Given that we’ve got 100 members (yay! And wow! :shock:), and we’ve got almost 1/4 of that on the waiting list, what’s your opinion on raising the membership limit?
The most I want to go, period, is 200 members. Even 100 sounds like a lot, though I think that, provided people are active on the forum and such, we’ve still got a pretty good sense of community here with our current members.
I don’t want to end up in an endless cycle of newbies joining and quitting 2 weeks later, but I also don’t want to end up with 100 members and 500 on the waiting list, 'cause that’s just a tad bit insane.
I think raising it to 125 or 150 would be good. If you figure we probably have what, 20? pseudo-acitve members now, raising it to 150 would give us enough space to let people join, try it for awhile, and quit if they don’t like it while keeping around 100 “core” members.
I think we have enough automated that it shouldn’t be too hard to manage another 50 players… especially if we raise it to 50 races/race day I think we’ll need the extra players to keep races reasonably filled. We’ll still end up having to create new horses to fill the races, but at least members will own them/be playing with them instead of us just randomly tossing horses wherever.
Well, we have enough automated that we could probably go to 500 members before the database got too huge. But I want to keep FF a relatively close-knit community, rather than just a huge mass of people you don’t know (and probably don’t like, since they’re your competition ).
I agree with Andrea. The limit should be what you feel comfortable handling. Both of you spend an excessive amount of time working on this game. Servers, bandwith, data base capabilities that’s your baliwick(old mans term) You know what will work and what you can afford in sanity, time, and money.
I think that around 150 would be right. That number sounds like it would be a good amount of people, yet you shouldn’t lose the close-knit feel you are looking for. And I agree with Andrea’s comments, you may need some extra players to fill the races for 2010.
I, for one, am very excited about the new year of racing. You guys are great, so much work done in a relatively short amount of time. Keep up the good work guys, and thanks for such a great game.
I agree… 125 isn’t bad… but I’m curious to know about member turnover actually… As a preface, I’m very sentimental about my little horseys . I noticed the other day that a horse I sold to a newbie not that long ago was reverted to FF; I assume because the player vanished…sadness… is there anyway we as a whole can combat that? Are we, as in the old folk’ of FF, not encouraging enough?
I don’t think it’s us. It’s the expectation of the person joining. It takes a lot more patience to play FF than some other racing games I’ve played. Gratification does not come as quickly here unless your lucky.
99.9% of the “turnover” is due to members being deleted for inactivity. To date, we’ve only had a handful of people actually decide to quit the game…most people aren’t that proactive and just don’t login for weeks on end. (FYI, you get an e-mail if you haven’t logged in for 4 weeks, and then if you don’t login within 2 weeks after that e-mail is sent, you get deleted.)
So…I’m not sure if there’s just not enough “draw” initially to keep people interested/logging in while they stlil have a small stable, or what. I don’t want to hand new members tons of horses, though, so even if that is the case, I’m not sure what to do about it, really.
I don’t really think there’s much you can do about it. It’s the nature of the game right now. Where I came from they are running limited races Tuesdays and Fridays. On Saturday it’s a full card for 83 tracks 20 races a track 16 horses a race :shock: (luckily they finished a program to help you pick races your horse qualifies for). There’s an auction every week with hundreds of horses. You can breed every week. There are thousands of people. That’s not the nature of this game. The people that don’t stay here don’t fit the pace of this game. I’ll admit there are somethings that move a little slow for me so I went back and opened 5 of my 17 stables(your limited to 10 horses a stable, but unlimited stables). This game takes patience the people that leave don’t have enough patience. So what’s happening is we’re getting those most suited to the game, and those most like the rest of the players here.
to me this game is awesome… my sister (who has also joined)… the pace is too slow… and she wants to be able to buy more horses… which are virtually unavailable… there will always be people who are disenchanted once they are into the game…
I’m here forever… (until the game closes)… and I know it’s going to take me at minimum a year to become very productive…
so this game will weed out the impatient… and those seeking instant gratification… But it’s the closeness of the players that are here now… and those who will eventually become long standing members… that make this game what it is…
More horses is on the to-do list… In fact, it’s fairly close to done. (Note: this won’t make there magically be horses for sale, but the more horses FF has the more likely claimers are to get filled pre-entry deadline so claiming is at least an option.)
Basically (hopefully) everything will ramp up about 2x as far as races/horses for next year.
(FYI, you get an e-mail if you haven’t logged in for 4 weeks, and then if you don’t login within 2 weeks after that e-mail is sent, you get deleted.)