Why is the 0 A.D community so small?

[Seleucids]

Let's think how a player progresses from completely unaware to a regular user: (at each step, N is multiplied by a fraction  f_i , 0 < f_i < 1)

- Discovery phase: N people hear about 0ad or see its existence, e.g on YouTube, in a Linux app store, walking across the website, FOSS recommendation etc.

- Out of these people, f₁  of the are attracted and try to download the game. 

- f₂ successfully downloads and runs the game for the first time, the remaining fails due to whatever technical errors or just their own stupidity. Some people are driven away by the large download size. 

- f₃ make it through the tutorial or some easy AI mode without loosing interest. From my personal experience, this number is quite small as I found it quite difficult to beat the easiest AI and the tutorial was long and tiring. The tutorial could be improved by having larger texts and ability to skip steps

- f₄ out of these decides to play AI the next day and the days after - we now have a casual singleplayer

- f₅ are bold enough to click on multiplayer and register their first account to the lobby

- f₆ of these are not discouraged by their village getting vapourised by inf at min 14 and decides to become regular players

There is a fraction q of regular players who quit the game for whatever reason. 

In the end, we have the current lobby users:

n = N * f₁ f2 f₃ f₄ f₅ f₆ (1 - q)

 

so ideally we maximise the values of N and f, then minimise the value of q

[Seleucids]

To maximise N, we need to maximise exposure of the game. Ads, appearance on Steam, GoG, Origin, Microsoft Store (these are disgusting places but are quick to get views). More involvement in alternatives.to, appear more on recommended lists etc. For example you can advertise as free alternative of AoE

f1 is quite big imo, the media to the outside world does look attractive. We just need to make sure the description is pristine in every software store: Gnome Softare, KDE Discover, Flathub, Snap, ...

f2 can be increased by making the download easier. I think in the main website, the https download llink could be made more obvious. You can even put the https download link in the first homepage with big attractive button around it. Maybe more modern design as well to make it look like a well maintained legit project.

Also the download size is way too large, 1.32GB! Can we cut that down a bit? E.g. on Linux we separate the data from the base engine, can we do something similar in Windows?

f3 is small and is something we can work on. I think the pregame page could be redesigned to guide new players better, e.g. by having large buttons for tutorials and guides in the middle to really emphasise where someone should click.

The tutorial could use some improvement, for example not too much text. It really tests the patience of players. Use short sentences, 1 thing per page. We can even break up the tutorial into bits.

The default settings could also be improved. The AI is set to medium by default. Petra is too aggressive. By default, it should be Easy + Defensive to ensure that the new player has time to explore before getting smashed. Experienced players know how to adjust settings so it's really not a problem for them.

 

f4 is really dependent on how well f3 is received and whether the individual is into the RTS style. Not much we can do. But we can always say something like "there is so much more that you can explore!"

 

f5 -- at the end of some hard campaign we can recommend them to join the lobby. Or, after they smash the very hard AI for the first time, we can do a popup message that says "Congrats! You have passed the trial, now you are ready to play with other humans!"

 

f6 -  we can add some social guidance on the lobby page. Some comforting messages like "try your best" "enjoy" "it's ok to loose" "don't give up" "have fun" , not the current harsh ones. Also it's important to explain to them not to try to join OP TGs on their first game as it won't be fun for anyone. 

 

q can be minimised by fixing some bugs and other problems. But that's really another story

[TheCJ]

9 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Ads

...

9 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Microsoft Store

not microsoft, please...

9 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Origin

what is even that?

Also, you forgot a very relevant way of increasing "N"; creating content (e.g. yt-videos, reddit posts, twitter, instagram and what not). 

9 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Also the download size is way too large, 1.32GB

Your first time downloading a game? 0ad is very small compared to most other games. I mean, 30+GB is very normal, there are also 200+GB games...

Can't really speak on tutorial or single player, since I never played those and went directly to multiplayer. 

Anyway, thank you for the input!

[Seleucids]

2 hours ago, TheCJ said:

Also, you forgot a very relevant way of increasing "N"; creating content (e.g. yt-videos, reddit posts, twitter, instagram and what not). 

Good point 

2 hours ago, TheCJ said:

Your first time downloading a game? 0ad is very small compared to most other games. I mean, 30+GB is very normal, there are also 200+GB games..

The difference is, they are not one file. You first download a small installer exe, then when you launch this installer it retrieves data from the server. Some games only try to download data when you reach that relevant part of gameplay. 

0ad can do the same: you download a tiny installer, which contains only the key dependencies and engine core. Then the installer downloads the big public data from the wfg servers. To make it fast for everyone, build in multithreaded parallel download into the installer.

[Baelish]

I totally agree with Seleucids, he/she wrote a really good guide to approach the average unexpert windows user.

To make the game interface, installation and presentation noob friendly requires lots of work, but I think it's necessary.

A personal experience: my friend was scared by the initial message which says that the game is still in development and can have problems. I laughed at her, but if we want to grow the community, we must take care of this type of user

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Well at least now that the game is signed, macos users won't have their operating system telling them that the game is malware XD.

4 minutes ago, Baelish said:

initial message which says that the game is still in development and can have problems.

I suppose it could just be "In development".

[Gönndolsalv]

Interesting how opinion differs here. I like the in Development disclaimer. I also don´t think calling the different game versions alpha XX is a issue. Since you can play the game for free and it is in development it´s ok that things are not perfect or subject to change. I´m not a typical gamer so maybe i´m the wrong person to ask.

3 hours ago, Baelish said:

A personal experience: my friend was scared by the initial message which says that the game is still in development and can have problems. I laughed at her, but if we want to grow the community, we must take care of this type of user

When i get this question from my fiends that i got to install the game my reply is: because there will be more features, it will be better with the next version or if you want you can help them, write a mod with your own changes. From my point of view all of that is positive.

[Baelish]

35 minutes ago, Gönndolsalv said:

Since you can play the game for free and it is in development it´s ok that things are not perfect or subject to change.

It's true, but lots of games, also paid ones, are under development (e.g. Among Us, COD Mobile, Fall Guys, Fallout 76), but they only release an upgrade and a banner with all change listed.

It gives to the player a feel of care toward the game coming from the developers, not a feel of unfinished or worse abandoned.

[Grautvornix]

43 minutes ago, Baelish said:

It's true, but lots of games, also paid ones, are under development (e.g. Among Us, COD Mobile, Fall Guys, Fallout 76), but they only release an upgrade and a banner with all change listed.

It gives to the player a feel of care toward the game coming from the developers, not a feel of unfinished or worse abandoned.

Indeed, this game is far from being unfinished although there are many ideas and discussions of extending and further improving it. Frankly, the game works well and is fun to play (both SP or MP).

So , I do support the proposal to rephrase that disclaimer from essentially saying:

"this game is unfinished and will not completely work, has potentially bugs", etc.

to something more positive like:

"this game is a full featured early release that is constantly improved and extended by an active community. Many extensions are already available for download as mods, and there is even guidance material available how to adapt the game by yourself and therefore contribute to this community project." 

Plus I would really suggest renaming the next version from "0AD Alpha 0.0.27" to "0AD 1.0" (and no alpha).

I do acknowledge this might be seen as a bit bold marketing but THIS GAME IS ALREADY AWESOME RIGHT NOW and will get even better!

Sorry, I had a need to express my view .

[Gönndolsalv]

On 21/08/2024 at 11:15 PM, Stan&#x60; said:

Just moving to 0.27 instead of 0.0.27 would already be bold

We could also do 0.1.0

remove the alpha before the Version number fine but move directly to 1.0 is to far if 0.27 is already bold

anyway it´s just a number how important is it really?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The thing is, we have several competing ideas of what constitutes Alpha, Beta, Early Access, et al. And what exact milestones are necessary for each of those terms.  

i think for the longest time, the idea was that to come out of "alpha" to "beta" would require a working full-featured single player campaign and surely a multiplayer environment where we're no longer arguing over what constitutes cheating or not (the mods). Also, where the civ designs are rather solid and complete and the tech tree not in flux. Then with Beta, we can balance all of those things and fix anything that crops up. 

 

That's an older view of game development, but the industry has moved on to a more "perpetual development and balancing" environment, in an odd way meeting Wildfire Games where it's at with its development of 0 A.D. So, I'd advocate we get rid of the old view and embrace where the industry and gamer expectations are at today rather than how we wish they'd be or where they were 15 years ago. 

 

Having said that, I'd still like to tunnel down and get some things ready to go before officially boosting the game to Beta. I'd still like a single player campaign even if it's not full-featured and "complete," and I'd like to get the rest of the civs differentiated on the level of the Athenians, Romans, and Spartans are in Alpha 27. And lastly, we need to get the multiplayer community under control before we can legitimately go to Steam or wherever we can go after claiming we're in Beta or Early Access. 

 

So, I'd say let's make Alpha 27 the final "Alpha", and after that change our mindset and goals toward the next release being "Beta 1" or whatever we decide to call it.

[Seleucids]

Calling the game Alpha probably is not a very big factor. I think most people don't know what Alpha means in this context and probably won't delete the game immediately just because they see "under development". 

[ChronA]

13 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Calling the game Alpha probably is not a very big factor.

I agree that the specific verbiage and underlying reality the the game is unfinished are probably not a big factor in preventing people from trying 0AD, but I suspect they might be significant factors in low retention and engagement depth.

As FOSS, there are few good reasons not to install the game and give it a try if you are interested. However, playing around for a few hours will quickly clarify the meaning of those labels. The game is clearly missing some key ingredients of the value proposition of a full-featured RTS (which wowgetoffyourcellphone just listed), and the verbiage of its "unfinished alpha" state communicates that these features are coming, just be patient. Thus if you are bothered by the lack of any of these features you will say to yourself "this is promising, but I'm not going to waste more of my time trying to get enjoyment from a prototype; I'll come back when it is finished."

Thus that notional user never goes on to become a regular multiplayer competitor or a content contributor. They simply lurk, until eventually they forget 0AD exists, or they realize that the timeline for these features to be delivered is not weeks or months like most commercial early-access or games-as-a-service products, but years or decades. The end result being that yes, you got a new user for a few days or weeks, but they did not "join the community," and therefore the community remains small.
 

Dropping the alpha labeling might help with retaining some of those players, who enjoy their initial experience of the game, but anticipate a better value proposition if they wait to full invest their time. It would at least encourage them to make their own assessment of whether the value proposition of the product is enticing enough for them to stay engaged, rather than defaulting to the word of god that the product is not ready yet. However you are likely correct that the benefit will be small.

I think the bigger benefit will come from how that change would affect the project's development priorities. 0AD can't keep coasting along on aspirations of eventually delivering a complete product in perpetuity. If the project can't deliver on a "full-featured single player campaign," and "a multiplayer environment where we're no longer arguing over what constitutes cheating or not," and "where the civ designs are rather solid and complete and the tech tree not in flux"; then it would at least be healthy to give some thought to what sort of optimal value proposition can be delivered in the immediate future, and focus more effort on developing that. Dropping the "it's sill in alpha" excuse might help motivate that change of mindset.

Edited December 5 by ChronA

[chrstgtr]

13 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Thus that notional user never goes on to become a regular multiplayer competitor or a content contributor. They simply lurk, until eventually they forget 0AD exists, or they realize that the timeline for these features to be delivered is not weeks or months like most commercial early-access or games-as-a-service products, but years or decades. The end result being that yes, you got a new user for a few days or weeks, but they did not "join the community," and therefore the community remains small.

This. 

I’ve said before that when I initially downloaded the game I played for a week or two until I realized how bad AI was. After that it wasn’t fun to play against the computer. Then I stopped playing for a month or two until I randomly decided to reopen the game and do MP (where I realized how green my kills were). 

If AI is only good enough to beat a brand new player for a week or two that’s a problem and means you can’t retain most single players for more than a brief few weeks. 

So I imagine the typical experience is 2 days of “this is impossible with how hard AI is,” followed by 2 days of “I’m getting the hang of it—this is fun,” followed by 2 days of “this is fun and I’m beating AI all the time now,” followed by a day of “is there anything new? This isn’t a challenge anymore.” That’s a really fast lifecycle for a game. 

A smarter AI is needed to build out the SP mode. 

[Emacz]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

This. 

I’ve said before that when I initially downloaded the game I played for a week or two until I realized how bad AI was. After that it wasn’t fun to play against the computer. Then I stopped playing for a month or two until I randomly decided to reopen the game and do MP (where I realized how green my kills were). 

If AI is only good enough to beat a brand new player for a week or two that’s a problem and means you can’t retain most single players for more than a brief few weeks. 

So I imagine the typical experience is 2 days of “this is impossible with how hard AI is,” followed by 2 days of “I’m getting the hang of it—this is fun,” followed by 2 days of “this is fun and I’m beating AI all the time now,” followed by a day of “is there anything new? This isn’t a challenge anymore.” That’s a really fast lifecycle for a game. 

A smarter AI is needed to build out the SP mode. 

Defintiely agree with smarter AI for SP.
And again I still like more of a "starcraft" approach to MP.  right now there are too many unknowns, smurfs, multis ect... this wont be completely fixed with a new model, but if somehow your rating/ability can be calculated better regardless if you dont play rated games and you can be put against players around your ability it would me more attractive and fun.  I remember one of my first games against borg 6+ yaers ago, I lasted less than 3 minutes and was so annoyed at his cav rush and thought it was so OP, but mostly cause i didnt realy know how to play the game yet and playing him was one of my first MP experiences 

[Stan`]

Yet most players with user report on are SP players not MP ones (1500 vs 150) by a factor of ten. So there must be something that's keeping them playing everyday.

16 hours ago, ChronA said:

think the bigger benefit will come from how that change would affect the project's development priorities. 0AD can't keep coasting along on aspirations of eventually delivering a complete product in perpetuity

Sadly FOSS is people driven not priority driven. If you force people then you lose developpers and they are harder to get than players.

Also not all skills convert.

[Lion.Kanzen]

16 hours ago, ChronA said:

Thus that notional user never goes on to become a regular multiplayer competitor or a content contributor. They simply lurk, until eventually they forget 0AD exists, or they realize that the timeline for these features to be delivered is not weeks or months like most commercial early-access or games-as-a-service products, but years or decades. The end result being that yes, you got a new user for a few days or weeks, but they did not "join the community," and therefore the community remains small

The thing is, 0AD is quite a niche game.

There aren't many RTS with Romans out there that could add things.

Most games die soon despite sales.

Check out the highly anticipated DB Sparking Zero.

At this point it's dead.

Very good focused on the MP.

Obviously it's not a RTs but it's very competitive.

A game that doesn't want to die must give you content or have a good amount of community that gives you that content.

Games live in eternal development.

Another factor is replayability. It can become tedious, ordinary and routine.

 

 

[ChronA]

6 hours ago, Stan&#x60; said:

Sadly FOSS is people driven not priority driven. If you force people then you lose developpers and they are harder to get than players.

True, but I don't think it's correct to entirely write off the importance of steering forces and ecosystems on attracting a very effective cohort of developers and focusing their voluntary contributions on valuable targets.

For example 0AD's venerable design document still exerts a powerful influence on the character of contributions. Just look at how much effort and ink has been spilled on trying to combat the sniping issue. Would that still have happened if the design doc didn't contain such a strong injunction against click spam mechanics? After all there are a bunch of other very successful RTS franchises where click-spam micro or macro is a core skill mechanic.

[chrstgtr]

11 hours ago, Stan&#x60; said:

Yet most players with user report on are SP players not MP ones (1500 vs 150) by a factor of ten. So there must be something that's keeping them playing everyday.

Sadly FOSS is people driven not priority driven. If you force people then you lose developpers and they are harder to get than players.

Also not all skills convert.

But do we know how long those players have been playing? We know that there are a lot of downloads. How do we know that these aren’t new players that are continually coming in but not being retained? 

[Stan`]

8 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

19 hours ago, Stan&#x60; said:

But do we know how long those players have been playing? We know that there are a lot of downloads. How do we know that these aren’t new players that are continually coming in but not being retained? 

It feels weird to me that the influx of players would be 1) constant 2) consistent in terms of version representation and especially that new players would enable feedback while it's apparently a hidden feature.

 

12 hours ago, ChronA said:

True, but I don't think it's correct to entirely write off the importance of steering forces and ecosystems on attracting a very effective cohort of developers and focusing their voluntary contributions on valuable targets.

I mean sure people can be convinced to work on specific stuff but most of the time you just end up draining their energy faster. I'll agree that my experience here might be different than elsewhere.

12 hours ago, ChronA said:

 

For example 0AD's venerable design document still exerts a powerful influence on the character of contributions. Just look at how much effort and ink has been spilled on trying to combat the sniping issue. Would that still have happened if the design doc didn't contain such a strong injunction against click spam mechanics? After all there are a bunch of other very successful RTS franchises where click-spam micro or macro is a core skill mechanic.

I don't think the document does that per se. For me that specific line is not from the document itself, which I cannot say I know by heart. It's mostly how devs feel or are made to feel about the game.

If we followed the design doc the game would be much more different than it is now. @Wijitmaker told me it's completely off with regards to what they had in mind at the time.

[Lion.Kanzen]

56 minutes ago, Stan&#x60; said:

If we followed the design doc the game would be much more different than it is now. @Wijitmaker told me it's completely off with regards to what they had in mind at the time.

Hehehe.

I imagine judging by A6 he imagined it to be simpler.

We had to have new mechanics to have an identity.

We were not going to be able to keep up with the changing times.

He hardly connects anymore as he did when I arrived.

And Wow, it was already a long time when I arrived. 

We started to get more features over the years.

The capture mechanic was something I suggested and it wasn't considered.

 

Indeed, I saw that you have more factions planned than what appears on this forum.

But there are others that don't. Nomads and all those mechanics are just chatter that started one day on the forum.

This was the game in the first versions that I was able to see.

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

A major difference between the original vision and what the game has evolved into is the territory mechanic. Originally, the map would have pre-defined unclaimed "provinces." You'd see the map divided up in the minimap into your home province, the provinces other players start with, and then a number of other unclaimed provinces. Similar to a voronoi diagram. And then you'd claim new provinces by building your Civilisation Centres (original terminology) on an unclaimed Settlement, very similarly to Age of Mythology. 

The standard Building roster was much more streamlined (too much, IMHO) and the number of planned civs stood at 6. The way that biomes and seasons planned to work was pretty cool, but super difficult to achieve, so abandoned early (which is fine). I'm personally glad we have many more civs than originally planned because of the cultural diversity we can allow players to experience and play around with.

The tech trees were supposed to be 95% choice-based, like with the tech pairs in DE. The tech trees were going to probably be the most complicated aspect of the gameplay. While each of the few civs were to have a slimmed down building roster and unit roster, they would have had 100% unique tech trees that would have determined nearly all of the differentiating features of the civs. It was desired that phase 1 spearmen and phase 1 swordsmen would be nearly identical in stats, only to later in phases 2 and 3 be differentiated via each civ's unique tech tree. The number of phases were limited to 3 (too few, IMHO) for simplicity and to keep these tech trees from growing too massive. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'm personally glad we have many more civs than originally planned because of the cultural diversity we can allow players to experience and play around with.

Yes, less boring, that's why we should have an Encyclopedia  and gameplay that is fun with each culture.

Unique gameplay with each faction.

The nomadic system will be very interesting once it is more developed.

I intend for it to have civic, commercial, military and religious technologies and political.

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The number of phases were limited to 3 (too few, IMHO)

I agree, very few and it is not even felt due to the snowball effect of the economy.

[Gurken Khan]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone While I appreciate the historical insight, I ask myself how the things you described lead to a small community.