The first two things sited as "Features" on the home page have negative connotations and as such aren't the wisest things to lead with.

I'd mention the number of character combo's and cabals first. It's not all that "cool" that you can suffer reprocussions, but if the possitives of the game are shown, such a thing may seem better in the grand scheme of things.

>The first two things sited as "Features" on the home page
>have negative connotations and as such aren't the wisest
>things to lead with.

I agree. IMHO, these two should be moved to the bottom of the list:

Risk! A game is not rewarding without a sense of risk. When you are defeated, you are directly affected by these losses, making survivability a priority.
An aging system for all races and classes. Want to die a slow, agonizing death by boredom? Carrion Fields forces you to live every moment to the fullest!

We've talked about these comments a few times on Team Marketing. We're trying to point out some very 'unique' things that makes CF different from it's competition. This happens to be one of them.

In fact, we've had several comments from new players saying they specifically started playing this mud because of several of these unique concepts we've pointed out.

I mean seriously, if a player looking for a Mud can't handle some of these unique "features" do you really think they're going to be able to adapt to the mud as a whole? Why not establish some of these things up front with the players, so they get a good grasp of what they're getting involved in?

On the flip side, we've made some very big steps with the progression of the website which we'll be announcing soon.

The features, while a good idea, seem to be lacking in execution.

The order of them just seems illogical and "off". The most universally positive feature of the game is obviously the customizability: different races, classes, sub-classes and so on.
Why isn't that highlighted first? Also, why is nothing said about how utterly FREE CF is? THOSE are the two biggest selling points of this game. The two that would potentially draw in the most players.

Also, many of the bullets seem to have negative connotations. CF is FORCING me to live life to the fullest now? I'm playing the game on my own free will, after all. CF isn't forcing anything.

And asking if I want to die a slow, agonizing death by boredom? What's that even saying? That CF is boring?

Roleplaying environment that removes useless spamming? I'm not sure why that bullet is there. It's basically repeating the bullet above, but in a more negative way.

Overall, the bullets sound too negative in tone. You're supposed to be selling the game, and you need to be positive to do that, I would think.

Honestly, if I was a new player and saw that list, it wouldn't make me want to play the game over the competitors.

...and this is why we have a Marketing Team. If you want to contribute, please feel free to join it. We're open to many ideas and people willing to help implement them.


Otherwise, we're dealing with about a dozen different opinions and we keep tripping ourselves up over the same suggestions. While it may seem trivial to you and to others, when you combine this - with color scheme, newbie guide, artwork, donation pages, etc - it all adds up and I'm not really interested in back-tracking.

Thanks for the suggestions. The marketing Team as a whole will make changes based on high priority (majority decision) items.

Customizability isn't why I play CF. I honestly could care less about all that. It's a nice touch and a bunch of human running around in cat suits and giant suits doesn't really bother me.

Why "I" play CF is because there isn't a reset button. I can't save the state, or save to a memory card and try something stupid and then reload consequence free. When I lose my junk, it's gone. I play CF because it is fairly unforgiving and decisions are pretty permanent.

The loss aspect of CF appeals to the masochist in me in much the same way that online poker does. The fact that there are no "do-overs" is one of the draws for me in CF.

However, I'm pretty sure that the majority of people don't feel this way and stressing the fact that it's unforgiving isn't, in my opinion, going to encourage people to give it a try.

Also, for the true masochists, isn't there that LoTR MUD where you only get one death?

And be honest. If you don't know anything about CF.. or anything about MUDs in general. Are you REALLY going to be drawn in when the only advertising is how hard and frustrating the game is?

>And be honest. If you don't know anything about CF.. or
>anything about MUDs in general. Are you REALLY going to be
>drawn in when the only advertising is how hard and frustrating
>the game is?

Do we just want to bring in everyone we can, or do we want to market to people who might actually stick around? Yeah, getting 20 people to try it might be nice, but I think we're going to get much better long-term gains if we get three people to try it AND stick around. By that theory, aren't we better off not pulling punches? Yeah, maybe not be TOTALLY blunt and brash about things that are double-edged swords, but no point in pretending they don't exist.

Specifically, I'm of the mindset that if you try to lure people in with candy (*), you're going to get people that are looking for an easy game. And frankly, if people wanted an easy game where success is more or less a function of time input, we're not going to out-World-of-Warcraft World of Warcraft at that.

My mindset here is that we should be aiming at a particular niche-- the kind of player who is bored of what typical commercial games can provide. World of Warcraft can't crank up the difficulty, or allow 'real' PvP where losing has real consequences-- their customers pay a monthly fee, and includes a lot of kids and very casual gamers who aren't cut out for that.

While I think we've done a lot to make CF a game that you can play once in a while and remain competitive, I don't think we're going to reliably rope in people who aren't skilled at games in the general sense. We are, for lack of a better term, a "serious" game. Being good at PvP here is extremely intricate, as is being recognized as a good RPer.

I think there's an opportunity there-- I know I find most mass-market games fairly boring. The successful strategies tend to be narrow, and "losing" generally means having to walk for 10 seconds to 5 minutes, and maybe having a meaningless number on your profile tick from "Losses = X" to "Losses = X + 1".

So let's say I'm an outlier. Maybe only 1% of gamers think like that. The thing is, if we selectively reach out to that 1%, we stand a very good chance of retaining those people. And at the end of the day, CF doesn't thrive on drive-bys-- the key is to retain regular players. (Beyond that, the key is to retain regular players who aren't assholes, but that's a topic for another thread.)

Doing that is fairly challenging, but it's possible. A few years back, I spent a lot of time trying to craft a certain image over on Top Mud Sites through advertisements, and they were reasonably effective-- people mentioned the ads on the newbie channel, and we saw modest upticks in new character generation.

Right now, I'm hesitant to invest that kind of time-- in part because I don't have a lot of free time recently (new house, demanding job), and in part because I know people will check the game out via the web site first. (I got a lot of feedback of the form 'Just keep writing a couple paragraphs like that.', but some of those ads took a large amount of time to craft. Until you sit down and do it with a serious eye towards the effect it will have, you probably don't realize how much time it takes.)

Right now, the incomplete web site will probably turn a lot of people off. I like the direction it's going in, but for the time being directing people to "Under Construction" isn't effective.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): As a more extreme example, consider the games that advertise "Free Awesome Upgrade for New Accounts!" or "Join now and get one Prestige Class FREE!"

I think you're exaggerating a little.

"Risk" isn't the same as "hard and frustrating" (though that's exactly what CF is, relative to many other games).

Risk and danger are attributes that appeal to a lot of game players. Within the subset of MUDs, I think that "feature" helps separate CF from MUDs where strategy and decisions have no meaning. Whether you put a lot of importance in that doesn't change the fact that it is a sound point to market on, especially since the kind of person who is likely going to respond to something like that is probably the type of person who won't only find CF appealing, but be more likely to have follow through as a player.

Does it need to be the first point in the list? *shrug* Who knows/cares. I really don't think it's going to instantly turn people off from CF if they were really curious in the first place, and if it does, there are literally a hundred things even more likely to drive them away once they actually connect.

Personally, I do. I do because I want CF to be marketed effectively, I want the playerbase to grow, and I want the game to not peter out.

And I think marketing the game with an overly negative tone will NOT work.

People that are looking at our website aren't looking at it in a vacuum. CF does have competitors, and those competitors are advertising too. And it doesn't matter if those competitors are a better product. If they're marketed better, we won't have a chance.

Honestly, the first too bullets sound overly negative, and preparing people for a frustrating and boring game. Risk is good, but don't make it sound like death is the worst thing that can happen. Most players coming into a game KNOW they are going to die. A lot. Telling them that those deaths will be hard to overcome isn't a good thing.

Especially when the next bullet is essentially suggesting that CF is a slow, agonizing and boring game. I really don't even understand why bullet #2 was written.

Why don't you join their marketing team then? You clearly have a strong opinion.

To me, bullet #1 reads like a positive, especially in context. The Staff clearly WANTS you to know CF is a strategy game with consequences, unlike other RP-only MUDs/MUSH/MUXs and RP-togglable MUDs. As someone else said, there is no pause button or Ctrl+Z. It's one of those things that isn't going to appeal to everyone, but it's a point that ought to appeal to CF's demographic, and demographics are what you market to.

Clearly, bullet #2 exists because CF has an aging system, something many MUDs do not. (Many MUDs let characters live forever, both in terms of age and "con" as we understand it.) That's why it's called a feature. If you want to argue over the amount of sarcasm or wit used to write the bullet item itself, join "Team Marketing".

Just in how it's presented. Especially bullet number 2. Why are they talking about a slow, agonizing and boring death as if that's a good thing?

It needs to be presented with the view of someone OUTSIDE of CF, who has no idea what this game is about. As it is, it makes sense to those of us that play the game, but I think it'll drive away more new players than it'll attract.

And this is an actual rule at my day job:

If you're going to criticize someone else's work, include an example of how you would have done better, in your eyes. This does two things:

1) It allows the other party to see the positives of your approach, instead of only the perceived negatives of their approach.

2) It shows that you're taking the work seriously by investing your own time in it. Any amateur can take potshots-- go to the comments section on any media reviews site.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I happen to agree with Java on this one point (bullet #2 being written oddly). But I also think I see where marketing team is going with this line. And not to nitpick, but this line is a tad confusing as written.

Change:

An aging system for all races and classes. Want to die a slow, agonizing death by boredom? Carrion Fields forces you to live every moment to the fullest!

to:

An aging system for all races and classes. Want to die a slow, agonizing death by boredom? No? Carrion Fields challenges you to live every moment to the fullest!

I've read over that line again and again and it sounds really like we're partly proud of advertising a boring game. (Which we all know is not the case).

Seriously.. I use it a lot.

HOWEVER, you don't have to do something FOR someone, to provide constructive criticism.

I told them WHY I didn't think it worked (negative tone, bad word choice, bad order of bullets). Which bullets specifically bothered me, and how I would change them.

That IS constructive criticism. If you don't agree with it, that's one thing. But you don't need to do someone's job for them, to adequately critique it. I think you know that, Valg. You're not stupid.

If I came out saying "The website sucks. Make it better", you would have a point. But I didn't say that.

That IS constructive criticism. If you don't agree with it, that's one thing. But you don't need to do someone's job for them, to adequately critique it. I think you know that, Valg.

I'm pointing out that it's lazy constructive criticism, because you don't present an alternative.

This board has always had a surplus of critics, and a shortage of doers.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

But there's two problems with that.

1. I'm not part of the "Marketing Team", so my specific write-ups would go largely ignored (Thror has already stated he doesn't care about our inputs).

2. I'm sure there are much, much better writers than me out there. It's kind of an insult to the Marketing team to say that they can't do it.

Constructive criticism is NOT just doing someone's work for them. It's giving them suggestions on way's to correct that. That's what I did.

But no, I'm not part of the Marketing Team. I don't have the time, desire or skillset to be a particularly valuable member of that team. But, as a player of this game, I DO have a vested interest in their success. And because of that, I'm going to offer suggestions to try to help them get the best possible product out there.

If they disagree, fine. That's their prerogative. But I think it's pretty pathetic that you try to belittle my comments, just because I'm not willing/able to do it all myself.

Unless you're going to respond to Daevryn's post, and tell him to write it all himself, or STFU too?

In fact, we've had several comments from new players saying they specifically started playing this mud because of several of these unique concepts we've pointed out.

Do point them out. I just thought that it was bit backwards to open with those points since the fact that CF is a RP is what makes them positive, right?

>I mean seriously, if a player looking for a Mud can't handle
>some of these unique "features" do you really think they're
>going to be able to adapt to the mud as a whole? Why not
>establish some of these things up front with the players, so
>they get a good grasp of what they're getting involved in?

Features such as non-opt out PK, which is not mentioned anywhere in the site? You could present it as features boasted with, but in positive fashion, something like "Advanced playerkilling system that allows players to play out their roleplay conflicts themselves without a need for a game master". I leave the wording for the Marketing team to file, but mentioning that might not be a bad idea as PK is such a thing some players may not adapt to (some players in TMS define it as a factor they want to opt out from when choosing a MUD and asking for suggestions). The page as it is says nothing about CF being a PK game (at least directly. People in the know might be able to read that between the lines, though).

>On the flip side, we've made some very big steps with the
>progression of the website which we'll be announcing soon.

You're going to need a page that tells newbs what a MUD is, and CF specifically. Linking it to the word MUD in main page we boast list might work. Races and classes need their own pages too, so that new people can plan their characters offline.

I think, to that point, you have to consider whether you're trying to market CF just to people who MUD, or if you also have an eye to some kind of broader audience.

The site's not up for me right now so I can't make more specific suggestions, but in principle I agree with the idea of either mentioning our death system a little later, or, explaining it in a way that a non-MUD audience might follow a little better.

I've got the site up and I'm looking at it now.

I haven't time or inclination or talent to be a more active part of the website/marketing team(s), so please feel free to disregard my commentary if you've decided to go in another direction.

1) I think it would be important to stress our relatively unique PvP system. What I mean by that is, I think most (not all, but a lot of) games that have player vs. player conflict tend to fall in one of two molds: either competition is very structured with evenish teams and everyone pretty much knows it's on from the start (similar to our arena, most team FPS games, RTS games, etc. etc.) or you've got some kind of anything goes model (possibly with some safe or safer zones) where your newbie can and probably will be ganked down by a team of max-level players.

Our PvP is pretty different from that in that, it's basically always on like the latter, allowing for surprise attacks and unequal teams and the like, but because of things like PK ranges, sort of like the former you always have a reasonable chance to win or survive a fight.

I don't know exactly how I'd explain that in a marketing blurb, but I think I would try to put it in terms that someone coming from other kinds of non-MUD multiplayer games could sort of understand.

To me, this is one of the lynchpin concepts / selling points of CF -- and conveying it is key to selling most of the rest of your points. For example, the idea of risk and losing something when I die may be a turn off if I'm expecting the sort of "anything goes, and hordes of teenagers will probably gang-rape you" stereotypical Asian MMO kind of model.

2) Re: The Risk bullet point, I think I would also in some way explain limited gear as part of it -- because I think that's a relatively easy to understand selling point that explains part of why risk is cool. Unlike many games where top-end characters will all have identical or very similar gear, only one character in CF is running around with the strange bracers -- and being that one guy who's temporarily king of the mountain in some way has a power and prestige to it that you don't find in other games.

3) Re: The aging bullet point, I think I would explain and sell that a little more too. Explain, in the sense that if I haven't played some MUDs without one and some MUDs with one, I may not have a good idea of what that would entail or how it would impact play. Sell, in the sense that I would try to say why having an aging system is cool. It's cool because one guy doesn't squat on leadership or a cabal/religion/etc. forever. It's cool because you always have the chance to come up the levels with top players who have been around for years, to learn from them or try your luck against them. It's cool because you actually sort of have generations of characters. It's cool because it creates a climate in which people don't expect to pretty much play one character seriously in the whole time they play the game -- if you pick paladin and don't love it, you can give warrior a try and it's not like you're giving up thousands of thousands of hours of work like you would be in a game like WoW, and moreover, you'll be competing with players doing the same thing, not the guy who's had the same character for 100,000 hours. And so on. Not that all of that fits into or can be conveyed in a blurb, but I think the idea needs to be not just let's list the features, but let's convince you that this feature is better than the way the game(s) you're playing now do things, or is interesting enough to give a try.

4) Re: the bit about specialization of characters, I think I would just try to convey in there that there are lots of GOOD choices. It's not like, you can build a warrior a million different ways but only three are competitive, which I think is the case for a lot of games' specialization systems.

5) RP: Here I waffle a little more on the sell, but maybe it's worth pointing out some of the perks of a RP-enforced game. Convince me, even if I'm not someone who insists on a RP-heavy game, why I might like what this brings. Maybe you give an example of parts of RP that might appeal to someone like that, like the scheming that can go on around overthrowing or electing an Emperor.

Comments, questions, self-doubts?

gr