A month ago we published an update for our tycoon-simulation hybrid game. Normally it wasn’t doing really good but it suddenly dropped to crippling numbers.
Before Update:
Playtime: 18m
D1 Retention: %8-10
After Update:
Playtime: 12m
D1 Retention: %4-6
I can’t understand what is the exact problem. With update we brought a new and bigger map, new things to purchase, rewards for playtime and retention, brand new UI and rebirth. I tried to fix onboarding with a new publish yesterday. I don’t know how it will affect but I don’t think it will create miracles. Should I just rollback the updates and delete 2-3 months’ of work? Could anyone please tell me what I am not seeing?
What are your new player stats? You may be looking at this data the wrong way.
Let’s say you have 100 people who all LOVE your game when you release it and 100% of them return the next day (D1 retention = 100%). Now, you publish the update. Your game becomes much more popular with a 1000 people playing the game but all the people who play your game hate it :( and never return. This means that your D1 retention will now show 10% even though the same amount of people still love your game.
TL;DR: The new players in your game are probably less loyal to the game than the ones who joined a month ago and the new players take up a larger portion of the total user base now.
There is currently a bug in Roblox that causes client FPS to severely drop over the span of about 30 minutes. Not sure if its fixed yet but that might be the problem.
Whenever you notice a playtime dip, the first thing you should do is make sure to check the “Error Report” page on your game. You should compare errors showing now with errors on the days prior to the update (you can change the selected dates being viewed on that page). If there are new errors that are in high volume they could be a cause of your playtime drop.