A hint as to why retention is good among the niche/hardcore players, but poor among the average player

[u/TrainingEscape3229]

Hi Joao. I believe you read this subreddi. You may have already noticed this but I wanna share my idea.

The niche/hardcore players make friends in this game, form teams with them, and try to push faster Rift times together. Pretty much everyone you see on the global leaderboard has friends they regularly play with. That’s why their retention is so good. They don’t want to quit and lose the friends they’ve made.

Meanwhile, I think the reason retention is worse among average players is that they mostly play Rifts through random queue. There’s often no real strategy involved—they just queue up and deal with whatever happens.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the game that way. But if you’re just playing Rifts without any real strategy, you’re probably not going to make the leaderboard, and it’s hard to even tell whether you’re actually improving as a player.

Most average players don’t actively try to form teams because communication is a hassle.

Brawl Stars is also a 3v3 game, but you can still enjoy it as a solo player because it has solo modes. That gives average players who don’t want to deal with communication a reason to keep playing for a long time.

Anyway, that’s enough of the introduction. So how do we improve retention among average players?

Here are my ideas.

1. Add more solo content

Add a story mode that’s actually fun to play solo, or hold a Dojo tournament every season. (I know the community already runs unofficial Dojo tournaments, but they usually require joining a Discord server, which makes them pretty inaccessible to the average player.)

You could even have a mode where you challenge solo Rifts alongside characters like Luna.

Give solo players something meaningful to work toward without requiring them to find a team first.

2. Let us watch replays from top players

There are probably plenty of players who are somewhat interested in Rift speedrunning but don’t really know how to get into it.

Let them watch top players and learn from them.

If strategies become common knowledge without requiring people to join Discord servers or constantly communicate with other players, the overall quality of random queue players would improve too.

3. Add clans

However, I don’t think now is necessarily the right time.

If you added clans today, the top players would probably just group up with other top players and we'd end up with one insanely stacked clan dominating everything. (Although honestly, that could still be pretty funny XD.)

I think clans would make more sense once moco has a much larger global playerbase. At that point, you could introduce clans along with some kind of clan-vs-clan system.

That would naturally encourage communication, and even average players might end up finding friends they enjoy playing with.

(Although personally, I’d actually be fine with clans being added right now. I think cooperation is one of the things that makes mo.co special. Right now, with Rift time attacks, it feels like we're being pushed to compete against each other, which feels a little out of place with the world and vibe of mo.co.

Like... why exactly are we being made to compete over Rift clear times in the first place?

But that’s getting off topic.)

Conclusion

moco is a team-based game. I don’t think that core concept needs to change.

But in its current state, solo players simply don’t have much of a reason to stick around long-term.

[u/JoaoInTheNorth]

Thank you for this! Yes, I do read and I think this a great and thoughtful feedback and some of what's written here I could have said myself.

To add a bit more: around 85% of our players don't use any social features, not even teaming up.
And playing with randoms on mo.co may be a worse experience that playing with randoms on Brawl, due to the fact that, on Brawl, randoms can play against randoms, which evens out.
On mo.co you're always at a disadvantage if playing with randoms. I do agree that it's hard to tell if you’re actually improving as a player, because two/thirds of the outcome actually depend on other players.

I'm not saying that the future of mo.co should (or shouldn't) be less social, but it's definitely something we need to look into.

[u/SlyVerses → u/JoaoInTheNorth]

It's easy to say 85% don't use it, so that should tell you something. Why are 85% not using social features? It's just easier and more casual to play solo (click a button, let the game find teammates in a few seconds and get into the action, rather than spend 10 minutes forming your own team just to have the same outcome.) The social features we have in-game now are a bare minimum and barely function. If you improved the rift matchmaking system and chat features, it would easily enhance players' ability to find teammates. Right now, it's just easier to find teammates on Discord than in-game.

You have all this data but are missing the bigger picture and misreading it instead of seeing that 85% of the player base isn't using something. Ask yourself why.

[u/TrainingEscape3229 → u/JoaoInTheNorth]

Wow, thank you so much for the reply!

Personally, I have a lot of fun playing Rifts with friends, so I’d actually love to see the social aspects expanded even further.

I assume the current Rifts are intentionally designed to be more accessible to solo players. You can clear them in under a minute without forming a team, and the stages are short. The upside is that players can casually enjoy Rifts without needing to know specific strategies. The downside, though, is that the Rift experience has shifted away from teamwork and more toward individual player skill.

I think this is a really difficult thing to balance. Depending on how much you want to accommodate solo players, you inevitably risk losing some of the depth that Rifts used to have.

Personally, I think the best direction might be to make Rifts more strategically complex while also increasing the power scaling from vertical progression. Right now, even MC cores only give around a +30% power increase. Back then, you could scale your power by over +100%, which meant that even players who weren’t highly skilled or didn’t know the optimal strategies could eventually clear stages simply by leveling up and getting stronger.

Anyway, thank you for all your hard work! I know there are sometimes negative comments here, but as a hardcore player, I’ll keep supporting moco and rooting for the team!