Roleplaying is still going to be incredibly wonky anyways with the way we age outside of the game clock based on our hours played. I'm not even sure what considerations are made here, but if it already doesn't matter than at least players can have a bit more customization of their character.

[Ichiro]

Most players more or less ignore the "game age" when RP'ing....But I'm not sure that allowing people to just set their age when they walk in is the best option either. While I think it would be nice....it would be, I think, equally odd for Dude-Bro-A to walk in and be like "I'm a 20 year old epic ninja of doomz.....bro" and not actually be able to do anything other than fight deer and maybe throw a kick. I think the current system definitely needs an overhaul (and probably it's own topic). At one point it was used as a way to track how long you had played (hours), but now we have so many other ways to see that...it's just become kind of redundant.

As for the conversions...I think the skill set-up is fine, and at most could be tweaked a little. I think what would be easier and make more sense is if we change how many points 1 practice is worth. Gaining 15 ability points for a practice is a lot...especially when you're actually only level 1.

[Gatz]

I think we have about 5 different topics spinning around in here. How about some of you guys grab a main topic and make a thread about it? I think we've started to drift from the main topic at hand, which was just asking if we should advertise.

[Giyoku]

not it.