Friday 10 April 2015

On Wargaming behavior analyst team

Source.

Hello warriors,

you probably didn't know it - I did not - but Wargaming is not just about games, it's also about psychology. They have their own player behavior analyzing team working on the data obtained from live servers in order to make players as happy as possible - sorry, to make the most money of course :) Andrey Yarantsev (WG vice-president) and Sergei Kadomsky (player behavior data analyst) reveal how it works. Here is a summary of what is written in the Russian article above.

- analyst work consists of routine (reading reports, discovering issues and solving them, discovering negative trends) and special commission when a client comes and asks "it was like this and changed to this, why?"
- in game industry, analytics can be split into marketing (to achieve high return of investment) and development (internal)
- in WG case, the analysts segment the player-base into blocs (payers/non-payers, newbies/hardcore etc.) and treat them accordingly
- one of the latest reports was the report was an analysis of why players are leaving WoT and what players groups are the most risky
- on average, WoT player plays 20-25 battles in one session
- the amount of traffic on RU server is hundreds of terabytes of data per day
- analysts are collecting analyzing all kinds of data apart from the obvious (XP, grind speed, damage done etc.) , for example socialization (when the player plays in platoon, in company, when does he join a clan) or behavior in chat, purchases (consumer behavior of the player)
- marketing is also collecting and  connecting practically all the data available - for example how long does it take players from clicking on the ad banner they saw somewhere to buy their first premium tanks: even the smallest issues in this chain have to be remedied
- the most important data that are looked at first are the online numbers, new registrations, payments and expenses
- the most typical reason for various non-standard behavior in this sense (payment drops etc.) are technical issues with the game (server downtime), even smaller fluctuations however trigger an investigation
- WG analysts are also taking regions into account and studying each region separately as well
- the most important values for the analysts are CCU (concurrent users), new registrations, payments, CPI (costs per install) and LTV (life time value, eg. what the player spends during his gaming career in total)
- when WoT started, players were split into very basic groups (newbies/potential core/core + payers/non-payers). Later on, the analysis became more complicated (for example "how is the non paying core part of players behaving")
- another phenomenon that was investigated was the one of "paying newbies"
- regarding various groups of players, CW players for example are motivated "by the need to win and lead an army", e-sports players are motivated by the option to earn money and to accomplish something. The motive of random players is mostly "fun"
- developers are trying to stimulate team-play "from the bottom" - first incentivize players to play platoons, then companies, then clans, because socialization is what keeps the players in the game
- random players are incentivized by minigames, discounts, events and competitions
- one of the most important elements that keeps players in the game is user-generated content (social networks, videos, streams)
- stimulating players to buy stuff is actually pretty difficult, they have to start thinking that they actually need something, like premium account. One way to motivate them are various discounts - but there's a huge problem: if they come too often, people get used to them. That's why WG is trying to attach discounts to various very important events and tries not to make them like a regular thing.
- instructional videos (for example "How to play XX") also stimulate players to buy stuff because players that do not know the vehicle are afraid to spend money on it
- one of the cases where analysis failed were historical battles that expected much higher interest from players, one of the main reasons the format failed was "lack of balance and the absence of garage battles"
- another huge failure was the 9.0 improved graphics where the developers overestimated the desire of players to upgrade their PC, expected 30-50 percent of players to switch to improved graphics immediately and in result only 5 percent did
- one of the things that surprised the analysts is how long some memes can survive, some RU memes survive for years ever since the betatest
- 70 percent of RU players claim that WoT changed their attitude towards history (reading more books about it and stuff)

50 comments:

  1. Most of this doesn't surprise me, really. Maybe the improved graphics switch? I'd also expect more, 5% is pretty low.

    Though it shows that WG knows exactly what they are doing. Sometimes they take their time and sometimes they miss (HB looking at you), but they know where they are aiming with short-term goals.

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    1. Maybe they were underestimating people's desire for smooth frame rates.

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  2. very true since Jingles was the one that kept me playing for my first 1k games until I really enjoyed it

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    1. Hell... he was the one that made me enjoy a KV-2, was about to sell the tank until he shown the way. Also decided to get my StuG III G after he advised in one of his videos, 1 Pools, 4 Radleys and 1 Kolobanov on that TD currently.

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    2. jingles is successful and attractive is bcox he plays for fun. like TOG, KV2, Luchs, E100 and Matilda. All are not the best performer in their tier, but FUN.

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    3. i guess he mainly attracted noobs and average players though... As i said b4, players who watch him is for fun, not necessary good. watch quickybaby for skill, and rita for............... feminine?

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    4. If you think people watch me solely for being a women it means you haven't watched me yet, you can still surprise yourself. ;)

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    5. Stugg IIIG is a good seal clubbers tank, no doubt.

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    6. "jingles is successful and attractive" Thank you for making me giggle. :P

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    7. better show this comment to jingles ;) we may get freedom in his salt mines

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    8. QB for skill? Pfft. If you really want to raise your game, watch Zeven.

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  3. That was a really interesting article.

    The 9.0 point confused me tho' :/
    So WG, who doesnt want to add more HQ stuff because of russian calculators, expected to launch a huge update full of bug and then russians would suddenly sell their calculators for actual computer ?

    When players decide to upgrade their pc it's rarely because of one single game. If they do, either many things they do on it require more power, either they just want to anyway. I dont think someone would spend money on upgrading a computer only for one game, and even less after the huge amount of bugs in the said patch. I dont think they misscalculated the player incoming change, I think more that they misscalculated the stability of their patch and wanted to do too good too quickly.

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    1. lol their calculators ;)

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    2. Russians are in PC Gaming Land. Calculators or not.

      You are probably in Consolitis land. So dont talk...

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    3. "If they do, either many things they do on it require more power, either they just want to anyway."
      Or the computer broke.

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  4. All this effort to make people "happy", and artillery is still in the game. I guess the profit they get from letting the people 'who couldn't make it in normal tanks' stay, overshadows the happiness of 90%+ of players.

    Sure you can move around randomly, stay in cover, don't get lit up first. But its so damn annoying. How great would it be to take hull down and not have to worry about a gold shell one shotting you from across the map. Theres no time to savor the moments of sidescraping and perfect angling. The sweet back and forth of gold shells pinging due to that perfect hull down. Instead of a relaxing time after work you have to move around like you're on fire and hope the enemy arty doesn't have xvm. You have to hope your perfect defensive position is exactly where the clicker is not aiming for. A game without arty is a breath of relief for both teams. And the best players of all time wish death upon this damned heathen the artillery. How focking dare they say they want the players to be happy.

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    1. feel the pain of that good batchat player https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-5JVOV_ltQ

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    2. Oh give it a rest.
      If it weren't arties, it would be something else.

      Whiners whine and will find something to whine about.

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    3. If they fix the matchmaking i will come back to the game. Hell, even jingles is fed up with it enough to stop playing the game for fun.
      Everything else, is fine. I would play the shit out of the game.

      You can go back to playing artillery. You wont be seeing me there though. So don't get your hopes up.

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    4. I am arty driver (with all other classes, I play everything not only that), and I guarantee you dont do amazing shots all the time. In the last week I did play arty a lot to try pass the goddamn SU-14-2 (xp needed for tier 9 is 217k, more than many tier 10 btw), and for fully aimed shots at immobile targets you can miss by a lot. My hit ratio was around 1/5 per game, and you manage to oneshot things not so mich because 1/5 shots hit, and unless target is horribly positioned, you have maybe 1/30 chances to pen. 0.007% of your shots actualy oneshot, and if it oneshots it's either luck/rng, either target was noob enough to put himself in a position where arty could shot soft parts (back or flat side if not too armored). 90% shots will do only 1/3 of the "average damage" written in description (for 203mm guns, rarely over 800, keep in mind tier 8+ TDs do the same with more accuracy and better reload), and on a battle time, arty will waste half its time reloading, a good quarter aiming, and half of the remaining time missing (other half hitting).

      Arty is the most frustrating class to play, for arty drivers as for arty targets, and arty haters whine when they take "big shots" that many other guns can do as well, or get oneshot which happens very few times (if you get often os by arty you might reconsider your playstyle and be more careful about covers and positions).

      Not that 212A has a gun that reloads in about 36s to do 1850dmg IF IT PENS with 102mm pen shells.
      FV183 has gold ammo that does about the same amount of damage, with accuracy twice as better, 10s reloadd time less, 5s aiming time less, and 230mm pen. And yet I dont see a lot of complains about this tank in game, even tho it has 10 times more chances to oneshot ennemy tanks than arty when firing gold (I rarely see FVs without gold).

      Think a bit, haters, before raging for nothing.

      Oh and "arty cant be fighted whereas TDs have to move", yeah well TDs camp a lot too, and arty has 0 armor and almost no life while TDs often have good frontal armor and at least 2 to 4 times more health than arty.
      Also arty can be countered because of their tracers. TDs cant. Skilled arty drivers will do it, "basic" arty drivers will just "point and click" and do nothing very useful for team.

      Btw, "clickers" really ? Because when you fire your gun you dont click maybe ? "Point and click" because other classes aim by farting rainbows while spining three times spelling incantations ? You call arty stupid because it seems easy while every other classes have same way of aiming/firing + require different skills each (light/med/td/heavy/arty have different gameplays each, so different skills, stop saying arty is noskill just because it doesnt play like you)

      No argument valide, it's just hating to hate something, without any real reason other that "it killed me so it sucks and its for noobs". Kind of guys that report their killer because they cant accept to lose.

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    5. If you hate the game so much why are you reading this forum, much less posting to it ?!?? Haters gotta hate I guess ..

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    6. While I agree that the Deathstar is also a huge cause of frustration simply because of that absurd damage + pen and regardless of penetration or not, still causes a big amount of damage . You at least could know how to easier avoid it, often they drive on the frontline where you can avoid or at least fight back. Also they require a line of sight and often enough you can still be effective while avoiding it. It's not the same with arty, as an example you could switch the flanks with a fast tank to avoid the Deathstar. You can't do the same with arty, simply because they can turn around in some seconds to face the other flank. Also the oneshots are not really the main problem imo, yes they are annoying as hell but, the thing that annoys me the most that they do tons of famage no matter pen or not. They often cripple your tank too. Getting hit for 800 damage by a non penetratring hit or a miss is extreme annoying. Even more if you get focused because of that awfull XVM mod, I wish WG would remove it.....

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    7. ARTY is by far the EASIEST class of tanks to play in the game. U just sit at spawn and click. U don't have to go hull down, side scrape, flank, dodge shots, peakaboo or do anything in a tank that makes a player good. That's why you only see RED NOOBS playing arty, and because it's so fricking BORING. I don't understand what players find "fun" about sitting in a spot and clicking. I am playing arty a bit for the first time because of the IM's and playing arty takes ZERO skill aside from anticipation and patience. WG has arty in this game to keep around the bad players who suck at tanks and for some reason have fun playing arty.

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    8. "they can turn around in some seconds"
      yeah, about 20 seconds to aim at the other side, and pray that the aimed tank does not move

      Grapes of camping TDs are a lot more annoying, good we still have arty to prevent that from happening too often ;)

      Just look the difference between battles with and without arty, the ones without are boring campfests

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    9. I am continually amazed at how many complainers this game gathers, it's probably as bad as golfing.

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    10. Why are you arty defenders always so full of crap?

      In my experience the battles WITH arty are the ones being campfests...

      Also it is possible to counter tds based on tracers as well.

      And yeah changing flank on arty may take 20s to aim, but all the other tanks have to actually DRIVE to change to the other flank so 20s is nothing...

      *Literally facepalming*

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    11. Considering that there are WoT players in tanks that cant hit a barn at 200 meters, cant read there map and don't know what a Team is and yet have such things as a Maus.... I think pulling the skill card out is a bit premature.

      Some people play SPGs because they just want to watch the world burn, it also gives you lots of time to point out all the stupid players in WoT, and there are a lot of them.

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    12. @SpeedyCraft51 The thing you fail to see, is that the thing that makes arty annoying, is not the occasionnal oneshots, it's the fact that you constantly have to move around like you had fire ants in your pants just to hope for arty not hitting you. Either that, or you have to camp behind a very tall rock/hill, which is not what you want to be doing. My hate towards arty comes from the fact that it makes fight extremely boring, because it doesn't allow you to be in the open for a longer period of time. This means that you cannot flank( if that means going into the open), you cannot sidescrape (when you're sidescraping you are exposing your side, which are can usually shoot at, but it depends on the direction of incoming fire), cannot go hulldown (maybe they can't pen you, but arty will fucking murder you) and cannot do all sorts of other things. Also, as I said, I don't mind oneshots, because if arty manages to oneshot me, it's completely my fault. It's my fault that I have been sittings still for such a long time to allow the arty to notice me, switch focus to me, aim, fire and then actually having a 1/20 chance of oneshotting me. What IS annoying is the constant dmg to health and MODULES it does. And also, it usually fires at the easiest, most dangerous and most skillfull targets, which usually is me, because I'm trying to sidescrape in my E75 slugging it out with a ST-I and the arty tracks me and takes out my gun, loader, engine, sets me on fire and what not every 30 secs (keep in mind, this es overexaggerated, but you get what I mean). It almost seems like it's just there to piss you off and you can't do shit in return. You must shrug it off and continue to do your thing, just to see the arty getting killed by a scout/med and you didn't even get the chance to shoot him. Don't you get the fact that it basicly shoots tanks across the map without exposing itself? You may now defend it with "yeah, zero armor, shit speed, zero hp bla bla bla" but this only comes into play when everybody is already dead, so if you were in a "normal" tank, it would have been highly likely that you were dead aswell. Basicly that, coupled with the fact that it's fucking boring to play yourself; you don't do shit, just sit there and click (I know it requires skill, but that doesn't make it any less boring) makes me hate arty.

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    13. Arties aren't that bad, if you play arty a few times, you'll get an idea of how to avoid getting artied(Try not to sit in a spot for more than 5 seconds, arty safe positions, erratic movement, etc).
      I got a hit ratio of 35% across all my arty, and they rarely hit for full damage unless engine deck or no armor. I recently bought an M12 and it hits for 300-400 if the target has any armor(which is most of the time) with the stock gun. Also, nearly 30 seconds reload, you can do a lot in 30 seconds. That's about 4 shots with guns like the 20pdr that has 7 second reload, about 800 over damage.

      You know what else hits as hard as arty against your armored tank? Any TD that is t8 or above. And they have superior reload, superior accuracy, more hp, better mobility, and armor. If you're lit in a TD, you can probably survive if you know what you're doing, but if you're lit in an arty, you either hope you can get out or you can shotgun the enemy.

      I personally think that the ideal number of arty per team is either 1 or 2. 3 is stretching it a little but still okay, 4 or 5 is just too much, imo.

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  5. Hey, they put the M4A2E4 in shop and I'll buy it, I need it for the sherman collection I have. I need that one.
    And I'd love it they'd put the dam box sets in stores here in American, their most paying country, especially the MTLS-G14 pack. That thing is so ugly it makes the Lee look like Megan fox

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    1. 1) offtopic imo

      2) MTLS isnt even in the game in any playable form anymore. It was the most op tank ever (more than IIJ), they removed it from sales years ago, and now you cant even meet it ingame (I think even press account can't drive them).
      You're waiting for a thing that will never happen :)

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    2. @SpeedCraft51 The tank isn't OP, certainly not to that level. The only special thing about it is that it has 2 guns, which just fire at once. It's mediocre at best, watch some vids about it. Oh, I forgot to add that press accounts can play it and that it never, ever was on sale (prem shop). You could only get it from a special russian edition which let you choose the pz 2j, bt-sv or the mtls-g14.

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    3. @1mymm America isn't by far the most paying country. They earn most of their income from the russian and european server. Also, the russian may pay less per player, but that's certainly not the case with europe.

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  6. I hope that people understand now that WG knows exactly what their doing. With no insight in the workings of a firm it's not possible to rate how competent they are.

    Clearly WG is very successful with what they're doing as they have 3 games of which all have some respectably sized player base and one is so successful that other firms joined the market to create WoT killers. And I don't think its because they're "incompetent with a shit game".

    Not like the average gamer is able to judge how a multimillion and multinational game/firm should be run.....

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  7. maybe arty players are all in the paying group. Thats why those mofos are still in-game.

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  8. Sergei Kadomsky...

    Ha! SerK!

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  9. Wana know a secret which keeps ppl in an a MMO... but dont tell anyone!

    .... community/communication...

    yeah i said that!
    ... and now look at wots piss poor chatt system.

    just send me the moneyz for this brilliant analyzez to wontEver@GetFixed.np

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    1. You're an idiot. WG has a thriving community. The forum is very active and CW is easily one of the best CW scenes around.

      CW is WoT's true endgame and if you'd join one and participate instead of whine about platoon missions you'd know how incredibly good and well thought out it is. Good luck finding one that is much better.

      Also, in terms of communication. You must have forgot but WG released quite a chat overhaul in 9.6 but yeah.... Whine about it and make BS statements instead....
      WG knows what they're doing. Refer to my comment above for more info...

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    2. Admittedly it is rather whiny and hostile but I'm sure you're aware that you're part of the disease. Think before you post bro....

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    3. Good points, but even you must admit WG reps are very quiet on the forums when certain issues are addressed (the banning of certain mods for example?) and have quite a few examples of them completely ignoring the community.

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  10. and why always 5-6 bots in game? fuck yoy wg...

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  11. i get play GTA V,fuck you wot.

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    1. GTA V.... scrub.
      Go play a real game. STALKER for example.

      Also, Witcher is coming.

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    2. GTA V is better ;) :{ :P

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    3. @yordanov, you're really annoying with this spam-soviet-crappy-games, over and over again. wake up, in the real world communist games don't count.

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  12. I play arty when i eat peanuts and popcorn :)) while i reload i get bored...oh,and ofc relaxing watching noobs and shoting them :D
    Don't worry i have 1600 wn8 ;) dont start hating my comment

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  13. ”another huge failure was the 9.0 improved graphics where the developers overestimated the desire of players to upgrade their PC, expected 30-50 percent of players to switch to improved graphics immediately and in result only 5 percent did”

    fail joke, soviet made.

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    1. really, what kind of computer did they expect, if a octacore processor and a gtx970 is not enough for best graphics??

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    2. What really surprises me is the fact only 5 percent switched to improved graphics. After all the b*tching people did on the forums for better graphics, you'd think more would switch over...

      Especially since one of the biggest reasons people claimed WT would be more succesful, was graphics after all...

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