Clickbait: How BR could have been saved! - non-Clickbait: discussion about how future iterations of Arena Brawlers could fare better

Hello, fellow BR playing (heh') people, pecimists and optimist alike!

Today I want to try a little more emotionally deflated writeup around the topic how this kind of genre struggles with player retention and how to get a game right to keep people interested.

First of all, I want to list a few challenges this arena brawling business brings to the table(only related to player motivation/retention, not even considering monetization) :

1. steep learning curve and bordering on evil selfmutilation as a sense of progress
   veterans are on the whole ladder, new players have only a small niche in the lower brackets and tend to leave when they get destroyed. Getting better at the game (skill wise) as the only thing worth doing(besides collecting skins, heh)
2. presentation of progress
   some Trueskill rating that places you where you have to be in terms of your skill in a fast facion with volatile placements and then does not reward you for clutch games later down the road. It's really difficult to present the player with his actual skill progress when in reality he isn't progressing at all... That just feels horrible for the player. Typically players don't want to know if they're stagnant.
3. exhaustion due to the intensity
   Players tend to burn out fast without the proper regeneration phases, where they can refuell their energy tanks to be able to go to full potential again in the next high intensity situation (the arena fight, heh)
4. community interacation and moderation
   I think this is one of the tougher nuts to crack as having chat channels, global chat and so on requires a lot of staff to moderate. As long as AI is not strong enough to handle all the possible chat abusing behaviours (selling boosts/drugs, general spam, spreading racial and explicit stuff and so on) this will on the one hand result in a super toxic and possibly legally borderline chat mayhem or on the other hand simply lacking possibilities to connect players with each other to make friends, form bonds and thus cement the retention rate.
5. meaningful and distinct rewards are hard to create
   Pretty selfexplanatory. Meme culture allows for some fun titles (as they did in BLC) but may just water down the individual value of such a title. Avatars and skins can only provide so much. It's quite hard to nail such rewards to induce some pride and accomplishment...
   

In sum this genre has a few difficulties tied to the core feedback loop. We all want to play competitive, but we hate being classified as only Diamonds(insert any ranking you're currently stuck at), we want a bar that ever rises(for us) but don't want inflated ladders, we all want to have chat channels, but don't want to moderate them or have the toxicity, we all want high intensity matches that stresses us to the core with close outcomes(hopefully in our favour) but we burn out, too. We all want to be rewarded, but we want them to be good rewards.

All of the points above are hard to tackle for a developer with limited resources and not too much staff to do all the hauling.

1. The learning curve is steep. And you can't change that. One thing you could try to do would be a more spread out tutorial phase. A tutorial (just like the current one, but a bit more in depth) that has built in rewards. Rewards that keep the newbie motivated to try some more. Say, they can earn a free champion for completing the tutorials and then some skins for each task thereafter. Maybe it could even be a champion coupon where the first champion purchase is simulated for the sake of the tutorial, then for a series of beginner quests in the actual ladder, like "playing all the five different free rotational champions in casual games" to earn the coupon, then some more quests that promote the learning to reward them with a rare skin for the selected coupon champ.
2. Progress could be emulated a bit with an infinite levelling system that actually provides rewards. Similar to the current system where it just counts up your champion level, but goes further. With initial shown rewards, just like they are shown now and later rewards hidden behind questionmarks. It could use some hefty diminishing returns so these levels are not reached too early. Every time somebody reaches a new highest level with a unique reward there could be some global announcement showing the reward. That could become some motivational factor, but will eat up some resources from the art team.
   In terms of skill progression I think the game has to sort of lie to the player. Decoupling a visual rating for ladder sorting purpose and a hidden matchmaking and skill evaluating rating in the background to find fair matches. You always win the same amount of points for a game, regardless if it was close or not. Winning a 3-2 in the current system feels unrewarding with low point gains for having bested a strong enemy with the last drop of energy drink induced reaction. Under the hood the rating change has to then be influenced in a broader sense with some setpoint following algorithm. It's just important that the progress never stagnates or feels unrewarding.
   Say, you won 3-2 against an equally skilled team. In the current system you'd earn a low amount of points, let's say 10 because it was a game that the system thinks you're well positioned at that skill range. "You belong here". With a changed system you'd be rewarded with +30 points regardless if you won 3-0 or 3-2 (and lose the same), the background skillrating for the matchmaking would still only count +10. It would then create an "error" of 20 between the two ratings that would be considered over the course of the next matches. So the next match of that caliber would give you 28 Points at stake instead of 30 points (10% of the error subtracted). If you then lose the game 0-3 you'd be losing 28 points visual and 30 points hidden rating resulting in an error of 22 between the visual and the hidden rating. The next match would then put 27.8 points at stake and so on. That way you build an error between the skill and shown rating and that influences the overall amount at stake.
3. exhaustion is a tough topic as well. You could try to add in some farm-ville-esque sidegame for the menues you can idle around in inbetween matches. Some clicker game. Another thing would be to provide some kind of Guild system where you can meet in a unified playground, showing off your skins and devastate one another, just like in the royale lobby... This is a broad thing and would eat up loads of resources but it's needed, I think. It has to be some chill activity that is still in the microcosm of BR (well, in the client) and allows for some generation while still keeping people on topic.
4. Community interaction and social features are connected to this. Maybe you could go a semi-global chat route here and connect it with the aforementioned guild system. A global channel where people can type in only specific words related to the searching and building of teams, guilds or lose chat channels. That would close up the communities in themselves and prevent random spamming somewhat and thus greatly reduce the need for moderating staff. An option to observe games would also be core for social activities. For helping people with their gameplay for just watching a friend and so on.
5. This then ties to the rewards situation. A Tournament with a low barrier of entry, the possibility to observe the games being played (while you're waiting for your turn) and a set of visual appeasing tournament gear/skins you can obtain one set of simply by participating a certain amount of tournaments throughout the season would be a good start. Ladder rewards that you can show off ingame (Avatar in the ingame menue, borders, titles, emblems for different achievements and tournament placements). Bad ass Grades. Blood God, High Fist *drool*

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Well yeah, that's some specific problems and my take on their answers that would maybe have given BR another spin. The core feedback loop in BR is not enough. Make people excited to play some more. Not letting them run into the "oh, I am at my evaluated rating now, nothing changes from here on"-Wall

TLDR.: Core feedback loops in games have to be like Diablo's(1 and 2, 3 after the auction house mess) addicting and fun.

Maybe somebody who develops the next big competitive arena brawler may take one little inspiration from this writeup. Feel free to discuss this further.

Submitted July 05, 2019 at 04:51PM by _wuzzle https://ift.tt/2L5zKnJ