How Third-Party Community Tools Increase Player Retention and Engagement.
We analyzed the behavior of over 80,000 TFT players who actively used third-party tools and compared them to a control group of 17,000 randomly selected players. The results are more than interesting.
On November 20th, Teamfight Tactics (TFT) released a new major update, Set 13: Into The Arcane, after a two-week run in the public beta environment. This marked the 13th major update, continuing Riot's successful LiveOps strategy of fully revamping the game every four months, which, in my opinion, has been the key to securing their position as the “number one strategy game in the world,” as stated by their president of esports.
In this fast-paced, ever-evolving environment, there’s a major key difference compared to other games: the impact of third-party tools and platforms in engaging and retain the most dedicated players.
I’m Marcos, co-founder of Tacter, a platform that builds game-specific communities. And joining me today is ‘Guthers’, founder and developer of MetaTFT, a website and desktop app that uses data to help TFT players learn and improve at the game. Both of our projects are included on Riot’s list of "3rd Party Friends".
In this article, we analyze the behavior of 80,000+ players who actively used third-party tools like MetaTFT during Set 13, compared to a control group of 17,000 randomly selected players.
🎯 Our objective is to identify behavioral differences between these two cohorts to measure the impact that top-tier third-party tools like MetaTFT or Tacter have on player engagement, progression, and ultimately, the lifetime value of your players!
Benefits of Third-Party Tools.
We analyzed a sample of 80,000+ players actively using third-party tools like MetaTFT, compared to a randomly selected group of 17,000+ players. To be included, players had to have played at least one game during Set 13.
At first glance, players using third-party tools played 2.1 times more matches on average than the random sample during the analyzed period, while the median user played 3.4 times more than their counterpart in the random sample.
Daily engagement also showed significant differences—players using third-party tools played 47% more daily matches than the random user average and 61% more than the median user.
In short, players who use third-party tools tend to play more frequently, both overall and daily, compared to the average player.
Players who actively use third-party tools played 47% more daily matches than the average player, and 61% more than the median player.
Differences in N-Day Retention.
For live-service, free-to-play games that monetize through cosmetics, season passes, and in-game currency, long-term user retention directly impacts LTV.
In this analysis, we use N-Day Unbounded Retention to measure long-term retention differences between our two cohorts: players using third-party tools and a randomly selected control group.
⭐ After 60 days from their initial match, players using third-party tools had 59.2% higher 60-Day Unbounded Retention than the control group.
As the graph shows, the retention gap between the two cohorts widens over time—21% higher on Day 7, 35% on Day 30, and 59% on Day 60 for players using third-party tools.
As we all know, the longer a player stays engaged, the higher their LTV. And it's now clear that players using third-party tools have significantly higher retention. That said, third-party tools may not be the direct cause of this increase. As Guthers explains, “Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation; however, it’s evident that our users engage with the game far more than the average player.”
The analysis makes evident that 3rd party players engage with the game significantly more than the average player.
A likely explanation is that players who take the game more seriously are both more inclined to seek external resources and more committed to playing regularly. Moreover, providing these players with the content, tools, and a like-minded community is a proven way to keep those super players engaged longer.
Differences in Player Progression.
Player progression is another key factor in boosting player activation, a crucial step toward long-term retention. Third-party tools help create an environment that reduces frustration and accelerates the learning curve—both essential for keeping players engaged and progressing. This is especially important in competitive live-service games like TFT, where the meta is constantly evolving.
Notably, 87% of players using third-party tools played at least one ranked match, compared to 59% in the control group—a 46% higher tendency to engage with competitive game modes.
While we don’t have exact data on the LTV difference between competitive and non-competitive players, it’s reasonable to assume that players engaging in ranked modes have significantly higher LTV.
Moreover, when comparing ranking distributions within both cohorts, the difference is striking—players using third-party tools rank 30% higher on average than those who don’t. This is clearly illustrated following the TFT Rankings distribution.
Why do Third-Party Tools Benefit the Game Ecosystem?
By @Guthers — MetaTFT founder and developer.
After several years of third-party tool development, here are some of the benefits that I see to the game ecosystem:
Closing the Frustration Loop - With any game, you win or you lose, while winning is a positive experience, losing can cause frustration, which people naturally seek to avoid. When experiencing frustration, players alleviate this in several ways:
Playing again can temporarily relieve this, but consecutive losses can exacerbate the negative feelings.
Seeking external guidance or feedback is the next logical step. Players can take a step back, reflect, learn from external resources, and come back with fresh motivation.
Players might also share their misfortune, hoping for sympathy from others and reinforcing social connections.
Without outlets to alleviate their frustrations, players might stop coming back to the game altogether.
Accessibility & Extending the Learning Curve - 3rd party tools live or die by how well we serve our users (the players). As such, we have to be incredibly receptive to user needs - creating resources to answer questions that users might have.
Players that just start out a game have lots of questions, and often seek out guidance - having resources available to players can help the new player experience massively. This can help to improve accessibility to new players for a game, which is often a critical time to keep players engaged.
3rd party resources also help players continue improving. As the average skill level of your player base increases, players adapt & innovate new strategies to succeed, which also increases the depth of the game. With any competitive game, players are often motivated to maintain their rank between seasons - which can involve playing more and more games as the player base improves.
Foster Community - Tools that can create and foster discussion around your game can also help user engagement. We are naturally social creatures, and sharing thoughts, discussions, highs and lows around a shared passion are great ways to form social bonds. Speaking for myself, I’m much more likely to play a game that my friends are playing, and having ways to share highs and lows, discuss strategies, and help each other improve will keep me engaged for longer.
Additionally, Community discussions are also full of valuable insights for developers. You can see what your players are excited about, what frustrates them, and react accordingly.
Experimental Features - The community often develops tools around games to alleviate their own frustrations with the game. Some of these can genuinely improve the player experience and be adopted into the game itself if successful. Observing what tools are popular within your player base is another valuable risk-free source of insight into what your players want.
The “Community as a Platform”.
By @Marcos, founder and CEO of Tacter.
After several major game release flops, it's becoming clear that creating a great game is no longer enough* You also need to build a strong game ecosystem around it.
*Any new game today is competing with established titles that boast over a decade of content, thriving communities, and loyal fan bases. In fact, according to Newzoo’s 2024 report, 60% of total playtime in 2024 came from games that are six years old or older, and just 10% in new titles.
For studios, building a robust game ecosystem is essential for long-term success, but it's a challenging endeavor.
The average Studio relies on Discord for community building, yet less than 3% of a game’s total player base actually joins a Discord server.
This is mainly because Discord wasn’t designed for this purpose. However, it seems that they have recognized the opportunity and are shifting their focus back to gaming.
Established studios, like RIOT Games in this study, lean on fan-driven third-party partners. They sacrifice the control of those hubs, trading control for scalability.
Their success, along with supporting data, proves this approach works—projects like MetaTFT and Tacter are prime examples.
However, this comes at the cost of control, limiting the publisher’s ability to fully leverage the community to support game operations. In periods of massive growth—like previous years—this wasn’t a major concern. But as growth stagnates, optimizing in this area becomes a more compelling strategy.
Additionally, Studios with less bargaining power often struggle to attract top-tier community projects early on, creating a "chicken-and-egg" scenario.
Modern approaches lean toward building in-house solutions, which require significant time, money, and resources—often shifting focus away from core game development. Examples include:
Hoyoverse (Genshin Impact, Honkai, etc.) is building its own community platform, HoyoLab.
NCSoft is developing their own community hub: Purple Lounge.
Monopoly GO (Scopely) created their exclusive Monopoly GO Tycoon Club.
This last example is particularly interesting as it intersects with another growing industry trend—especially in mobile gaming— the alternative stores.
Monopoly GO is currently in the Top7 in the top-grossing charts, and Teamfight Tactics is in the Top 14 (source)
In the case of Monopoly GO, the “club” isn’t just a regular player community—it’s an exclusive, invite-only space designed for highly engaged players who drive the majority of sales. It also serves as an alternative store, effectively bypassing the 30% mobile store commission and directly impacting LTV.
At Tacter, we anticipated this trend nearly a year ago when we talked about the concept of the community as the platform.
That’s why, based on these market trends, we expect controlling the spaces where the most engaged players gather to become a key strategic priority for studios.
And, as demonstrated in this article, third-party platforms like MetaTFT and Tacter naturally attract these highly engaged players, making them invaluable strategic assets for expanding game operations beyond the game.