Remodel the new player experience to retain new and returning players
The New Player Experience
MMOs are most social at the initial lauch, queues up to 6 hours and sever overloading are many of the problem for MMOs.
But MMOs does a poor job at retaining its player base, soon after the inital hype period, the player based is down to a cliff.
It is rare to see MMOs able to gain a massive player base without something in place, in fact most of the events that seek to get new player or returning players back are just another hype cliff. The core reason? I argue it is because the owerwhelming system the game introduces to the player when the player are totally not ready for it. And the lack of social aspect as players have to often travel through “dead” zones for stories and quests, and it may requires weeks before the player is able to hang out at the area where people usually stay or idle at.
The lack of guidence and map expansion keep the players in a solo experience for a while until they are able hang out with their friends or do the meta dungeons. While must maintian a skillset so they are able to beat their progression dungeons alone because the meta player has no incentive to go back to the beginner’s island.
The Current Solution
Currently, some ways developer tries to encourage new player or returning players by offering powerful stats to help the player rush through the story quest inorder to catch up to the current story and be able to hang out with the veterants. The major flaw of this solution is that the player often feel the power gap between them and the veterants. This may end up hurting both parties as some games has dungeons strictly for certain power level which makes the veterants dodge queues with the beginner player, and the beginner player will feel bad because it is hard for them to find a party.
Another way is montizting or give free level boost, so you creating a max level character with good stats so you can hang out in the big league immediately. The core problem of this solution is this way the game never have a chance to give the player a guidence on what systems this game has in place. Example can be this game have unique crafthing system that not only upgrade is possible but evolving, engraving, converting…etc, it requires a lot of time for the player to do research and I think you probably see a lot of the “Biginner’s Guide” videos on YouTube. They are time consuming and most of the information is really not useful until you actually are doing it.
The Remodel
Seasonal Resets
MMOs should have a stict season to encourge new players and returing player to join. At season reset, this is where everybody up to date with the story. This will make beginners and vertants to progress the stories together therefore more social aspect, which is what MMOs are for. Legacy stories should be revamped as a single player campaign or be remade into a single player game to be sold as an advertisment for the MMO.
An example of this can be Genshin Impact, it has a strict patch cycle every 6 weeks, with a big update during the summer season and follow by their anniversary event. So Genshin Impact has a really good model for setting a time to encourage new players to join the adventure. With anniversary rewards that is easy to get and give everyone more chances to get their character. Granted it does not speed the player up to the current story nor it is a MMO, but the idea is there.
Gear and Progression
I encourage with a season reset, gear/power level must be reseted as well so everyone is at equal footing. Well how does the vertant player stood out amongs the rest then?
I think there should be a new metic system that rewards the player who actually put their hours into the game.
I believe a good system is “Proficiency”, just as mastering a skill in real life, by doing something over and over again it is easier for us to that that specific task. So the the “Proficiency” metric will be based on things such as timing, key press, time spend, and combination of key execution(Combo). Depending on the game high proficiency can reward different things, for example with high proficiency a player’s ability can do wider damage, use less resources, or have less cool down. Or execution certain combo that usually result in 1 projectile, you have 3. Or executing a parry move, in stead of slash the enemy once, you gain a time slow effect. Ofcourse having the visual effect time add some unique colors so newbies can get jealous of that move.