In post 75, TywinL wrote: In post 18, Plotinus wrote:In the past 86 days, the open queue has fired 5 times, at a rate of once every 17 days.
In the past 56 days, 5 large theme games have entered sign ups, at a rate of once every 11 days
In the past 41 days, the micro queue has fired 5 times, at a rate of once every 8 days.
In the past 33 days, the mini theme queue has fired 5 times, at a rate of once every 7 days.
In the past 31 days, the normal queue has fired 5 times, at a rate of once every 6 days.
In the past 29 days, the newbie queue has fired 5 times, at a rate of once every 6 days.
The newbie queue is the most active queue.
Just wanted to add something to that.
There is only one on-going Open game right now. If anything needs to be dissolved, it would be the Open queue, but I am also against that too.
In post 76, zoraster wrote:Forgive me for putting words in his mouth, but I don't think the issue TSQ was having was that queues that don't fire often necessarily need to be removed but that it's important for the first game that a newbie plays to fire quickly so we turned them from mildly interested people who registered and typed /in into a user that accesses the site regularly in order to play a game. The longer the distance between point A and B the more likely we are to lose people.
Under what conditions is "losing people" a bad thing, though? I would suspect the subset of people who stop visiting the site to check the queue thread and their PMs on the Sixth day after their /in is closely correlated with the subset of people who will replace out of their first, second, or third game.
Actually, I think that's studyable, since you could go through and see if replacement rates are lower for players who waited 5 days for their game to queue vs. players who waited 1 day, for their first game. Maybe there's egg on my face and there's no statistically significant relationship. I don't know if anyone would want to do that legwork, though.
Still, my main point is that you should focus on "what process adds value added members to the site", not "what process adds members to the site." What playstyles are enjoyable to have around can be controversial, but low replacement rate is one of the not-so-controversial characteristics.
In a lots of fits of boredom over the past 1.5 years or so I have *almost* joined a game, but the only large I was interested in was too far from filling, or an open setup I'd be willing to play wasn't even at the front of the queue, or etc, or etc. I feel like it's quite possible this function mimicked the tests that a rough patch or lull in a game I actually joined might have had, and whether I would become miserable or replace out/ play unfunly with that kind of interest level.
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"