Aba wrote:The survey would measure CC's marketshare, how much of a gamer's time is spent on CC, or playing other games. It doesn't have to be precise, it just has to ask the player to rank CC compared to the other games they play, find out what other games they play and how much they play it compared to CC (some people will be like you and play many other games) it is our job to find out why they are playing those games and find ways to appeal to them and make them want to play here instead.
It is quite simple when you think about it.
If someone spends most of their time playing CC, they are going to spend money here.
We need to get them to spend more time here, instead of playing other games.
I think the survey would show you that many of the site's players do not spend most of their gaming time here, CC is losing marketshare to other games that are more entertaining for whatever reason.
One of the major reasons is that players are limited right from the get go to only four games, slow games.
I got that, but what I mean is that CC is a different experience to video games. I personally don't want to spend half my day on here playing turns, because that would mean I would have to do it every day. That might sound a bit weird coming from a moderator, but that's truth. I don't think the amount of time someone plays per day is the issue. It's retaining players in general. If I felt like playing Civ for 4 hours today, well... I don't need to play it again tomorrow, or anytime soon. I can choose when to set up a game. As I said, the experiences are different. Not better or worse than each other, just different.
As an example, I could play up to 10 games at a time here and feel comfortable playing that because my turns aren't all going to come up at once. But those 10 games mean that I have to log in every day and take my turns as they come up, co-ordinate with team mates wherever I need to. That kind of thing. If you're playing team games, they take more time than a single player because you have to decide what to do with the team, especially if you're the game leader. I might hang out for a while and check in on the chatroom while I'm here. Depending on the day, I might visit a few times a day, but ultimately, I'm playing it casually and as a relaxed thing. If I see something going down in the chat, I'll deal with that, etc, etc.
I used to play up to 40, 50, 60 games at a time, and those were way too much. That was all fine and dandy during the days that I'd feel like taking multiple turns, but on the days where I didn't, I'd be like "okay, this is a chore." At one point I kind of got burned out and left for a while. I have left CC a couple of times for various reasons and came back because I had a clan and some friends here to draw me back. I don't think the site could do anything to make me play more. It's a log in every day or lose kind of thing, so it comes down to what your personal happy place is.
I think perhaps that CC could use an update in terms of user interface. I have invited friends to play here and those friends were like "what do I do, this is confusing." I had to explain that over Skype. The thing is, I shouldn't have needed to explain the panel interface to them, they should have been able to log in and play without instruction. I would love to see it simplified down. Create a nice looking, simple interface with the advanced options on a separate tab, or button. Unlock the tab when they leave NR status, but leave the advanced options hidden, unless they choose to click on it. Pull new players into playing the more basic settings and maybe we might retain more of them. The more people playing the basic settings like standard escalating, the faster games would fill and maybe it would engage new users for longer.
