I have a game which has a good amount of visits for a one person project. It is a tournament golf game, where people create/join matches and play all holes to see the winner.
The issue is that from the Statistics I build up on my game, most of players quit before even completing the course:
Now, I believe that the problem is coming from the difficulty of the game for younger ages, because most players get bad scores on the game (on golf a negative score is what you want, and they go +3 to +20 at the end. Meanwhile, some players do keep playing and I casually see them playing the game again, and those are the ones that usually get better scores.
I tried making a tutorial and also showing courses difficulties so beginners choose the easier ones, but the game still has a lot of surrenders. What do you think I Should do? Do you think my game is boring or have another problem? Should I make even easier courses, enhance tutorials and other things?
The game looks amazing. I just donāt think Roblox is the platform for golfing games.
You want people who donāt like golf, to like your golfing game. Golfing is more-so an older person thing, but many video games have done the āgolfing thingā before.
Iād take inspiration from other golfing games and see how they succeeded.
Nintendo has made multiple Golfing games. Wii sports Golfing and some Mario ones are pretty good.
Yeah, I wanted to make a different golf game than the other ones on roblox, which are mostly mini golfs, just to be unique compared to them. But what I noticed is that regular golf might be actually harder to play than mini golf, as the distance increases and even the mechanics I added kinda requires more calculation and patience from the players.
I actually recently added a difficulty classification on each course based on stars: 1 star = easy and 3 stars = hard.
But from what I saw even easy maps are hard for people lol. I was thinking of adding that difficulty option though, making wind weaker or even nil on easier levels and even setting some scripts to check the difficulty before starting a tournament, so it can change a bit of the terrain based on the difficulty.
It is better to make something too hard, than making something to easy in development. Players enjoy when something becomes easier.
Iād try to make everything easier and make that the main focus for the next update.
I would call the update title ārevampedā or something like that. This would let players know that many things have changed and to give the game a second chance.
I tried your game and I have some feedback. Its really fun after you get it figured out.
I think like you suspected and others are saying, the game might be too hard for a younger roblox player. And its not that its really that hard, the concept will be foreign to a lot of players. Getting to the point of playing and figuring out what to do is a bit complicated. I think by changing a couple small things you could get better results.
I didnāt play the tutorial, but I think a lot of players would skip this too. I didnāt find it that complicated to start playing but it was hard for me to figure out where the hole was(where is the goal). I noticed the beam going up, maybe it could be brighter. Also, it wasnāt clear the layout of the āholeā, for example from the standing angle I couldnāt see there was water between so I shot it straight at the hold and landed out of bounds. Maybe starting each hole by showing a cut scene of the zoomed out hole, then to the starting point so they get an idea, oh ok, i have to go around this way to get to itā¦ or else put a mini-map of the hole on the gui.
I would get rid of the āgolfā information lobby thing when you tp to a course, and replace that with a cut-scene of the first hole and start the player on the ground. Move that info lobby to the main lobby area. Also, we call them clubs here, not bats, maybe theyāre bats where you live, but that might confuse players. It just seemed a bit redundant to TP there and then have to click Start again.
I think you should have a way to exit a āholeā/area to the lobby, i didnāt see a way out without finishing. Right now iām stuck in sepia hills and canāt quit to try a different area. I had to reset then it put my in the āgolf infoā lobby where i could then return to main lobby.
I would make āquick playā instead of taking you to a random course, put them in the EASY one. I got thrown into difficult for my first try. Thatās the first thing a player is likely to click, quick start, so start them easy every time. Otherwise, present a grid of courses with difficulty clearly shown that they can click for quick start
make the Distance to hole text bigger, I played a couple holes before I noticed that and was even looking for it too!
you may want to change your animation that plays when you finish a hole, I was insulted by a disappointed avatar when I finished +1 and I thought I was doing good even though I know how golf scoring works! I like the celebration that plays when you get par though, Iād probably play that for any finishing score. I tell you, after I tried so many times to get to the hole and finally get there, I want to celebrate when I get it in! Maybe only play the ābooā animation when its a pvp where the other guy did better?
Anyway thatās my feedback. Good luck getting your players to stick around.
So I read your suggestions. Overall I liked your ideas and will apply most. Hereās what I think:
You are right, people really do get lost where the hole is, and I think that cutscene will help a lot. Maybe the transition cutscene I make inbetween holes would fit that first hole too? Now for mini-maps, I also think they would help a lot, Iām just trying to figure out how to make them work with terrain based maps (which are being a pain on my game overall, I might start making meshpart terrains instead).
This exit hole option would be great too, and I will add it.
That easy preference on āquick playā might be also good, Iāll probably make so you always try to join the easiest maps, and if none are there, you create an easy one 100% of the time. I think of adding a rank system that works like a level up (playing gives xp, increases rank) in the future and the quickplay will choose maps based on your rank.
I didnāt notice it was too small, but again, I already knew where it was from the beggining because I am the one who made it. I will increase its size on the next update.
I also thought I was too agressive with the +1 animation. It used to be bogey, but I think that might have been even worse? (Idk what it means in english but I guess itās something that tells you didnāt do well). Iāll try to find a less agressive animation and remove the sound effect. Instead, it will keep playing the course music).
Well, Itās not like I want to force them not to leave, I want them not want to leave. That anti-leave script should be something reportable actually (and I think it is) seeing that it misleads people that dont know how to close the game other ways into staying at the experience against their will.
