As game designers I expect you to have some basic understanding of behavior reinforcement and how to get players to do what you want. The idea that creating what we call "feels bad moments" should be avoided and that positive interactions go much further to keep a player coming back to potentially spend more money, is a CORE tenant of game design.
What you are doing, is creating a bad experience for players, and then penalizing them for trying to improve their experience. So now they've had two bad experiences. People don't do something that makes them feel bad for long.
If you want them to stay, give them a good reason to. Make rewards meaningful. Give us Map voting. Queue teams vs other teams. Actually balance the lobbies.
Quitter penalties are the laziest and most counterproductive design choices you could have possibly made.
This in no way addresses the issues with PvP and why people are leaving matches, and it looks very much like you are trying to strong-arm players into accepting your SBMM system.
Let's be clear. You've taken the most casual PvP mode and instituted SBMM and a penalty system. It is no longer a casual mode.
Where is the SBMM in Trials? You remember, the "Pinnacle" of PvP!
You need to have a dedicated PvP environment that is truly CASUAL. Rumble is fine, but the mechanics scare too many people away and it's not a team mode. The rotator playlist is fun, but too often employs non-standard mechanics. If you're going to turn control into comp, then you need to give us a new dedicated casual team experience. Someone suggested Clash in another post as a dedicated casual PvP mode and I think that makes sense.
In trying to bring more people into Crucible, people that likely won't stay, you're pushing the players who actually spend their time there away. That downward trend you're trying to correct for may do the opposite.
If you want to change a behavior, positive reinforcement will always have a higher success rate than negative reinforcement, and much higher than negative punishment.
-
2 Replies[quote]The idea that creating what we call "feels bad moments" should be avoided and that positive interactions go much further to keep a player coming back to potentially spend more money, is a CORE tenant of game design.[/quote]Couldn't agree more, which is why quitter penalties are a good thing.