A while ago, someone (I'll leave it up to them whether to say who it was) showed me some statistics about the proportion of novices that come through the portals in various Seren guilds. I'll list them below. These were taken over a few weeks.

Serenguard : 70 - 27%
Hartstone : 62 - 24%
Moondancers : 62 - 24%
Spiritsingers : 25 - 9%
Shofangi : 37 - 14%
TOTAL : 256

As you can see, these statistics mean that the most novices come out of the portal into the warrior guild, and the least into the monk and bard guilds. I decided to do some research by logging into Shiri every day for a while (Ninjakari are too new, and emofist too nonexistent, to judge those accurately) and checking the Celest portal logs so I could honours all the novices that came through before lack of registration ate them. Interestingly, the same phenomenon exists in Celest, and in fact it's even more exaggerated: see below.

Paladins: 53 - 45%
Aquamancers: 25 - 21%
Celestines: 19 - 16%
Cantors: 9 - 8%
Tahtetso: 11 - 9%

TOTAL: 117 (yes, I know that adds up to 99%)

Mind that the Celestian ones were taken over about 6 days rather than a few weeks: it's the proportions that are important.

There are a couple reasons I can think of for this: bards cover a much thinner range of fantasy characters than warriors, for example, and the monk guild names are kind of random - I'd like to investigate a guild with a cool name like that, but someone relatively new to fantasy might prefer to go with something they can relate to easier. Not a lot can be done about this. The guy who mentioned the stats in the first place, though, thinks it might have to do with the way guilds are ordered on the Nexus chargen. The order is basically all the warriors in Celest-Seren-Magnagora-Glomdoring order, then all the mages in the same order, then all the wiccans in the same order, then the bards, then the monks. As you can see, they correlate exactly with the stats for novices coming out of the portal. Note that this can't be due to RP environments or whatever to a large extent because this is them coming out, not necessarily staying. What I think might be happening in addition to or instead of the factors I listed above is that a novice will scroll through the list, then stop when they find something that interests them, and go with that. It would explain the fact the order is exactly the same, which I would otherwise find suspicious. I'd like to know if the order Celest-Seren-Mag-Glom shows up listed in produced results like that too, but collecting all those stats is too much of a hassle and monks would mess with it too much for the next while. This being the case, it might be a good idea to change that part of the intro - instead of having them all lumped in like that, maybe have four bars, one for each org, with the guilds in random order or something (I don't know how doable this would be.) If this is actually contributing (and it looks like it is, though obviously it's not the only factor) it might help to liven up some of the smaller guilds.

Diagram included below!

I like the diagram, just thought I'd share that.

The majority of Glom novices either go Shadowdancer or Ebonguard, I'm pretty sure. While I do agree that it would be good to divide up the guild choices on the nexus screen by city/commune, I don't think it's really a big deal that some guilds are less frequented by novices. For example, in the SDs, we actually do get quite a few novices, relatively, but rarely any of them stay around. This could be due to the guild being relatively quiet and stiff, or simply that wiccan skills up to master are really boring. However, we have a decent number of full members, so it's not actually a problem that we don't have a lot of new novices coming through. I think generally, if someone actually becomes interested in IRE and invests enough time, they'll discover the guild they really want to go to, and go there. So, if having enough new novices is really the issue, I would say it's the players who are already developed who count more for numbers, and they will change guilds.

Not to dismiss the value of having good novice programs in each guilds, that's very important.

The effectiveness having good novice programmes can have is limited by the number of novices that see it in the first place. For whatever reason, I see -very- few converts in novicehood.

Having an inactive guild tends to be viciously circular, as you need lots of members to keep a lot of newer players interested. But stimulating growth a little with this kind of suggestion can't possibly hurt, and if the person who gave me the stats is right that it's a cause, it can certainly help.

EDIT: P.S it is a problem if you don't have new people coming through. Your current playerbase won't last forever.

That diagram is awesome.

Also, I think it's just because Warriors are cool, and monks and bards are less cool. That's how it's always been with me, anyway, except I prefer magic using classes. But Monk and Bard were always my least favorite archetype in RPG's.

I've always preferred magic classes, then monks, then warriors, then bards. Like I said, I have no faith the way the chargen is set up is the only reason for the disparity. I just think it might be worth consideration as a factor that can be adjusted to help out the flagging monk and bard guilds.

Thanks for the compliments on the diagram by the way, I put a lot of work into making it look professional like that as you can see.

The moment you asked me for those stats the normal Serenguard lead and Moondancer trailing had a temporary shift, but it's shifted closer to where it usually is since. Here's the stats right now:

Serenguard : 90 - 29%
Hartstone : 74 - 24%
Moondancers : 71 - 23%
Spiritsingers : 28 - 9%
Shofangi : 45 - 14%
TOTAL : 308

I've actually been accumulating and checking this for almost three months now, though I reset it a few times along the way, so those totals don't include it. It is always, always, always true that:

• Where you are on the chargen list is the primary determinant of your number of new novices.
• Bards always fall a bit below where they should be, probably because the bard concept appeals to a narrower slice of people ("I'd have to write songs?").
• The newest 2-3 guilds always have a higher ranking than they would otherwise.
• Notwithstanding the last two points, any guild could double its number of novices overnight by being moved to the top of the list.

A substantial majority of true newbies don't want to read 20 guild descriptions and consider them all very carefully and choose the best. They start scrolling and stop at the first one where "that sounds fun". It's the only explanation.

Shiri, your choice panel would probably require a lot more recoding than simply changing the order -- either to a random order (easier), or reverse order by TOPGUILDS novice score (more interesting) -- which I think would still get the job done of fixing the unfairness. And, more interesting, of proving once and for all that this is the most important factor in which guilds get how many novices.

As to Bards, my opinion from before still stands: being a Bard requires a very special type of person, because the connotations of "bard" mean a higher RP focus. The people who are looking to just come in and bash won't be as attracted to the idea of a Bard because, as Lendren says, "I'd have to write songs?" That was what I felt was the primary problem with Bards when they first came out and everybody was like "Whoa...nobody wants to be a Bard?"

And does anybody have data from the novices score on TOPGUILDS? It'd be interesting to see if there are similar patterns in terms of -active- novices wandering around (I'm assuming the novices score is based on activity...please correct me if I'm wrong)

The Warriors guilds have names that you can understand as well. Anyone who's at least a little bit familiar with the fantasy idea has heard of Paladins... but how many people have heard of Cantors or Tahtetso? The same goes with the Serenguard or Ebonguard... it's a very defined function, whereas when you see the word Cantor, what are you supposed to think about that?

Although I do agree... bard does take a very special person in general, for sure. It is somewhat a higher level of RP for some reason.

Aetolia has something nice in this regard - the newbie intro features an extended quiz of sorts that asks questions about the character and then gives them guild suggestions. I'm not sure how effective or useful that is, but it certainly means more newbies for a few guilds that wouldn't otherwise be looked at as much.

And I don't agree with the caveats about bards... bards in D&D, for example, aren't the "roleplayer class," they're the jack-of-all-trades and the versatile class (I tend to pick it) that can do most of anything, including magic, skills, and some combat proficiency. They're not that in Lusternia (Mostly because in Lusternia nobody except warriors and monks has combat proficiency of any kind, and everybody uses magic all the time).

I would think showing guild choices in a random order, or in a more detailed display, or asking newbies to pick org then class, would be better.

That's certainly a factor, no doubting that. I just remain unconvinced that it means we get one novice in 11. I'd expect it to be maybe one in 8.

But the more compelling point here is that the proportions follow the order in the list for all guilds. Sure, you could come up with justifications for why Hartstone should consistently out-recruit Moondancers, and just conclude it's a huge coincidence that everywhere you look it always turns out to be precisely the same as the order in the chargen screen. I don't buy it.

But the only way we'll be sure is if we change the order. Reverse it for two weeks and if the numbers don't shift significantly, I'll eat my words.

(Incidentally, the novice scores in TOPGUILDS, and the overall participation rates there, don't correspond very well. But that tells you more about novice retention than recruitment. Moondancers have always outnumbered all other Seren guilds by a lot, but if recruitment was the most important factor, Serenguard would easily be the largest guild. In Serenwilde at least, Moondancers and Spiritsingers stand out as having the biggest gap between recruitment and retention in their favor, and Serenguard the biggest gap against them. What does that mean? I don't know. I imagine lots of pat answers could be given all of which would be vast oversimplifications.)

Those ideas are good, but now that I think of it, I never understood why the nexus selection is different then the text selection.
What I mean is, why not first allow them to choose a city/commune/none, and if it's not none, give the list of the relevent guilds to select from.
This way they get the spirit of where they gonna live and then a shorter list of the guilds to choose from.

In most muds I've played, warriors are considered the default noob class.

There's a lot to that, I think. I imagine a lot of new players have some experience with other online games, be it MUDs or graphical MMO's or whatnot. And generally, you start with a warrior to 'learn the ropes'.

Though I'm completely buying into the idea of guild placement in the selection having an influence on the number of new players. I like the idea of the reverse Topguilds thing. It's sufficiently similar to a random placement that it wouldn't necessarily look any more strange than random placement, while helping to nudge new players towards those guilds with the least representation.

Could always add a "quick play" button for players that don't want to pick a guild, which throws them into whatever guild has novice aides online and the lowest number of recruits in the last two weeks.

That's an interesting idea.

Or, maybe, you could go reverse topguilds by the sum of the archetype, so that there's no searching for similar guilds in different columns.

I'd like that idea. The first screen in nexus has 2 panels, 2/3 of the screen on the left, 1/3 of the screen on the right. The left is divided into quarters, one for each org with a picture of the nexus. Clicking on the picture makes the right side of the screen display info on that org, and a select button appears. You can click other squares to get info on that, when when you're ready, hit select.

The next screen has 5 ovals (1 for each guild) arranged around the info panel in the middle. Clicking on one of the guilds displays the info about it in the middle, and a select button appears again. You can select other ovals to read about the guilds, then select when you have the guild you want.

That way all orgs/guilds are equally displayed.

I think retention is a big issue. Yes, Serenguard have always seemed to have more novices because we are at the top of the list. But we have a fairly low retention rate. People may be jumping into Lusternia and choosing us because they didn't look farther, but only the people who really wanted to play in the first place stay. Up until recently (we've been working hard to keep more people around) Serenguard had some of the fewest active players around in the Serenwilde-- Moondancers crushed everyone.

Yes, the first listed guild will get the most novices. Unfortunately, if the top guild isn't suited to the player, they'll simply leave most of the time instead of taking this second opportunity to look at all the guilds again. It will be that way for any guild if they are listed at the top. I like the suggestion made about displaying all nations then all guilds at once-- people are presented right off the bat with equal options. When players start making good decisions about what guild suits them, the retention rate for -all- guilds will go up.

Yeah, I wish the Serenguard would retain more people.

As for the reasons for our low retention rate, I don't think it's really that hard. It comes down to a few things things.

Firstly, there is how the novices/post-novices of the guild are treated. For example, you regularly hear of the Spiritsinger novice/post-novice programs to be very good. That's why you have so many Spiritsingers who stay. On the other hand, the Serenguard lacks in this area. This is something we are trying to change, but it's a very slow process trying to get out of what the guild has done for much, if not all, of its history. And Everiine is lazy and never shows up when Sojiro and I are around.

Second, there is the actual RP environment of the guild. The Serenguard are a group of tribal warriors. I, for one, do not like this RP very much, and would love to join another guild if I were not restricted by a few other factors.

Thirdly, it's the cycle that Nejii mentioned. Need more active people to get more active people.