Players leaving

I have been thinking a lot about players leaving from our playgroup, but also from others. I am not one of the newest players, but also not from the oldest. I am playing this game probably more than three years and I like this game more and more. In theese past years we have some success with recruiting new players, but we also lost a lot of them.

I am sad each time someone leaves playgroup regardless what game it is. But we must say, that in V:tes, it is even worse. In magic, you can play a casual game with a friend and everything is okay. To fully experience V:tes, even for a casual game, you need four players at least. You can play with less, but it just doesn't feel right in a long run. Another thing is table talk. It gets old, with only four same players with the same lines - "Why are you rushing me? I am doing nothing to you." etc. etc. The game is simply dying because of that. After cease production, losing a player is even a bigger deal.

There have been different reasons for players to quit our group. I will write their reasons just for others to see, but also for me to summarize what i know and try to prevent other players from leaving - if that will be possible. I will also be glad to read your comments about your lost players and their reasons.

1) Not enough time - that is actually most common reason of our players. It is really sad, but we must remember that our playerbase is in general older than in other games. People are moving to different cities and in theese cases, there is not much, we can do. People also start their own families and it is also hard, to compete with that. But sometimes there are simply other things, which interest them more. There is not much we can do about do that last case either, but to try making our casual games, or playgroup more interesting - with league, or tournaments or special settings. Storyline events were helping too. I am just starting theese things in our playgroup and I will try to informing you, how it goes.

2) Too much competition - was a very special problem in our group. We had originally two game nights a week, but as time passed, some people got irritated, because our decks started to look more and more tournament-like. I was actually pretty surprised by this and am really curious if this happened in some other playgroup too.

3) Just getting bored - this happens too. Usualy thoise people play for a while and then find out, that it just isn't their "cup of tea." It is unfortunate, but I have also started some things which were not made for me and I have quit shortly after.

I am very surprised that the reasons have shrinked into three groups only, but when I look at the first group, it covers a huge ammount of reasons. It is not much important though. I know, that there will not be someone, who will catalogue players according to the Silmegils groups. I am more interested about your experience with this issue and reasons of your pleayers for their leaving. 

I have been thinking for a last few days, how to promote a dead game. Best thing is probably to not start with this fact. Demo games can be pretty boring, since you have to round at least four players to fully demonstrate possibilities. I have done some face to face promoting with my friends, who were close to CCGs in the past and it may have some impact, but I would still be glad to find some fres blood to our group. Don't get me wrong, our playgroup is still fairly strong, but I will be still glad for any interesting ideas. Feel free to post below.

Ok, this is last depresing comment for a some time. Next time, back to the game...