Hi there. Paladins is continuously losing players for last two years. But I think Paladins is the best game ever, and I don’t want this game to die. Here are some advices for Paladins dev’s team.

All this advices are addressed to Hi-Rez. Overall:
1) Fix all annoying things (see below)
2) Be friendlier to new players, while not hurting old players (see below)

The title speaks for itself. There should be some “watchdog” process, which detect crash and immediately restarts game, showing window: “Paladins crashed, we apologize, game is restarting…”

Explanation: probably, a lot of new players do not restart game after crash. They just think «what a stupid game, I’ll go buy overwatch». I am 100% sure: last impression is VERY important for new players. If it was negative (game crashed or smth else), player probably will never again launch Paladins.

Paladins launcher has a lot of problems (most of them are solved by launching C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Paladins\Binaries\Redist\InstallHirezService.exe 2 times).

There is no need to explain that A LOT of people are leaving Paladins because they just can’t launch the game and lose interest in it.

Annoying bug with Grumpy bomb sound with «Accelerant» talent was in game for 3-4 months. Was it so hard to fix it? Game devs with such attitude to their own game will continue losing player base. When something in game is going wrong, players just say: “what do you expect, this is Hi-Rez”. If game developers want their game to be successful, they should take care of their reputation among players.

I’m sure there are a lot of Paladins fans with programming skills, just hire them for a low-paying position, they can help in finding bugs, testing and fixing them.

1) After a match there are usually 2 chats: PARTY and LOBBY. If you are trying to write something to party chat, it is closing, and lobby chat is opening.
2) make possible to reply to LAST message with /r <msg>, without having to write player’s nickname.
3) If party is disbanded, party’s chat shouldn’t disappear, so that player can read last message.
Probably it’s not hard to fix these problems. Fix them, they are really annoying.

If player in party is going offline during match and then reconnects while match is not finished yet, he should automatically enter the group in which he was before.

Also, game shouldn’t freeze during top play after reconnecting.

Make nickname changeable for free over first 20 levels or 10 days after first game. If new player chooses unsuitable nickname, he should have an ability to change it.

New players usually do not need a serious reason to abandon the game. Only one or two totally imbalanced matches can be enough. Sometimes high-skilled players play in large parties, and matchmaking system is not able to find worthy opponents for them (especially in onslaught mode). So, matches with them inevitably are unbalanced. After these matches some player will cry “nice matchmaking gg hirez” and he’ll leave the game.

http://paladins.guru/match/pc/267367516

The solution is here. Strength of the group should be evaluated based on 3 factors: number of players, their overall ELO and (maybe) previous performance of this party. If party turns out to be too strong and MM system can’t find opponents, only players in this party should be responsible for this. MM system should show notification for players:

MM system should try to find suitable amount of high-skilled players to counter this party. If middle- or high-skilled player is found in queue, MM system “catches” him and holds in queue. Thus MM system fills slots in enemy team. Players can be withheld for no more than 5 minutes. If it’s still impossible to fill enemy team, party remains in infinite queue until it becomes possible.

So:
1) people in huge high-skilled party understand why they are waiting for too long
2) other players no longer suffer from bad matchmaking

Have you noticed how daily online has grown since you removed the frames? I also didn’t notice.

Level, crystals, skins and ranked frame were kind of estate that makes player proud and prevents him from leaving the game. Since ranked borders are no longer shown in match, last one has gone. Yes, ranked loading frames are promised to us, but we will get them… next year!

Maybe matchmaking system often make matches that are basically balanced, but frames are imbalanced, and players complain about it? So, make you MM system simpler – based mostly on frames, even in casual. Players will stop complain because they will see balance in frames. Really, ranked frames should be returned.

In good old days when Paladins was popular game it looked great:

In my opinion, game has not the best main menu screen. A lot of strange buttons distract new players. Also, animated “news feed” is diverting and unpleasant. Maybe, even old main menu screen was better.

Main menu screen should be attractive for a new player. Activity center is exactly redundant menu item. Profile frame is no longer clickable, it’s not good. Quests and awards (achievements) are very similar but are located in completely different places. Also main menu lacks “Tutorials” button. The game generally lacks tutorials for new players, while it’s very easy to make them.

Large number of champions and complex game mechanics confuse new players. This game really needs more in-game tutorials. Maybe this is the most important advice of all. New players often leave game because they don’t understand it.

Just make a button below the «Play» button, named «Tutorials».

Explain:
Gameplay basics (clear explanation of items, point capture, overtime, comeback mechanics, ultimates saving)
Gold and crystals (how to earn and how to spend currency; explanation that crystals is only for cosmetics and don't affect balance)
Talents and cards

Also it’s nice idea to make short animations which explain champions’ abilities.

Imo, default quests are boring, but battle pass challenges are very interesting. Also, battle pass XP is growing and reaching 75 level very fast even without any quests. So, why not replace default quests by battle pass challenges and reward players with gold, skins and crystals for them? This system will help new players learn the game by completing interesting tasks on different characters (btw, every task should have description, not every player knows that «Thousand Hands Leader» is Zhin and what is «Through Time and Space»).

As I see it:

Firstly we should admit that balance among beginners and balance among skilled players are completely different things. Among beginners there are serious balance issues: Sha Lin or Bomb King are complete trash compared with Viktor of Koga.

I’m not going to give any advices because I know, that Paladins devs team is working on this problem for years. I’m just telling that imbalance still exists.

I’m not economist, but I reckon that exchange rates shouldn’t influence the price of crystals in currency. Perhaps, one should choose price of crystals in each country to maximize expected profit.

Recently price of crystals in the CIS was doubled. Remember that such actions cause a wave of negative reviews in Steam, but this is not what you want, right? Was there any sense in this action, were the risks calculated? I hope so

Some players complain that waiting time in Paladins is too large. Speed up start of the match (opening base doors) if all players are loaded on time and selected loadouts. Also speed up start of the match if all players selected characters.

At least do it for matches among new players. Experienced players want time to think, choose talent and build, but new players just want to play.

Training room is not suitable for aim training because it doesn’t have strafing or fast-moving targets. But need for 3D aim-trainings is very high among players who want to perform well.

Even very simple aim-training game named “Aim hero” is very popular.
https://steamcharts.com/app/518030

Just make a simple room and place a randomly-moving fast target inside it – it’s very simple. You also can place a lot of targets and highlight them one after another, player will gain score by shooting highlighted targets.

Like in this video, but the most important part is target’s random movement, like a real player’s movement.

Having such simple aim-training map can attract players who play shooters professionally, expanding player base.

You can’t press VHS when you need healing, because while you are distracted by pressing these 3 buttons enemy will kill you. Same with other commands. VHS just is being used post factum to harass healer. It should not work this way.

Just add radial menu. These designs are looking cool:

Menu items in Paladins Radial Menu:

• Help!
  
• Need healing!
  
• Follow me!
  
• Attack the objective!
  
• Retreat!

If a player selects something in the menu, а corresponding icon appears over his head, visible through walls. I think it’s not hard to make this, but it is very helpful, and players will be grateful.

I don't propose to replace VGS with a radial menu, I only propose to add radial menu as new function, without changing or removing VGS

Besides that Makoa is difficult to play for new players, his hook has ping-related problems. Its projectile is not lag-compensated, so with 80-100+ ping it’s very hard to land it.

I even made a video about this problem 4 months ago, it’s still not fixed.

I recently saw a new player streaming Paladins, he played Makoa and said that Makoa is useless and his hook is not working. As far as I know, now he no longer plays Paladins.

Bans are not very useful in ranked, because if you ban strong character, enemies can’t pick it, but your team can’t pick it too. If you could know which characters your team players play well, bans can be powerful tool – you just don’t ban them and ban other characters.

So the idea: you can select up to 3 characters in your wish list in ranked.

This will also help in the distribution of roles in the team, and also this will help MM system to find teams with tank main and healer main.

Also, if player click on some character, this character appears in his frame as a translucent image. This means that the player is going to pick this character when comes his time to pick.

It will be more comfortable to play ranked games after implementing this features.