DUST Search - Sticky:What's going on with the Battle Academy?

CCP Greyscale wrote:

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.

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.

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 Smile

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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Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 7 post(s)
Dimitri Rascolovitch The Immortal Knights 33	Posted - 2013.08.17 16:24:00 - [121] - Quote Seeth Mensch wrote: So I had an idea: .... as they battle for their lives, and occasionally see the inverted flying coffin lunging by overhead... seeing this made me laugh, how did you manage to get it inverted, i tend to fall out of the sky if i try to do barrel rolls
Alldin Kan TeamPlayers EoN. 508	Posted - 2013.08.17 21:54:00 - [122] - Quote CCP Greyscale wrote: 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. Ignore the metrics, just raise it to 50,000 WP and gather the solid feedback...
IIphalanxII Tal-Romon Legion Amarr Empire 4	Posted - 2013.08.19 08:23:00 - [123] - Quote CCP, because i believe you don't know what you are doing in the FPS industry i will give you a HINT for the Battle Academy: 32 DOMINATION IS 100% CORRECT BUT WP?? why not SP CAP before getting out of the academy??? lets say 200k SP???? so in 700k total SP they will graduate...simple as that ;) it's like a 1 week SP CAP and i'm not saying about the PASSIVE SP, now you tell me if someone gets in DUST and doesn't play for 2 weeks he will graduate?? if he didn't play it HE WON'T EVER...
Draco Cerberus Hellstorm Inc League of Infamy 251	Posted - 2013.08.21 16:20:00 - [124] - Quote I still feel that the battle academy does not adequately prepare mercs for the new eden landscape. Basically you are thrown in with the wolves even at 1500 WP. There are no meaningful tutorials with a voice over walkthrough on how to place an uplink or nanohive, heal someone or even a way to try out the guns at the beginning of a merc's life to see what they like the best. Crysis did a really good job on showing their players what to do on the battlefield as did Mass Effect 3. This is the kind of tutorial that's needed to tool the learning curve so that people can get on, learn "how to do it" then move on to full fledged combat. This isn't Eve Online but if you look at the Career agents missions you will see a wide variety of professions showcased with training modules granted to the player. Implementing a similar system in Dust would be a nice improvement although it may take adding a bit of a PVE element to the game to do so.
JONAHBENHUR Trans Worlds Operations League of Infamy 24	Posted - 2013.08.21 17:37:00 - [125] - Quote why not just raise the cap back up 1500 wp is too low people come right out of the academy after like 1-2 matches and just get waffle-stomped by people that can play. maybe a somewhere between the old cap and the new cap of 1500 like say 5-6000 just to get a few matches in. almost all of us learned by trial of fire but to get new players and ie new money somethings may need to be done. could try making different game modes that bans the use of super tier equipment or something

CCP Greyscale C C P C C P Alliance 33	Posted - 2013.08.22 08:36:00 - [126] - 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.

steadyhand amarr Imperfects Negative-Feedback 1152	Posted - 2013.08.22 09:18:00 - [127] - Quote War points are not at useless at seeing how well a player has developet I would at diffrent metric tbh
Absolute Idiom II No Free Pass 463	Posted - 2013.08.22 09:27:00 - [128] - Quote steadyhand amarr wrote: War points are not at useless at seeing how well a player has developet I would at diffrent metric tbh I think you accidentally the whole sentence.
steadyhand amarr Imperfects Negative-Feedback 1152	Posted - 2013.08.22 09:29:00 - [129] - Quote Wow even for me that post made no sense sorry lol
Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar Silver Bullet Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 187	Posted - 2013.08.22 09:40:00 - [130] - Quote it needs to be 150k wp to graduate, if you set it to a higher number of wp new players will be more likly to continue playing after they reach gradation, it will also give them a chance to get familiar with how multiple things work in battle. keeping the graduation wp so low is ruining both the new player experiance and the veteran expriance also, throwing a handfull of guys that can barly get 100 wp a match into battle with people who can easilly score 1000 per battle is not fair for either group. th amount of one-sided pub-stomps has increased massivly since this change. just change it to random modes with a graduation wp of 150k. 150,000 wp to graduate!!!!!

CrotchGrab 360 High-Damage 198	Posted - 2013.08.22 11:11:00 - [131] - Quote To give CCP credit what they are doing is tweaking slightly and then tweaking again based on feedback. That's the right way to go. Rather than just change something willy-nilly. This is good news.
Killar-12 The Corporate Raiders 632	Posted - 2013.08.22 12:49:00 - [132] - Quote Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar wrote: it needs to be 150k wp to graduate, if you set it to a higher number of wp new players will be more likly to continue playing after they reach gradation, it will also give them a chance to get familiar with how multiple things work in battle. keeping the graduation wp so low is ruining both the new player experiance and the veteran expriance also, throwing a handfull of guys that can barly get 100 wp a match into battle with people who can easilly score 1000 per battle is not fair for either group. th amount of one-sided pub-stomps has increased massivly since this change. just change it to random modes with a graduation wp of 150k. 150,000 wp to graduate!!!!! Yeah This is a good idea.
Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar Silver Bullet Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 192	Posted - 2013.08.22 18:44:00 - [133] - Quote what feedback told them it was a good thing to put people barly out of milita gear into adv and proto battles, ive never seen a sugestion stating that 400/1500/2000 wp was a decent amount of game experience for new people?? ifnew players arewilling to get 150k wp you can just about garentee they will stay and contnue to play dust, there is no reason for the graduation wp to be so low that new people can play 2-5 battles and be thrown in a proto arena so soon unless you are trying to make them quit and never return. new people should have to play 100 battles or more of all types befre they 'graduate'.
Niuvo The Phoenix Federation 396	Posted - 2013.08.25 03:13:00 - [134] - Quote So I recruited someone today and while I was teaching him how to play, I found that there were no clear objectives. He didn't know why he was fighting for. Yes, he kept killing and killing with the AR, so I told him to use the S. pistol. He then took a liking to the SMG. In the game, people had no idea what they were doing. If maybe they understood more they will play better. Also the rewards for playing were nominal. There needs to be a clearer focus in Academy, to bring in and keep new players. Matchmaking should help this in 1.4.
Yokal Bob Gravity Prone EoN. 162	Posted - 2013.08.25 13:04:00 - [135] - Quote CCP Greyscale wrote: 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. 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. 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 Still needs increasing, a decent player can get that in one match, remember once they are out of the academy they are up against fully armed squads. the difference crushes a load of new players.
dustwaffle Gravity Prone EoN. 386	Posted - 2013.08.28 09:07:00 - [136] - Quote Yokal Bob wrote: CCP Greyscale wrote: 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. Still needs increasing, a decent player can get that in one match, remember once they are out of the academy they are up against fully armed squads. the difference crushes a load of new players. I dunno, 2000 WP from one match is kinda hard TBH. Don't forget, we have the knowledge and experience to know what works and what gives the most WP. Experienced players get squads going, squad orders, uplinks, RE's, nanohives etc. Which new players might not know how to do yet. Newbies are likely to get most if not all their WP from kills, and at 50 WP per kill it's still around 40 kills. A decent newbie up against other newbies may get something like 7-15 kills in their first few games (hopefully) and that still translates to at least about 2-3 games before getting booted out. It's not AS bad as it seems, though I do agree that WP limit should be higher.
Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar Silver Bullet Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 207	Posted - 2013.08.28 09:14:00 - [137] - Quote yeah what the heck is ur malfunction ccp ur acadamy graduations need to be set way higher than what they currently are, and do you have a sp cap on acadamy battles aswell? my cousin tried to play today for the first time on his character i made him about a month ago (2.1mil sp) and he didnt even have an acdamy option, he has 0 wp on hin name but he was not aloud in the acadamy to learn anything about how this game works and i think thats a ripoff for him, just because he was saving up passive sp before he jumped into dust is no reaon he shouldnt be givin a chance to learn how it works with other new peope, lucky for him i was online to help him out but what about thoose ohers who dont hav family to help them how do you expect them to gain a decent grasp of how things work in this game?? i garentee i was not there to help him he would have quit after his first batle 2.1mil sp or not. THE ACADAMY GRADUATION NEEDS TO BE SET TO WAR POINTS ONLY AND IT NEEDS TO BE 150,000, IF U WANT TO PUT A SKILL POINT CAP ON ACADAMY BATTLES IT NEEDS TO BE AROUND 6 MIL , BUT I REALLY DOUBT IF SOMEONE HAS 6MIL SP THAT THEY HAVE LESS THAN 150K WP UNLESS THEY WERE AN ALT ACCOUNT OR SOMEONE WHO QUIT THE GAME BECAUSE IT WAS TOO DAMN HARD TO LEARN WHILE GETTING PROTOSTOMPED.
dustwaffle Gravity Prone EoN. 386	Posted - 2013.08.28 10:17:00 - [138] - Quote Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar wrote: yeah what the heck is ur malfunction ccp ur acadamy graduations need to be set way higher than what they currently are, and do you have a sp cap on acadamy battles aswell? my cousin tried to play today for the first time on his character i made him about a month ago (2.1mil sp) and he didnt even have an acdamy option, he has 0 wp on hin name but he was not aloud in the acadamy to learn anything about how this game works and i think thats a ripoff for him, just because he was saving up passive sp before he jumped into dust is no reaon he shouldnt be givin a chance to learn how it works with other new peope, lucky for him i was online to help him out but what about thoose ohers who dont hav family to help them how do you expect them to gain a decent grasp of how things work in this game?? i garentee i was not there to help him he would have quit after his first batle 2.1mil sp or not. THE ACADAMY GRADUATION NEEDS TO BE SET TO WAR POINTS ONLY AND IT NEEDS TO BE 150,000, IF U WANT TO PUT A SKILL POINT CAP ON ACADAMY BATTLES IT NEEDS TO BE AROUND 6 MIL , BUT I REALLY DOUBT IF SOMEONE HAS 6MIL SP THAT THEY HAVE LESS THAN 150K WP UNLESS THEY WERE AN ALT ACCOUNT OR SOMEONE WHO QUIT THE GAME BECAUSE IT WAS TOO DAMN HARD TO LEARN WHILE GETTING PROTOSTOMPED. Sssh, the adults are talking here.
CHINA BL4CK Krusual Covert Operators Minmatar Republic 0	Posted - 2013.08.28 18:42:00 - [139] - Quote CCP Greyscale wrote: 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. A while ago it was 10000 wp, divide this by an average of 1000 wp makes around 10 games before you got booted from academy. Now they make it 2000 wp in skirmish so basically you get kicked out of academy in about 2-3 games. Personally i'd say 50,000 wp, which should be more than enough IF the new match making system in 1.4 works. They will also need to allow new players to select any game mode they wish and if possible free respecs to test out the way they wish to build their character. As I stated, this is IF the new 1.4 match making system works, if not well anything up from 85,000 wp should be ok. In the end alot of players never even had academy. I would even go as far as to say minimal sp cap should be raised to at least 5 mil sp so that the new player can get some decent gear. In the end most protobears have 20,000,000 - 30,000,000 sp so what is 5 mil? It's only a 4th or a 6th of what a protobear would have now, consider it a way to break in new players in a fairish sort of way.

CCP Greyscale C C P C C P Alliance 41	Posted - 2013.08.30 10:00:00 - [140] - 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.


Absolute Idiom II No Free Pass 576	Posted - 2013.08.30 11:59:00 - [141] - Quote CCP Greyscale wrote: 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. :ChemistryDog:
Hawkin P Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 223	Posted - 2013.08.30 16:34:00 - [142] - Quote Either put battle academy back up to over 20k warpoints where it needs to be or stop wasting your time on it and put out a decent dust patch, one that actually has new content, new game modes, NEW THINGS TO DO, instead putting out patches with pretty new interfaces, with nothing new to do.
Iron Wolf Saber Den of Swords 7892	Posted - 2013.08.30 18:29:00 - [143] - Quote Hawkin P wrote: Either put battle academy back up to over 20k warpoints where it needs to be or stop wasting your time on it and put out a decent dust patch, one that actually has new content, new game modes, NEW THINGS TO DO, instead putting out patches with pretty new interfaces, with nothing new to do. You need to stand back and try to see the pattern in testing and reasony why they are being methodically changed. These are not random or pre planned tweaks. They're trying to Identify specific values that will help retain a new player who will likely never post of the forum if they quit.
Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar Silver Bullet Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 227	Posted - 2013.08.30 23:46:00 - [144] - Quote 150,000 wp to graduate quit bullshltin and set the bar higher so it actually feels like an acomplishment to graduate.
Alabastor 'TheBlaster' Alcar Silver Bullet Solutions DARKSTAR ARMY 227	Posted - 2013.08.30 23:55:00 - [145] - Quote Iron Wolf Saber wrote: Hawkin P wrote: Either put battle academy back up to over 20k warpoints where it needs to be or stop wasting your time on it and put out a decent dust patch, one that actually has new content, new game modes, NEW THINGS TO DO, instead putting out patches with pretty new interfaces, with nothing new to do. You need to stand back and try to see the pattern in testing and reasony why they are being methodically changed. These are not random or pre planned tweaks. They're trying to Identify specific values that will help retain a new player who will likely never post of the forum if they quit. there is no pattern, this is making proto-stosmping worse and nw people are quiting, there is no decent reason why the graduation wp has to be so low or only one game mode either, unless u would like to explain this to us
Commander Tuna KILL-EM-QUICK RISE of LEGION 86	Posted - 2013.08.31 00:32:00 - [146] - Quote Iron Wolf Saber wrote: Hawkin P wrote: Either put battle academy back up to over 20k warpoints where it needs to be or stop wasting your time on it and put out a decent dust patch, one that actually has new content, new game modes, NEW THINGS TO DO, instead putting out patches with pretty new interfaces, with nothing new to do. You need to stand back and try to see the pattern in testing and reasony why they are being methodically changed. These are not random or pre planned tweaks. They're trying to Identify specific values that will help retain a new player who will likely never post of the forum if they quit. So instead of graduating in 3-4 matches, the new player will now graduate in 2-3 matches. What on earth are they testing then?
Vell0cet Royal Uhlans Amarr Empire 71	Posted - 2013.08.31 10:31:00 - [147] - Quote Has there been any thought to a 2-tiered battle academy? First tier is for people logging in for the first time and is analogous to what we have now. The second tier (post-graduate battle academy) is a "kiddy pool" option that would a gamemode type available to players under 2 mill SP (roughly--actual values could be tweaked), in addition to the existing standard modes. I think having people with 1,900,000 in the same match with people launching DUST for the first time trying to figure out how the controls work would be a disaster (which is why the battle academy should push people through rather quickly). Having a safe haven, to take someone from just graduating the academy to playing with the sharks and a reasonable enough SP pool to get some kills should help with new player retention. The 2nd tier academy shouldn't restrict players to only that gamemode though. You should be able to participate everywhere after graduating the first academy. Also, having the Armory test-range is critical for NPE, so they can experiment with weapons to pick a direction they will enjoy. Once a player has 2,000,000+ SP, they should be able to compete reasonably enough.
Niuvo The Phoenix Federation 431	Posted - 2013.08.31 15:42:00 - [148] - Quote Lots of good comments here. I think we are the trainers then, because we want noobs to play better. We all just want to play a good game. Noobs should play with noobs until they get better, then we draft them into our corps. Or they may make a new "generation" of corps.
DJINN Marauder Ancient Exiles 1135	Posted - 2013.09.09 08:00:00 - [149] - Quote My alt graduated in the first match... 2865 wp.. :( Definitely should be higher.
Killar-12 The Corporate Raiders 1048	Posted - 2013.09.09 19:56:00 - [150] - Quote Iron Wolf Saber wrote: Hawkin P wrote: Either put battle academy back up to over 20k warpoints where it needs to be or stop wasting your time on it and put out a decent dust patch, one that actually has new content, new game modes, NEW THINGS TO DO, instead putting out patches with pretty new interfaces, with nothing new to do. You need to stand back and try to see the pattern in testing and reasony why they are being methodically changed. These are not random or pre planned tweaks. They're trying to Identify specific values that will help retain a new player who will likely never post of the forum if they quit. oh how to destroy the game... it all makes sense...



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