Hi Snarkie! May I ask how the project for the new battledome redesign was conceived? While most users are very happy with the new daily rewards, many feel that the three challenger difficulty settings replacing the old hp increase with every win has effectively destroyed the competitiveness of 1p battledoming. That combined with a never-ending beta launched in October 2012, with some functionalities never being introduced at all, like stances, pet resistances, stealing, defenders of neopia, and featured challenger, plus a multitude of glitches in how weapons work in 1p and 2p, just to name a few.
The Obelisk War was released in march 2013 and after that there were not many updates regarding the BD.
http://battlepedia.jellyneo.net/?go=battledomebeta
TL;DR Why was HP increase scrapped in the BD? Was ir ever considered adding it as a fourth difficulty option, along with the 1p HSTs we used to have? Was the BD project abandoned for other priorities? Do you feel the new BD is better than the old one we have?
Thanks for your reply!
Seba
snarkie
Not a robot... probably.
Hi! Great questions. I get to go into some behind-the-scenes decision-making stuff, which is always nice. ? There’s a lot to each question so I’ll try to be as succinct as possible!
HP Increase:
Data we collected during the initial redesign phase proved that this feature of the BD was hardly used and was actually preventing most people from continuing to use the BD in general. (It wasn’t encouraging people to train as intended; most people just stopped playing.) So it definitely wasn’t part of the initial set of features we rebuilt for the beta. We did like it and knew it was popular among dedicated BDers but that number was so heckin’ low that we went back and forth on whether to rebuild it in a future phase or not spend the time on it at all. (Time and resource constraints were particularly tough at that time.) A member of staff fought really hard and made the case that it would be great for everyone with some tweaks to rewards/high score tables so that’s actually what saved it. It was supposed to be added in Phase 3.
I should note that all the other missing features you mentioned were also planned for either Phase 2 or 3.
BD project abandoned?:
Yes, though not intentionally. The beta was intended to be a first phase, with other features, both new and returning, added in over time. But a few things happened that ruined all our plans, the biggest ones being:
New BD better?:
“Better” is super subjective but I definitely think the revamp was the right move. Here’s why…
The old BD was so underused by the player-base that we were essentially supporting a dead feature. (I know veteran BDers would disagree but the reality was that they were a very, very, very small minority at the time. They just happened to be a very vocal one.) It was so underused that we were having a hard time justifying spending any time/resources on basic content for it, so it was extremely difficult to convince anyone that revamping it would be in any way successful. The pitch was that we had to keep the core gameplay mainly intact since it tied into so many other things across the site. If no one was playing it already, why would that change with “just a new coat of paint and a few new features”? We’d be wasting massive amounts of time and resources for nothing.
Long story short, the revamped BD in beta saw an increase in daily participation of over 20000%. There are no extra 0’s there. 20,000 percent. With 30/60/90-day retention at crazy levels. (It peaked higher during Obelisk War, of course, but then didn’t dip much below the new averages afterwards.) And of course there were corresponding jumps in related features like training, weapon shopping/trading, BD chatting, and even book reading. We also saw these jumps across every player type. Everyone was a BDer after that and we were shook. I mean, we believed we could make BD popular again for sure but this kind of response took us all by surprise.
So anyway, while it definitely wasn’t perfect by any means and we had a lot left to do, I’d call anything with that level of participation, making many players happy across the board, “better” than the state it was in. (I loved the old BD, which is why I didn’t want it to die completely and fought pretty dang hard for the revamp.)
I hope that was at least somewhat insightful. If you have any other specific questions about this project, please feel free to ask. ?
Hi Snarkie!
Thank you very much for the reply! I was wondering if you could go into more details about the new and returning features intended for the new BD? Either through a reply here or maybe a post on the site regarding the BD revamp project?
What is your opinion on the Faerie Abilities revamp? Many argue that some abilities like Lens Flare and Warlock’s Rage are nothing like what we used to have an are essentially too overpowered http://battlepedia.jellyneo.net/?go=abilities
I also would love to know how the design was planned for the new BD (like the article you made toy the Obelisk War) and what features are still missing of the original plan. We were promised by Jumpstart an update to the BD by Sept 2018 (almost a year late now!) and would be very insightful how the project intended to be in each of the phases and any extra plans you had for when it was fully implemented.
Thanks again!
– Seba
Sure! I’ll need to go through my stash and see if I have any of the Battledome design docs/brainstorms I can pull from (and to jog my memory on all the plans, honestly). It may take me a while to get to it and put something together but I’ve added it to my list!
Thanks Snarkie for the reply!
Regarding the revamped faerie abilities and HP increase, there are some proposals by a BDer which would be nice to get your input on if possible:
http://www.neopets.com/~Samuelosaurus#hpincrease
http://www.neopets.com/~Samuelosaurus#abilities
Looking forwards to reading the BD post whenever it’s possible! Thanks again!
Hey Snarkie, thanks for the insights. I would like to touch upon the necessity of the new Dome and some of its design direction, if that is all right. A lot of this seems to have been driven by the old Battledome not being used very much by the player base. Why did TNT do so little to incentivize its use over the years?
As a quick refresher:
2001 – 2006
Tyrannian Invasion
Brucey B and the Lucky Coin
Champions of Meridell
Battle for Meridell
Hannah and the Ice Caves
Curse of Maraqua
Tale of Woe
2007 – 2012/BD Revamp
Return of Dr. Sloth
The Faeries’ Ruin
Now obviously battle plots, which replaced wars, were very time consuming for all the art, puzzles, etc. But the above trend highlights the Battledome being somewhat neglected by TNT as time went on. If not small little war-like events, TNT could have done other things, such as host 2P tournaments. (To this day the staff basically refuses to release new and compelling 2P weapons, even though with things like League 97 and League 54 essentially make this the easiest thing in the world to do as they have very specific, and weak, weapon requirements.)
Even item drops, which is why we see all the current 1P use, was doable in the old dome. We know that because you guys put item drops in TFR. Now maybe HP Increase would have been a bit of a barrier to it being the cash cow it currently is for players, but even if that was true you could just have had the Inflatable Balthazar drop items, as he never gets harder or even fights back. That is how people farm now, with the ability Lens Flare. It could have even been a hybrid system where players could farm Inflatable Balthazar for dubloons and yellow codestones, and have red codestones and nerkmids be item drops under normal HP Increase opponents.
This is all to say that it doesn’t seem clear that the old battledome itself (or HP Increase) was at fault here for the low level of player activity. Between special battle events, 2P tournaments (perhaps even with avatars), solid weapon releases and even item drops like we have now, it seems like TNT could have fostered growth similar to or even better than what we see with the current dome.
Hi Snarkie!
Looking forward to a BD revamp article if it could be possible! Thanks!
So I’ve only just now seen these comments! Sorry, folks! Follow-ups are tough to catch because of the way this system works and the amount of spam I get mreh. If it’s big enough, it’s safer to ask a new question, I think, FYI!
@neoskulltula: I think I may have already addressed some of this in my last Plot post actually? (Short story is that engagement was way low even while it was being very heavily supported. Like almost from very early on.) But I’ll look and compare so I can answer anything here I didn’t address! And I made a note of this rather than rely on the follow up so hopefully I get to it next time I answer questions!
@everyone else: BD is still on my list, it’s just after a bunch of other requests. But yeah, still there! One day.