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paradisaooc2011-04-27 10:25 pm
paradisamods) wrote in paradisaooc2011-04-27 10:25 pm
Entry tags:
Stop! STATISTICS TIME!
STATISTICS TIME!
If you didn't join us last time, we looked at intro posts and who comments on them, and how often.
Cool, right? Well, tonight's post is only tangentially related to that, but it is hopefully just as interesting and light-shining on Paradisa's IC make-up and the "average resident." We did this thing where we tracked every character in the game's intro month. We found out some pretty cool stuff! It is updated as of all our new characters (intro'd or not) as of tonight.
Let's take a look!
Wanna see how many characters fall into each year?
(all percentages rounded, based on a total of 352 characters)
(all percentages rounded, based on a total of 352 characters)
| CHARACTERS | PERCENTAGE | |
| 2006 - 2008 | 20 | 5% |
| 2009 | 32 | 9% |
| 2010 | 138 | 40% |
| 2011 | 162 | 46% |
(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
How about some quick facts?
- 46% of the castle didn't see Christmas 2010... which means almost half of the game has been here for less than FOUR months.
- Only 35 characters -- roughly 10% of the game -- experienced Wild Wild West in June '09, which kicked off World Plot.
- Just shy of 60% of the castle has been here for six months or less.
- Our median character has been there for five months.
- The most common date-of-arrival is April 2011, with 66. That's 18% of the game.
- The average duration of a resident's stay, using this chart as a "photograph" of a moment in time, is nine months -- August 2010.
- See that long "shelf" for January 2010? That's after we closed apps for a month in December 2009.
- It looks like we get around 470 new characters a year. That's 40 approved applications a month.
- In the 48 hours between making this chart (Monday night) and updating it to post (Wednesday night), we have lost six characters and gained eight. One from 2009, three from 2010, and two from 2011. We don't know if that's a tonight thing or a typical thing, but it's easy to see how the castle "picks people off" IC from that.
Haven't had enough? Want to take a closer look?
Download the full-size .pdf chart here.
Download the full-size .pdf chart here.
Now, realistically speaking, we can't really gather too much from this comparatively because we have never done this before. We don't know what the slope looked like a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago. But it is interesting to note now, especially because we could return to this a year from now and see what it looks like.
We are also, as far as we're aware, the first game to do this! Jenn will be approaching mods in other games (both large and small, old and new) to try and see how Paradisa compares to other games. Are we the average, or are we anomalies in the RP community? Do we have an excessively high turnover compared to other games, and if so, what are games with lower turnovers doing that we aren't? Is that preferable, or do players like the constant come and go? What do other games look like in this format, and is there anything we can learn from them, or anything they can learn from us?
Thoughts?
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Beyond that I don't have much to say outside of hoping the high turnover rate can be fixed, and promising once the semester wraps up for me I'll be trying to comment to newer characters in hopes of making the game feel more welcoming.
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I am literally like ?_? WHAT DO I DO about this.
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Okay, now seriously. First off, thank you so much for doing this Jenn this is awesome. While I'm all for working on making the new members of the comm feel more welcomed (in fact I fully support it!), I do question if that's the only reason for the high turnover rate. I mean I'm sure that's part of it, but there's other things to consider too, like:
Impulse Apping: We're all guilty of it. We see a new shiny, we app said shiny and we play them for a bit before realizing that we really...did not think this through and either the shiny does not fit well into Paradisa or you don't have a good handle on their voice or you can't think up things for them to do. Shiny lasts anywhere from a day to a few months. This is aided by the fact that Paradisa's apps are open all the time. Meanwhile Amat whose mod said their turnover rate is much lower (though they have not done the indepth report Jenn has) despite being larger than us- has their apps open only one week a month. This makes people sit down and think if they really want that shiny. Another solution outside of closing apps is LjProm has a comm where people can trial run a character to see if they want to app them or if they'd be a good fit for a game! From what I hear through the grapevine, this cuts down the turnover rate a lot.
Pace Miscalculation: I've come across many muns who have said that they love Paradisa to pieces and had a wonderful experience, but they cannot keep up with the pace. Thus they tend to drop pretty quick. Fair beans and...I can't really think of a potential solution to this.
Getting Stale: A lot of older characters get dropped because muns "run out of things to do" with the character. Maybe we can fix this by having more plotting sessions? Though I'm not sure how we can do this different from the CR meme...
And there are more reasons...but I am blanking. If people can come up with common reasons for drops, please let me know! I am hoping that the other mods do reports on their comms so we can hopefully learn from them :)
ETA: Looking at April 2011 alone from the known muns...53% (29) of the new characters came from muns apping a second+ character, while 47% (26) were new muns (ones apping their first character). Returning muns were also thrown into the new mun slot (like I know Mike and Selena have been here in the past). The muns with ? next to their names were left out of it unless I could ID them because...they could be either or.
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Also, plotting sessions would be greeeeat. CR is part of plotting, but ... honestly, so is setting. I know a lot of my "running out of things" comes from sitting and thinking of WHERE my characters are likely to hang out, and after a while, they get tired of the same old places, and it's hard to come up with new ones that they wouldn't be bored with. I know that a while ago, there'd been talk of changing up the City Royale's layout a bit ... having a bit more diversity in the town for people would probably help with this, at least a little.
Another reason is lack of CR, I think. Some characters, not for lack of trying, just can't get the CR that their muns want for them.
Here's a random thought: what about an OOC Help Guide on the Wiki that players can pitch in to? It could have suggestions for problems like "How Do I Get My Obscure Character Some Solid CR", or "My Character Is In A Rut, Wat Do", that sort of thing...
Sorry if this was a bit disorganized, I'm a bit out of it tonight, but wanted to throw my hat in the ring... :P
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I have always fancied the idea of having an "LJ RP tutorial" series, especially one geared towards Paradisa.
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Some characters not fitting in well is also a very valid point. I once tried playing Egon Spengler here, a long time ago, and he definitely did not fit well, at least in my opinion--homeboy would have been quite happy to just chill in his room all day every day and experiment to his heart's content, and he's sure as hell not social, which doesn't work well for a game where you're required to make at least two journal entries a month. I'm pretty sure he would legit forget the journal even existed.
Pace miscalculation is also an extremely extremely valid point--is a game that moves as fast as Para actually the exception rather than the norm? I've tried one or two other games outside of this one and felt really out of place when they moved a hell of a lot slower!
I imagine some would use "Getting Stale" to argue that I should have dropped Lucy a long time ago, but I still think there's interesting stuff that I could do with her, especially as she's died four times and the castle is supposed to steal a little but of your soul each time you do. The conceited part of me wants to get her involved in the world plot because of that.
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...So yeah, York's justified in thinking everyone he makes friends with leaves. Was it really that long ago?
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Allen, Django, Ino, Evangeline, Lucy, Yuan, Asuka, Zelman, Teresa, Tony Stark, Joshua K., Rin, Colette, Deadpool, Ravi, Clark, Maya, Fred Burkle, Crowley, Lorne, Erica H., Jr., Ken, Sam W., Barney, Lance, Cassie S., York, Willow, Draco, Eliot, Vic, Arthur, Death the Kid and the Fifth Doctor.
(Yosuke shouldn't be on there, he didn't get there until November. Oops, my bad.)
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I only remembered because I know he's been here almost as long as Barney. :P
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I was basically looking at it going "Damn, SO MUCH OF BARNEY'S CR WENT HOME --- hey wait where's his coffee bro". And then I had a moment of "Shit, did Azi drop him and not TELL ME". So. Yeah. I was acting out of slight panic, there. ;)
Nevertheless, you are AMAZING for doing this statistical thing. .... And heeeey, aren't you supposed to be on a mod-stuff hiatus, lady? /PEERS
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All the coolest kids
Also I gotta huge problem with impulse apping and dropping if the character I play doesn't fit the game, or if I'm having trouble thinking of what to say or do with them, it's rarely a problem with the game and mostly a problem with the...me. :(
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April is totally coolest month. Too bad I apped in March. ): That turnover rate though... I know my drop reasons were more personal rather than directed at the game, or else whatever kept me from clicking last time... hasn't reappeared. So there's some IRL luck associated with that too, though it might fall under pace. idfk.
Man. I remember the Wild West plot and how fun it was. ♥ I wish I still had a character who was around for that, but considering how pissed off mine all were, maybe it's better that they don't. LOL
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