I'm pretty sure I said in my first post, "I frequently decide to not play MUDs I'm trying out based solely on my experience with character creation." which was followed-up by the quilt reply, "Players don't leave because of chargen." Just in case anybody missed that.

For me, one of the best parts of playing most MUDs is the development of my character. The character creation process can be very indicative of what kind of depth to character is allowed for or expected in a particular MUD. If the char-gen is stock, my character (and invariably my playing experience) will probably be 'stock', and I don't bother finishing.

I'm afraid I did indeed miss it, and having just searched through all of your previous posts I still can't find that comment. Could you please provide a link to the exact post where you wrote the sentence quoted above, so that I can read it and its quoted response in context?

The only comment I could find that's even vaguely related was clarified as being specifically "On the topic of color in the character creation process", in which you summarised, "I don't like having a lot of color on my screen. Sometimes it makes things hard to read. If I'm considering a new mud, and I can't even get passed character creation without my screen being lit up like the 4th of July, I might opt out and move on to the next MUD on my list."

I should also point out that nobody denies some players quit during character creation - of course they do. The argument here is that most quit shortly after entering the game itself. For example Achaea (the game you play) mentioned that 60% of users who clicked on "Play Now" completed character creation, but that 96.1% of those who did complete it dropped out shortly after entering the game.

Now as I pointed out in an earlier post, that certainly doesn't mean character creation isn't important. But it does need to be considered in context, relative to other features that new players may encounter. Adjust your priorities based on your bottlenecks.

Well I searched as well, and I cannot find either comment. That is very strange though, because I rather distinctly remember reading it the other day….

You know what, I never made the post I'm referring to (though I alluded to it in the comment about opting out based on 4th of July color shows.) The post immediately following that post was by someone who more or less dismissed my statement (and people who act similarly) completely.

Is the topic color in character creation or players leaving/staying based on character creation? I'm not quite sure.

I agree completely regarding bottlenecks. In the case of Achaea (one of the games I play) would you identify character creation as a whole being the (or a) bottleneck? I was just thinking about God Wars II - you offer a variety of features that I would consider to be fairly unique and the character creation process reflects those features appropriately. One of the initial pulls for me into God Wars II (a game I also play) was the character creation process. If that process didn't reflect the unique features of the MUD and the work that went into it, i.e. if it closely resembled a standard, stock MUD, even though GWII offers very unique game-play, I personally might not have pursued it further.

If color in the character creation process is one of the high-priority issues for your MUD, I wonder how much thought or work is being put into other features in the first place.

Ah, yes, the comment I was referring to was by Ssolvarain ("Anyways, the thought that people quit when meeting the chargen is fairly uninformed.")

I had just informed him that I frequently quit when meeting the chargen. Either he's dismissing my validity as a commenter or he's assuming the demographic of players who act similarly is negligible.

After first reading his post, I was going to reply with more examples of things in chargen besides color that might put me off completing it. I never got around to that, and for that, I apologize. :]

Numbers that don't mean anything. You can't just record when someone drops off and derive through the bones for what reason. I might play your game for a few minutes after getting through a poor creation experience and with it still on my mind decide it's not the kind of game I want to play–fully taking that poor creation experience into account. Most of your statistics actually prove that people didn't give your actual game much of a shot. Is it because of the creation? Is it not? We don't know. Yes, there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. 97% of people I asked in my circle told me they only use creation as a reason for quiting all muds. Well, they didn't really tell me. They just quit my creation before they got to the end so that proves it. My percentage is bigger, too. And if I made my creation even worse maybe I can get that number up to 100%. That proves it even more.

Also, while I'm at it, I'm going to go ahead and assume that both you and Achaea have a pretty good creation. How does your statistics relate to determining if a bad creation on KeyStoneCopsMudX results in large drop offs inside of creation? They don't. So, again, they're rubbish.

Okay, that's why I said it's important to see the quotes in context. The full paragraph was:

"Anyways, the thought that people quit when meeting the chargen is fairly uninformed. Most people quit 10 minutes into the game itself. This is an observed behavior, and I think most admins with new players on a regular basis will agree."

Emphasis mine, note "most people". Now look at the top of Ssolvarain's post and you'll see he quoted part of another post in his reply - a post in which Runter said "I'm of the opinion that creation is the most important presentation to the player". To be honest, it really doesn't look like Ssolvarain was replying to you at all.

Either way, it is of course up to each individual mud developer to decide how best to allocate their time and resources. As I've already said, I do consider character creation very important, but the trend I've consistently observed in every game I've ever run is that the majority of new players quit within the first few minutes of gameplay. I've seen the exact same issue discussed by many other mud owners over the years as well.

Of course it goes without saying that a really poorly designed character creation system could drastically reduce the number of players who reach the game. Likewise, an excessively lengthy creation system could discourage many players - for example, if you have to write a 50,000 word background story and then wait for a member of staff to read and accept it before they can connect, it's unlikely many players would complete character creation. But it takes a very special kind of mud developer to "modify" a perfectly serviceable and relatively straightforward stock feature into a train wreck that drives away newbies.

I don't necessarily think he was replying to my post, but what I said in regards to his post stands.

Anyway, I think it's a bit sideways to say character creation ends the moment the player enters the 'game'. Take Achaea, for instance. You connect, you begin character creation, you complete character creation, and you are pulled into an introductory tour where you have yet to enter the real game. There is no way to avoid this. We could call this part of the character creation process still. Are players quitting during this introductory tour, or after completing it? The statistic quoted regarding Achaea wasn't clear about that. Did 96.1% of the 60% who completed character creation quit in this tour, or what?

I'm a player who enjoys depth of character. Does that necessarily mean a longer character creation is good? Nope. I prefer to play a game where developing my character is an on-going process. When character development stops, the game loses fun for me.

I might be rambling now, but regardless of game-type, theme, etc. some points I'd highlight for character creation:

1) Are there relevant help files available? (Especially if your world is unique, is there a way for me to find out what picking option B might mean for my character, at least a little bit? If you're telling me to choose between two towns and all I have to go off is their names, I'm probably going to just leave. Or if I do pick one, and find out it's an All-Evil/All-Good/All-Treehugger/My-Class-Not-Allowed city and my only option is to remake my character, I'm probably going to leave.)

2) Is it structured logically?

3) Does it offer hints as to which choices are -really- important and which ones are less so? Or which choices can be changed later?

4) Information on the web? (If your MUD has a great website where I can read about the different choices available to me, or browse help files, etc. and this is presented to me at the beginning of character creation, I will disconnect, go browse the site and read up, then come back and make a character.)

These things seem to benefit both the player and the implementor. How accurate are your statistics about players creating and quitting? What if it's frequently a new player who creates, doesn't like what his character is(not having the information), and then reads the help files and quits, only to create a new character that he ends up staying with. Now you've counted the same person for two different statistics, as he's a quitter and a player.

I THINK PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO TALK ABOUT THESE THINGS IF THEY WANT TO, GOOD SIR.

It would be more constructive to actively gather feedback from players who quit, as opposed to just using numbers; at least in my opinion. Though, the main problem with that is how many people who quit for X reason are going to bother taking the time to provide feedback? Not many from past experiences.

Very true. This whole discussion is working under the assumption that w players who visit t muds and leave after f minutes quit for k reason related to the code-base/game-world and not reason t related to the community/player.

But you also said that of the h people who quit for X reason, based on b past experiences providing a number of users the chance to offer feedback, i users gave you not much feedback..

How was ! your post constructive?

A better way to compare would be experimenting with a no creation system vs (what you consider to be) a good character creation. Then as a final question in the creation ask them what they thought of the creation experience. I'd be very interested to see how many players would rather follow a creation on rails via really playing your (fun?) game vs the character gen menus and which results in the player actually being retained longer. I know, personally, when I play a game sometimes I'm a little burnt out by the time I get out of the creation and I'm not really willing to spend a lot of time learning about how to play relatively complex games. Especially if the creation took 30 minutes. There's a lot of coffeebreak style gamers these days. Some of them are willing to come back later in multiple sessions, but if they never really got to play your game in the first place or got the impression it was too much effort they won't even be back.