New Player Bracket (Suggestion)

This suggestion comes from getting steam rolled in my first 5 matches and from my friends who joined and experienced much the same. The difference between a tailored 250 army and the starting decks is huge. From experience for Lion it only gets worse when any of your units level up and you have to drop something from your company.

We suggest a starting bracket. Say for the first week or 10 wins you play only against those players.


The problem is likely the player population so you would need an opt out setting but also a way to dump them into the normal que after a certain time with perhaps a warning that you are doing so.

This would help with player retention as people wont feel so disadvantaged, game won't look as P2W, give you a sense that there is a learning curve and not just a deep end.

Anyone else have comments or tweaks please add them.

I lost alot of games when I first started too but you get better with fighting better opponents. You have to work your way up like everyone else.

Of course you do that goes without saying. But getting rolled before you have any idea how to play does not lend to keeping players. It's only worsened by running into fine tuned or Legend armies. I can honestly say out of my group of 5 I'm the only one that kept playing and that's only because I have no other way to get my table top fix.

What I've proposed is a way to showcase the game to new players and encourage them to keep going.

I think new player retention should be Cyanide's number one concern. So if this is what it takes, I really think they should think about it.

[Jigoku]

Hello, and thanks for your feedback.

We took some measures to prevent the situations where beginners run into Legendary units; that should be effective with the next patch.

As for the more experienced players encounters, the matchmaking formula should normally take care of giving you the most adequate opponent, and this includes Renown Ranks (it stills depends on your timezone and on the number of players searching within your waiting time though).

I do agree the experience for new players might at times be a bit harsh - although to be fair I found the jump from 250 to 400 even more punishing.
Your suggestion isn't bad, but I wonder if it'd require a lot of work by the devs to be implemented. Maybe the problem could be instead lessened by optimizing the starter rosters for all the races? For example I remember noticing that in the Lion one there's room for a further Sparkling.

[EDIT] Thanks for your answer Jigoku, you sent it while I was writing. ^_^

Excellent thank you for the response. The steps your taking would definitly address some of the concerns.

Sadly something like I am suggesting would require a whopping amount of work. That said having been frontline for 3 different start up tabletop companies, gating in new players is always a priority since that is going to promise growth and longevity.

If anyone has any other suggestions on how to streamline those first few learning games please add them. Tweaking the starting companies is a great start. In that vein perhaps some why of offering the new players a guide on how to grow those starter list into something at 400?

Good point. Maybe some new, more advanced tutorials could be added? I'm sure the pros here could write a short summary of "things to take heed of" to start being successful (in my inexperience I could already quote a couple, like checking the movement range of enemy melees and taking note of their run range too before moving your own troops).