How to make this game make people come back for more?

Help and Feedback Game Design Support
#1

I’m not too sure if this is an appropriate thing to post here, but I’d like to have some ideas!
Let me explain a little bit about my game first!

PROJECT: ZERO
It’s a post apocalyptic world where aliens have invaded a planet called ZERO. The players play an important role in the game where they were created by an unknown scientist to fend the planet off from these aliens. These aliens have made robotic henchmen and your sole duty is to destroy those robots and to defeat the aliens. As they progress through the map, they encounter these aliens and can fight them in an open-world. Similar to World Zero except for the character customization, these characters can wield cannons and blades. They can dash, grind rails, wall run, and even use a grappling hook.

Conclusion/Ideas?
In a nutshell, this game is pretty much a sci-fi RPG with tons of exploration mechanics. I don’t want to make this game solely focused on gamepasses as I feel like it’s a bit unfair, so I mostly stick with social items- like trails, exclusive future mounts, emotes, and voicelines. There’s even a VIP pass where people can obtain a unique tag in chat, as well as having an exclusive future VIP mount and some more voicelines. Of course there’s also the donation part for the game, but that’s separated from the gamepasses.

My question is, how do I make people come back for more? I’ve already done as much as I could with the gameplay and areas, I just don’t know how to entice people to come back for more. I thought about adding pets, but then I realized that it wouldn’t really go well in this setting for the game that I’ve put together. If I do add pets however, I need an idea on what type of pet it could be. A robot? A little mini alien? I don’t know.

Here are some things I’ve thought of already:

  • Adding a space section in the game, which players can create and make their own spaceship after a long period of time of playing. Going for a like a No Man’s Sky type of vibe here.
  • Being able to do PVP after reaching the level 14.
  • Adding classes that make players do other things other than using a cannon and blade.

These are things I came up with, but what did you think of when reading what I presented? Ideas are always welcomed and I’d love to implement these ideas into my game!

How would I start this game for beginner players?
Characters for my game + main bosses!
#2

I would recommend making a prototype and making the movement (dashing, grinding rails, wallrunning, grappling hook, etc.) EXTREMELY good. If you can do that, then you got yourself a fun game.

RPGs are hard to get players to come back once they complete content, but making it PVP focused, as long as there are players around, will keep a game going for a while.

EDIT: I also wouldn’t try and associate with World Zero if you’re not involved with that game, as some people might have the wrong impressions of the game when they join.

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#3

Yes, I know about the complications when it comes to naming the game similar to World Zero lol. I contacted my peers about the name, they know about the other game and said that it sounds pretty cool! And I don’t really know what else to name it besides that. I’ll probably look into different names!

So thanks for the feedback about the PVP thing! I’m definitely trying to make it really unique from every other game! (:

#4

Sounds like an awesome game how about you add DLC or extra content?

You could even have an upcoming dlc ui in the main menu that players can fiddle around with too check out what there missing out on

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#5

Thank you so much for the compliment!

And, DLC content or extra content you say? Very enticing. I may actually make the DLC content related to space stage that I mentioned in it.

I thought about some ideas for the games possible DLC, so maybe…

  • Make your own home when you complete the game.
  • The possibility of adding pets, which pets help improve your healing instead of adding damage (cause let’s face it, pets encourage us to keep going!)

Other players can see the pets, but if they want the pets, they have to buy the DLC which is only available at the end of the game and have officially completed it. What are your thoughts on this? (:

EDIT: Another idea for DLC content is being able to paraglide. They can use it temporarily in a map, but if they want it in the open-world, they have to buy it!

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#6

Yeah I think thats a wonderful idea, I also really like the paraglide that sounds fun!
I’d say though try to keep the DLC content less of a pay to win type of thing

The paraglide and buying your own home and the pets are great ideas, but like just for like future content you may come up with, you dont wanna give players unfair advantages that will not make them want to come back for more, LOL

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#7

OH ABSOLUTELY! That was the intention to make the game not a pay to win type of thing! I want everyone to be on equal grounds, but if they want additional content, they can buy it if they want to! Plus all the passes are relatively cheap. It’d be only like $5 to purchase 90% of them, with the VIP being like $9-$10 in terms of robux.

Never want to make it unfair, everyone needs a change of pace without being P2W!

Heck, I even made it to where that you don’t even need to use robux to level up. Just grind and get good at the game, and you’ll be able to reach a high level in no time.

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#8

Hello Vex! :wave:
When I have a problem with the game design of a project, I usually take a step back, and think about the metric I’m trying to improve. In your case, it’s player retention you’re trying to increase. Luckily there’s tons of information out there about player retention, and how to design mechanics to keep players coming back.

Just to list a few of my favorite ones ;

1. Limited time features, or items. — When learning about game design, I learned about FOMO (Fear of missing out), and how FOMO drives players to make choices in certain games, which can be beneficial to the developers. A good example here would be limited time skins in Fortnite! Fortnite has skins that were only out for a limited amount of time, and accounts with those skins sell in the hundreds now! If Fortnite were to announce that some of those skins would be going on sale as part of a Christmas special, tons of new players would re-download the game, and play Fortnite just to get those skins because of the fear of missing out, causing a massive spike in player retention. Exclusivity is one of the best mechanics you can leverage to get players to not only return to your game, but to spend longer play sessions grinding out the events to get those exclusive items!

2. Daily / Weekly rewards. — Player retention is the golden metric game designers like to say, and one of the best ways to get player retention up, is by having features that can be completed daily, or weekly, that massively impact the core loop. The best example I can come up with on the top of my head is Clash of Clans, and Clash Royale. These games are COVERED in mechanics that get you to keep coming back after you’ve already put your phone down. Daily raid bonuses, limited time events, seasonal items, battle-passes, stores that change the content within every day, etc. Most mobile games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush, and probably any other game you can think of, leverage daily / weekly rewards to get players coming back. I even interviewed some of my family that played Candy Crush and they said without all the weekly / daily contest, rewards, and missions, they wouldn’t play the game because of how hard it would be. The takeaway here is that if you add these mechanics, and integrate them into your core loop, you can really improve your retention a lot.

3. Efficient Content Cadence. — After launching a game, it’s up to the developers to continue adding game content. This process is called Post Ops, which is just a shorter way of saying Post Operations. During the Post Op cycle of your game, there’s two different types of content that you’re going to be releasing. Major updates, and minor updates. Minor updates are good for maintaining your current metrics, and Major updates are good for improving your players metrics. But because Roblox teams are generally small, Major updates depending on team size can take months! This is where minor updates come into play. When releasing a game, you want to make sure you have features in your game that can be used for minor content. This minor content will satisfy players, and keep your metrics, while you’re able to focus the majority of your work on the Major updates. Good examples of minor updates would be, skins, new maps, battle-passes, etc. Ideally you don’t need to make new features to create minor content, it should be leveraging already existing features created.

Some final advice I could give ;
Make sure you don’t frequently add a Major updates to your game that can’t be expanded upon. A lot of the time, the point of an update is to build a new feature that can be expanded upon using minor updates to establish a good content cadence. If you’re spending weeks or months on a mechanic that isn’t designed to be expanded off of, you could be wasting precious valuable time.

If you haven’t already, learn about game design! I knew practically nothing about game design until about a month ago, and that’s all thanks to an amazing resource provided by the Roblox Developer Relations team! They have a YouTube channel that has amazing content about game design, and is an amazing place to start learning about how to design your games on Roblox! Check it out here!

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#9

OH MY GOD, THIS IS VERY INFORMATIVE- Thank you!!! I will definitely use your ideas in my game as well!

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Class ideas for my game!