Features of mobile MOBA development on the example of Planet of Heroes: interview with Ivan Fedyanin

In mid–January, the open beta of the mobile MOBA from Fast Forward Studio – Planet of Heroes was released. We talked with the head of the studio Ivan Fedyanin about where he was looking for people for the team, why he decided to make a MOBA and how the story campaign is embedded in it.

Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru Questioner: Let‘s start from the beginning, with the history of the project. I know that you created a team specifically for this project. Please tell me how it happened that the project appeared, then the team? And why is MOBA on mobile?

Ivan Fedyanin, Director of Fast Forward Studio (Mail.Ru Group): It all started with the fact that while I was still at Nival, I thought about what the next projects to do, what is needed now.

Ivan Fedyanin

Recently, the number of those players who grew out of PC games has greatly increased, but now do not have the same access to them that they had before.

These are completely different players: either those who grew up, got married, had children, and who now have a computer on the balcony, or former students who have now gone to work and they simply have no time. Anyway, these are former players who played very actively in the “big” PC genres: MOBA, MMORPG, online shooters.

They played, socialized actively, were such a hardcore, interesting, cool audience. But over time, they stopped spending as much time as they wanted in their favorite projects.

This audience is gradually increasing. Its mobility, the level of smartphone penetration in this audience, is the maximum.

Accordingly, there is an audience, she has a certain “pain” because she wants to play something similar. But not on the computer, because it is not there or too little, but on your phone. And so the idea arose that it was necessary to make games for her. Then there were several ways – MOBA, MMORPG, shooters…

Tanchiki.

Tanchiki, again. Mobile tanks at that time, however, were implemented. But yes, they are going in a similar direction. In general, any team that goes in this direction is a great fellow. By releasing similar projects, she teaches yesterday’s hardcore players how to play correctly on mobile phones, and simplifies the task for the next developers. The second wave will be easier than the first. The first wave breaks the road, the second conquers the market.

It seemed to me that the first ones were not only making their way, but also completely taking over the market.

It happens in different ways.

Accordingly, along with this, it became clear what to do with MOBA. I was not an active developer of Prime World at Nival, but I was always there and always aware of what was happening. There was an understanding of how to make a mobile MOBA. I was looking primarily for resources.

It turned out that synergy and understanding with Mail.Ru Group on the topic of this whole idea, on the topic of what exactly MOBA needs to be done on mobile, and as soon as possible. As practice has shown, the market was just starting to move in this direction, and we managed to do it very timely.

Did you initially just have an idea, and were you looking for an investor who would agree with you and say that he was ready to do MOBA, or did you have a ready-made design document in which everything was spelled out in detail?

There were ideas. But I wouldn’t say that there was a design document directly. Let’s just say there was an understanding that it needed to be done urgently, there were some references within which it should be done, and that’s it.

Now we will touch on a small legal issue and go further. As it seemed to me, the Mail.Ru game projects are published from My.com . And in your case, for some reason, the studio is positioned a little apart from My.com . Brands My.com and Mail.Ru turns out to be a little in the shade. Why is that?

There are two ways. On the one hand, we are all sitting here entirely, we are Mail.En legally and de facto.

On the other hand, it should be understood that everyone who came to the new studio – 90% of employees – is in Mail.Ru didn’t work before. We are almost completely new blood in Mail.Ru . This is our plus. We are different. And we need to voice this, because we are making a different game, according to different canons, according to different rules, focusing on other things. For us, something else is absolutely important. And to show this, it is important to take a step aside: here we are, and here we are Mail.Ru .

You just said that you are a little different. Probably, some processes are built differently? Can you tell me what the difference is? What is the key feature of the processes that take place within your studio?

In fact, we have clear processes developed over the years. The team turned out to be quite strong. And the strongest people are in the lead positions, these are managers with extensive experience. And since we don’t have any “legacy”, we were able to come and say so, and now we are working on these processes, learning, setting everything up in a certain way, doing some things.

Thanks to this, it was possible to establish the planning process at the earliest stages, it was possible to establish a quality control process for all parts and elements.

How are your processes generally structured?

If we describe the process, then it is quite standard. Everyone perceives both Scrum and Agile in their own way. From the very beginning, there are milestones on the project, the project is divided into them. Each milestone is about two months, and it, in turn, is divided into two–week sprints.

A sprint is a set of tasks that is performed by a team, and turns all these tasks into some kind of version, playable almost from the very beginning, that everyone can look at.

That is, in two weeks everyone gathers in front of the big screen and looks at what has been done. All those responsible for the direction take turns talking about it, after which a new sprint with a new task begins to form.

Accordingly, this is a way of doing tasks in JIRA when there are epics, a task block, a feature. The latter is divided, in turn, into tasks that the performers do (and they plan everything). After planning and execution, it is estimated whether they have met the stated time or not.

In fact, it is a set of process actions that allow you to plan successfully. That doesn’t mean we’re very cool at it. We are still learning. The percentage of sprints we have is low, in my opinion. There is a lot to improve. But at the same time, it tends to improve.

How difficult was it to find a team? I played the project – I won’t say for a long time, but for a couple of days for sure – and I was surprised by the very high quality. How difficult it was to find a team that could do the project.

Thank you, firstly, for the good words. In fact, it is difficult.

The most important thing is to spend time at the very beginning searching for cool leads. And if there is a financial and temporary difficulty, then I would wish all teams to do just that. Not even for teams, but for those who want to create a team.

Leads should be searched according to the principle – if there is doubt about a particular person, you need to look further. In our case, we were probably a little “pressed” in time. But all the same, already risking the fact that we will move out [on time], we were still able to wait and find the right people, who, in turn, were already looking for people who are close to them in spirit. So a team of artists grew out of one art director, a team of programmers grew out of a technical director, and a team of designers grew out of a designer.

You just said about the leads… This is a very popular topic. It is believed that they cannot be found in the Russian market, in the market of the former CIS. You can count on the fingers of one hand. Where to get them from?

I can say that one of the leads we have now is a person who previously launched his own game on Steam. He had his own team and his own startup. He didn’t do it very well. After a long development, his team ran into a lack of experience and financial capabilities. And he decided to study, and learn from where there is not enough, that is, game design. He proved his coolness very quickly, grew up, now he is our leading game designer and a very cool dude. Gets what he needs. Here is such a way.

The second way is to use your own understanding of the market. As you said, there are very few leads, and hence the conclusion that I know most of them. And hence the conclusion that no matter who I try to “pull off”, I will still spoil relations with managers and with someone I still know in this company. Therefore, I had to go through the loss of relationships with certain people. Nevertheless, my position here is that if a person is ready to leave, it means that something is wrong at his work, then it’s okay if we poach him.

I heard your first advice as “look for indie developers who have launched a project, but who lack the experience to do something great and big.”

Yes, but not all indie developers are ready to forget their indie habits and start normal development. We had a few people like that, and most of them didn’t catch on. They are not able to live according to the plans, at the pace that they have. What they say about indie development… From what I see, they are somehow not very ready. Because “I work in the evening and very efficiently” usually means “I work in the evening and half as efficiently as an ordinary person on a working day.”

Sadly. Returning to the project, what did you do?

The client, all logic is on Unity. The server engine is Photon.

Have you considered any alternative?

Yes, of course. Both in the case of the server and in the case of the client, we looked at alternatives. In the case of the client, this is obviously Unreal. And, in general, we can say that at the moment it is becoming an alternative, because some server solutions have begun to appear on it. It became possible to build an online game on it. If we talk about the middle of 2015, there has not been such an opportunity yet.

That’s why we chose Unity.

Yes, and then, it is proven, with known jambs, with known problems. Nevertheless, with an established connection. Because support in Unreal, again, has changed a lot now, but at that time Unity support and support were important.

But if you were doing it now, would you consider Unreal more seriously?

Now we need to look at what we are doing, what we want according to the schedule, where it is easier to get it. Again, what kind of relationship… If the team is young, then there is no difference – Unity or Unreal, the team has no connection with either side. And if a serious company and connections are established somewhere, then this is important. Because it is quite difficult to re–establish them in the development process.

So you assembled a team, everyone sat down together, and started making a plan. What are the main features you wanted to offer players in the project?

In the process of assembling the team, we did an interesting thing: we conducted focus groups. This is an action when you gather people who fit a certain category. In our case, these were MOBA players – ranging from amateurs to professional esports players.

We conducted an in-depth interview to identify problems and ways to solve them that we could do in our mobile version. Accordingly, this study also took quite a long time. It was quite long and quite interesting. As a result, we had a couple of hundred-page reports and hundreds of gigabytes of video recordings that helped us identify which features are needed and which need to be removed. What is important, and what is not quite.

What exactly turned out to be important?

It is difficult to reduce everything to a few points.

What did we have to do?

So that the game could be played quickly – and we needed to be fast, because if we take our closest competitors (including Vainglory), then they have a session of 15-20 minutes.

From our point of view, this is not true, because players cannot always find so much time for one match. If they do not have 15 minutes, but only 10, then they will no longer launch the toy, they will not play it. Therefore, from our point of view, the game should first of all be fast.

You have reduced the session to five minutes.

By seven. This is the median. There are matches for three minutes. In the rarest cases – fifteen. When we had problems with the balance, there were twenty-twenty-five. Everyone became of a high level and the tug of war began. We’ve practically got rid of it now.

To shorten the length of sessions, it was necessary to increase the dynamics, and we were looking for what we could get rid of or minimize. For example, we removed the items in the game directly from the session, but added a rune system that is already present at the meta-game level.

When you change the set of runes for your hero, you, in fact, change the gameplay very much for him. You can transfer a clean tank a little to a support, or transfer a support to a healer. Or the hero will specialize more in the jungle, in destroying neutral monsters, rather than holding the line.

Then we changed the map. We have a “one-line” map plus the jungle. We have significantly reworked the proportion of health and damage of towers and creeps, so that, on the one hand, they are more dangerous in some cases, and in other cases they do not interfere with strong push. Plus, we have reduced the “early game” stage to almost zero and made the pitching on the line less significant.

The whole question here is that, on the one hand, it is necessary to make the team do such a “eh!” and kill everyone. And she should feel it and drag it right away. On the other hand, the other team should have a chance to make a comeback. When these two factors are available, it is not so important which mechanics provide them.

Have you taken the experience accumulation mechanics from Heroes of the Storm (the team has a common experience in battle)?

Yes.

Why her? It is not considered very popular.

It really isn’t considered very popular, especially when it comes to esports. Since we are talking about tournaments, everything is difficult with this: the individual contribution of the player is important, it is important to see what he drags. We, in principle, do not deny that we will return to this within the framework of tournaments and further development of the game.

The game session lasts seven minutes, which means that in principle you will always be plus or minus on the same level. In addition, mobile phones need more casual management, so as not to bother too much. A different level would only add difficulties, but not interest. Therefore, we have rejected this option.

By the way, another question about the map. Why did they decide to place the jungle not in the middle of the line so that the player could pass through them and gain experience, but on the sidelines?

They’re not really right on the sidelines. They are strictly from the bottom always. You probably mean, why not do it from above?

Yes.

We are thinking about this now. Then, indeed, it will be possible to make a small piece from above and the main one from below.

In most MOBAs that I know, the cards were iterated quite a lot all the time. I don’t deny that we can do it too.

Earlier in the conversation, you said that you added a lot to the meta. So it turns out that usually in MOBA toys, all the monetization that occurs through meta is, roughly speaking, “caps”. You have a different approach: there are a lot of currencies in the game, a lot of consumables, not the most obvious pumping. There is a feeling from the game that it also forces to donate. Why did they decide to stop there, and not decide to sell exclusively “caps”?

If you go back to the original question – donat or not donat – you can buy heroes from us both for money and for ordinary currency. You can buy skins for money from us. And in another way they can be purchased only in events or contests. And we will have a subscription in the future. These are, in fact, buffs for receiving currencies. And there are some consumables that speed up everything.

We don’t have such a thing as pure money. All currencies are, rather, a way to motivate the player to play in different modes. Because besides what we just talked about, we have a campaign mode. This is such a “mini-Diablo” with heroes from the “Planet of Heroes”. It is designed to serve as a help when you are on the bus, in the subway, you have a bad Internet connection, but you want to play. And then you’re like, “I have a MOBA!”. But seven minutes is not the fact that there is. Then you open the game and quickly play a small game for two or three minutes. As a matter of fact, playing these missions and passing them, you get a special currency that develops your heroes from the point of view of runes.

Yes, but they can be “squandered” for money several times, as in Heroes of the Storm.

It’s not money. Here it is the currency that you get by participating in PvP. For example, a person says that he likes PvP and he doesn’t like PvE, he doesn’t want to play it a lot. But at the same time, he wants to get content, a resource for runes, from there. In that case, here’s an opportunity for him – he gets his mission skip, but while in PvP.

I probably didn’t fully understand it then, because for me it was the first shock. I didn’t want to play PvE. And then they tell me that I have to pump up and go through all the missions. And I look at it with big eyes and think: “I don’t want to.”

You’re right, it will need to be shown more correctly. But the base looks like this: anyone who wants to play PvP can do it. They will develop a little slower, but it will not be a stopper for them. Those who play PvP and PvE will be more balanced, and everything will be fine for them. The way the designer intended. Those who want to play PvE can do it too.

How did users perceive PvE now?

Perhaps there is a problem of a “downed pilot”, because we only look at those players who are playing. And from those who play, it is clear that PvE is popular. They play it, farm it, and want to get three stars. And the second difficulty is also used. There are such smooth cut-offs at each level that it is clear that people are still going through.

Are we talking about the whole audience? Is there some small piece that exclusively plays certain modes?

We don’t have a division into groups yet. Everyone plays PvE at times one way or another. There are those who are smaller. There are those who play a lot. But if we are talking about an average time audience, then it plays the same way: PvR and a little PvE.

The last question is about what results did you come to within the framework of developing a very high–quality MOU? What were the most difficult problems? Or vice versa, what were the biggest discoveries that you did not expect to see in the framework of the soft launch of the project?

First, style is very important. Style and “production value”. If it looks expensive, then this will help you. If not, it will be very difficult to break through.

Secondly, we were very right not to go in the direction of classic MOBA with a long session. Because now we would have faced other games and would have been “one of”. And now there is uniqueness, and it’s very cool.

The third bullet: from the very beginning, you need to look at the technical part. We did that, but there are still technical difficulties. I hope we will solve them soon. We are actively working on this. The more synchronous the game, the more relevant this problem is. We ran into this, and in the next project it will be even more in focus.

The last bullet is about the team. It is important that she not only listens to what is being said, and does only that. Now I will give a metaphor: if a seed is thrown into the ground, it will germinate, and something beautiful will grow. That’s how it turned out.

Exhaustively. Thanks for the interview!