12-03-2016, 08:58 AM
so i find this game enjoyable at the lower level for several reasons when putting this into practice, the main ones include:
- Upgrades
upgrades exist for high levels to but the thing that low levels do right is there are so many different ways people can use their early diamonds especially when its limited as a f2p player that create enjoyment. Beyond this, gold upgrades are the same because you haven't capped everything, you are stuck deciding to you want to make the push for 200abd when damage starts scaling or get more gold, building time extend having a party member build hp reduction just so you can clear the areas or pushing expedition fuel.
The point that early game does right and that late game can learn from is increasing the amount of decisions players can make with their purchases and expeditions with gold cost was a good step, a suggestion that would improve the f2p experience is adding 5+ new account upgrades so players are once again stuck deciding where to invest their diamonds, probably more are needed for the long term and having this coupled with one time diamond upgrades on new content allows the player to enjoy the game
Gold could use the same adjustments, having more upgrades like in pet map however you wont need a reset because gold is a resource that you are constantly getting more of, didn't like that you put your gold into autospeed before auto dmg? you can continue pushing auto damage the next day
AP feels like a useless resource at the moment, hopefully this will be improved soon, players either are pushing arena with it or using it on daily pet arena pp, there needs to be more uses for people to get enjoyment out of their purchase decisions from this currency
Finally, in regards to the pet system, people highly enjoyed it when it was resetable because they could have fun working out what builds would work better for them at the time, this system is different from gold because you aren't going for 50 upgrades a day and each investment isn't negligible, resets should be a once every 2 day thing so people do feel punishment for making the wrong decision however, they get to enjoy playing with it. If you are really worried about being able to reset pet map as much as you want then making it cost 1k pp per reset is a viable option but really, you shouldn't be expecting people to use sheets to calculate what is best, you should be allowing players to figure it out in the game
out of the rest of the side content we have, soul orbs does the best job because different orbs are better for different people at different times, but the most important thing with these upgrades is you give a vast amount of choices that are all impactful for different builds or different points in time when playing the game
- Pushing together
so a big aspect that made this mode fun was that being new means players need to push together to get to the end of at2, this is done via needing to spread out upgrade purchases since only one player needs to control time extend,hp reduction, treasure hunter etc. There is also the fact that we started with a new guild, we are all deciding together which guild building to go for next and as has been said, guilds buildings need an expansion for high level guilds
with at3 being the peak for players, you wont really see much of players pushing together besides the occasional challenge or people working together to push with their abilities, what can be done and from reading the dev blog, steps are being made towards this is including global content for all players to work together on and this can also be done at the guild level, having bosses work similar to the daily clan boss in clicker heros will do this job but you could also have content where every 100-200 levels you create a cohort, players in this cohort get a new set of guild buildings to work on but they also get personal upgrades seperate from guild upgrades which are permanent from this. These buildings will also require stone, forcing the player to decide if helping the guild for a long term guild bonus is better verses helping all future and current players in your level bracket for a bigger short term benefit.
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With all this being said, there are still things that aren't done right for new players however, the main one is getting players into the community.
If players want to join a guild these days, for the most part players will join autojoin guilds which are near dead or be joining onto guilds which are already established and are quiet apart from requiring your daily sheet update. There may be a few discussions but really the only way to fix this is to remove autojoin on inactive guilds and increase content where players have to work together in to make the new player experience more then just a solo one. As i said, a reason this game was enjoyable was because i went through content together with a group of people, the effect of this really falls down later on even if new players have fun with random parties
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a side note, we have the f2p and p2p gap, there are some players who care a lot about this but really its just going to be the gap is slowly widening based on how much you played while someone who has played longer will have a slight bonus over you, you can always get past this with investment. This isn't really a problem when people to learn to accept this for the type of game iou is but... the one thing that might make it easier on f2p players is providing a piece of content that cannot be effected in any way by diamond investments again. This was something that expeditions had departed from and while for developing such a big piece of content, you do need to make money for the time put in... having one system that cannot be manipulated by p2p should help reduce the complaints f2p give
tldr some ideas that should help increase retention ._.
- Upgrades
upgrades exist for high levels to but the thing that low levels do right is there are so many different ways people can use their early diamonds especially when its limited as a f2p player that create enjoyment. Beyond this, gold upgrades are the same because you haven't capped everything, you are stuck deciding to you want to make the push for 200abd when damage starts scaling or get more gold, building time extend having a party member build hp reduction just so you can clear the areas or pushing expedition fuel.
The point that early game does right and that late game can learn from is increasing the amount of decisions players can make with their purchases and expeditions with gold cost was a good step, a suggestion that would improve the f2p experience is adding 5+ new account upgrades so players are once again stuck deciding where to invest their diamonds, probably more are needed for the long term and having this coupled with one time diamond upgrades on new content allows the player to enjoy the game
Gold could use the same adjustments, having more upgrades like in pet map however you wont need a reset because gold is a resource that you are constantly getting more of, didn't like that you put your gold into autospeed before auto dmg? you can continue pushing auto damage the next day
AP feels like a useless resource at the moment, hopefully this will be improved soon, players either are pushing arena with it or using it on daily pet arena pp, there needs to be more uses for people to get enjoyment out of their purchase decisions from this currency
Finally, in regards to the pet system, people highly enjoyed it when it was resetable because they could have fun working out what builds would work better for them at the time, this system is different from gold because you aren't going for 50 upgrades a day and each investment isn't negligible, resets should be a once every 2 day thing so people do feel punishment for making the wrong decision however, they get to enjoy playing with it. If you are really worried about being able to reset pet map as much as you want then making it cost 1k pp per reset is a viable option but really, you shouldn't be expecting people to use sheets to calculate what is best, you should be allowing players to figure it out in the game
out of the rest of the side content we have, soul orbs does the best job because different orbs are better for different people at different times, but the most important thing with these upgrades is you give a vast amount of choices that are all impactful for different builds or different points in time when playing the game
- Pushing together
so a big aspect that made this mode fun was that being new means players need to push together to get to the end of at2, this is done via needing to spread out upgrade purchases since only one player needs to control time extend,hp reduction, treasure hunter etc. There is also the fact that we started with a new guild, we are all deciding together which guild building to go for next and as has been said, guilds buildings need an expansion for high level guilds
with at3 being the peak for players, you wont really see much of players pushing together besides the occasional challenge or people working together to push with their abilities, what can be done and from reading the dev blog, steps are being made towards this is including global content for all players to work together on and this can also be done at the guild level, having bosses work similar to the daily clan boss in clicker heros will do this job but you could also have content where every 100-200 levels you create a cohort, players in this cohort get a new set of guild buildings to work on but they also get personal upgrades seperate from guild upgrades which are permanent from this. These buildings will also require stone, forcing the player to decide if helping the guild for a long term guild bonus is better verses helping all future and current players in your level bracket for a bigger short term benefit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With all this being said, there are still things that aren't done right for new players however, the main one is getting players into the community.
If players want to join a guild these days, for the most part players will join autojoin guilds which are near dead or be joining onto guilds which are already established and are quiet apart from requiring your daily sheet update. There may be a few discussions but really the only way to fix this is to remove autojoin on inactive guilds and increase content where players have to work together in to make the new player experience more then just a solo one. As i said, a reason this game was enjoyable was because i went through content together with a group of people, the effect of this really falls down later on even if new players have fun with random parties
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a side note, we have the f2p and p2p gap, there are some players who care a lot about this but really its just going to be the gap is slowly widening based on how much you played while someone who has played longer will have a slight bonus over you, you can always get past this with investment. This isn't really a problem when people to learn to accept this for the type of game iou is but... the one thing that might make it easier on f2p players is providing a piece of content that cannot be effected in any way by diamond investments again. This was something that expeditions had departed from and while for developing such a big piece of content, you do need to make money for the time put in... having one system that cannot be manipulated by p2p should help reduce the complaints f2p give
tldr some ideas that should help increase retention ._.