Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub.

[gwynchisholm]

15 hours ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

Random strings of characters and numbers as usernames are the norm on many platforms. For years, SL escaped that by allowing users to have a first and last name, giving you a better shot at a usable and interesting name. Now that last names are paywalled, usernames suck as much as they do everywhere else. SL isn't the outlier in that respect and I don't think being surrounded by people named things like "kaaarein69291841" is what's turning new users away.

I don’t think I’ve ever given one iota of care to someone’s username in terms of its composition unless it was some other kind of red flag in terms of its content.

I have a lot of unique usernames in some places, low character count, just my name, real words and such. But that’s never actually that important versus someone who’s just xXjose.gonzales.2007Xx, that’s their name choice. Not everyone cares that much to try and make unique usernames, especially on a platform where you can also have a display name anyway.

Roblox had this problem, with i think close to a billion registered accounts, a solid quarter of them estimated to be unique real users and not alts or bots. Theres so few remaining usernames that anything under 6 characters long is taken. That includes underscores, letters and numbers. So they just introduced override display names. So everyone can be any name they want, and you don’t even see their real username unless you visit their profile.

But like, nobody cares. I have a 3 character username in that game and at most I’d see someone say “I didn’t even know that was possible” once in a blue moon, because usernames are not important at all.

Thats a relic of SL’s type of internet culture to care about a username or even just the presentation of other users in general. Web boomer stuff. Nobody else cares at all.

Edited February 18 by gwynchisholm

[Love Zhaoying]

40 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

I'd like to know what the retention figures are doing since the new set up of that new welcome hub and all around it, there should be at least some data to work with by now.
Is it working or are the newbies only the new hobby for some settled residents, mentors and bored entertainers that need new goals themself?
If the new program doesn't work again, skip it. If it does work, find out why and focus on that point instead of adding more diffusing options for newbies that hardly know how to walk.

what i read is still "we think"we could"we this"we that .. and no-one knows what the newbie wants. The resident made ideas never worked for retention, because it's about them, not about the new players where we know nothing about.
A huge amount are alts/bots. Don't waste time on those.
 

I can't imagine retention getting "worse" as a result of the WH, unless more people get confused and logout instead of exploring SL itself.

[Teresa Firelight]

Wow some of the posts sound so critical. Newcomer retention is incredibly important because SL will whiter away and die if we don't get new "regulars" to replace those who either die off or get too busy with RL to keep coming to SL. I think the hubs are a reasonable attempt to help increase newcomer retention. 

I think the new welcome hub (9 regions of it) is a big improvement over the earlier 1st time entry places. I like the idea that new people have the option of taking or skipping the orientation. I like the idea that those looking for a social experience have almost immediate access to others to socialize with. I like that there are multiple regions that expose newcomers to some of the things they can do in SL... different people have different interests, so a variety are shown here.

I like the idea of a community exhibition. If new people are not finding it on their own, perhaps the mentors will start steering those looking to connect with likeminded people through there. I also like (very much) that there is a large team of mentor volunteers to help new people out without overwhelming them.

If I understand things correctly, LL will be adding a lot more community exhibits as time goes on. I sure hope it catches on with both newcomers and residents because it seems like a good idea to me.

Edited February 18 by Teresa Firelight

[Midnoot]

9 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

Aren't the mentor programmes running anymore? Or is it in proces to be given up as so many initiatives ever started?
There should be enough by now to have enough of them to have a 24/7 coverage, and as so people who direct newbies to the different places.

Of course a fight against sticky bots needs other abilities than welcoming real new accounts ( eject and send to a external desert where they belong)

It's still my opinion that settled residents should stay away there. 

Yeah, bro. We can't have experienced users around. They might detect when those "fake new" residents are around, bullying or hitting on the "real new" residents. They might offer some useful hints when the 70 year old, technologically inept, pre-mesh,  mentors fail. ( Which is often). They might offer a newbie an idea of what there is to do in SL besides pretend to be relevant as a  "helper" in every single sim that accepts requests to become a "helper". Sure would be a shame.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

@Alwin Alcott and @Midnoot if, according to you two, only losers, the elderly, and wannabes are "helpers" and do nothing of value to help retain users, what do you think would help?

I've been to the new user area 3 whole times and it seemed to be busy.  People were chatting in local and a few mentors went to IM with a few noobies to help them with various issues (mostly how to look better)

I have never seen the new community area, but highlighting a few seems like a good idea.  Certainly better than doing nothing 

Do you have some new exciting idea that will increase user retention that you are not sharing with the rest of us, or are you just here to say how lame the area is and to insult people volunteering some time?

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

Do you have some new exciting idea that will increase user retention that you are not sharing with the rest of us, or are you just here to say how lame the area is and to insult people volunteering some time?

That's not fair! It's easy to be critical, but difficult to make constructive suggestions!!

 

[Rowan Amore]

33 minutes ago, Midnoot said:

70 year old, technologically inept, pre-mesh,  mentors fail.

Just wow.  IF you've actually been there at various times, you'd have seen that pretty much every single mentor is up to date.  I've been able to keep up with SL's technology quite easily even at the ripe old age of 60 so maybe you could just stop already.

[AmeliaJ08]

Ohh yeah... I had forgotten I was supposed to visit after seeing it mentioned here a week or so ago...

Did it even get a log in message advertising it or anything? I don't really see how many people would know it exists but maybe most users are far more engaged with wherever LL use to advertise these things.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

16 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

That's not fair! It's easy to be critical, but difficult to make constructive suggestions!!

 

Try this...

Don't put a sign at the end of Noob Street, saying "click this to buy $10 worth of L$".

The moment the noob sees that their $10 purchase is $8.50's worth of L$ and a $1.50 of "transaction charges" that's going to scream "ref flag ripoff alert" at them. Remember, many will come from systems where in-game shopping tokens are purchased from the game operator, not "from other users", which generally means NO transaction charges.

 

There shouldn't be ANY "buy shopping tokens here" signs on Noob Island, let the poor sods get their feet wet first.  They will mostly not want to invest cash in a "game" they haven't even really tried yet.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Just wow.  IF you've actually been there at various times, you'd have seen that pretty much every single mentor is up to date.  I've been able to keep up with SL's technology quite easily even at the ripe old age of 60 so maybe you could just stop already.

It's an excellent illustration of why people use Alts: so they can say whatever they like without consequences.

[Alwin Alcott]

27 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

@Alwin Alcott and @Midnoot if, according to you two, only losers, the elderly, and wannabes are "helpers" and do nothing of value to help retain users, what do you think would help?

When you only pick one thing out of my post, ignore the rest and put it together with that reply of the ihatealtsandoldusersbutamonemyself poster that popped up a short time ago, you'r not a lot better in contributing as you seem me to blaim.
When you read my posts here i already asked a few things, but also you, don't come with an answer.

[gwynchisholm]

I’d like to see the new user experience translated to a closed ecosystem like what a lot of other games do.

The iconic tutorial island of runescape

This teaches you just the core basics. Movement, camera control, key aspects to the game. The basic steps of doing some of the basic skills, and a little chat at the end about account management.

And nothing more. This doesn’t show you how the grand exchange works. It doesn’t explain gear tiering, pvp, what higher level prayers and special attacks are, none of that. This shows you how to at best navigate the game. Everything else you learn on your own or via other smaller explanations as you come to certain areas. A new user may never know about pvp until they click on a wilderness gate and it gives them a warning they can be attacked there.

And that’s worked, it’s worked extremely well. After tutorial island the game dumps you in lumbridge with 

1) a very basic assortment of gear and tools

2) no skills beyond what little xp you earned on the island

3) no goals, quests or notifications 

youre just there, it’s up to you at that point to do anything, it directs you to nobody and nowhere

And it sounds so sudden and rushed to throw just the core essentials at someone and then toss them into the game but it works, and has worked for 22 years. Jagex tried to change this several times and every time it was dumb and didn’t work, and they reverted back to tutorial island because it has the highest player retention. That is I think something sl needs to replicate, simplicity with the core essentials in a closed environment. Then dump the player into a crowd and let them figure it out.

Explain basic movement and camera controls, avatar customization, chat and the friends system, content guidelines, searching and maybe some basic object manipulation like interacting with pay or touch items. And then no more, no detail, no history, no lore, no specifics, this should take 15 minutes tops. Dump them somewhere with a bunch of people and let them have at it.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a new user experience in SL, I should make an alt and do that again to see what’s changed. But from what I’ve seen they’re still trying to get too much content into it.

[Sid Nagy]

17 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

What did you expect, "all the good names are already taken", and most people have very little imagination.

Enter a name:

Jane

That name is in use

Jane2

That name is in use

*some time later*

Jane38759XXX123abc

Welcome to SL, account created...

 

Are you really surprised?

 

One could make a lot of first and lastname combinations though

JaneApplebee or JaneDollydot, JaneWiggleass, JaneJeanspense JaneRosebutt ..... only the non creatives start to use numbers and random letters.

[Sid Nagy]

The welcome hub should designed with some things in mind IMHO:
- Assume people who come test the waters have zero experience with SL and its merits.
- Assume people don't read walls of text. Some don't read text at all. So give your information in sound/vision as much as possible. A picture can paint a thousand words.
- Use the KISS method to design things.
- Don't assume that all newbs come to stay. A lot are just curious and leave within minutes. SL is and always will be a niche market.

All in all I think the welcome hub does pretty fine. It is not designed for us oldbies. We should not bother to go there a lot.
Helping the noobs is for the mentors.
LL should keep developing it IMHO. So it is ready for a next possible hype period, if the phone app turns out to be good from the start.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

I'd like to know what the retention figures are doing since the new set up of that new welcome hub and all around it, there should be at least some data to work with by now.
Is it working or are the newbies only the new hobby for some settled residents, mentors and bored entertainers that need new goals themself?
If the new program doesn't work again, skip it. If it does work, find out why and focus on that point instead of adding more diffusing options for newbies that hardly know how to walk.

what i read is still "we think"we could"we this"we that .. and no-one knows what the newbie wants. The resident made ideas never worked for retention, because it's about them, not about the new players where we know nothing about.
A huge amount are alts/bots. Don't waste time on those.
 

 

 

Back.  I got sidetracked cooking breakfast.  It's the most important meal of the day.

I did focus on the insulting volunteers part, so, to be fair I will point out some good things in the post.

I would love to see some retention numbers, too, but how to tell who is just making a new alt and who is actually new?  I am not sure how well the welcome hub is working.  Maybe just forming a New user Buddy group would help.  Only those under 6 months and helpers/Moles/Lindens have access and you are ejected from the group at a certain age. That way new users can get support at any time no matter where they are without having to remember how to get back to the hub.  They'll get a quick lesson in joining groups and figure out how to open the message window to ask questions. 

I agree with Zalificent about having a pass a buy tokens board before you even exit the hub,  It seems to say, "You have to commit right now and buy game tokens before you've even decided if you like it."  It smacks of corporate greed and probably does send people right back out the door thinking they have to pay to play.

If both resident and Linden ideas never work for retention because, as you hypothesize, no one ever asked a noobie what they actually need, how do we get the info?  Send pop-up windows and emails to new users at 1 week old, 1 month old, and 6 months old with a survey?  How did we do introducing you to SL?  What could we have done better?  Please rate your initial experience with 1 to 5 stars. 

Or maybe send email surveys to those who logged in and never returned after a week.  We miss you.  How can we get you back into SL?  What made you never come back?  Was it too difficult?  Computer couldn't handle it?  Bad experience with another user? I looked like crap and didn't want to spend money to look acceptable? I couldn't find any people? Other?

 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I couldn't find any people? Other?

"Everyone else I saw were weird pink clouds or appeared to be stuck in bushes" (they were bots). I can definitely see being disappointed if your first exposure to SL is bots!

[Rowan Amore]

15 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

The welcome hub should designed with some things in mind IMHO:
- Assume people who come test the waters have zero experience with SL and its merits.
- Assume people don't read walls of text. Some don't read text at all. So give your information in sound/vision as much as possible. A picture can paint a thousand words.
- Use the KISS method to design things.
- Don't assume that all newbs come to stay. A lot are just curious and leave within minutes. SL is and always will be a niche market.

All in all I think the welcome hub does pretty fine. It is not designed for us oldbies. We should not bother to go there a lot.
Helping the noobs is for the mentors.
LL should keep developing it IMHO. So it is ready for a next possible hype period, if the phone app turns out to be good from the start.

I agree with everything you've said except, I do think it's a nice place for older accounts to hang out.  The central social area is kind of fun.  New people wander out of the landing zone and immediately see people!   A lot ask, What Next? so someone directs them to the tutorial area or answer general questions.  There isn't always a mentor available so I've helped a handful of people get started.   IF a mentor is there, I send them that way.  

Once the new person has engaged with a few people, asked a few questions or whatever, they're more likely to head over to the tutorials as I've seen.  If the only people they have to talk to are other new people or 1 mentor, I think they'd log out.

 

Edited February 18 by Rowan Amore

[Persephone Emerald]

Even an old-timer disguised as a newbie can help with new user retention if they bother to chat with the newbies. I had a couple of new guys chat with my newbie alt. One was apparently trying to form more of a relationship with her and even seemed jealous of the other. He was saying she was cute and chatting her up, which I found kind of cute myself rather than desperate. Maybe he was used to the chat-oriented experience in IMVU? Say what you want about IMVU users, but at least they they know how to chat in more than monosylabic text.

[animats]

12 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

He's been told about the bots at the welcome hub multiple times, including by me.  Doesn't seem to take that onboard for some reason.

I've seen avatars walk around and then go back to the landing circle. It's not just bots.

[Gabriele Graves]

6 minutes ago, animats said:

I've seen avatars walk around and then go back to the landing circle. It's not just bots.

Nobody said it was just bots but people wandering around that never rezz aren't the majority case from what I've seen of the cloud people.  The ones that are most likely bots don't move at all even though they are there for hours at a time and never respond to chat or text.

[rasterscan]

The popularity of Belliseria suggest the lab should plonk a single street out of the Vics and into a walkthrough straight out of the landing zone. Fully furnished houses that no one lives in but the new resident can wander about inside trying stuff out. That's the way forward imho. There could be a second exit to a row of houseboats. Stuff like that.

Plus a third exit right that goes straight to a SLRR station. With an automated tram trundling through the ever expanding zones of Belli in a perma loop.

Edited February 18 by rasterscan

[Love Zhaoying]

20 minutes ago, rasterscan said:

The popularity of Belliseria suggest the lab should plonk a single street out of the Vics and into a walkthrough straight out of the landing zone. Fully furnished houses that no one lives in but the new resident can wander about inside trying stuff out. That's the way forward imho. There could be a second exit to a row of houseboats. Stuff like that.

Plus a third exit right that goes straight to a SLRR station. With an automated tram trundling through the ever expanding zones of Belli in a perma loop.

Great ideas!!

[Persephone Emerald]

48 minutes ago, rasterscan said:

The popularity of Belliseria suggest the lab should plonk a single street out of the Vics and into a walkthrough straight out of the landing zone. Fully furnished houses that no one lives in but the new resident can wander about inside trying stuff out. That's the way forward imho. There could be a second exit to a row of houseboats. Stuff like that.

Plus a third exit right that goes straight to a SLRR station. With an automated tram trundling through the ever expanding zones of Belli in a perma loop.

There is already a railway line straight from the demo homes into Bellisseria. The only problem with it for newbies is that they can't rez a train, because they don't have a train in their inventory. The Valentine's train was a great idea though. I hope LL keeps something like this going with a rezable train, maybe just an engine and one open passenger car.

[Extrude Ragu]

X Marks the confusion spot

This is another route I've seen a couple of new residents take, after bouncing off the L$ kiosk, they will go through the Senra Avatar Market and then end up on that long circuitous path with nothing on it. It takes a while to walk that path, and I've seen a couple get confused around here, but they did at least not give up.

 

 

Watching another newbie, I saw them go back to this Welcome Hub Map. They looked at it, walked off, then seemed to double take and walked back to the map.

Wayfinding map - You are not here!

I took a closer look at the wayfinding map. It's not correct. The 'you are here' marker is not where the sign is, which I think is probably serving to confuse newbies a lot more than help them. I've marked where they really are in green.

Edited February 18 by Extrude Ragu

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The only problem with it for newbies is that they can't rez a train, because they don't have a train in their inventory.

See, if *I* had said that the SecondLife Rail-Fail thing was daft because Noobs don't own a damn train, people would have screamed about "negative nancy naysayers who never say anything constructive".

 

This is EXACTLY the kind of thinking noobs don't need.

Captain Oldbie has 7 trains, Captain Oldbie suggests n SLRR track for the noobs to rez "one of their trains on", Captain Oldbie doesn't understand why noobs don't ride their train to [where ever].

Even if you GIVE them a free train, they know nothing about region crossings, and the potential pitfalls of doing them in vehicles, let alone multi part vehicles. As soon as they have a glitch or a crossing fail, you lost the noob. "Huh this game doesn't work, not paying money for this".

 

As for several areas of sample Belli Houses, f shoving a "pay us $10 for $8.50 worth of shopping tokens before you can leave noob island" sign wasn't daft enough, now we should shove a "pay $99 for a house in Bell" in their faces too?

What do they want a house for on day 1, when they don't even know if they want to stay at all yet, let alone spend a couple of hundred bucks on premium and furniture and a mesh body and head etc.