Overview
Lord of Heroes is a F2P mobile game where players can enjoy strategy RPG and Character Collection. This game has strong point to characters aesthetic and becomes a new trend for the Korean otaku subculture. I have some friends who have played LOH for a long time. Though they love characters, sometimes they complained about some unsolved issues.
I started these case study because LOH won The grand prize — Korea Game Awards 2020 and that, Clovergames provided "1,000K points of Renown" to each player, a significant resource in LOH.
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Developer: Clover games
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Period: Mar 2020 - Present
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Service in: 143 contries with 10 Languages
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Downloads: Total 1M+
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Platform
Mobile
Duration
Jan 2021 - Feb 2021
Role
UX design, User research
Tools
XD, Photoshop, Miro, Excel, Illustrator
Background
Starting from Identifying problems of the current product
Improving a product begins with identifying the problems it faces. To do so, I first conducted a self-applied diary study and then usability tests combined with in-depth interviews with expert players. This process helped define the target audience and uncover pain points within their daily routines.
Process
Improving a product begins with identifying the problems it faces. To do so, I first conducted a self-applied diary study and then usability tests combined with in-depth interviews with expert players. This process helped define the target audience and uncover pain points within their daily routines.
Discover
Diary study
I conducted a self-diary study for seven days, playing 1–2 hours each day. Recorded satisfaction level, retention motivation, and thoughts during game play.
Desk research
I reviewed five games in the same genre as Lord of Heroes to benchmark UX patterns and player motivation strategies.
Usability Test
I recruited and interviewed three expert players who had played daily for over 6 months, reached the max Lord level, and made in-game purchases.
Define
Persona (Generic player type)
Subculture Fangirls who also love playing games
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Women in 20s - 30s who usually communicate with similar groups on Twitter
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They love both subculture activities (about manga, animation, etc.) and games
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They are fascinated by specific characters, consume money for them, and search for new targets to fit their taste
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They feel uncomfortable with character design in Korean famous RPG because those are too sexual
Player journey map
Key insights
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Novice players found manual control attractive. Expert players enjoy hard contents that have to consider combinations of squad and equipment (Alliance raid, Obelisk)
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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.
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In general, players checked and grew heroes toughly and uncomfortably on the Heroes page.
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When bought heroes, public evaluation and performance were important but those couldn't be seen in the shop
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At Alliance raid, players couldn’t know ‘currently participating player’. It blocks tactical participation from other members.
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Players started LOH and retained there because Character and narrative appeal to them.
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Players easily learn LOH from their surroundings because the game spread in subculture community
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Players want to know detail about characters and narratives though they're not related to playing.
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Novice players understand simple game rules confusingly, and hard to set goals for retaining LOH
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Expert players cannot find information fastly what they need or don't want to use some UI because of inconvenience.
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Design
So, How Might We help players immerse more in LOH?
... And there is possibility to improve all screens where usability issues surfaced such as novice players struggling to understand, or expert players experiencing friction:
Alchemy, Shop, Mystic Shop, Log-in, Main Lobby, and Settings.
Ideation & Benchmark
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Ideated multiple features through key insights and HMW questions, then prioritized them based on impact.
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Referenced large-scale mobile character-collecting games with over a year of live service as competitive benchmarks.
(Cookie Run: Kingdom, Summoners War, Blue Archive, FIFA Mobile, Genshin Impact, and Girls’ Frontline) -
Referenced mobile human factor principles and generic mobile layout patterns from both games and digital products when structuring screen layouts.
Key Solutions
1 - Improve for easy tactical consideration for battle
Heroes
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Improve flows based on actual player needs
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Improve layout to see info at a glance
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Add missing info for comparison on Heroes List
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Add functions what players need
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Sorting
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Presets (Same as Alliance raid)
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(Detail) Total combined stats
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(Detail - Public evaluation) Heroes rating
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Core-loop gameplay
Area map→Battle ready→Alliance raid→Arena
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Provide Preset on heroes and battle-ready.
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Mark 'Current participating player' on Alliance raid.
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Mark 'Heroes attack turn' on auto-play HUD.
2 - More easily collect heroes and Do fandom activities
Heroes
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Add voice and dialogue for accessing everything about heroes on one page
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Host creator events that players can participate in on Twitter.
UI that easy to learn and use efficiently
Main Lobby
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Use UI to enter each feature and provide an immersive experience by using 'camera dolly in-out', 'communication with heroes'.
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Give the players the Hamburger menu.
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Improve layout for Preferences, Questline, and documentation to get more info
Shop
Shop, Mistic shop, Alliance shop
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Use the vertical layout to consider mobile human factor
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Group similar contents for easy understanding.
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Improve layout for getting more info easily on one page
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(Shop) Add 'Heroes rating' to read public evaluation.
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(Mistic shop) Send push alarm to players' mobile when its item list refresh.
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Validate
LOH Players Satisfaction Survey on Twitter (2021 Feb 2 - Feb 8)
Got 788 responses, and analyse 725 after data cleaning
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Though UI changes easily get negative feedback from users, overall satisfaction of prototype significantly improved (5.64 → 7.23)
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Prototype satisfaction is higher than current across every player level section
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Prototype satisfaction is higher than current across every feature apart from Main lobby and Login page
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Alliance raid had the lowest score and increased to the highest. Presumably, it was the result of solving the player's most thorny problems.
(Player could know 'current participating player' in the prototype) -
Main lobby score decreased. Presumably, players felt more immersed in the current interaction, though it was difficult to find information.
(Current - Touching character modelings to enter each content)
Takeaways
Functionality isn’t always what players value — it’s the game’s uniqueness that stands out
While new main lobby might improve usability, players preferred current, less convenient but more immersive interaction
A bit of cyberbullying can actually become effective publicity — as long as you can take it
Thanks to that, I received over 80% of responses within 22 hours through Twitter retweets, Medium traffic, and the survey
I should replace short-answer questions with multiple choice
I did not analyze a total of 1,172 responses because of the quantity