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Female Onboarding: An analysis of the first time female League of Legends experience.

Infero·8/30/2014, 3:58:29 AM·84 votes·16,224 views

I was inspired by Tien Larson's post and decided to chase my curiosities about the initial experience for first time female players. I should note that this particular study was approved by my Institutional Review Board. In this study there were two training periods and five competitive games played. After each game participants answered a survey to gauge enjoyment and perceived difficulty.

Why did I do this:

  • To understand the on-boarding experience for first time female summoners.

Who:

  • 8 first time female summoners.

What did I do:

  • Observed the effects of basic training and intro bots on enjoyment and perceived difficulty.

Note: each game the teams switch sides

Day 1

Training Received: Team SFA = Basic Training Team Jacks = Intro Bots Training

After Training:

Game 1

Imgur

Team SFA (blue) vs Team Jacks (purple)

Things to Note:

  • Ryze (SFA Soraka) frustratingly died many times.
  • Perceived Difficulty: 7 (very high) of 7
  • Enjoyment: 3 (a little low) of 7
  • Itemization….or the lack thereof.
  • Three boots of swiftness on Garen.
  • Almost all kills were tower assisted.

Game 2:

Team Jacks (blue) vs Team SFA (Purple)

Imgur

Things to Note:

  • Ryze (SFA Soraka) She was upset/mad after this game, frustrated with move/attack mechanics.
  •    Perceived Difficulty: 6 (high) of 7

  •   Enjoyment: 1 (very low) of 7
  • Team Jacks started scoring kills away from tower.
  • Itemization favoring Team Jacks (Intro Bots).
  • SFAashe figured out how to use her Enchanted Crystal Arrow, followed by a legendary spree of 8!

Day 2

On this day the teams received the opposite training from day 1.

Training Received: Team SFA = Intro Bots Team Jacks = Basic Training

Game 3

Team SFA (blue) vs Team Jacks (purple)

Imgur

Things to Note:

  • Ryze (SFA Soraka) bought ITEMS! 
    • She also figured out how to chain her skills!

  •     Perceived Difficulty: 5 (a little high) of 7

  •     Enjoyment: 5 (a little high) of 7
  • Before this game both teams received the opposite training.
  •    Example: Team SFA first received basic training, now they went through intro bots.
  • Post-game the players discussed how to stay under tower when out numbered and wait for the opponents to leave tower before attacking.

Game 4

Team Jacks (blue) vs Team SFA (purple)

Imgur

Things to Note:

  • Ryze (SFA Soraka) nailed a positive Kill-Death ratio and actually enjoyed doing it!
    • Perceived Difficulty: 4 (not high or low) of 7
  •   Enjoyment: 6 (high) of 7
  • This was a brutal 30:34/51-68 game.
  • Team SFA’s first tower takedown! They Cheered!

  •   First victory! They Cheered Louder!
  • Very few kills were tower assisted.
  • SFA Annie (Garen) Discovered how to use the bush.
  • With a spin out for a kill….and spin back in!
  • Post-Game players discussed bush mechanics.

Game 5

Team SFA (blue) vs Team SFA (purple)

Imgur

Things to Note:

  • I call this game “Ryze Shuts it Down.”
  • 27/12 Double frozen heart, Double Rod of Ages.
  • She giggled through all 9 of her double kills.
  • Perceived Difficulty: 2.5 (low) of 7
  • Enjoyment: 6.5 (very high) of 7
  • Team SFA’s second win, and complete shut down, allowing no towers to fall.
  • All champions ended with decent itemization.
  • Sparkyjo (Team Jacks) owned 5 boots of swiftness at one point, later sold 4 of them.

Some Graphs to show Enjoyment and Perceived Difficulty over 5 games for SFA Soraka, Team SFA, and Team Jacks.

SFA Soraka

Imgur

Team SFA

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Team Jacks

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The Take-Away Question:

What would you like to see implemented that might make this game more appealing to you, or other first time female players?

#1 Shopping focused tutorial. #2 Choice of character in the basic training. #3 More focus during training on interaction and strategy with towers.

Currently, at least two of the participants have continued playing :)

There is lots more data...I just hit the highlights. If you have questions, ask here or add me in the client.

Cheers!

85 Comments

RiotRiot Nitsuabo8/30/2014, 4:49:35 AM21 votes

Thanks for sharing this, and for your hard work on it! When I see interesting stuff like this I can't help but ask for more =)

So, two questions:

  1. Given your design and results, what followup would you be most excited to run?
  2. If you were setting the strategy for a team trying to improve onboarding, what would you prioritize highest based on these results?

Thanks again!

ChickenWrap8/30/2014, 5:55:51 AM17 votes

My sister started playing League and bought two Banshees Veils and two sets of boots and didn't buy anything at the start even after going through basic training.

Of course, I noticed when I went to check on her and quickly set it up so that she was ready for success. Now she's asking me three times as many questions a day about League than my AMA got in its prime.

I would like to see a shopping tutorial and for bot games to not let you leave the base until you buy an item to help solidify the fact that it's very important to do. I would also like the shop tutorial to explain in detail how Unique passives work so that people don't buy duplicates of the same item (like Boots of Swiftness!) thinking it will help them. Most of the issues beginning players have are completely item focused. If we can remove confusion there, new players will have a much better time, I feel.

redniwediS8/30/2014, 4:16:57 AM10 votes

This is absolutely fascinating! I would love to see how this would compare vs other groups, be it male/female, young/old, ect. Might be difficult to set up, but it would sure be interesting.

Riotdavin9/3/2014, 5:57:22 PM9 votes

This is very interesting. What was the reason for the group design of having two groups play against each other rather than doing 8 individual longitudinal training sessions? It seems that from an analysis standpoint the former approach makes things a little cloudier, but from a logistic standpoint I could see how it's quite a lot easier to run!

Also relevant to your interests, our Research internships just opened up... ;) http://www.riotgames.com/careers?department[]=490&location[]=9&search=

Nine Ravens8/30/2014, 7:39:30 AM7 votes

A few questions:

  1. Was there a particular reason you used teams of four instead of teams of five as standard for Summoner's Rift?

  2. Nothing about this study seems particularly female-oriented. Do you feel the participants being female affected the results in a particular way, or do you think you would see similar results if the participants were male only or mixed gender?

  3. Did the players make use of the Recall spell? Were they more often recalling frequently to recover health/mana or staying in lane until they died?

Lavantant8/31/2014, 11:00:15 AM6 votes

so we're all on the same page; to make the game more accessible to new people there needs to be more emphasis on the store.

maybe we should talk about what should be discussed, like "boots dont stack yo" or maybe something that makes it so that if you ACTUALLY cant buy 2 boots, or so that you cant buy 2 of the same non consumable until youre level 10, or maybe something that explains that numbers in that redish color scale by AD and numbers in that green scale by AP.

these are just my ideas and they might not match up with any of yours, but i would like to see if i was any help

soylent shipment8/30/2014, 6:48:46 AM6 votes

This was very interesting and well done, I loved looking through the post, seeing how the first timers changed their approach to the game and discovered new mechanics and strategies. Do you plan on doing any more studies like this about other aspects of League of Legends or maybe a survey of how summoner's have changed over their entire league "career"?

Pyrrasu8/30/2014, 5:27:00 AM5 votes

I wouldn't have had any clue how to play this game if I didn't have friends telling me how to buy items, avoid tower hits, etc. I haven't experienced intro bots but from your data it looks like it helps out new players a lot more than the old tutorial.

Deep Terror Nami8/30/2014, 9:54:50 PM5 votes

Yes, first time female players should focus on shopping. Priceless.

Adalore9/1/2014, 2:59:16 AM5 votes

The item mechanics are a weird thing to get a handle on to start with. I barely understood them when I picked up the game for the first time. :)

I think the game would benefit from a "Auto purchase" system that can be turned on, that if you open the shop it will show you what you can purchase in the order with your current gold.

Yeah maybe a toggled shop modes of "Automatic", "Assisted" and "Advance"

Where Automatic simply auto purchases equipment and gives the notice to the player. Maybe it has a little bit of a note saying "This item increases your critical chance and critical damage on auto attack" if it was an IE. and lists items becoming other things. Like... Longsword upgraded to Vamp Scepter (Provides the starting amount of lifesteal, lifesteal is used to heal by attacking enemies) and Longersword AND Pickaxe upgraded into Last whisper. (Ignores 40% of the target's armor, allowing auto attacks to deal more damage.)

Assisted would show a build paths but have paths off it in nice clear buildpaths with notes of reasoning. Maybe there are forks in the path like if "Do I want Magic Resistance?" or "Do I want Armor?" with mouse over text explaining how to figure that out and pick. The forks could be more complex or dynamic with choices that are simple like "More damage!" or "Defense!" and give a pre rendered build path.

(Starting build) > (Parts of first item) > (First item) > Fork MR or Armor? > (parts of resistance item) > (completed resistance item) > Fork, Mr, Armor, Health, More damage! > Whateverwords

Advance would be mostly as live, but I would LOVE to be able to set up buildpaths manually that lets me at a glance see how much in order that I can purchase with current gold.(and the difference to the next item.)

I think stuff like this would assist newbies and make the UI more usable to even high level players.

I would also suggest an auto skill leveler that also states why the level up is useful, that can be toggled before first skill rank. Example with ashe. Rank... W (primary combat skill.) E (More gold from minion kills! Allows you to safely check bushes or other areas safely.) W (More power to volley and lower cool down.) etc.

Cyrex Wingblade8/30/2014, 4:41:26 PM4 votes

Yay for a full-on experimental analysis! I like it!

Yeaaaah, items could use a much more detailed tutorial. Took me forever to figure that stuff out, and I"m still bad at it.

Rhyto8/31/2014, 9:15:11 PM3 votes

Interesting analysis, I'm quite pleased with this amount of work put into this. I took your survey and it was quite psychologically engaging. It was amusing encountering the redundant questions regardless of how slightly different they were. I wish you best of luck and hope you'll be able to help many other players.

Infero8/30/2014, 6:15:14 PM1 votes

Cross-posting this from LinkedIn, Sharing a good discussion.

questions: did you have a control group (mixed gender)?

It actually wasn't a group design, even though there were teams. My experimental design was a single subject BACA design. So the introduction of training methods (the other group was CABA) served as my experimental control.

did you sample new, male players for contrast?

I did not, since the focus of this study was the female experience.

how many of these female players would consider themselves experienced gamers? new >gamers? non gamers?

Actually, none of the participants considerer themselves experienced gamers, and mostly "new." I say mostly cause one participant included playing "Tiny Death Star/Tiny Tower" as her gaming background.

What I find interesting is the graphing of the experience, something we all feel, the new->player-slump as we make the transition from merely learning to QWER in the right order >to actually contributing to success on the team.

Watching the QWER adjustment evolve over 5 games was neat. 3 of the players rested their left hand in the lap...and occasionally brought it up for skill use.

A possible solution would be a more streamlined item progression, but my first fear for >such an endeavour would be the dilution of the creativity made possible by the open >ended store system.

Have you checked out Intro Bots? The store is different and does an excellent job streamlining item progression (the recommended items are different). But, lacks any training in the "what is" AP and AD.

What I especially like about the identification of the store as a barrier is the store's >inherent gender neutrality, a nod to the point I wanted to stress above about removing >gender from the equation entirely.

From a behavioral perspective, if you want to increase the female player base (recruitment and retention) you should focus specifically on female participants. Comparing them to males only reveals how they are different/same. Which is not a question in the OP, that's not to say we should exclude males in the series of needed research. The inclusion of male should only be used if one were measuring interaction with other male players...but I think that would lead a study on perception and effect of a "toxic" player on new female players.

I'm going to cross-post this into the boards, sharing your excellent questions :)

Thanks for posting!