Suggestions for next patch

[gray raft]

1: (most important) Remove harsh duo penalty.
The game is advertised as multiplayer in the first sentence:
"An infinitely replayable multiplayer and single-player tower defense."

For me its either single player or smurfplayer. Or an " I don't care about my elo player." But not a multiplayer game.
I don't think thats the goal of the penalty? And the "problem" was a chinese duo who don't even play anymore.

2: Change leak gold. Not getting gold if your team mate leaks his opponent feels wrong. Example: You start nightmare on wave 1, your team mate leaks his fiesta opponent with a snail. And you still chilling with 4 workers on wave 2. This just feels bad and unfun. (maybe I'm biased but thats how it feels for me). This change just made the game giga predictable gold-wise and you never have a game where you can push that 1 worker extra out of nowhere.
3: Like suggested before: Change scrapper that the value generating units scrap for their base cost and not their actual in game value. This prevents scrapper from generating money.
4: Maybe a small robo nerf. This helps players to greed more early. Holding is just to important in the current state of the game.
5: Think about the mastermind "shown" at the start. I think that showing the masterminds will cause more unfun problems than it helps solving the problem.
Question for the devs regarding this. I see it as a QOL for kings guard. But besides stash I don't see any benefits of showing it.
It "solves" stash.
it "kills". Fiesta, cartell, castle and in some form miner.

I know this will be partly ingored and thats all fine, you can't pleasure everyone. But I have the feeling that more players share some of these suggestions.

[jagged basin]

Really good suggestions

[gray raft]

I think that point 1 is most important and the biggest pain point for the game

[open jolt]

Re point 1 we got accused of purposely losing games the other day despite playing every game genuinely because the duo penalty causes elo decline. If you don't play any solo (which in a 2v2 multiplayer game should come as no surprise) then your elo crashes over the season:
https://drach.bot/profile/Abstraction/
Now in gold but he's probably 2400+
Its a bit shit that other players think we might be trolling or w/e because the system makes it look like you're doing that when its actually just a consequence of the system

[jagged basin]

Don't think he's 2400 (at least from the game I spectated and some of those that I've looked at) but I'd give you he's better than gold - 2k is probably a fair rating.

Just ignore what people say otherwise and keep playing. It may do him some good if they play solo and maybe you backseat and coach for a few games - heck that could be good for both of you for when you duo again.

To the point of duo though, it's kind of tough from both perspetives. We want to duo, without a huge penalty and without getting screwed over by matchmaking but it's damn tough to do so now most have duo smurf accounts to do so.

This then screws people over playing against a duo who has a smurf since they even when a bigger amount of elo or lose fewer than they would.

It sucks either way you look at it.

My favourite solution would be a duo queue - akin to Mecha, but the Legion playerbase just couldn't make it work especially now.
I remember once a potential solution given was that top 100 couldn't duo, which well forces more smurfs and prevents friends playing together again so that is out of the window.

[jagged basin]

Got an idea.

Have a duo ladder/elo but keep the queues as they are.

This then becomes something new and fresh to maybe get new players in such they will want to reach the top of the duo ladder.

Concerns - elo inflation, but do we actually care about that anymore?
Smurfs - maybe have some sort of trust factor or a certain amount of solo games first?

[violet hemlock]

If robo gets nerfed I’d like to see another sub 100 ranged option for power mercs at least. I think a sniper merc that plinks away at backline units could be a cool idea

[strong panther]

100% it is beyond doubt now. It gets mentioned almost daily.

I had a half baked idea that might be worth further thought:

"I'm pretty high right now, and I have not thought this through at all, but instead of a duo penalty, wouldn't it just be better for both teams to win or lose less elo when playing as / against a duo? Could work similarly to the penalty (big elo gap = not much elo win, small gap = closer to normal).

Like it takes the risk of players being upset about losing to duos away, while encourages more people to duo and thus invite friends and grow the game. Makes smurf boosting difficult."

Sure it's not as good as having no penalty + manual penalty for smurf boosters imo, but it's a middle ground maybe?

It could be combined with Dan's duo ladder idea, which I also think is great if it's possible / easy enough to do on FlayFab.

• Arguments for: Seems like there are less downsides than there currently is, mostly solves the problem, partially allows duoing again

• Arguments against: Still not perfect. You could end up being a solo player playing vs a big elo gap duo opponent repeatedly and only win / lose small elo in a long session which could be frustrating if you're trying to climb. (Although having it ramp with elo gap as the current penalty does mostly negates this).

Other idea's I've had:

• Keep duo penalty as it is, but add in win % to the mix. Gold player with 200 wins 200 losses duoing with a 2400 player who is trying to coach them with a 53% win rate get less penalty than a duo with a gold player with 50 wins 1 loss playing with a Legend player.

Basically, you only get the full duo penalty if your lower ranked team mate also has a very high win % (played over 50 games or w/e).

• Add a short 2 min window in the queue to find duo vs duo games, revert back to regular queue if no other duo joins queue (pref combine with Dan's idea and have a ranked duo ladder to go with it).

[jagged basin]

A new rank for 3k elo would be good to...

[fringe nymph]

Next patch

[gray raft]

❤️