Attracting/Keeping New Players

I'm creating this thread because I believe this is what the devs want right now. If anyone has ideas for ways to capture the hearts of new players, this is the place to share.

For some reason many players are against focusing on this. Lemme make something clear: nobody plays any game forever. People will quit sooner or later. It is important to keep the flow of players coming in the same or better than that of players leaving the field. (And before people blame the loss of players on the update, hush, tons of us have already adapted and love this update already).

The infamy climb is something a lot of players complain about, and you only need to reach about 600 infamy before you start encountering mid-level players. I believe this is due to a lack of low-level players. The Mk1-Mk4 ships are mostly squashed below 2K infamy, among many Mk5s who can't push into the 2K~3K range.

I'll start us off with a few ideas. Progression is something many players complain about. I get that the slow progression is supposed to keep you playing the game longer, and personally I love this about the game, but we have to remember something important: Battle Bay is a mobile game. The vast majority of mobile gamers play casually. Speeding up progress would give these players a chance to stick around without being a noob forever, and would reward active players even more. This could be done by increasing rewards, shortening mid-high level training, etc.

Another idea is to make ship mk upgrades less spread out from each other. Let players achieve Mk2 within an hour or 2, Mk3 maybe a week or 2, Mk4 a month or 2. Mk5 is the biggest issue, being where players tend to spend 90%+ of their experience until reaching Mk6. HP upgrades and item slots are always well appreciated, even if you don't have amazing items to fit in them, and it allows for more creative builds, making the game more fun to play and experiment with. This idea might seem counterintuitive because it further reduces the number of low Mk ships, but it gives you a sense of knowing that next big upgrade is right around the corner.

Last idea for this post, maybe an unranked PvE mode. The rewards could be cut in half for this, as if you're losing ranked battles everytime, but exp gain should be the same until like level 10 or so. This gives beginners a fair ground to fight on to work on their basic skills in the game, and doubles as a fun gamemode to experiment with various setups and ships. The strength of the bots should hit a sweet spot of "challenging" and "fair", maybe by averaging their item levels based on the players' average gear score, as well as creating 3 difficulties (for the AIs' "skill" level): easy, medium, and hard. Man, I'd love to play a bot game in my Mk6 where the bots are actually ruthless and not complete noobs lol, but that aside, noob bots would be very appreciated by noob players. Many will prefer that over ranked until they feel strong enough to fight, but it should always be an available option.

 

I’ve been playing for over a year now, and I think I’ve ended up coming full circle on a lot of my feelings about the game.

Originally, I was quite unimpressed by the way ships can be matched against much more powerful opponents, and the way that gaining infamy is so dependent on teammates.

After I listened to the devs explain why things work the way they do, I started to accept the system, and I thought their explanations made good sense.

However, now, I’m not so sure it does need to be the way it is. Constantly being at the mercy of floaters, suiciders, and seal clubbers, really detracts from a lot of what is fun about the game. It also makes progression feel needlessly gruelling.

Yesterday, I lost 14 games in a row, which is one of my worst streaks ever, and knocked me back down beneath 3k. Many of those games I played well enough to win (even got 2 stars for one of them). Today, my infamy is lower than it was 8 months ago, when I was in a lower mk ship with Rare items.

I find games are just too luck based. So many games are decided by things outside your control, it takes hundreds of games for ‘skill’ to actually make a difference to your infamy, and then one unlucky streak can wipe it all out.

There are probably an infinite number of ways that these issues might be improved, and TBH I don’t want to detract from my point by making suggestions here. Suffice to say, the devs probably need to accept that the current matchmaking and infamy progression isn’t very fun. They can justify it, sure (their reasons even make a lot of sense). But most new players I’ve seen, do complain about it, and I doubt that even half of them are going to be willing to stick it out and accept it, the way that I did.

 

It's true, one of the top complaints from new players is the matchmaking. It could use a bit of smoothing over. Especially your last point about sticking it out. What seperates the top players from beginners? Usually the answer is patience, and while that is a requirement to reach the top, it doesn't need to be such a heavy requirement for beginners. They should have the luxury of smooth sailing as often as possible.

 

I started playing because a clash royale toober featured the game in one of his vids. I liked the look of it, so I gave it a try .. and ended up loving it.

But, I think that's part of the issue now - not attracting enough new players.

There are a few good toobers out there, but the super active ones can't switch boats and setups as often as they need to .. most aren't experts beyond their one main ship. So, it gets stale after awhile .. and they have no new material to make content about. Obviously, a lack of new players is going to stop players from progressing and reaching new heights.


The other issue is that the base game doesn't really change. The agility update was a rudder/lube fix and was different for a few hours. Events have been something different - once a week or so .. But, it's always the same ships and same items that are overpowered. There are rarely balance changes - and they're minor at best.

Why? Because what's strong or weak varies so much depending on level, rarity and point in the game. It's not mathematically scaled. The item damage calculations aren't uniform. The crew talents come in at random points and in random amounts. The progression is all sorts of messed up and your success at the early levels is too reliant on RNGing strong legendary items (to go along with your uncommons and mid level rares) ..

How do you balance that? ... The short answer is you can't.

1. I've made long posts about standardizing the skill tree in order to scale weapons at the same speed to make balancing easier ... This would give players more ship and item options to explore, toobers more content to analyze, and it would even attract a more serious (and invested) level of gamer.
2. I've described how event reward scaling could increase progression speed for newer players while limiting their access to OP items before they're ready for them ... in addition to disincentiving seal clubbing.
3. I've gone into other things that are not working as intended (items, calcs, setups) and inconsistencies that should be addressed (unregistered hits).
4. I've described what behavior is currently being encouraged (that is bad for the game) and what should be changed to encourage proper behavior (for the good of the game).

• How ship tiers should have greater differences to encourage players to speed their training and leveling to reach those levels - which would also segregate ship tiers more on the ladder and appear more fair ... rather than encouraging them to not upgrade their ships for fear of matchmaking penalties
• How encouraging players to build every item and ship extends their interest, their desire to buy epic containers, their need for resources (Ad-views/VIP subs), and increases game variety.
• And probably ten+ more intertwined examples

What I've come to discover is that this game isn't meant to be a serious game .. It's like the old school angry birds - it keeps you entertained for a period of time, then you move on. It's not meant to be a competitive platform for serious gamers that evolves over time.

And that's not a jab. It is what it is. Once you accept it, it's easier to stop getting frustrated with all the things not being done to take it to that level - and start enjoying it for what it is.

 

Maybe they could advertise BB using best plays from pros.




Like me

 

Oh yes, this is huge. We're encouraged to try various setups and playstyles, but we're denied the possibility to do so (slow item leveling, RNG based item obtainment, limited inventory space, etc). The game would be more fresh and exciting for everyone, including new players, if we had more freedom over our setups, rather than grinding for hundreds of hours to upgrade just 1 singular ship and loadout. This is a massive turn off for a lot of players and it causes the game to become boring quickly for some of them.

 

As a player who started within 1 month of Global launch.
What attracted me was the Advertisments on cross format games.
There haven't been any since that I am aware of.
Also. The length of time to achieve level 50 progression takes too long. The ability to get Epic Maxed weapons takes too long.
These statements are true even once money is used. I have spent at least 7k. And I don't have every weapon Epic Maxed....some thing needs to be reworked in the monetary to parts and gear formula to put this game more in line with other games out there. Multiple games I could buy an expansion pack and own every single weapon, skin, and item. For a total of $99.
Reality if Battle Bay wants to become massive and upping player base to 4million players. It immediately advertises. And it changes the in-game economy. Where everything is 1/4th what it used to cost. $25 should be the max for 14,000 pearls.
And then the devs should go thru to every player who spent money before....and retro actively...give them back 1/3 amount of pearls they ever spent. For free pearls. Ie...if I boughy 300,000 pearls. My account would have a credit of 100,000.

With this moves done. Old players are happy new players are happy. The pearls will be bought and pearls given will be spent. Goodwill will be given.

Next devs should do this all and add mk8 ships and other new weapon next update.

On top of...developers should follow the shop from Clash of Clans and other games. Where duplicates can be bought anytime of any item. If devs are concerned about this... they can rotate the shop 8 weapons/items ever single day for a 5 day period and then start over. Again an epic weapon shouldn't cost 3000 pearls anymore. It should be 1000. Fix the in game economy and the gear duplication progress rate.

Once thus is done...even seals and noob players will have great weapons. And they will be able to easily afford to duplicate any weapon they want.

Also...stop the artificial block of when weapons can be combined. Make going up level 1 thru 50 more to do with overall ship strength.

Also. Make all ships have to be bought at same time. Going mk2 to mk3. U have to buy all mk3 ships. Ie they all get unlocked. With one gold purchase.

Next. Scrap power cells. These are worthless. No other game in the web puts as many blocks to levelling up as battle bay. Let's count what's needed to progess... captain level, weapon purchase, duplicate purchase, gold, sugar, pearls....and now Power Cells???? Come on. That's kind of dumb and unneccessary.

Get rid of rng...if a player wins an award they should be able to select from 4 items exactly what they want. This will keep the game completely out of "Loot Box" E.U. rulings and nonsense lawsuits the game doesn't want.

Most of my ideas if implemented are drastic. But will eventually flood the game with new cash. At a level this game hasn't ever seen.
Most battle bay players have tons of friends who haven't started playing this game. Why? Because I tell them.
U will have to spend 7k to even be competitive. And progressing now from nothing to my level is brutal. No new player wants to join a game to get beat down.
Fix what's wrong with this game by fixing the economy. And the new player progression. Along with advertising for new players. And creating mk8 boats for existing players and rewarding them for money they have spent.....will make a massive new influx of new captains. And I for one, will finally be able to tell my friends to play this fun game. Because the game will no longer want 2 months of work pay to be competitive.

Jaws

@The Grim Repair

 

if rovio doesn't wanna advertise for BB then we cant do much about it .

 

A major turn off in this game is the negative progress. Any other game on the market you don't get penalized for losing, you just gain less.
Also the progression can be confusing to new players. We have captain level, infamy, and item strength (gearscore) as measures of our progress. Combining all of this into one category would help streamline the progression and make make us feel we are actually achieving something in this game. It also wouldn't be a bad idea to base matchmaking off of a combined progression system. I.e. you get xp based on every upgrade, training and match won and matchups are based on xp level. This would be a better reflection of our true power in battle.
The xp system would need to be reinvented but in the long run it would prove very beneficial.