Recently, I have been having a surprising amount of fun playing Pokémon Unite, a recent Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) from Nintendo and the Pokémon Company. As a long-time League of Legends player who has also dabbled in Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the developers were able to translate the complexity of the previously PC-exclusive MOBA genre to a controller while also coming up with their own unique take on the MOBA formula. I’d never expected to see elements of MOBAs mixed with basketball in the Pokémon universe, but here we are. While playing however, I found a handful of UI decisions that could definitely use a second look. This week, I want to take that second look at Pokémon Unite’s battle pass.
The battle pass
Let's talk battle passes. Over the last few years, season passes, battle passes, and other similar systems have exploded in popularity as a profitable monetization model for free-to-play and live-service games. At the beginning of each season of a given game, players earn battle pass progression simply by playing the game. As new levels are earned, all players can unlock a variety of rewards. Some rewards however, are only available to those who purchased a battle pass upgrade, thus incentivizing players to spend money.
Pokémon Unite’s battle pass works very similarly. Players complete missions by performing certain tasks that they are likely to complete over the course of normal gameplay. Once complete, these missions can be redeemed for battle pass progress, after which the battle pass’’ rewards may be collected. The problem is that going through this process every time players have accumulated enough points to redeem some of the rewards involves way too many steps. To redeem battle pass rewards, players must:
Select the battle pass button to enter the battle pass menu.
Press <ZR> on their controller to go to the missions screen.
Press <X> to claim all available mission rewards. If the <B> button is pressed here, or at any other point during this process, the battle pass menu closes and the player is returned to the main menu.
Press <ZL> to go back to the battle pass menu.
Press <X> to claim all available battle pass rewards.
Compare this to games such as Sea of Thieves or Teamfight Tactics, which have much simpler, player-friendly collection systems. In Sea of Thieves, players are automatically granted the season pass rewards once they reach new season pass levels. In Teamfight Tactics, once players reach new battle pass levels, they simply select each earned reward to unlock it from the battle pass screen. These rewards systems stay out of the way of players enjoying the game but remain accessible to the player when they are rewarded for the time spent playing their game.
The Improvements
Since the battle pass is one of Pokémon Unite’s main monetization methods, it stands to reason that the game developers want to make interacting with the feature as painless and straightforward as possible. With that in mind, I would make the following optimizations:
Don’t make the player claim mission rewards; once a mission has been completed, automatically grant them the battle pass progress they have earned. Doing this reduces the number of steps necessary to progress through the battle pass from 5 to 2.
Keep the missions screen, but only use it to show the player what they can do and what they have done to earn battle pass points. This helps keep battle pass progress transparent, so that players don’t feel like their progression is being unfairly gated behind invisible milestones.
If the player is on the missions screen, the <B> button should return them to the battle pass menu instead of the main menu. Since the missions screen is only accessible via battle pass screen, players will generally the <B> button to return them to the previous screen.
Each of these changes should help players navigate the battle pass in a much more intuitive way. They help players feel like they are continuously progressing through the battle pass, instead of making progress via occasional large jumps. Providing players with more frequent, smaller rewards is a solid method of retaining players and reducing player frustration due to a lack of promised rewards. As an added bonus, the less frustration monetization systems give your players, the more likely players are to buy into said systems.
In the meantime, go catch ‘em all!
-Mark
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