Marvel WoH: Nexus Event UX Design
Marvel: War of Heroes Nexus Trailer
Background Knowleage:
In Marvel: War of Heroes, players will travel through the Nexus portal to explore various iconic locales in the Marvel Universe, embarking on missions and pitting themselves against enemies in a brand new Revolution Battle system. Powerful cards, strategic card placement, and skillful deck maneuvering are all necessary to obliterate enemies and amass valuable rewards. Players can collect all-new Nexus cards by completing missions in the Nexus, then gathering and crafting over 60 new Materials and Gear that can be equipped onto Nexus cards to arm them for battle. Use these powerful Nexus cards in the game's events to battle other Agents and bosses for even more rewards. The initial release of Nexus will feature the world of Asgard - a realm based off Norse mythology. Experience the "Might of Asgard" by assisting Thor in his quest to prove his worth to Odin, as he challenges fellow Asgardians such as Heimdall and Sif. Collect the Nexus cards of the Asgardian by defeating them The update introduces the Nexus, a brand new game mode that includes all-new gameplay mechanics, a revamped user interface, and a dynamic card evolution system for a brand new set of Nexus cards.
Problem:
Marvel WoH was facing a tough time after its 2 years anniversary: new users conversion dropped heavily while existing users were leaving. Marvel WoH has only one global server, thus new registered users could barely catch up to the old players.
Hard-core players were craving for new event — Obviously 4 monthly regular updated events couldn't meet the needs of all users already.
Objective:
Introduce new trending event to both fresh users and old users, in order to keep the old players retention rate and increase new users conversion rate.
Solution:
New event development: Nexus
My responsibility in Nexus team was to create user flow and prototype of the entire event including battle system, regular/daily mission system, reward system, new card system etc.
1. Conceive
Game play mechanism generation
6 Nexus event game designers grouped into 2 groups, each groups held a internal brainstorm meeting and came up with a major mechanism.
Held a team brainstorm meeting with all the Marvel team members, voting for the better ideas.
Competitors Research: Featured similar game play reference: Dot Arena, Magic Rush, Marvel: Future Fight, etc. We chose those games based on the popularity of the trending games and top revenue games at that time. We listed the core features of these competitors and discussed the pros and cons.
Finally decided the core feature list of Nexus.
2. Plan
1st, created the game mechanism specification and user flow.
E.g.1. Battle logic specs:
E.g.2.
Information Architecture:
E.g. 3 Forced tutorial for Nexus event:
Meanwhile, I cooperated with other planners on design of event data structure (User data and Event data) including:
Simulated user behaviour in Nexus event and created user story board
Level design
Mission/Reward/Item/Card data design
Event data simulation
Monetization simulation
3. Rapid Prototyping
In order to get users involved early in the design process with quick and inexpensive online prototypes, I created the wireframe prototype to uncover usability issues and validate design decisions based on actual user reactions. We iterated the process until the prototype being approved by internal team members and managers.
Part of the wireframe prototype of Nexus by using Balsamiq and POP (now MARVEL prototype)
POP link: https://marvelapp.com/1bc78de/screen/21591167
4. Develop Phase: Work closely with Engineers and Artists
During developing phase, other planners and I managed and updated team schedule and held a team quick sync meeting every morning to make sure all team members are on the same page and each member is clear of his/her responsibility and timeline.
With Analysts: We created all the data report sample which we need to track event performance data after event release. Also, we worked together to create data report of revenue prediction based on game sales trends.
With Engineers: we explained everything clearly with engineers in details and communicated with them all the time.
With Designers: I ordered all the UI and animation resources needed and wrote or draw the requests on the ordersheets.
Once received UI assets from art team, I generated the high fidelity prototype before engineers put the final assets into the game.
High fidelity prototype:
POP link: https://marvelapp.com/1g865j3
5. QA Phase
Internal test:
α test: core features test and tweak
β test: production level test
Checked QA test list and answer questions from QA team.
Helped create&close JIRA tickets.
6. Internal release and Official release
Since Nexus was the biggest updates in Marvel WoH. we did the internal release 2 weeks before the official release. During the internal release we also did a internal competition, the top 3 players would be rewarded after the competition ended. I'm proud to say that I was the 3rd best Nexus player in our company ^_^
Based on the internal user data and feedback, we iterated the process again and again, to polish the event even better, especially the level design part.
Official release
7. Recap and Reflection
After the official release, we paid close attention to the event performance: tutorial clear rate, user retention rate, daily event unique users, event paying users, daily revenue etc.
I dug deep in players needs, I came up with the initial ideas, I conducted the initial ideas into executable proposal and I helped the whole team to ship the product online successfully.
Nexus event not only brought Marvel: War of Heroes more profits and user experience, but also laid the foundation of shipping full functional social mobile games by the team of Singapore and Hanoi studios together.
Marvel WoH Nexus was the most great project that I had gone through with. As the only user experience designer in the team, I explored and learned the UX design procedure and prototyping tool on my own, as a new work force in this field, I know I have a long long way to go.
Stay hungry, Stay foolish :)
