EVE Echoes Expert Review

I had the pleasure to do a job interview in which the interview exercise asks to conduct an expert review of EVE Echoes, a mobile sandbox spaceship MMO made by NetEase Games.

Study Goals

The goal is to analyze the First Time User Experience (FTUE) up until ‘Chapter 3 — More Experience’ is unlocked, and to conduct a presentation of up to 10 slides aimed at communicating the top findings to the supposed developement team.

The Analysis

In preparation to the study, different methods were used to build tools to create a scaffold for the presentation:

• Gameplay flowchart and onboarding plan for an overview of the gameplay flow of the onboarding, and for a structurized list of features and/or systems in which it was verified that 1) most onboarding was done by contextual tutorial text or learning by doing, 2) the level of challenge demanded of the player at each givens step, and 3) some elements are not taught to the player, allowing to elaborate the ‘suggestions’ block in the communication to the PROD team.
• Rational Game Design in which the information is structured by pillars, game systems, mechanics, skills/actions and atomic parameters to help validate the design intention.
• List of issues categorized by playability heuristics with a corresponding severity rating (for which the presentation reflects the top findings).

Snipet of EVE Echoes’ Rational Game Design

Snipet of EVE Echoes’ Onboarding Plan

Snipet of EVE Echoes’ Heuristics, Issues and Severity Ratings

The Presentation

Conclusion

In hindsight, the heuristics’ codes were deemed unnecessary information that cluttered the screen without adding important information to the PROD team.

In a presentation to the PROD team you should always have prepared answers to their expected questions. The famous questions “why would I do this?” or “if my onboarding is already done and it works, why should I waste resources reworking it?”. My answer is that the Return on Investment (ROI) should increase the conversion of new users, especially on D1, which is when the most of the dropouts occur. When Marketing spends roughly 50% of the project’s budget in advertisement to bring attention to the game, the FTUE has to work towards retaining players. In Free-to-Play (F2P) games, the conversion of players drops significantly if the FTUE does not match the players’ expectations within the first few minutes of gameplay. Therefore, if the reworking of the feature involves less cognitive overload and a shorter (contextual) tutorial, it will likely result in a lower dropout rate, which is what the PROD team ultimately wants to hear.