I have tried helping some of the newcomers to torn by explaining them what to expect and ways that may help a newbie but what I have observed is that, most of these newbies go inactive after playing torn for a few days. One of the reason I think is that, torn is a long term game and when they don't get quick results, they stop trying.
What do you think are the other reasons that they quit torn after few days? (I also know that these days newcomers get an upperhand in game as compared to the past). So, do you think something should be changed or introduced to retain them?
The casino, not even for newbies but older players too. Once you use all your hard-earnt money on that , it kills.
I think if you could look at the statistics for almost any free game, you would see that most users would sign up, give it a try for a couple days, and then stop playing it. There's nothing wrong with that, Torn just isn't the kind of game that most people are looking for, especially for our new players downloading Torn from the app stores, where the game is a lot slower paced than most of those games.
Honestly the slower pace is what caused me to stay with it. With most free games after a few days Im up to hours or even days of waiting between a few min of play. Torn keeps me doing something all the time even if its just reading forums to learn better ways to play.
true torn has more than one aspect to keep you interested........
Welcome new noobs.
It might partly be because they never find the forums (specifically Tutorials & Guides) or the Wiki (helpfully disguised as the Help link). As a relatively impatient person myself I thought I would be one of those newbies who left after the first few hours/days, but there's just something about having your own long term goals to work towards at your own pace instead of the typical Level Up Gear Up go go go
When I first started, I remember thinking the opportunities were so few to a brand new player, and so many facets of the game seem a touch out of reach.
I definitely teetered on the edge of either not being very active, or committing. Fortunately for me, I had friends who played, and I could see what lie in store, so I wanted to progress to get to their level and experience the parts of the game they were involved with.
I started playing, and quickly discovered that I love this game. I actually found it on accident, while trying to search for tornadoes to get information for a school project. I hit enter too soon, and this came up as the first result. Decided to try it, and have not regretted my decision. One of the things that makes me love it so much is that there is something for everyone, and it IS NOT PAY TO WIN, which is kinda unusual these days.
I almost quit when a player bountied me constantly for 3 weeks, but he went inactive, and now is a member of my faction. Let that be a lesson to you people being bountied as noobs. Just wait, and eventually you will be the one who is stronger.
Love this game, and hope to be playing for many years to come.
This is gonna sound dorky but I would have loved having a "Big brother/sister" back when I first joined. I read tutorials and stuck with it longer than a few days but I just couldn't grasp it all by myself and was way too intimidated by the atmosphere to reach out. And I saw how a lot of newbies were dealt with.
Came back when my now boyfriend mentioned torn on our second date. Have loved it ever since.
So I think there is a newbie chat right? Been awhile. But I think a newbie forum which allowed older members to interact with newer members might be helpful. If it already exists and I'm blind, then call me a cucumber cause clearly I'm a vegetable.
This is what I like about torn that there ain't any shortcuts and you have to earn your progress and build your character. You have to work for every aspect you want to see yourself in and not like the other games where you can just pay and get stronger/go ahead in game.
They expect handouts or an easy path.... you see it in most games. people join and expect higher leveled people to come to the rescue! where as in this game its every man for themselves and the only way to progress efficiently is to insert hundreds of hours into specific things such as education and stat gains.
Another reason id say would be salty newbies attacking other new people. Them then not knowing what to do they just shut the game off.
There's no official tutorial that shows new people what to do at the start only forums of which people don't bother reading and therefore the people with low self drive give up within an hour.
A certain level of luck i.e. in good city finds or a lucky win in the casino can also help in boosting the morale of noobs in playing the game. Personally I had found two good high value items in the city map that i was able to sell and make enough networth to get a real footing in the game also the help of friends is a good motivation that helped me drive on to become the better noob that I am today :)
Yes the Casino can really sting you and stats say that the house is always the winner in the grand scheme of things. House takes more than what it gives out to the "lucky" winners. Avoid the Casino like a plague. That is my good advise i will give to all the players. It's just a quick way of losing or winning some cash. The losses are always bigger than the gains.
PREFACE: THIS IS SIMPLY HOW I SEE IT. AND SORRY THAT THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY. I'M PROBABLY MISSING SOME IDEAS/POINTS.
The problem is, in my own opinion as a not quite noob (I think...?), is that at the lower levels that aren't enough things to do. Especially interesting things/games or for events/games instant gratification/morale. Torn...doesn't really have a hook so to speak, but it's survived this long because Chedburn started in the early 2000s giving it a major boost over most (If not all) of Torn's competition and a hardcore player base so it hasn't really needed it since it can rely on that player base to bring in the money. However, for newly joining people, who either come in expecting it to be like every other mafia/text-based game out there or are having their first mafia/text-based experience, the lack of a hook throws them off I think. That and the lack of instant gratification or morale building things to do. I mean, there's the Casino, but you only go there to lose.
Take Mafia Wars on Facebook as an example. When it was around, it was very much a click in and get out game if you played by yourself (Though they had their own clan wars and worldwide events as well and there was still plenty to do outside of missions), but there was still progression in missions. You could see yourself improving with every mission, with every "storyline", even if you didn't necessarily take the time to read the words the evidence of your progression was right there in front of you. Humans are very visual creatures, so they like to see the progression, they like to see themselves improving, getting to that next level or next gated mission/location/event.
And then there are the waiting times for everything. Now, Education makes sense. But for energy, which is Torn's #1 most important thing/bar/resource/whatever you want to call it, taking 4 hours just to be able to regain 100 e doesn't seem worth it. Waiting an hour to get 15 Nerve is just as bad. And that's as a level one. You come in here all fired up looking to use your e and nerve and you use them in training or attacking or doing missions or whatever...and then you look at the regen clock. 4 hours just for 100 e. In Mafia Wars I could've had over 1k energy/stamina. It'd take me forever to fill it up, but I'd always have some energy or stamina after just 4 hours depending on my Class and refills for either was easy enough to get if you had the friends.
So you look around for other things to do on Torn...and there's nothing much to do. You can't race or play the stock market because you need to cough up about 3,750,000 to buy the License/Ticker for a combined 75 points, you can't fly, you can't buy anything from the shops in Torn because of the 100 item limit you didn't know about until too late, you can't join chat because people will bounty the sh*t out of you for no reason or just flat-out attack you, jobs require no effort beyond signing up so they're done in the background and you might as well forget them, etc... The only thing you can do is risk the casino and even then you can only do it for a limited number of things until you unlock the wheels and other stuff at level 7 for a limited number of times (75) or until you lose all your money on a risky bet. And then at best you're out of sh*t to do or worse, out of sh*t to do and money and you've no way to make any except wait the 4 long hours it takes to regain 100 e or 1 hour for 15 n.
Even if you manage to hit level 10, all you've managed to do is unlock more ways to lose your money in the Casino, companies, and Duke. Now, the Duke missions can provide you with a distraction, but only if you have e or manage to pull the lucky mission where you just have to send a word to some rando without wasting any e. And the problem is, you've likely already used your e in attacks or trains. And the companies are out of your reach because they require time, effort, money, business education, and/or stocks that you likely don't have. So even if you officially have access to it, it still feels unofficially gated to you.
So you're back to square one, where you can't do squat. You're frustrated. You've finally hit level 10 (Or whatever) after X days, and whatever else happened to you in the intervening time. And yet you still can't do anything because anything that can be done needs e and there's no way to speed up or increase your e/e regen beyond becoming a donator/subscriber. But you don't have the IGM to buy a pack or the IRL money to do so, which makes you feel stuck. And you're tired of feeling like you don't have any progression, that you're not really getting anywhere and you don't have anything to distract you on Torn waiting for those 4 hours to pass by, and you slowly stop coming. Or perhaps immediately quit. Either way, Torn and you have split and moved on.
Torn does not have such a thing as "visible progression". With Torn, you (Unless you fly to China and pay the fortune teller which only 15+ can do and most noobs never get that far) have no idea how close or how far away you are from leveling up or reaching the next tier of you NNB which most people don't like, you don't have missions beyond the original George entry missions and the missions from Duke (Which, AFAIK, most people don't even bother to do) and the Duke missions don't give off the feeling of progression beyond perhaps reaching the merit, and once you hit 15 and get the Travel Agency, that's all there is to be unlocked. Then progression stalls massively, unless you're a numbers nerd and like seeing your stats climb, or like d*ck waving contests where you pit your stats against others for the sake of being called #1, or money because you're secretly an accountant IRL. Progression in Education and Work Stats are so in the background that it's laughable to even say it matters.
"Aren't seeing stats or levels go up enough for visible progression?" you might wonder. It may be for some, but it's not enough for the majority of newbies. After all, they're never gonna catch up with the guys who've been around for 10+ years and are still going strong. And unless you're lucky enough to maintain a steady cash-flow somehow in your early days to gain a PI, your numbers will be a slow crawl which is not what newbies like or look towards. Similarly enough for levels.
"But wait!" you might also say. "What about the factions and the forums? What about the chains and territory wars?" or as the awards whores might cry out in anguish, "But the achievements, honors, merits?!". Most people do not come to their games looking to dig into 46 different sections of forums before further digging into thousands of different threads in search of something entertaining for themselves, most of which either repeat the same old shit or talk about things a newbie wouldn't know or have an opinion on or it's some dude sh*tting on another dude. Most people do not expect to need to dig for "how to" guides for a game or needing Excel spreadsheets just to barely compete. Most newbies don't even have the stats factions demand or to deal with enemy members or the abilities to chain/help in a territory war either if they even have the inclination and fewer still have the inclination to start one up. And most people today don't care about sticking around for the achievements unless they love the shit out of a game.
"Torn is a Marathon, not a Sprint" has been championed time and time again. There is truth in that saying after all. And most people are actually fine with that. There are games out there where people set aside hours for simple exploration or what have you. What they aren't fine with is the seeming lack of progression and structure and the very limited amount of things to do compared to modern games. But that's not Torn's biggest problem. It's Torn's e. It tries to do a little too much for too little. It tries to be attacks (Or sluttings) and trains. And it takes forever to regen when you don't have the money for a refill in the points building, for Xanax, for Cans, etc... 4 hours might not seem like a lot in a day, but that's 12 hours of the day doing nothing when you've used up 300 e in attacks, trains, or in the pursuit of Duke's missions in less than 5 minutes. That's half a day and the average person stays awake for about 15 and a half hours. That makes it nearly a full day awake and you had to manage to hit Torn a minimum of 3 times a day with minimal or no distractions/IRL problems. For someone who's just joined up and doesn't have the good fortune to make friends or was brought in a by a friend to help them make it through the slog, this game is a lifetime with very little to show for it or distract from it.
Tl:dr; Torn runs on a different mentality from modern games and the inertia of the old crowd and has no "hook". Torn is very much extremely delayed gratification, has no sense of progression, limited things to do especially in the early stages and has limited to no structure beyond the internal game politics and Chedburn's changes. So it's hard for new people to come in because if you're not brought in by a friend or get don't lucky in friends and help on Torn, you're mostly sh*t out of luck of a quick way to get out of the slog or make Torn fun for you. Unless you're a whale in which case you're a lucky bastard and can buy your friends or shoot your way up the rankings.
Today's gamers want to see visible progression, they want to see new things often as possible, and they want tons of options amongst other things. If they don't have such things, they're likely to be discouraged by Torn.
That's way too long haha
The game to new players appears as simple energy bar you click to gain stats or attack. Then you wait a few hours.
This being a " crime game " they go and try nerve bar and find there's not much they can do. ( And to be fair for an advertised crime game .....there is not much a seasoned player can do without destroying nerve bar ).
Torn is not a game for everybody.
I agree with most points made above. Torn seems to be either a "love it" or "hate it" type of game. In a world of instant gratification, many probably give it a whirl, and bore quickly from it.
I have spent much time trying to help new players, and have found that somehow they still seem to seek me out for one reason or another. I have always tried to impress on them, as they become frustrated with their progress is this, that Torn is a marathon, and not a sprint. A game of patience. Everything takes time, and if you are willing to put the time in, the game becomes more rewarding.
This is really the reason that I enjoy it so much. I was actually on the verge on Day 4 in Torn of quitting myself. It just didnt seem possible at that point that I was going to get anywhere. But alas, I stuck to it, and just had my 1st Torniversary a couple days ago.
Bro you wrote an entire essay on why people turn away from Torn I'm kinda wondering why you're still here lol
Even your Tl:dr; needs a Tl:dr;