Why Players Drop a Quest: Find Out From the Numbers
Count who reaches each step of a quest and compare that with the quest as you wrote it. When many players vanish at one step, first check that the quest can still be finished at all, because a stuck quest and a boring quest look the same in the numbers.
Why do the numbers not add up?
The Tollkeeper's Daughter is an invented story game, and every number here is made up for this example. Its main quest has five steps. The maker counted sessions in which each step's event appears.
| Quest step | Sessions with this event |
|---|---|
| Quest accepted | 140 |
| Key found | 96 |
| Gate opened | 110 |
| Daughter found | 61 |
| Reward taken | 60 |
Look at the second and third rows. More people opened the gate than found the key, and the gate needs the key. That cannot happen in the quest as written, so either the log is wrong or the quest is not what the maker thinks it is.
It was the quest. The shop sells a lockpick, and 14 players opened the gate with it. This is why you write the plan first: the numbers can only surprise you if you know what you expected.
Counting a player for every step they got past, the path now reads:
| Step | Players | Went on | Very likely between |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quest accepted | 140 | ||
| Key or lockpick | 110 | 79% | 71% and 85% |
| Daughter found | 61 | 55% | 46% and 64% |
| Reward taken | 60 | 98% | 91% and 100% |
The big loss is after the gate: 49 of 110 players gone. A quick reading says that this part is dull, so shorten it. That reading would be wrong.
Is it boring or is it stuck?
The maker looked at what those 49 had in common.
| What the 49 had in common | Players |
|---|---|
| Opened the gate with the lockpick | 14 |
| Played chapter 3 first, where the mill burns down | 23 |
| Neither | 12 |
The daughter's scene waits for a flag called has-key, and the lockpick never sets it. And she is in the mill, which chapter 3 destroys. So 37 of the 49 (76%, very likely between 62% and 85%) could not finish however hard they tried. Only 12 may have simply stopped.
Numbers cannot prove that. They only made it worth checking. The proof comes from walking every order of play through the quest, which is what the quest order check does: it shows the exact moves that lock a quest for good. For a whole story, the story check does the same with people, facts and rules. You can read more in quests that do not get stuck.
How do you get the quest moving again?
- Give each stuck path a way out. The lockpick now sets the same flag as the key. After the fire, the daughter moves to the inn.
- Check again before you measure. Run the checker until no order of play locks the quest.
- Then release and count. The 12 who simply stopped will show whether the quest is also dull.
If only 15 players had reached this quest, the table above would prove nothing, but the check would still find both bugs, as it needs no players at all.
Paste this to your AI
Players are dropping out of a quest in my game: [quest name]. The event log is in [file or folder]. Do not rewrite the quest yet.
1. Read the quest and the main story. Model the quest as facts (who is where, who holds what, what has happened), steps with what each needs and changes, and the rule "while the quest is open, it can still be finished". Draw it as a Mermaid state diagram.
2. Check every order of play with TLA+ and the TLC model checker. If TLC cannot run here, use get_recipe with quest-check or story-model-check through Spielerando. If you can run neither, tell me that nothing was checked.
3. Count the sessions per step from the log. Compare them with the model. Show every place the log does something the model says cannot happen.
4. For the step that loses the most, group those who left by what they did before, and show the counts.
5. For each broken rule, show the exact moves that lead to it, and match it to the groups from step 4.
Suggest one way out per stuck path and wait for my choice. Separate what the checker found from what the numbers merely suggest. If too few players reached a step, say so.
Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP
How to check it worked
- Follow the path. Play the exact moves your AI gave you. You should get stuck yourself.
- Run the checker again after each fix, and read how many states it looked at.
- Count again after release. More players should get past that step.