Lord of Heroes is a F2P mobile game with turn RPG and Character Collection. This game has strong point to characters aesthetic and becomes a new trend for the Korean subculture. I have some friends who have played LOH for a long time. Though they love characters, sometimes they complained about unsolved issues. I started these case study because LOH won The grand prize — Korea Game Awards 2020 and that, Clovergames gave "1,000K points of Renown" to each player, a significant resource in LOH.
-
Developer: Clover games
-
Period: Mar 2020 - Present
-
Service in: 143 contries with 10 Languages
-
Downloads: Total 1M+
-
Platform
Mobile
Duration
2 Month (Jan 2021 - Feb 2021)
Role
UX design, User research
Tools
Adobe XD, Photoshop, Miro, Excel
TL;DR
Who and What
Novice players and Expert players who play daily, have over 5 months of playtime, reached max profile level, and have purchase experience
The Problem
1.Critical issues in Core gameplay loop
2.Learnability gaps and insufficient support within Heroes feature, despite being a character-collection game
The Solution
1.Add contextually appropriate info within Core gameplay loop
2.Revamp Heroes feature to support learning and long-term progression
Validation
The highest increase in satisfaction was observed in both Core gameplay loop and Heroes feature from player community
Process
Discover
Self Diary study
Improving a product begins with identifying the problems it faces. To do so, I conducted a self-diary study for seven days, playing 1–2 hours each day. Recorded satisfaction degree, and thoughts during game play.
Usability test from Actual players
Tests combined with in-depth interviews with three expert players. This helped define the target audience and uncover pain points within their daily routines.
Define
Persona (Generic player type)
Subculture Fangirls who also love playing games
-
Women in 20s - 30s
-
They love both subculture activities (manga, animation, etc.) and games
-
They usually communicate with similar groups on Twitter
-
They are fascinated by specific characters, consume money for them, and search for new targets to fit their taste
-
They feel uncomfortable with character design in Korean RPG because those are too sexual
Player journey map
Key insights
-
Novice players found manual control attractive. Expert players enjoy hard contents that have to consider combinations of squad and equipment (Alliance raid, Obelisk)
-
Players set different squads and equipment in battles depending on the contents. But they should have a long journey to go to the heroes page when they want to change equipment.
-
In general, players checked and grew heroes toughly and uncomfortably on the Heroes page.
-
When bought heroes, public evaluation and performance were important but those couldn't be seen in the shop
-
At Alliance raid, players couldn’t know ‘currently participating player’. It blocks tactical participation from other members.
-
-
Players started LOH and retained there because Character and narrative appeal to them.
-
Players easily learn LOH from their surroundings because the game spread in subculture community
-
Players want to know detail about characters and narratives though they're not related to playing.
-
-
Novice players understand simple game rules confusingly, and hard to set goals for retaining LOH
-
Expert players cannot find information fastly what they need or don't want to use some UI because of inconvenience.
-
So, How Might We help players immerse more in LOH?
... Also improve usability issues across multiple features, with lower priority
Shop, Mystic Shop, Alchemy, Log-in, Main Lobby, and Settings
Competitive Benchmarking
I selected six references from large-scale, long-running AAA character-collection games, reviewing them selectively based on the target users and the context of each problem.
Mobile: Cookie Run: Kingdom, Genshin Impact, Summoners War, Blue Archive, FIFA Mobile, and Girls’ Frontline
PC: Overwatch, Apex Legends
_gif.gif)
LOH Players Survey on Twitter (2021 Feb 2 - Feb 8)
Got 788 responses, and analyse 725 after data cleaning
-
Though UI changes easily get negative feedback from users, overall satisfaction of prototype significantly improved (5.64 → 7.23)
-
Prototype satisfaction is higher than current across every player level section
-
Prototype satisfaction is higher than current across every feature apart from Main lobby and Login page
-
Features related core game mechanics showed the largest gains in satisfaction.
In particular, Heroes and Alliance Raids, previously among the lowest-scoring, saw significant improvements. -
Main lobby score decreased. Presumably, players felt more immersed in the current interaction, though it was difficult to find info.
Takeaways
Closer an issue is to core mechanics, the greater the impact of fixing it
While usability issues were addressed across multiple features, the most dramatic satisfaction gains came from improvements tied directly to core mechanics: Heroes and Alliance Raid.
Continuously balance function and immersion
Satisfaction with the Main Lobby decreased slightly. While the redesigned suggestions improved usability and visibility, players valued immersive interaction with characters. For long-running online games, making balanced trade-offs would be important.
Noise marketing can be uncomfortable, but it proved highly effective for driving survey participation
During survey distribution, some players in community accused the UI of copying existing designs, which caused friction. However, the controversy significantly increased reach, resulting in over 80% of responses within 22 hours via Twitter. Only about 8% of responses were considered invalid.