Feature Recovery
Atlantis Redesign
From weak adoption to 50% DAU participation: clearer onboarding, better progression, reward clarity, and motivation.
Role
Game Designer
Status
Shipped
Tools
Analytics dashboards, Jira, Confluence
Design Breakdown
Atlantis Relaunch: Before/After Progression Curve
A simplified breakdown of the redesign target: make the feature easier to enter, quicker to justify, and clearer about why players should come back.
Entry clarity
Atlantis read like a separate endgame lane with a vague first step.
The relaunch defined a clearer entry point and a first action players could commit to immediately.
First meaningful goal
Too much early distance between entry and the first moment that felt rewarding.
The early path was tuned so players hit a meaningful goal sooner and understood why the feature mattered.
Reward visibility
Players could not easily judge whether the effort curve was worth the spend and time.
Rewards and progression value were surfaced earlier so the loop justified itself faster.
Return motivation
Weak reason to come back after the first exploratory session.
Progression pacing and payoff visibility created a stronger reason to return on subsequent sessions.
Simplified progression curve
Outcome
The original release had weak adoption and poor reception. After redesign, the relaunch reached 50% DAU participation within its first month. Full baseline and raw player counts are internal.
Context
- Atlantis was a major Seafight expansion, but its initial reception and adoption were weak. The redesign brief was straightforward: diagnose why players were not entering the loop, then rebuild the early experience so the feature justified itself faster.
- The relaunch focused on first-session readability, a stronger early progression path, and clearer reasons to invest without undermining existing player progress.
Problem
- Atlantis had weak adoption and players were not starting or sustaining engagement with the expansion.
- The entry experience and time-to-reward curve were tuned too heavily toward the top segment.
- Players needed clearer reasons to invest in the feature area.
My role
- Game Designer
- The redesign had to respect existing progression, inventories, and economy expectations.
- Changes needed to recover trust without making the expansion feel like a separate game.
- The relaunch had to be understandable to both veterans and returning players.
Design decisions
- Reworked onboarding so the expansion offered a clear first action instead of asking players to buy into a distant end-state.
- Adjusted quest flow and progression pacing so early commitment felt achievable rather than back-loaded.
- Surfaced rewards and progression value sooner so players could judge the feature on visible returns, not assumptions.
- Kept changes compatible with existing progression, inventories, and economy expectations.
Outcome
- The original release had weak adoption and poor reception. After redesign, the relaunch reached 50% DAU participation within its first month.
- Reworked onboarding, progression pacing, and value communication so players could understand the feature earlier.
- Full baseline and raw player counts are internal.
What this shows
- The original release had weak adoption and poor reception. After redesign, the relaunch reached 50% DAU participation within its first month. Full baseline and raw player counts are internal.
- Atlantis is the clearest proof that I can recover a weak feature by fixing its entry point, improving the first rewards, and giving players a clearer sense of why the system matters.