zenith citrus
It's clearly the least popular alternate mode. It often seems to fall into obscurity, with the devs rarely allowing us to play it. They can do much more with this mode, rather than ignore it in favor of the other two. It was the first attempt at a zany special mode, but it's clearly outdated nowadays. I'd like to see it be on par with the two other special gamemodes, so that all three of them could be in a regular rotation.
I see one main issue with the game mode: it's not different from battle royale enough.
Even if it aimed to spice things up, it just doesn't achieve that goal. The gameplay in mystery mode is, for most modifiers, about 90% the same dynamics as a regular Squads battle royale, with a few slight differences that you need to take into consideration. The game mode, to be as good as the other two, should first and foremost feel like its own thing, separate from squads battle royale. Therefore, it's the modifiers that need work.
I suggest that each mystery mode match receives two (or three!) random modifiers, from a much greater, and more interesting, pool of possibilities. Make each match unique, make each occurrence of a particular modifier also unique since it will be paired with others. Some modifiers would be mutually exclusive. There could also be one "main" modifier and two "minor" modifiers, depending on how impactful they are.
The possibilities for modifiers are endless, and as a wacky game mode where everyone is affected equally, they don't necessarily need to be perfectly tuned and balanced, like the team-oriented game modes of SvR and Bwok. So, go wild with the modifiers, set them loose and see what results. Here are some I could come up with, of course there can be many more:
•Extremely faster Super Skunk Gas - it could start like it does now, but only wait 3 seconds per shrink stage
•Pitch black, reduced sound distance, no map - horror-y modifier, everything outside of your sight would be black rather than grayed out
•Multi-shots - each weapon shoots thrice the bullets at a third of the damage each
•Bounce shots - bullets bounce until their max distance, with reduced damage
•Fast out-of-combat healing
•When taking damage, health gets consumed to 1 before armor starts blocking shots - switch up how resources are managed
•BCG only
•Specialty ammo guns only
•Common items only
•Legendary items only
•Vampire mode, slowly lose health, massive health leech when landing shots
•Infinite throwables
•Mole crate spawns every 30 seconds
•Infinite clips, where ammo gets consumed from your reserves, no reload necessary
•Random spawn location, like in Bwoking dead
•Instant death upon being downed
•All bullets cause 2 ticks of 9 poison damage
•Emus have quadruple health and double damage, and spawn at quadruple the rate
•Enemies are visible through walls
•Bullets pierce through obstacles
•No ammo pickups around weapons, only acquired from crates, grass and kills
•No crates or grass
•Greatly increased player health (300)
•Increased fire rate, movement speed, bullet size, weapon spread, range, damage falloff...
These just write themselves. When balance isn't a big concern, we could get crazy combinations.
valid perch
lapis flume