A crazy idea to keep newbie retention:

[ChickenGaming]

For CIU, I expect most players who are new to the game to be here because their friend recommended the experience. But I gotta say I’ve seen a lot of people who came to me after the recommendation and basically said that the game doesn’t have that hook that keeps them engaged.

And I think that is mainly because the starting items arsenal is just too small. I have tested this theory: Most people I’ve shown this game to tend to have a lot more fun if they’re borrowing my device for a bit just to get a feel for it - they downloaded the game because they had fun with that experience, then realized the newbie account is kinda terrible, and drop out not long after.

I think we should have a bit more items to begin with and some loadouts to help with getting players hooked in the first place, mainly because of what I’d just said, but also because pretty much any designer knows that if they’re not hooked in the first place, the game just won’t grow even if you got everyone recommending it.

The crucial bit is that these added items are all consumable - and newbies tend to use them when they don’t really need to, so eventually they’ll have to get more by playing without items (like how it is for newbies now) or getting the keys if they can afford it.

So for newbies, they get to be someone with more items to use in each mission (some of the best parts about this game), losing the items because they spent too much of it when they didn’t need to, plays the game like newbies in the current versions to get the items back and explore new mechanics along the way like new ships, HUD customizations, contests …

It’s kinda like giving new people free samples to try out at the supermarket.
More people tend to like something to the point of buying it if it has a free sample.

This might be a crazy idea if you’re InterAction and are reading these words, but it’s worth a shot and should be pretty easy to do.

PS: I have this idea just now and I have to put it here because I think it’ll work.
I won’t edit this as much because most new ideas often get overlooked here (because I’ve long learned that it’s not worth editing them that much with my previous ideas), so I doubt this would even get traction at all.

But I really think this’ll work and is worth giving a shot.

Quick edit here: I’ve expanded on this with a proposed loadout.
Take a look and let me know your thoughts!

[sympatheticdeer]

Support. If you’re not a longtime CI fan as I was, the start of CIU is rough and slow. It gets much smoother once you progress past Lv 10 or so.

[ChickenGaming]

Before we talk about the specifics on which items to set, I’ll need to go through the new player experience again and see how it’s like currently first and get a baseline to compare against. It’s been ages since I’ve last done that. Not sure if there’s an easy way to do this … Will drop another reply once I’ve been through that experience again.

PS: I’ll be using Steam’s for this experiment because the “watching ad” time for mobile devices really add up per flight and I don’t have much time on me right now. The ads do cause some amount of player dropoff in mobile devices, but that’s a problem for another day.

[ChickenGaming]

Got some time today and I decided to make a quick account to get the new player stats.
Here’s what I got:

Starting stats:

• 0 Keys, 1k Fuel, 0 Food
• HC 101 (6 Slots)
• 20 Extra Lives
• 3 Missiles

Initial Loadout: 4 Lives + 3 Missiles.

Key starting bonuses:

• Tier 1: 30
• First Mission: 50
• Starting Constellation: 27
• Starting Star System: 9

Variables: (These might be different per account)

• Tutorial mission: 17 keys, 258 Food.
• Planets in starting constellation

I’ll work on different ideas for starter loadouts and items in the near future.
The hope with the reworked loadouts is to showcase some of the best bits about this game right up front to get people hooked. Will take some time to figure this out though.

PS: The intro sequence is really long and contains a lot of info that won’t be useful in gameplay. Like, why do they need to know the galaxy they’re in if it’s just one of millions out there? Also, I get that the ship model name call is there to let people know about other ships existing, but in practice it just doesn’t work and is kinda useless in the moment.
A quick cutscene where the player flies in then chickens started attacking from a nearby planet like the classics would work better here - pushes them right into action and keeps the engagement high. It also shows you what the starting messages are trying to say anyway, which is much better in practice.

[ChickenGaming]

So here’s my proposal on the starting loadout used by new players.

This should be enough to show that there’s more to this game than meets the eye.
Special Weapon swapping, different kinds of weapons, items that help you when something happens … you get the point.

Crucially, all of these added items are consumable and newbies will tend to use them when they don’t really need to, so they’ll have to get more keys to get these items themselves again.
Because they’ve spent the items wastefully themselves, the players know they got themselves to this point and will be more motivated to get the items back, especially if it’s pretty easy to do so (I also picked these items because they are the cheapest kind of their type). You’ll be more motivated to get these items back yourself if you enjoyed the fun you had with them earlier. It’s the “free trials” effect from supermarkets.

These items are also pretty cheap from the Store to get so it’s easier to get them back - though I think the starting set should contain 15 of the special weapons listed here (with the loadout they’ll lose up to 3 per mission so they’ll waste them in 5 missions) and 25 extra lives (from 20) to give them a bit more leeway - I see a lot of newbies joining random MP lobbies with their default loadouts, lose all the lives, then use their Missiles (see what I mean from before?), and then leave cause they can’t do much else anymore.

PS: There should also be a warning if you have the starting H&C 101 specifically, saying that the Key Bonus perk of this ship won’t work if they’re playing in Multiplayer. I’m pretty sure they don’t know this fact.