Why is my game having so low playtime?

Hi, I was wondering why is my game having worse and worse playtime and sessiontime. Could you join and give me a constructive feedback on it? We have made a major server optimization update one day ago (and client has to handle a bit more) but it was as I said one day ago and playtime is on downtrend for a few days already. Also if you have anything in mind about the game, please tell me and be honest!! I hope for a roast here, that’s the best way to improve the game
Thanks!

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Okay, I just analysed your game and compared to more popular but similar ones (including a non-Roblox game that I excessively play and paid stuff, Blue Archive). Here are my thoughts:

  1. As a beginner, the game pacing feels off since the pets’ attack feels to slow. This leads to another problem where the enemies becoming clumped together and I am unable to focus on attacking one by one. This also makes me feel that the game is progressing much more slower than it should have, leading me a false feeling that this game requires a lot of effort. This is rather odd because your game is literally about bringing pets near and occasionally let players join their pets’ combat. If players perceive this game is slow and high effort, players will not want to stay long.

    • I’m basing this off from Blue Archive, since is has a similar mechanic where the anime girl characters move on its own, but you can use their special abilities to attack specific targets. (Also, if I can get hooked by similar games, your game already has a strong potential. Just some pacing issues.)
  2. Your kick is lacking range. Currently, the way you handle players attacking the enemies are not good. It requires players to be close to the monsters, but the monsters themselves are huge. This makes it difficult for the players to react fast enough to give the “feeling of accomplishment” when attacking the enemies.

  3. Your enemy spawn needs some tweaks. Right now, when I enter the first battle area alone, I feel overwhelmed. However, when other players join in, it feels manageable. Your enemy density per player is way far off for the first area.

Granted, point 3 is actually going to be hard to tune. I recommend looking into machine learning based methods to automatically do this. I already made multiple tutorials for this if you ever consider looking into this method through DataPredict.

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Thanks, we have changed the dynamics of pet attacks (frequency and speed) and we have fixed enemy spawn amount. Now it works like this:

math.min(5 + 3 * (amountOfPlayersInThisWorld), 15)
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That’s nice, but I recommend that instead of setting the density based on server scale, do it in terms of zone scale. As in like, number of players in that zone.

Plus, this have some added advantage of keeping your game lightweight.

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Yeah, it is based on amount of players in a specific zone so let’s say we have

zone 1 - 3 players → 5 + 3x3 = 14 monsters
zone 2 - 1 player → 5 + 3x1 = 8 monsters

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Also, I haven’t actually went to other locations yet, but doesn’t this assume the “worlds” you have equal space / area? Because if it is not, you’ll have to set different formula for different worlds.

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Pretty much yeah. I think there is no need to overcomplicate it to be honest

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Okay then. That makes sense. I personally prefer perfection since generally you invest a lot of cost in making games, but you do you.

Though if you ever feel like to want be a little bold, go ahead and try out machine learning approaches. Things can get very interesting from there.

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Hey, I played your game as requested. You asked for a roast and to be honest, here it is.

The game is good, it has daily rewards, which makes players come back every day, and it has gifts for playtime. Honestly, what’s missing is just marketing. What makes people stay in these types of games is getting rare pets, and people want rare pets to show off to other people, but if there aren’t many people playing, there’s no reason to spend time grinding for rare pets, much less spend money on your game.

The most important thing right now is to get people to play your game. I recommend contacting a YouTuber to play it and encourage people to get something, like: “I really want this specific pet, if you play this game and get it, let me know in the comments!”

After you have a good player average, it’s easy to monetize, and the best way is to make developer products. This is both for the platform, which requires monetization in your experience to push it to new players, and for you to actually make money. Look at Apple, for example, many people have the iPhone 15, which is a good phone, but they want to trade up for the iPhone 16. It won’t change anything for them except one single thing: status. It’s the famous “conspicuous consumption” or Veblen effect. Exploit that in your game and I guarantee it will bring you returns.

Oh, just one point I forgot to mention, do not hire a YouTuber to make just one video, you will just be throwing your money away. It has to be at least 10 videos. If you don’t have the money for that, you’re better off trying another form of promotion. Do you buy a product from the first commercial you see? I don’t think so, so treat your game like a product.

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Thanks for that answer, we will be doing big marketing soon but just wanted to make sure game is good enough :smiley:

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By the way, do you know maybe why our playtime is dropping? Any ideas for that?

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Are you updating the game weekly? The platform has changed; it’s no longer like it used to be when we’d all wait 3 months for @asimo3089 and @badcc to update, and the entire update was just one new vehicle or one easter egg. Today, it’s essential that you update the game weekly, preferably even twice a week.

Think of it like YouTube: would you get more traction uploading 5 videos all on Monday, or one video every single day of the week?

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Just to make it very clear this is just my opinion, I am not a great example to follow either. As you can see in the image, the average time of my TBM game is not very high, I have already managed to reach 32 minutes, but today it is between 19 and 25.

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Well, we actually released the game one week ago and the screenshot shows result from ads, we haven’t got home recommendation traffic yet

Just keep working. Update your game every week if possible 2 times a week and enjoy to captivate as many players as possible now in December. December is the best time of year to launch a game, you have time to dedicate 100% to it and the children with much more time to play.

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How you get your analytics like that i been trying to get it but i just can’t any tips?

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I think it’s just a DAU (daily active users) requirement i could be wrong though.

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Could you explain a little bit more what do you mean?

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You mean how do I get this view?

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well, i was answering to another person what this analytics meant:


(not hard to understand)

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