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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 7 post(s) |
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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.06 12:28:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hi there Mercenaries,
So as many of you noticed, we made some adjustments to the Battle Academy (the new player battle queue) in Uprising 1.3 last week. Today, you'll notice in the patchnotes that we're adjusting it again. If you're reading this thread, it's probably because you're interested in knowing why, so let me try and explain 
The short version is that we're trying to figure out exactly what works, in terms of giving new players the best experience possible.
In 1.3, we did an experiment to see what effect giving new players the simplest possible game mode would have, by moving the Academy to a 16-player Ambush map. Our provisional conclusion is "new players don't really like super-simple game modes", so today we're switching the Academy queue over to 32-player Domination. This adds more players, and takes the experience closer to the "full-fat" Skirmish mode while still (hopefully!) keeping the game flow easily comprehensible.
We're also adjusting the War Point total you need to accumulate in order to graduate from the Academy, down to 400 War Points. This didn't seem like a very large number to most of us here, but our metrics suggest the median new player is scoring about 100 WP per battle, so this has them graduating from the Academy after probably 3-5 battles (with better players graduating sooner and less able ones staying longer, of course). Once graduated, players are free to join any of the normal game modes.
This is an ongoing experiment, so we're expecting to make further changes in the coming weeks, to try out new theories and home in on the best experience. Happily, we've got a reasonably comprehensive set of metrics tracking retention and so on, so we have a pretty good overview of the trends involved.
If you have any questions, please ask away and I'll try and answer as best I can.
Cheers,
-Greyscale |
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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.06 12:52:00 -
[2] - Quote
All this experimentation is in service of building a better understanding of how new players actually behave, which we can then lean on in future to build a better overall new player experience. We're very aware of the need to review all aspects of the way we introduce DUST to new players; what we're doing here is just trying to learn what we can with the tools already in place. |
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CCP Greyscale
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C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.06 12:55:00 -
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Absolute Idiom II wrote:Would your currents tools allow you to have a lower/upper limit for the BA, as per my suggestion?
We're actually looking into this at the moment |
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CCP Greyscale
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C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.06 15:38:00 -
[4] - Quote
Reav Hannari wrote:You are changing multiple variables at once but basing your decision to reduce graduation requirements on the older setup. I would have changed the academy mode and then checked the WP average for that.
I also vote for opening the opportunity to move out of the academy battles but leaving the option there for some time.
I also suggest giving faster SP accrual during some initial period.
Yes, we are. For a number of reasons we're running tests on a weekly cadence right now, so we don't really have time to explore the entire possibility space variable-by-variable. Instead we're jumping between reasonably optimized implementations of various different plausible models of new player behavior, to try and establish as quickly as possible which model gets us in the right ballpark. We have a number of likely-looking mountains that we want to do a rough height-check on; once we've established some baselines for those, we'll be in a position to consider doing hill-climbing to find local maxima. |
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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.15 08:27:00 -
[5] - Quote
Updated the OP with the following:
Quote:UPDATE 15-08-13: At downtime today we'll be increasing the Academy WP cap from 400 to 1500, to see what impact this has on our metrics.
Characters who log in after downtime and have scored between 400 and 1500 War Points in their career to date will find themselves back in the Academy, which they'll leave (again!) when they accumulate 1500 total lifetime WP. |
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CCP Greyscale
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C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.22 08:36:00 -
[6] - Quote
Today's update:
Quote:UPDATE 22-08-13: At downtime today we'll be increasing the Academy WP cap from 1500 to 2000, again to check out the metrics impact. We'll also be changing from Domination to Skirmish, so that we have solid numbers on all three game modes.
As with last week's change, characters who log in after downtime and have scored between 1500 and 2000 War Points in their career to date will find themselves back in the Academy, which they'll leave (again!) when they accumulate 2000 total lifetime WP. |
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CCP Greyscale
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C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.08.30 10:00:00 -
[7] - Quote
Today's update:
Quote:UPDATE 30-08-13: At downtime today we'll be lowering the Academy WP cap from 2000 to 1200, for the usual metrics-impact reasons. We'll also be changing from Skirmish back to Domination.
Because the cap is going down, any player with a WP total above 1200 will find themselves no longer in the Academy after this change. |
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