A game I and a few team members have been working on for a while is struggling to maintain an active player base. I believe the problem has to do with a series of things that all tie back to the game’s average visit length, which is just around one second. The game is still quite new and it is for pc only, It is designed to be quite challenging and grindy like most survival games out there. Multiple thousands of robux have gone into advertising which only got the game enough players to keep it somewhat alive for a few days but it’s been dead for weeks now. People return once or twice only to realize there is no one playing which defeats the purpose of the game’s pvp aspect. If anyone has any idea what should be changed or implemented to increase the game’s average visit length and possibly visits please let me know. Thanks. I will probably be deleting this post soon.
Seems too similar to an already popular game. So I think you can only do 5 things…
Change something that drastically makes it more unique to stand out more, possibly like the map being in medieval style or something.
Host a large community event through a discord server or some other similar platform and get a temporary large boost of the player population. It could jumpstart your game into what you want it to be. While I’m not sure if this is allowed, fill a few servers with alt accounts or bots that seem to be doing something…
Advertise, advertise, advertise. Stream your team playing it, make some fun videos, make a good trailer, etc.
Do all of the above, I had some other idea but I forgot it… maybe keep working/ polishing it and something may come out.
Forget the game, make something else. Don’t try going into an already saturated market if you want to make a successful game, while your current isn’t overly saturated; it is a little niche.
I hope some of my advice helped you see some paths you could take.
Playtesting feedback: While its core mechanics aren’t hard to grasp, during power out I keep getting spawn killed basically; I can’t even outrun them with the help of obstacles. They find me immediately too, no matter what it seems. The GUI also looks good, but it could be better; I’d recommend looking into what you could do into improving it.
You should hire a few playtesters and collect data from them on how you could improve the game according to them, ask them to attempt making the game unplayable and break it.
That’s all, I couldn’t get much farther with constantly dying on spawn without knowing how to play. This is what you can expect from any new coming player.
There’s something off with the lighting because the colours of the models look bland. When I move the objects they are a bit laggy, I don’t think you put SetNetworkOwner() for these parts. There’s too much UI in my opinion and I don’t know how to hide them because I’m locked in first person. The intro is pretty straightforward which is good and the mechanics of the game are nice. The scripters have done a great job scripting the game because it’s pretty functional.
I’m also able to put parts inside other parts and I can place parts in the sky as if they don’t have collisions. When I place them the sound doesn’t feel right.
We have done a lot of testing, the game is made to be difficult which may be interfering with the first-time user experience. It is for us to decide what should be changed and implemented but we are looking for ideas cause we have run out.
I did but I just noticed that I can hide the UI now and I did the tutorial. The UI is pretty clean and the tutorial is helpful. So I think you guys made it easy enough for the players.
If your ads failed than I think you should find modelers, scripters, etc instead. It’s hard to grow a new game as people are much more comfortable picking games from the front page.
That’s true, are you saying to keep improving the game instead of trying to help it grow? It’s gonna need to have a player base soon otherwise we cannot continue funding it.
I think you should try improving it. First I’d find game testers so you have more opinions on what to improve in your game. There is a discord server called QA Central and another one:
In QA Central you can fill in a form and have game testers to test your game for free.
We don’t need to, we just need to figure out why people are leaving so quickly. We can still add content, but if you have actually progressed through the game and understood the main goal you will see this.
