Hey folks,

I’m Fortisq, the solo developer of Bitiverse, a free persistent browser MMORPG.

The game has grown into a shared world with combat, gathering, crafting, trading, guilds, homesteads, vendors, and personal dungeons. It also has enough systems that a new player can occasionally look at the screen and wonder whether the developer has abandoned them in the wilderness.

I’m looking for a few fresh players to try the first 15–20 minutes and tell me:

• Did you understand what to do after the tutorial?
• Was combat clear?
• What caught your interest?
• What made you consider leaving?

No account or download is required:

https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse

It’s fully playable and continuously developed, but still rough in places. Honest criticism is welcome, I’m trying to preserve the old-school freedom without making the opening feel aimless.

1. The tutorial was clear enough, for me at least. But... for people who have never played a classic MMO, the lack of a little handholding is definitely going to drop retention. That's why many MMORPGs start you in a random cellar or whatnot and tell you to kill rats and chop trees, so afterward you have an actual, understood goal to lean towards, rather than leaving them to fumble around for 10 minutes wondering what the point is - even if they figure it out, their mood is already soured. I'm going to assume this is the largest factor in low retention. For every person that complains about a tutorial there are 10 that need it and won't tell you (or sometimes even themselves).
2. I initiated as a mage, and the instruction to use 'space' to fire wasn't immediately clear. I attempted this to no result, though people who probably played longer than that 10 minutes might realize you need to craft another kind of wand/staff to have access to range.
3. The ability to access the service without making an account definitely would have raised my likelihood of trying the game, for one. But once I was there, I found it instantly offered skills to get into, and most importantly, no class-locking of equipment, something I love.
4. After 15-20 minutes? Honestly, my biggest complaint was that there wasn't a button to 'sell all' of an item in the shop. About an hour in, though, it's probably the lack of difficulty I'm exposed to - none of the enemies I encountered in the early game were really a threat, at all; I'm aware I didn't go particularly far (from Ravenenton to Elmmoor Keep), but I shouldn't need to travel across the continent to find something I need to be careful around. Hours later, exploring a good chunk of the continent, I have still yet to find anything that could remotely hurt me. And while it's not a bad MMORPG as it stands, I had not seen particularly much that makes it stand out and provide reason to play it over competitors. 

And a side note:  I did notice iron boots don't give anything over copper. I'm also annihilating quest bosses for quests I supposedly don't have the level to accept the quest for.

The open-world approach sounds interesting! Are you considering optional starting goals for players who prefer a little more guidance?

I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do. I took the quest, went left, picked some plants, killed a rat, and didn't find anything else. On my way back, I died in a fight against a spider. I don't really get why I could defeat a ghost but not a spider—though I did go through the whole fight without using any skills. I guess mechanics-wise and art-wise, I might just not be the target audience for this game.

An update on this, from the dev account rather than my main one. Same person: I build Bitiverse on my own.

Since I asked, the answer to "where does it lose people" turned out to be mostly the first ten minutes and the shop screens, and a lot of that came from one player who sent me fifteen bug reports in a week. All fifteen are fixed. Shop racks now group by what a thing is rather than where it landed, a shop counts its things instead of its shelves, and the row that refuses to open a homestead shop finally says why.

Guilds also grew a council: any member can call a vote, quorum counts people seen in the last fortnight rather than everyone who ever joined, and a passed vote lapses if the leader sits on it for a week.

The ask has not changed, and I am still short of testers. If you have ten minutes, walk in as a guest, come and break something, and tell me where you got stuck or what read wrong. That is the part I cannot see from the inside.

https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse

The healing side of the orders system is live now: the bonesetters' house of healing opened this week. Take the first patient as a joining test, then run daily house calls, each one settled in a card duel - steady hand for an extra card, field dressing for a quick heal, a calming draught to stop the sickness cold. The apothecary brews a remedy from the day's two herbs at the still. I build this on my own.

Still looking for testers to come break it and tell me where it fails.

https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse