Retaining Lapsed Users and Building a Daily Habit Loop
Context
Diablo Immortal is a mobile multiplayer RPG. Players who return after being inactive for 4+ weeks are classified as “returning players” and are offered a limited-time catch-up event with bonus rewards.
Only 14% of these players remained active after 7 days. Our goal was to improve this retention rate by redesigning the returning player experience—tailored to different player segments and motivations.
Impact Summary
After three weeks, the effort showed significant improvements:
40% reduction in time-to-kill: Average time for level 60+ players to get their first kill decreased from 5.5 minutes to just over 3 minutes
30% increase in playtime: First-day playtime increased from 15 minutes to 20 minutes on average
15% increase in Day 1 retention: Day-one retention improved immediately after launching 4.0
Lasting retention improvement: The retention improvements established a new baseline that continued after the Druid class launch halo period
Extended impact: The improvements trickled down to Day-7 retention with a 10% baseline shift
Collaboration
I partnered with:
A User Researcher and a Data Analyst to uncover player pain points and retention gaps
A Game Designer and a Product Manager to define strategy and user flows
An Engineer to align on technical constraints and implementation paths
A Producer to scope milestones and manage the release timeline
Research
Quantitative insights revealed that while 30% of all returning players stayed through Day 1 (D1), retention dropped to 23% among those under level 60 who hadn’t completed the main story quest—especially during their first sessions (D0 and D1).
User testing showed these players felt overwhelmed by the volume of information and struggled to re-learn core gameplay systems.
Goals
Get to combat faster
Only 30% fought within 3 minutes; 50% left without a single kill. We reduced blockers like notifications to prioritize action.
Show what’s playable now
Early sessions were blocked by asset downloads. We surfaced content available in the base install to answer “What can I do right now?”
Cut first-impression clutter
Players spent ~15 minutes clearing menus. We reduced tooltip noise and red dot fatigue to ease re-entry.
Get to Combat Faster
Solution: Launch a mini-dungeon on re-entry
Why it works:
Delivers immediate action—no tutorial required
Qualitative research shows players value combat upon return, quantitative research showed positive correlation between time-to-combat and retention
We first tested a combat-focused mini-dungeon for returning players, which saw positive lifts in retention before we released this as an evergreen feature for all returning players.
Show What's Playable Now
Solution: New interactive gameplay during Asset Download
A focused 10–15 minute narrative quest immediately follows the Mini Mad King's Breach dungeon, occupying player attention within downloaded content while other assets download.
Why it works:
Clear direction and combat-focused, two strengths for retention as found in research.
Low asset load: this gameplay only uses assets pre-downloaded in the base package, avoiding player friction facing asset download error messages for wider parts of the game.
Cut First-Impression Clutter
Solution: Stagger and Suppress Notification Clutter
Hid all red dots and tooltips during the Mini Dungeon and Ashwold Questline to focus players in the first 20mins of returner gameplay.
Delay non-critical red dots in batches to later sessions.
Revise tooltip logic to suppress irrelevant or redundant messaging.
Why it works:
I conducted a card sort activity to evaluate stakeholder priorities regarding feature surfacing.
Research showed the first session sets the tone—players overwhelmed early were more likely to churn.
Insights from my Red Dot System project showed players struggle to self-prioritize when flooded with notifications.
This approach breaks down info into digestible segments, easing re-onboarding without dumbing things down.
Results & Next Steps
As mentioned in the Impact Summary, this initiative drove measurable impact across early engagement and retention, setting a stronger baseline for long-term player return.
Next, we’re focused on long-tail retention by better immersing players into the main questline, a part of gameplay that has shown positive correlation to long-tail retention.
