"Saving" Hero Academy

Of all of these, I think android would bring in the most new players - HA has been featured so often that I think everyone that wants to try it has tried it, except for those that can't - I.e. android folks. That said, it's no simple port, so I don't begrudge RE if it never happens. 
 
The next thing would be the newbie system. It's always the case in 1v1 games, someone has to lose, and if newbies just get bad beats one after another..

You cant exactly put a deadline on new teams. The harsh truth is, the more teams that get put out, the slower new ideas are going to come.
 
But Android and a quick game option are definitely something RE should invest in IMO.

I'd be interested in a quick game mode...but sometimes my notifications just don't work. Not sure why but sometimes it'll be my turn but there's no badge on the app icon. I dunno if its a problem with my device or their game. 

I have felt (and whined here) from my beginning, that this is a signficant damper on new player uptake for HA. I also believe the problem gets worse with every new team. 
 
I have advocated a "council and DE only" bunny room that all new players start in... but some kind of level matching might work too... But the trick is to not make so many partitiions that people can't get a random game in a timely fashion... Without access to RE's active user base data, it is hard to have a good idea what is possible and what isn't.
 
I think it is the biggest threat to HA's longterm propects. HA, the game is good enough that it should be sustainable. As I said many places, I think RE should take a break on new teams and address this problem (and add a couple other good facilties...), and then take a look at marketing.

 
Careful.
 
Thin ice.
 
 

Kevin, get the horse tranquilizer ready

Adding the Quick Game option seems like no-brainer, given Robot has already spent the time and money developing the feature for China. Not implementing it here just seems like a waste. (I've actually been playing the Chinese version, it's a lot of fun only having three minutes to make your move in timed matches. Stressful, but fun.)
 
Leaderboards are also active in China, but I don't see Robot reversing their stance on that.
 
I agree that Android support would probably bring the most new players, but ultimately what's more important is what will bring the most money. And Android users are not known for spending a lot of money on apps.
 
Development on Hero Academy has slowed. We used to get a team every two months (less than, even... 42 days between launch and Dwarves, 42 days between Dwarves and The Tribe). Now it's more like three or four months between teams (125 days between The Tribe and TF2, 99 days between TF2 and Shaolin).
 
Why has development slowed? Money. If Hero Academy was raking in cash hand over fist, you can be sure it'd be on Android by now we'd have more teams and more features (local pass and play, et cetera).
 
I've been having similar thoughts about Hero Academy's (uncertain?) future as of late, which got me thinking of new ways to monetize the game. Hence my thoughts about in-game currency a few days ago.
 
Unfortunately, Robot's business model for Hero Academy (free to play with $2 teams and $3 avatars) doesn't seem to have set the world on fire. I wish it had, because from a player's perspective it's awesome, but from a business perspective, it might need some tweaking.

I'd pay a small monthly subscription fee for skill based matching. 
 
That would make it a sustainable economic model, as opposed to now. Currently: We have paid for teams, which should cover development costs, but now RE has to keep bleeding money to keep the servers running, with nothing in return from us, the customers. 
 
If a league, ladder or other kind of skill based match making were implemented at the cost of a subscription fee, many of us would subscribe, generating a steady flow of cash toward RE, which should cover (maybe even exceed) operational costs. 
 
In addition, it is newbie friendly, since you could make it such that you would play mainly against players of your own skill; possibly you could implement that a certain % of games is against more skilled opponents so that you can see how to play properly. Or maybe, max out the number of skill-matches at a relatively low number (like, 7 or 8), so that league players will be compelled to start a few random games as well. Or something like that.
 
Since this idea is kinda obvious, I'd be very surprised if RE hasn't considered it; so I wonder why they didn't implement it?

I lurk more then I comment, but I wanted to quote this for emphisis. I LOVE HA. I play a lot with my friends, but very few randoms. I think that this game has an extrodinary amount of potential, but it would need to grow and expand a lot in the process. I think the best way to do that would be to have HA2, but carry over the teams/purchases of the oringal HA. I say this not only as a development decision, but as a finical desicion as well. Since more backing/capital/whatever can be given to the sequel of a top rated game, vs sustaining the life of it.

HA will never totally die until they decide to shut down the servers.  I'm guessing that is a minimum of a 18 months away since the player base currently still seems pretty good and new folks continue to appear.  I mean, start a few random games at different times during the day and time how long it takes to get your game started, then do some basic math and you'll see there are still a ton of games being played.  Looks like the app is at #146 in Strategy Games, which isnt too bad, although its been falling since the Shaolin update.  However, it could certainly get fairly quiet within say 6-9 months if they dont do anything to get attention in that span.
 
I agree Android would be a terrific indicator of longer term viability, but who knows if they have any active plan in this regard?  Its something they have clearly decided not to disclose.   

This desire to have a game last forever confounds me.

I still fire-up the old original Starcraft on my museum piece in the attic and play the campaigns or vs. multi-AI for nostalgic reasons.
 
And I'd play Star Control II again if I could find the diskettes and a woking drive for them (still got the decoder wheel); or maybe I should just give a stab at getting the sourceforge code a try.
 
When producers stumble upon solid game-play, all the story lines, transition screens and fancy graphics all take a back seat.
 

They have said they were working on an Android verison last January... So it's been worked on... Who knows if we'll actually see it. Haven't had any updates on it in a long time.

Interesting you should mention this. I did this just a few hours ago, partially out of the curiousity, inspired by this thread, of how active the random (and therefore new user) scene is.
 

Over the course of 1 hour, I started 9 random games. 

 
Not one of the games took more than about a minute to acquire. There are 1440 minutes in a day. Assuming there wasn't something special about the time of day, this suggests that the number of new games being started every day is in the thousands. Unless people on average start a lot more than one game a day, it suggests that the number of players playing daily is also in the thousands. Notice this is an estimate of the minimum. It could be 10x or 100x  more than that and my evidence would be the same. I actually hope it is much more than that since a thousand people paying a couple bucks every couple months, is not sustainable from RE's POV. Ten thousand people may be. 100 thousand definitely is.
 
Other notes:
5 of the 9 were council team default avatar (suggesting free player, which can mean newbie, but not necessarily--A while ago I played several games with a clear free player, who might have been the best player I've played, slaughtered me every time, s/he stopped playing without explanation, sadly.)

• One of those resigned without moving (I was DE, I don't know if that was a factor).
• Another resigned after about 5 moves, after giving me two fully loaded units. (After taking the first fully loaded unit, I chatted that I was willing to give advice if requested but he didn't respond. I don't know if that sounds obnoxious. I did it because I thought, if I slaughter this guy, he's just going to delete HA. I welcome advice, I don't heed it, but I welcome it, but different people are different, I've heard...)
• 2 others of those 5 are clearly newbie.
• The last one of the 5, positioned himself displaying some experience on his first move, but hasn't moved since.

 
The other 4 games

• 1 was council but purchased avator, no indication yet of newbie-ness - but only moved once during the hour.
• 2 were dwarves and not newbie,
• 1 was DE and is already beating me badly. I defend my ego by saying I was paying too much attention to my unscientific study.

 
So, very unscientifically,

• half of players starting random games have paid RE some money, and of the rest:
• 1/9th may be giving HA a good look.
• 2/9ths have just are probably about to delete the game.
• Another 1/9th doesn't seem terribly interested.

 
Another note of interest: Even though I had just started 9 games, only about 2 of them made more than two moves over the course of the first hour. I was disappointed because I was out of waiting games and wanted to play. But I also thought it was strange, because these were all people who had just started a game, why weren't they moving? I only start games when I am ready to play.
 
Question for anyone bored enough to read this far: What would you do with the 2 newbies who are left?

• Should I slaughter them and hope for some reason they don't delete HA?
• Should I chat them and say _____ [you fill in the blank]?
• Should I go easy on them?

 
 
 
 
 

Thanks. Yes, a sample size of 9 is only useful as an guide to where to direct further study. 
 
RE must be able to do with kind of research pretty easily. They should be able to see newbies and good players even more accurately than the league can. And therefore they should be able to see how often newbies play against exotic teams and/or experienced players and ... never play again. I would think this should tell them how valid my argument is that new teams and games against expert players dampen new player uptake.