Improving the Free-to-Play System

Hey Guys and Gals,

About a week ago, we made a post identifying some of the weaknesses we see in our current F2P Hero Rotation System. Here they are again for quick reference:

• When 10 heroes are used per game, a pool of 15 heroes does not offer much variety from game to game.
• Because of the limited pool, game modes like SD and Banning Pick are problematic and require work-arounds (tokens and passes).
• A new player may lose access to a hero that he's become familiar with, adding another hurdle in the learning process.
• Moreover, when the F2P heroes rotate, the heroes that new players become accustomed to playing with and against get replaced as well!
• While players have access to 15 heroes each week, they have ownership of none of them. This means they can not unlock avatars for any of these heroes without first unlocking the hero.

Since then, you guys have been overwhelmingly helpful with 8 pages of Forum responses full of feedback and suggestions. Thanks so much for putting time and thought into ways to improve the gameplay experience for new F2P players! A lot of you had great ideas, and it was pretty cool and vindicating to see that some of the ideas we were bouncing around internally were espoused by you guys as well. That said, we've considered a bunch of things internally as well as read through and considered each and every one of your suggestions, and this is the gameplan that we're thinking of moving forward with:

1. We will expand the Free Hero Pool from 15 heroes to 30 heroes.
2. We will carefully craft a balanced (10 of each attribute) pool of 30 heroes, taking into factors such as difficulty to play and hero roles.
3. The Free Hero Pool will no longer change from week to week - it will remain completely static. Furthermore, it is no longer a "Free Hero Pool" - F2P players, new and old, will simply start the game OWNING all 30 chosen heroes.
4. We will refund any Gold or Silver Coins players have spent on the 30 chosen heroes.
5. We will start work on the code changes necessary to run all of the modes that you currently need tokens/passes for without them, and have any modes that randomly select heroes do so from ALL of the heroes available to a player (the base 30 + whatever he unlocks).
6. After that functionality works, we will remove passes and tokens. 30 heroes is enough to run any of the modes, even if no player has any additional heroes unlocked.

What we like about this course of action is that:

• It addresses all of the issues presented directly and elegantly.
• No rotation means there is a defined "Starting Hero Pool" that players can learn and pick up the game with, without having to learn how to play with and against a new set of heroes every week.
• It creates a very simple system, made even more attractive in that it allows for complete removal of the cumbersome tokens/passes mechanic.
• It is a simple, perfect base from which to implement potential additions such as an Upgrade-to-Legacy fee or a subscription model to access the rest of the heroes in the future, should we decide that they are beneficial to the new player experience.

As welcome, we ask for and welcome your feedback - what do you think, guys?