Player Retention Study, pt6

Day 863, 19:37 • Published in USA USA • by system0101

DoD Orders | Briefing Room | Pony Express | Congress
State | Welcoming Committee | The SA | Militia Support
Army Times | EDEN News | The FF
http://erepmarket.com/counter/counter.php">

I have began Phase Two of this study recently, here you can see the summation of the raw data for the Control group.

I was rather dismayed to see how few players from the Control group were still playing 32 days later. Granted this percentage will be adjusted upwards when I remove the banned from the final tallies, but only a little over six percent were still active from that group. I had hoped to see a marked improvement in the second group.

Group two is nicknamed "Numbers". I had sent them this message:

Welcome to eRepublik! I'm sending you two newspaper articles, the first article is one I wrote to introduce this game to new players. It's long but has a lot of useful information:

CLICK HERE to read "It's a Numbers' Game!"

And here is a link to an article all about the eUnited States Department of Interior programs to assist new players:

CLICK HERE to read "Help is Here! Department of Interior Programs"

This game has a great community built up outside the game, come visit our National Forums

This group was also the only group that I gathered during weekend days. That may skew it slightly, but I didn't have much choice. I barely got done with Phase One of this study before admins changed the wellness rules.

For the 604 players born in territories of the eUnited States on February 26th and 27th:

At the two-week mark:
51 (8.44😵 had 70 or more wellness
113 (18.71😵 had 35-70 wellness
333 (55.13😵 had under 35 wellness
107 (17.72😵 were banned

The bottom two groups were removed, but I'll continue to count their numbers in this raw data gathering phase.

At the 32-day mark:
32 (5.3😵 had 70 or more wellness
37 (6.13😵 had 35-70 wellness
425 (70.36😵 had under 35 wellness
110 (18.21😵 were banned

The current residences of the players over 35 wellness:
California 22
Karnataka 19
Florida 16
New Hampshire 3
Minesota 2
Arkansas 1
Colorado 1
Madrid 1
New Mexico 1
Pacific Coast of Mexico 1
Utah 1
Wyoming 1

The current political affiliation of the same group:
AAP 13
Libs 5
SEES 5
DemRep 4
USWP 4
NWO 3
Brolliance 2
Feds 2
SFP 2
American Defense 1
Bastards of Liberty 1
Imperialist 1
Partido Forocoches 1
Patriots' Party 1
Republican 1
Sons of Patton 1
Technocrat 1
US Green Liberal Democrats 1
None/Not Affiliated 21

Here are the ones with wellness over 70:
Ace Trinity
Andrew Boland
ArchRose
bakedearth
Bill Leet
busterman
car11
chodester
CHOO CHOO
Darth_Fader
falloutvaultboy
Hedonist Afarensis
Jathovan Fracampa
Jimmyjamx22
jrfinley
Kragor
LauraRourke
Lucian Runefaust
Malle72
maseaneok
midaiganes43
Mnbhayes
Mr. Alfred Smith
S.A.Deaton
Solomon Burkhalter
Sordog
SPCSedlak_the2nd
Tankhides
The Iceman
TheMerican
Zatch7
Zero Seven

I'm frankly a bit disappointed. Once I subtract the banned accounts at the end of Phase Two, the 32-day retention rate between the first two groups is fairly close to even. I was hoping that the informative message would have helped more, but the numbers don't bear that out.

What I can say is that this group had a few less in Florida, and a few more in TC and militias. This group had a lot less 'shifty' characters than the first group. Unfortunately I'll probably not know for sure if my message made a distinct difference in the retention of these players. And I don't want to draw any sweeping conclusions until I get the last of my data on Sunday or Monday.

But I'm hesitantly going to say that sending out broad-spectrum help messages to new players doesn't significantly improve the retention rate. I'm also going to hesitantly say that from the data I've seen, being born in a hospital state does not make a player any more likely to stick around. There is a lot of data here, so when I get to writing the final article for this study (with the shiny graphs I skipped in the last couple...), I may post that on the forums as well.

My 'hope' for the Numbers group has been dashed, so now I'm hoping the data shows mass-friending and informative shouts aid in retention. I'll know one way or the other on Sunday.