New Player Feedback Methodology

For large social games such as Survivor where the primary mechanic is social interaction.
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New Player Feedback Methodology

Post Post #0 (isolation #0) » Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:24 am

Post by pablito »

Upon some discussions with SummerInWonderland and the LSG mods, we thought that there ought to be more of an initiative to figure out what the hell is working right for all the new players that join the Large Social Games area - whether they have actually joined or played a game or not. I know that at Kingsmeet there was a serious effort to get some of them to join the next Large Social, and that was very successful :) And I hope many stick around.

However, we haven't had a game going currently since Civivor, and therefore it's time to think about "how is the new player experience?" - for those who have played or are thinking of playing. Not all Provisional players have the best track record at making finals unless your name is Jess. So some new players stick, and we love them for it, and some don't, and we respect them for that. But what makes people want to stick around? What makes some people enjoy playing or not enjoy playing?

My intention is for this discussion and thread to
not
be the place for us as a community (and us as mostly veterans) to theorize and discuss why the rookies are or aren't sticking around. So please do not answer the questions in the previous paragraph unless you are a New Player. The intention of this discussion and thread is to focus on how we can increase the feedback and to empower the voice of new players. I think it would be improper of us to pose our own opinions on their experience and to steal their voice on their experience - and instead, the intent is just "how the hell do we get more feedback from new players in various ways?"

I think there are various options for us to take, so Summer and I (and the LSG mods by extension) are seeking advice on how the community can take on some of these things and whether some of these sound good or not. So please opine on these methods:

1. Mods and Veterans should talk more (in a formal sense?) with new players about their experience after the game. I know this happens regularly at some level - to better success with some than others.

2. A constructive feedback form could be implemented at each game to ask all players about what kept them engaged and what they would like to see in the future again. We don't have feedback forms - but for example university classes do this all the time.

3. New players can provide more feedback and help update the Newbie Guide to Survivor. Shouldn't the newbies who have actually played help write the guide?

4. Players waiting for a new game should self-identify to the LSG mods (or should there be a new player queue in this area or a different format?) and potentially be allowed to chat with future game moderators or other community members so that they can get a chance to learn more about their experience. I know that racefan12, Shrek, Aurathebirb, and Mina (and likely others) all had documented interest in joining a game much earlier than their first actual game - I wonder how that experience of waiting was.

Please share your opinions on the above methods and what would be the best way to empower the voice of new players to provide feedback. Some new players have not had the best experience and may be too polite to be honest in some cases. More often than not, people who do not have a good experience simply don't give feedback and would rather just go on with their lives - but if there's a chance to find out more - I think we should find out how we can seek it.
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Post Post #1 (isolation #1) » Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:27 am

Post by pablito »

By the way for #2 - A sample constructive feedback form could look like:

Which parts of the game engaged you the most?
Which elements of the game would you like to see repeated in a future game?
What was something that a player/spectator/mod did that helped you enjoy this game?
How can some of the twists be improved in this game?
Did your experience reach your expectations?


The idea is not to give carte blanche for all players to criticize games. I think that many players will do this in their preferred method already - but it would be good to know what works out of all the new ideas and what could work with more tweaking.

These are just some ideas - but please also provide your own ideas for what could work on a regular non-anonymous constructive feedback form.
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Post Post #13 (isolation #2) » Sun Sep 24, 2017 1:34 pm

Post by pablito »

Any new players want to comment on what's being said yet?

The focus of this thread was intended to be on how to get feedback from new players. And the more veterans talk about these ideas, the more I'm concerned that all these discussions are distracting from newbies getting a space to talk.
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Post Post #46 (isolation #3) » Tue Sep 26, 2017 3:51 pm

Post by pablito »

bippy sent me this:

heya pabs, glad to contribute some feedback. i'd never played an anonymous game or a game that played out over the forums/PMs before, or a game in this community, so yah ive been a noob here, but ill insert the caveat that id played other games before

that said: talking over PMs and knowing how much to talk felt pretty natural. challenges were fun. i just had a good time. i liked the confessional particularly (as im sure was apparent) thanks to basically being a performative attention seeker and getting positive feedback from specs. :P not everyone is like me but id wager that spec banter or generic spec "we're rooting for you!" that someone goes and posts in every person's confessional is one of the biggest things for encouraging a new player.

maybe new players could have an "Ask the specs!" thread stickied by default in their confess forum where any time they have a mechanic type question or general question about what they should be doing they could put it there and a mod or any of the specs can show up with an answer. so they woudlnt feel like they were imposing or asking a stupid question, but would feel invited to share things they didnt know about. and i dont mean questions about what moves to make but any questions they have as a new person: "do i need to talk to everyone in my tribe"; "where do i vote"; idk whatever, i remember asking one time "wtf is v/la?" and if this also encourages the new player to interact in their confess forum, again, i think thats one of the keys to making noobs wanna play again

i will say that i did get a bit surprised by how twisty school was in terms of cast size, swaps, double tribe voting, but i was able to roll with that at least internally ("oh, so this is how it's gonna be, ok, got it, np") even if my game was actually falling apart haha. maybe for some new players a heads up on the twist level of a season, if like regular survivor is a 4 out of 10 in twists, australian survivor maybe like a 5.5, and then say they is a 7.

so like maybe there could be some list of common differences (this might already exist somewhere) between the typical season people might have watched on tv and what happens on ms. also i think newbs should haveto play the borubdur challenge.
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Post Post #67 (isolation #4) » Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:17 am

Post by pablito »

Maybe I should've started with this question really to help keep this thread on topic, but for all you new players:

Aside from the "questions thread" in a confessional in-forum that grumpy and others mentioned, in which settings (forum, ms, or other) have you felt comfortable providing feedback and why? Do you have suggestions for any more?

If this thread about new player feedback methodology maybe I should've asked and inquired new players about where they can do that already, so I can get that baseline.
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Post Post #70 (isolation #5) » Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:41 am

Post by pablito »

In post 69, Iprobablysuck wrote:I am more comfortable not asking for feedback at all, tbh.
How about providing feedback on new player experience?
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Post Post #75 (isolation #6) » Thu Sep 28, 2017 4:18 pm

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In post 74, racefan12 wrote:I personally am not really good at providing unsolicited feedback during a game because I'm not really sure what you're looking for... Well that, and because I'm using all my time and energy on actually playing the game.

But if you give me specific questions to answer, I'll be happy to answer them. I liked the format of Medevac where we got like 5-10 questions per round to answer.
If you have issues with a game or certain players, do you feel comfortable giving that feedback to game mods or LSG mods?
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Post Post #77 (isolation #7) » Thu Sep 28, 2017 5:03 pm

Post by pablito »

All of the above
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