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Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel Onboarding - Quick Case Study

In this exercise, I am a Product Manager at Konami working on the game Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. This exercise is meant to be a free-thinking creative exercise rather than an in-depth research piece, so I will limit myself to just an hour to complete this exercise from start to finish. For full transparency, timing starts immediately after the “Prompt” section and will end before the “Retrospective” section. Additionally, no outside research will be done for this exercise so any factual information will have to be assumed.

Prompt

What changes would you make to Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel to improve the game?

Clarifying Questions & Assumptions

Q: Is there a particular part of the game experience that we are targeting?
A: Nothing in particular, feel free to choose any area of the game that you might want to improve upon.
Q: Is there a user segment that we have in mind whose experience we are improving?
A: No users in particular. Define and choose the user segment as you see fit.
Q: Are there any off-limits parts of the game that I should avoid talking about changing?
A: Since this is just an exercise, the sky is the limit!
Q: Would this be a change for the mobile or desktop app?
A: Either is fine since we try to make the experience on the mobile app as similar to the desktop one as possible.

Identifying User Segments

Since I have some familiarity with trading card games (TCGs), I think that the user segments can mainly be separated in a few categories:
Competitive Players - These are players that are very familiar with the game and understand the ins and outs of every mechanic that exists. They will min/max every deck that they play so they can get the highest possible competitive advantage and will try their best to win every game with the best tools possible.
Casual Players - These players are familiar with most mechanics of the game and tend to be able to competently play games at a moderate-to-high level. Unlike the competitive players, the end goal of a casual player is mostly to have a good time while playing rather than optimize for a win. Casual players often play certain decks because they might like a particular mechanic of the deck, enjoy the theme of the deck, or just think that the overall interaction of the cards in the deck is fun.
Newbies - The people who are totally new to the game are classified as newbies. Newbies usually had their curiosity piqued because of their friend group or some influencer exposed them to a new card game and they want to check the game out. Sometimes they saw art for a few cards and wanted to figure out how to play the deck that uses those cards. In any case, they are all new to the game and are still trying to figure out the overall mechanics of the game and identify what they enjoy about the game.
For this exercise, I’ll focus in on the experience for Newbies. Given my past experience with a few different card games, I found that one of the hardest parts about card games is getting into it and understanding the base mechanics of how the game works. Once that’s out of the way and the player understands the typical flow of how a game will usually play out, their chances of continuing to play and invest in the game is usually fairly high.

Pain Points

There are a few difficult things about Yu-Gi-Oh! in particular that new users tend to be intimidated by that causes new player churn. This isn’t necessarily unique to Yu-Gi-Oh! as every TCG has its own special mechanics that players need to learn, but Yu-Gi-Oh! in particular carries a reputation of being extremely complex. Below are some of the complexities of Yu-Gi-Oh! at a bird’s eye level.
There are a LOT of phases - Most players can fairly easily grasp the base phases (Draw, Standby, Main, Battle, Main 2, End) but it gets a bit complex with what I refer to as “mini-phases”. For example, when entering battle phase players have to consider their attack declaration which is separate from the damage step which is different from battle resolution. These mini-phases aren’t explained when talking about the overarching game phases, but still play a crucial part in the flow of a game.
There are a LOT of different card types - Most other TCGs tend to have at most 3 or 4 different card types. In Yu-Gi-Oh! there are upwards of 9 different card types that are further subdivided into more different card types. The unique characteristics and how to interact with each of these card types is not exactly clear to most beginners, especially when there’s so many different card types shown to users at once.
There are a LOT of nonstandard mechanics - I’d define “nonstandard mechanics” as mechanics that are unique to individual cards/decks. Of course, having so many nonstandard mechanics is part of the draw to Yu-Gi-Oh! since it allows for so many different kinds of playstyles and unique game expression with different decks. The problem for new players is that there are so many different mechanics that it can be very overwhelming since so many cards seem to break the rules set out in the beginning when learning about card types. For example, most players learn there are dedicated monster and spell/trap zones on the field, but some trap cards have the effect to act as monsters and some monsters can act as equip spells. These kinds of cards can be very unintuitive to the initial understanding that is established when delineating different card types, and are often met with confusion from new players.
The gap between Newbie and Casual is huge - When a player gets enough experience to know generally how most games are played and they know the core strength of the decks they choose to play, new players who are still familiarizing themselves with the game don’t stand a chance. Bridging the skill gap between new players and people that can play at a casual level is crucial to giving new players the chance to dig in and enjoy the game and as of now, it’s usually only community resources and suggestions that help players get from new to casual.

Solution Ideas

Official tutorial content via social media - This kind of content would probably be a collaboration with the department in charge of community management, but overall would be fairly easy to produce. This kind of content could be planned and shipped out within a month, but wouldn’t have nearly as much reach as an in-game solution.
Tutorial overhaul - The current tutorial content that’s available in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel doesn’t go far enough to tell players how real games are played out. It briefly touches upon the baseline rules of the game, but as we covered earlier many cards break those established rules. Changing the way that Yu-Gi-Oh! thinks about tutorial content could help bring new players up to speed with experienced players more quickly.
Community-based tutorial content in-game - Sourcing out the community who already makes plenty of tutorial-related content (deck combo videos, decklists, how-to’s, etc.) and bringing that experience to players in-game could be a great way to bridge community management with the product vision.
Mentoring system - Community-based tutorial content in-game - This would be a totally different way for users to interact with each other in the game. The goal of this would be to mimic the experience of a new player strolling in to their local card shop and meeting new people who are eager to teach them how to play their favorite game.
Automatic card combo system - Similar to how some games have simplified controls for newer players, having some level of automation for card combos may be a good way to make the beginner experience smoother. An implementation may give some pause, as the current players may perceive it as giving an unfair advantage. Some tweaking around the edges of the implementation as well as consistent communication with the community will be required to make sure that this solution is implemented successfully.
Of these solutions, the tutorial overhaul may be the best combination of impact and difficulty to implement. Since there is already tutorial content in the game, that system can be expanded upon and implemented in a different way that is more effective at getting users to understand the game.

What a new tutorial looks like

My initial instinct is to start doing market research of what really good tutorial systems in other card games look like and analyze the areas of overlap for what may be applicable for Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. Looking into games outside of the card game genre can be enlightening as well to get a larger macro approach at what helps players understand new systems.
One inspiration that comes into mind for me is a fighting game that I’ve recently had a bit of experience learning called Guilty Gear: Strive. The game breaks up tutorial content into a few different categories and progresses players from more generalized tutorials down to character-specific tutorials. When learning individual skills via the tutorial, the player is required to successfully perform the task a few times before moving on to the next tutorial content and are encouraged to play games against other players and use what they’ve just learned. Giving players direct experience with a mechanic as well as integrating repetitions is an effective way to immediately get experience with the mechanic and makes the transition into usage during a game versus another player very smooth. This also avoids some common pitfalls of tutorial systems either being too brief and not giving users enough information, or giving too much information and overloading new players with concepts that fly totally over their heads.
These are some lessons Yu-Gi-Oh! Master duel can take from Guilty Gear: Strive. Users could get experience with basic mechanics and have mock duels against an AI opponent with free decks. One way to make the experience even better than Guilty Gear: Strive’s is to chunk up the tutorial content into different chapter. Players can further be encouraged to play against AI computers or even other players using what they’ve learned in their most recent chapter. These players could even be provided a deck that works to emphasize the lessons learned in the tutorial chapter so they can get strong practice with the specific mechanics that they had just learned about. When players are ready, they can start getting familiarized with other unique mechanics, eventually getting full tutorials on how to play specific decks down the line.
With sweeping improvements like this, many opportunities present themselves to make the tutorial system a fully integrated part of most users gameplay loop. Making the in-game tutorial system top of mind whenever players want to learn something new would be a great extension of the tutorial system past onboarding new players.

KPIs

New player sign up rate - If word of mouth spreads that the game is easier to approach , more new players may flood in to play the game. This metric should definitely be taken with a grain of salt, since other things may create a buzz around the game and increase sign up that isn’t directly related to the implementation of the solution.
Player retention rate - This metric is the biggest target of this project. If players are falling off of the game at similar or higher rates then that would definitely indicate something very wrong with the implementation. This metric is a combination of account creation date and account activity. Accounts created at the time of implementation that are still active months into the future should be tracked for their activity trends.
Average game time - Another indicator of successful implementation of the new tutorial system is that average game time should go up. Barring the release of any new event or other content with the new tutorial system, it would make sense that new users become interested in the game and play more than they would prior to having a strong onboarding experience.

Retrospective

I performed quite a bit better on this exercise than I did with the Patreon exercise, probably as a result of my familiarity with the app. I think I did manage to take the lessons of the previous quick case study to heart and implement them in this exercise effectively.
The largest area of improvement that I can identify is how much time I spent talking about Guilty Gear: Strive’s tutorial system. I think that my solution may have come across as simply copying another game’s solution, but my hope was that by taking inspiration from a different genre it would be enough to say that inspiration was taken but applied in its own unique way to Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. I was quite happy in particular with the idea of taking the tutorial system further and making it a regular part of every player’s experience as they continue playing the game.
In the end I do think that the weakest part of this particular exercise would be the solution section, but I am very much satisfied with the justification and future opportunities that my chosen solution could open up. I’d like to thank you, the reader, for taking the time to read this quick project! Don’t hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn to give any feedback or to simply strike up conversation 😄
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