"Players Can Now Rename Their Pet Beds..."

It's been three weeks since I last played Nightingale. Back then, I was still enjoying the ambience and there were things left I could have done but it was all starting to get a bit what's the point?" 

I'd reached the end of the narrative, seen all the main biomes as well as most of their variations, and while there were still plenty of upgrades I could have made to all my gear, the stuff I had was already more than equal to anything I was likely to ask of it. Everything left to do seemed like it would become incrementally less engaging the longer I carried on with it, so I stopped.

This has to be a major problem for all live service games, doesn't it? Holding players' atttention once they've burned through the initial tranche of content. The people making the games certainly seem to think so, even if their bosses don't.

Games with a built-in competetive component have a clear edge. Players don't need much in the way of incentive to keep logging in if their place on a league table depends on it. Moreover, races and fights and matches all benefit from keeping to the same ruleset over time. No need to keep adding new twists and tweaks. Or not so much, at least.

Sandboxes also have a slight advantage in that players generally take longer to fall out of love with their own creativity than with someone else's. Give them the tools and they'll likely not only finish the job but tear it down and start over a few times before they finally lose interest.

If gameplay depends on exploration, storyline or character progression, though, it's going to need constant refreshment to keep people interested. MMORPGs have traditionally managed that through multiple channels, including but not limited to slowing progress to a crawl, dangling the tastiest temptations far out of reach, encouraging tribal loyalties, instilling a sense of duty or responsibilty and of course pumping out half-finished, poorly-tested content as fast as they can shove it down the pipe.

The genre has also relied heavily on a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach to content. By trying to appeal to anyone, from the cuddliest of Socialisers to the most psychopathic of Killers, along with absolutely everyone inbetween, many MMORPGs may have suffered terribly from lack of focus or feature creep but they've also sometimes succeeeded in creating a church broad enough for anyone to worship at, so long as they don't mind kneeling next to heretics and heathens.

As time goes on and the sheer number of MMORPGS, both long-running and nearly-new, continues to grow, these tricks don't seem to be working as well as they once did. Still, it does seem as though they're having more effect than later innovations such as short-lived, cyclical Seasons, a gimmick whose appeal may already be almost at an end, whereas the arrival of an "expansion" can still bring people flocking back to games they once played.

Even a big Update can show up as a significant bump on the Steam charts. I was expecting one of those for Nightingale, which released its first major update yesterday. Known uninspiringly as 0.2 (Seriously, give these things names if you want people to pay attention to them, guys!), it's a fairly hefty package, including some much-requested quality of life improvements and a deal of new content.

The full patch notes (Known somewhat pretentiously to Inflexion as "the Changelog".) are extensive. There's even a video. Here are some of the highlights, along with my comments because I can't possibly keep my opinions to myself, even when I haven't yet had time to see most of this stuff in action:

You can now queue up to six items at a crafting station. Previously you had to complete each one before starting the next, which led to me not tearing down the old ones when I built upgrades, just so I could have more things cooking at the same time. If nothing else, this might save me some space.

Craft stations now pull from storage, which is a huge improvement. I did quite like trotting in and out of different rooms, opening chest after chest in search of a hinge or some coal, but it was kind of a zen thing at best. Crafting is going to be a lot more practical now, not to mention faster. That said, the range from which the stations will pull is quite short. I'm going to have to build a whole new storage area directly above my workroom for everything to be available immediately.

Three new weapons have been added - Sheath of Throwing Knives, Satchel of Grenades and Blunderbuss. Clearly, the intention is to improve ranged attacks, which were very limited and basic. They've also zhuzhed up the existing one-handed weapons, sickle, knife and hammer, so as to allow for dual-weapon builds.

As well as new weapons, we have new mobs trying to kill us. Only a couple but they do look quite distinctive, plus they have new attacks. Some of the existing mobs have also learned new tricks. We'll all need to be on our toes until we get the hang of the new combat techniques. I haven't had the chance to try them out yet but I look forward to being bombed from above and zapped at a distance as I fire my blunderbuss and fling my knives. Once I've made them, that is.

To that end, there are some new quests revolving around gaining the blueprints for the new weapons and learning to use them. The update also cleans up some loose ends on existing quests and allows for more options for players who may have thought they'd locked themselves out of certain choices. Almost the first thing I did when I logged in last night was to go back to speak to someone so I could get an annoying dangling questline out of my journal.

Traders now trade remotely. Or at least they do once you've been to see them at their locations at leaast once. This is a major improvement in utility for the game, not least because some bright spark at Inflexion thought it would be a spiffy idea to distribute all the games hundreds of buyable items and blueprints across dozens of vendors situated in dozens of different realms, each of whom requires you not only to navigate the entire map to find them but to build a damn portal to get there in the first place. 

It made for excellent content - once. Having to keep doing it every time I needed to go back to buy something I either couldn't afford the first time or thought I'd never need but later found I couldn't do without wasn't quite so much fun, so I was very excited to see the change. I was less thrilled when I discovered that I'd still have to go back to every single vendor one more time to set the flag that confirmed I'd visited in person. 

Surprisingly, it seems no-one had thought to record that information until a use was created for it, which certainly tells you plenty about how on-the-fly some of these changes are being made. I would have thought it would have been obvious from the start that we'd end up here sooner or later but apparently not.

And on the subject of things you'd have thought would have been there from the start, lead quest-giver Nellie Bly now has voice acting. I wonder if the eventual plan is to have all NPCs voiced? It seems like a lot of work and expense to retro-fit them all, especially since the impact will be lost on almost everyone currently playing. I mean, I'm not going to able to hear much of what Nellie has to say, seeing that I've finished all her quests. 

I will go visit her to hear what she sounds like, all the same. She has some incidental dialog she repeats. I'm almost curious enough to make a second character so I can hear the rest, though. Puck was very entertaining to listen to so if the standard is maintained, it might be worth it. I guess I ought to hold off for now in case they add more, though. I bet they'll do Dr. Frankenstein next!

There's been a UI makeover. It's been a while since I last played so I'm not one hundred per cent sure what's new and what I've just forgotten was there already but I have to say the whole thing feels smarter, cleverer and all-round better than I remember. It still looks a bit like it was designed by someone who usually does intertitles for silent movies but functionally it's a definite improvement.

Everyone can dodge now, apparently. This one confused me a bit. I wasn't aware anyone could dodge. I certainly haven't been doing it. Maybe I'll start, now I know I can.

Building costs have been "tweaked", by which ambiguous term they do for once mean "reduced". By a lot, in fact. This is quite significant for me inasmuch as it was specifically the large quantities of mats required that put me off building a new home using the more advanced building options I'd acquired in the late game. That alone would give me something to do for a good few hours more.

Which brings me neatly back to the potential impact of this update on both keeping the players Nightingale still has and bringing back some of those who've found other things to do. News of the update was enough to get me to take a look and from my comments on the list above it does appear there's at least a chance I might hang around for a while.

A glance at the Steam charts for the two days since the update dropped, however, doesn't feel quite so cheery. There's just the tiniest blip of interest visible. Comparing the Wednesday before the patch with yesterday, peak population rose by just a couple of hundred. Maybe the weekend will see a better turnout but even if it hits the dizzy heights of a couple of thousand it'll still be less than ten percent of what it was back in Februray, when the game went into Early Access.

And there we have it. The familiar pattern. Wilhelm posted something very interesting a while ago about the tendency of MMORPGs that reach their ten-year anniversary to just keep on going. ArcheAge look like it's about to buck that trend but generally it seems quite reassuring for people playing - and running - games that go back more than a decade. I have to wonder, though, which new games are going to be joining the Decadian Club ten years from now?

At the moment the pattern seems to be a huge influx of players at the moment the game becomes publicly available, be that Early Access, Open Beta or an official Launch, swiftly followed by a swift and precipitous decline, frequently representing the loss of well over 90% of everyone who was there for the first week or two.

When that still leaves well over hundred thousand players, which was Palworld's peak population last month, the future may still be rosy enough. If attrition in the first quarter takes you down to a mere couple of thousand active players, though, which is where Nightingale finds itself, you do have to wonder how long the game can go on.

I guess one way to spike interest is to persuade someone to make a hit TV show based on your game. I did wonder if that might the big announcement New World has planned for June. Nightingale would make a great TV show, if anyone's interested...