MMO Quit Moments

[Paul Hexem]

I didn't want to hijack another thread with this, but a few recent topics made me think of it. 

An MMO reviewer on YouTube made a video a while back about "quit moments" in games, especially MMO's like SL. It really should be required watching for LL employees. SL has a ton of these quit moments (great example being failed teleports that literally force you to choose "quit", instead of "reconnect").

It seems strange to me that LL is working on the mentor program and new welcome regions, but hasn't done anything about their quit moments, some going back 20 years.

 

[Marigold Devin]

Some people just quit before they even really start. The bloke in the video says people are lazy and would pay £5 rather than have to download hacks and fixes and patches etc. No one likes an uphill struggle. 

Making Second Life easy probably isn't an option. It's not a game in the traditional sense (how many times has this been said before?), and it appeals more perhaps to those with imagination or desires. Or maybe the people who have staying power in Second Life are just masochists who don't like physical pain! 

I've had a few almost-quit moments over the years, just like I expect the majority of people have. I nearly packed in SL during the first two weeks, but some good people I met helped me to settle in. Ironically it's probably people rather than technical issues that have made me have other almost-quit moments.

I'm not and never have been a gamer, and Second Life was the very first "game" I downloaded to play. It's mentioned in the video, a question asked what if your game is the first one that a non-gamer logs into, and they don't like it and quit. If I had quit then I still might or might not have tried another game in the future. I haven't, because I did get into Second Life, and it took up a lot of my time. Too much really. But it served a purpose back in 2007 for me personally. 

Imagine though, if somehow someone came up with the most amazing and brilliant way of making Second Life appealing to absolutely everyone, and it ended up having to be rationed to one hour a week for everyone (yes I am laughing as that is such a ridiculous and unlikely thing to happen). 

Don't we prefer being niche and therefore special ("special"  )

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Marigold Devin

[Paul Hexem]

14 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Making Second Life easy probably isn't an option. It's not a game in the traditional sense (how many times has this been said before?), and it appeals more perhaps to those with imagination or desires.

Yeah that gets trotted out a lot, but at least in this case has nothing to do with the actual point being made.

While the example of a too complex skill tree might not apply to SL, things like technical and payment issues do apply, and my example of not having reconnect options stands, too.

26 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Imagine though, if somehow someone came up with the most amazing and brilliant way of making Second Life appealing to absolutely everyone

That's, like you say, not really feasible.

But tackling some of those obvious moments? How come there's no attempts to try, I wonder?

[Orwar]

   Mainland routes going through region corners.

   And no, I'm still here, but I don't drive anywhere near as much as I would if I could drive around without risking crashing every few minutes - which in turn means I don't buy as many vehicles as I spend less time with them than I could have. 

   Also instant orbs.

   Flying from Blake to Jeogeot can be really fun and give you quite the sensation of accomplishment, but when people have a license to essentially grief anyone who passes through, forcing a teleport home without notice, the entire adventure and progress is immediately undone and you're left just feeling an overwhelming sense of misanthropy and a desire to visit suffering beyond torture upon those responsible.

   And that's why a lot of vehicle enthusiasts in SL spend less time and money in SL, and instead spend their in-world time discussing Truck Simulator, GTA:V, Sea of Thieves, or MS Flight Simulator in the group chats of driving groups. 

[Marigold Devin]

22 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Yeah that gets trotted out a lot, but at least in this case has nothing to do with the actual point being made.

While the example of a too complex skill tree might not apply to SL, things like technical and payment issues do apply, and my example of not having reconnect options stands, too.

That's, like you say, not really feasible.

But tackling some of those obvious moments? How come there's no attempts to try, I wonder?

I think there are many attempts to try, it's just it's difficult to modify a running programme. I mean, obviously, I am not a techie, but going on what gets rolled out week after week and then often rolled back, because it just hasn't worked. And listening in to User Group sessions every week I was just in awe of what was being tried, what worked, what failed. When these technical issues come up time and time again, and they seem not to be being addressed by Linden Lab, I am sure that they actually are being addressed, and behind-the-scenes, there have been plenty of almost-quit moments by Linden Lab staff themselves, as well as a heck of a lot of dismissals for failure to perform reasons of Linden employees over the years.

And this mentor programme is a big deal, and could make a significant difference to new user retention figures. If it's done right. As a non-gamer, I enjoyed the quirks, the rolling restarts that used to seem to chase me around the grid, and getting forcibly logged out while crossing over regions, and making ghosts, all of that was actually what kept it attractive to me, while I understand that would be very frustrating to a gamer.

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Marigold Devin

[Paul Hexem]

12 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

I think there are many attempts to try,

I don't. At least, not based on how often we see "not actionable" or "working as intended" on the JIRA. 

[Rufferta]

What might have made me quit (If I wasn't so stubborn):

- Being stuck under the floor of a building with poor mesh construction,

- Choosing 'wear' rather than 'add' and ending up partly naked,

- Trying to figure out how to open boxes without wearing them,

- 0- second orbs

- 0 - snotty forumites

- 0 - cliquey resident groups

In retrospect, what helped me was other residents inworld, and forumites who patiently answered all my newby questions, and a few online resources.

And, I should add that, although I have explored a number of other virtual worlds, there is no place like Second Life.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I generally agree with this idea, and in fact, had my very own "quit moment" when playing Astroneer yesterday, even. The ole "tumble deep into a cave and untether from your oxygen supply, die, and lose all yo ish - good luck retrieving it" mechanic I so love - NOT - how are corpse runs still a thing in 2023?? 

That said, though, I don't think LL could assist with most of my SL-specific ones, and there are a LOT of those, hence why SL is solely a photography simulator for me these days - and even that's a pain in the booty. The majority of my own quit moments today have to do with cobbling together user-generated content. I don't think LL can really assist on that front, short of creating some sort of body standards so everything just fits. Sometimes, it's just a lot easier to head over to Fashion Wars (GW2) or some other game with a ton of mods for my fashion fix.

And I agree with Orwar - while I typically like to go for a drive every now and again, it's too hard to do that in SL. Instead, I'll go race around on my GW2 griffon or roller beetle or choose a game with dynamic weather to go for a relaxing drive in the rain. Enjoyable racing/flying/driving might be something LL could work on, though don't even begin to ask me how.

[Paul Hexem]

44 minutes ago, Orwar said:

And that's why a lot of vehicle enthusiasts in SL spend less time and money in SL, and instead spend their in-world time discussing Truck Simulator, GTA:V, Sea of Thieves, or MS Flight Simulator in the group chats of driving groups. 

I play Snowrunner now. No more driving mainland roads. 

[Arielle Popstar]

The top tempted to quit moments are because of the horrendous Inventory UI and system. The text based inventory listings cause oodles of time wasted trying to find items I know I have but can't remember the name of nor can rename to something more memorable because of the No Mod restriction. Another tempted to quit thing is the work involved shopping with the demo and then buying the full version of an item. It is inefficient and for me at least has increasingly been the justification for not shopping unless i absolutely have to. 

Those two things will likely eventually cause me to stop logging into SL altogether and only focus on other grids where I have more options to keep a smaller and more organized inventory and not worry about demo's.

[Rowan Amore]

 

[Marigold Devin]

14 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The top tempted to quit moments are because of the horrendous Inventory UI and system. The text based inventory listings cause oodles of time wasted trying to find items I know I have but can't remember the name of nor can rename to something more memorable because of the No Mod restriction. Another tempted to quit thing is the work involved shopping with the demo and then buying the full version of an item. It is inefficient and for me at least has increasingly been the justification for not shopping unless i absolutely have to. 

Those two things will likely eventually cause me to stop logging into SL altogether and only focus on other grids where I have more options to keep a smaller and more organized inventory and not worry about demo's.

The no mod thing is a bear, but creating a new folder and shoving thing into it with a name I can remember helped me with some of my inventory, my favourite bits for sure. I'd never let my own clutter be the reason to quit though.

I can remember a conversation years ago that took place in a User Group meeting about what an ideal inventory size was (can't remember the figure, something unrealistic like 14,000 I think). I can remember laughing at the unrealistic ideal that LL had though.

[Qie Niangao]

51 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

1 hour ago, Marigold Devin said:

I think there are many attempts to try,

I don't. At least, not based on how often we see "not actionable" or "working as intended" on the JIRA. 

Not sure whether the problem is more that quit moments are undiscovered, or that they're not given the right priorities to fix. I'm pretty confident the Lab collects data to try to uncover circumstances that lead to quitting.

I wonder how well those quantifiable factors align with jira reports.

Apropos nothing, a purely hypothetical cautionary tale of retention data. Suppose six months from now they discover that the best predictor of quitting is spending time with a Mentor, and it's even dose-sensitive: the more time a newbie spends with a Mentor, the less likely they are to login again. Should they cancel the Mentor program?

[Love Zhaoying]

One reason "Quit" moments are hard to track is, if others are like me then they already smashed their PC and moved into the woods to live off the land, with no connection to other humans for the remainder of their lives.

Hard to contact those types!

 

[Paul Hexem]

8 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Not sure whether the problem is more that quit moments are undiscovered, or that they're not given the right priorities to fix. I'm pretty confident the Lab collects data to try to uncover circumstances that lead to quitting.

I wonder how well those quantifiable factors align with jira reports.

Apropos nothing, a purely hypothetical cautionary tale of retention data. Suppose six months from now they discover that the best predictor of quitting is spending time with a Mentor, and it's even dose-sensitive: the more time a newbie spends with a Mentor, the less likely they are to login again. Should they cancel the Mentor program?

Well, considering that a well designed game doesn't need mentors because the tutorial phase covers it...

Of course, SL isn't your traditional game.

I also personally I think the Mentor program as designed is a terrible idea. It makes no attempts to fix retention issues while simultaneously passing the retention problems on to unpaid volunteer residents with no authority to do anything of consequence.

[Love Zhaoying]

I've done some "more serious" thinking about these types of issues lately, and come to some fairly obvious (in retrospect) conclusions:

- Instead of fixing some "quit moments" because they were "too hard to fix", LL just "gave up" and never fixed them.  This was propagated to the TPV's.

Example:  When a user is "logged out" due to error (let's call it a "disconnect logout"), there is no automatic "try again" process.  There are many, many conditions that would be valid to "try again" at least once after a disconnect logout, even if the "crash" condition essentially meant that the viewer needed to be restarted by the code with an "auto-login" flag.  SURE that would be "hard to fix" - but they've had 20 YEARS TO WORK ON IT.

- Instead of making the GUI simpler for users as time went on, new features were added, and added, and added, and added.  As a result, the viewers / GUI are daunting for new users. This is probably in part due to LL trying hard to "make everyone happy" by adding the new features, without going back to make the GUI easier. Again, they've had 20 YEARS TO WORK ON THIS.

The above logic can probably be applied to a lot of "quit moments". 

As Qie said above:

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

or that they're not given the right priorities to fix.

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Love Zhaoying
Oops, 20 years not 25 (was thinking of my own job)

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

51 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Well, considering that a well designed game doesn't need mentors because the tutorial phase covers it...

Of course, SL isn't your traditional game.

I also personally I think the Mentor program as designed is a terrible idea. It makes no attempts to fix retention issues while simultaneously passing the retention problems on to unpaid volunteer residents with no authority to do anything of consequence.

I also see some legal issues on the Mentor thing unless they're paid or something.  Due to the way many governments getting their hands into the internetz many other MMOs or games have pulled the plug on volunteers that were helping in the games from keeping watch on chats or muting gold sellers.

37 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

- Instead of making the GUI simpler for users as time went on, new features were added, and added, and added, and added.  As a result, the viewers / GUI are daunting for new users. This is probably in part due to LL trying hard to "make everyone happy" by adding the new features, without going back to make the GUI easier. Again, they've had 25 YEARS TO WORK ON THIS.

The above logic can probably be applied to a lot of "quit moments". 

As Qie said above:

 

I hate the GUI on the official client with a passion.  I gotten used to the original version it had in the beginning since it was simple and not broken --- now it's convoluted and hard to work around in. Why many people use 3rd party clients.

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I hate the GUI on the official client with a passion.  I gotten used to the original version it had in the beginning since it was simple and not broken --- now it's convoluted and hard to work around in. Why many people use 3rd party clients.

Luckily, there's no choice but to make the Mobile client simpler. Hopefully a new "desktop client" will be released as a result, or a client with optiont that let is look like the Mobile client.

Can you imagine if you are a happy Mobile user, then you go to use your PC and can't figure out the client? That won't fly.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Luckily, there's no choice but to make the Mobile client simpler. Hopefully a new "desktop client" will be released as a result, or a client with optiont that let is look like the Mobile client.

Can you imagine if you are a happy Mobile user, then you go to use your PC and can't figure out the client? That won't fly.

I don't even do mobile.  SL would be hard to do on a flip phone!  I'm probably one of 11 people on the planet that don't use a smart phone.

[Qie Niangao]

53 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

I also personally I think the Mentor program as designed is a terrible idea. It makes no attempts to fix retention issues while simultaneously passing the retention problems on to unpaid volunteer residents with no authority to do anything of consequence.

If I were actually weighing whether the Mentor program should stay or go, I'd want to judge its merits compared with other retention-directed efforts such as fixing the problems raised in this thread.

As I emphasized though, my question was "purely hypothetical", so it's pretty clear I was up to something, and that was trying to show how tricky it is to make proper use of objective data to understand retention problems. The example was that it could appear from all the data that Mentors hurt retention, when in fact the causality might be completely reversed: those encountering the worst such "quit moments" may be the ones most likely to seek the help of Mentors.

Over the years, the Lab has spent a lot of time and consulting money trying to figure out how to improve retention. They surely have much better data than we have. That doesn't mean they know what to do about it.

[animats]

3 hours ago, Orwar said:

Mainland routes going through region corners.

I haven't said much about region crossings in a while.

Server side is still broken. One of the senior Lindens was annoyed at me for bringing it up at Server User Group so often. He said they were working on it.

That was in 2022.

It's still broken.

I'm tired of the excuses from LL on this. I've heard five years of excuses for failure now.

In the context of new users, if driving worked reliably, we could have mainland tours for new users. But vehicles with multiple passengers work very badly. Sometimes I try to get people interested in driving. I can't put them in a vehicle and drive around with me without going through a checklist. Low-complexity avatar? Check. Good ping time? Check. Enough network bandwidth? Check. Enough graphics power? Check. Good vehicle? Check. OK, we're good to drive around mainland.

I've started people driving with free cars from one of the shops on Robin Loop. I've seen them hit the region crossing at Neumogen, have the avatar get stuck, and the car kept going, running off the road and into a building. I had someone on the back of my bike recently, and their high-complexity avatar came off at the second region crossing.

LL people, this is pathetic.

If you don't get this fixed before mobile goes live, you will be laughed at by major reviewers. You cannot launch into the mass market/gamer space like this. You only get one chance to make a bad first impression. You don't think so? Go watch and read game reviews. The tolerance for immersion-breaking failures is zero.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

2 minutes ago, animats said:

I haven't said much about region crossings in a while.

Server side is still broken. One of the senior Lindens was annoyed at me for bringing it up at Server User Group so often. He said they were working on it.

That was in 2022.

It's still broken.

I'm tired of the excuses from LL on this. I've heard five years of excuses for failure now.

In the context of new users, if driving worked reliably, we could have mainland tours for new users. But vehicles with multiple passengers work very badly. Sometimes I try to get people interested in driving. I can't put them in a vehicle and drive around with me without going through a checklist. Low-complexity avatar? Check. Good ping time? Check. Enough network bandwidth? Check. Enough graphics power? Check. Good vehicle? Check. OK, we're good to drive around mainland.

I've started people driving with free cars from one of the shops on Robin Loop. I've seen them hit the region crossing at Neumogen, have the avatar get stuck, and the car kept going, running off the road and into a building. I had someone on the back of my bike recently, and their high-complexity avatar came off at the second region crossing.

LL people, this is pathetic.

If you don't get this fixed before mobile goes live, you will be laughed at by major reviewers. You cannot launch into the mass market/gamer space like this. You only get one chance to make a bad first impression. You don't think so? Go watch and read game reviews. The tolerance for immersion-breaking failures is zero.

Couldn't the regions be merged into very large ones like used in game type MMOs? You think in this day and age the region crossing issues be solved.

As for the thread's title --- some "games" had quit threads on their board as soon the game was released.

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, animats said:

I haven't said much about region crossings in a while.

Server side is still broken. One of the senior Lindens was annoyed at me for bringing it up at Server User Group so often. He said they were working on it.

That was in 2022.

It's still broken.

I'm tired of the excuses from LL on this. I've heard five years of excuses for failure now.

In the context of new users, if driving worked reliably, we could have mainland tours for new users. But vehicles with multiple passengers work very badly. Sometimes I try to get people interested in driving. I can't put them in a vehicle and drive around with me without going through a checklist. Low-complexity avatar? Check. Good ping time? Check. Enough network bandwidth? Check. Enough graphics power? Check. Good vehicle? Check. OK, we're good to drive around mainland.

I've started people driving with free cars from one of the shops on Robin Loop. I've seen them hit the region crossing at Neumogen, have the avatar get stuck, and the car kept going, running off the road and into a building. I had someone on the back of my bike recently, and their high-complexity avatar came off at the second region crossing.

LL people, this is pathetic.

If you don't get this fixed before mobile goes live, you will be laughed at by major reviewers. You cannot launch into the mass market/gamer space like this. You only get one chance to make a bad first impression. You don't think so? Go watch and read game reviews. The tolerance for immersion-breaking failures is zero.

Idea: Have LL rez "WARNING" signs at all corner crossings of all regions, grid-wide!

 

[Orwar]

16 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Idea: Have LL rez "WARNING" signs at all corner crossings of all regions, grid-wide!

   Some do, but chances are the model and/or texture of the sign won't have rezzed by the time your face whacks itself inside out against a crossing, at least in built up areas with lots of assets to render. Also depends on your speed, it's 'fairly stable on occasion' if you're driving at 30km/h, but .. It feels a bit silly to roll around the grid in a fancy car doing 30km/h. 

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Orwar said:

the model and/or texture of the sign won't have rezzed by the time your face whacks itself inside out against a crossing,

A "feature"!