Wave War - Illuvium: Arena Game Mode Suggestion

[bright silo]

I am excited to suggest a new game mode for Illuvium inspired by Legion TD - the Warcraft III mod which pioneered the Autobattler genre. The main reason for this game mode is to provide a multiplayer experience that will help onboard friends and allow players to enjoy the game together.

Here you can read the full Idea:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PNWkLKIvKdsdOJuYYI__PAH9WTNFkyvTrQOQ4ivpWHE/edit?usp=sharing

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions on this Game Mode, and I hope together we can tweak and refine this Idea to be something that will improve the Illuvium Arena gaming experience!

[pure glen]

Looks like a cool idea, I dont personally have enough experience in autobattlers outside of Illuvium so cant say too much more (some the TFT players in our community im sure will have more relevant comments there)

agree that unless something similar is already planned, we cant afford to add on anything new that could add delays for now, but if this idea gets traction it could be worth considering as a future additional game mode to add for sure, excited to see what others have to say

also think this is a fun time whilst we wait for PvP to theory craft different potential game modes that could be added in future so great work on getting the ball rolling

[woven estuary]

Yo mate! I think it's really cool to start thinking about those things and brainstorm as a community so first of all i'd like to thank you for sharing this with us. Before i really give any opinion i'd just like make sure i understood the concept correctly.

[polar sphinx]

I like Legion Tower Defense 2 (LTD2) and I have played it a bit before (about 150 hours).

The initial version, "Wave War Battle Royale" where you battle for yourself and when you leak enemies, they would go to the next person (as per the image) seems rather shallow.
If you play the game and end up next to the doofus that leaks everything every wave, you would end up having a really sad game as you would also leak all of that and potentially drop a lot lower in HP or even gold than you normally would. (Imagine using a hydra egg, an LTD2 unit that is useless for 2 waves but can be used early on as a strategy. You would have it die just because the person next to you couldn't hold the easiest first 2 waves at all. rendering it basically useless for the remainder of the game)

You would have issues with that type of strategies that could be the most interesting. This would take away a lot of the fun since it could rely on lucky neighbors. Instead it could be cool to have the 8 players that you showed be part of the same local chat and make an Among-us type game out of it.

At the end of the wave, all placers would be able to choose to send their unkilled enemies or "leaks" to the person of their choice. Through an in-game Voice chat you could make deals with others, send reinforcements or hold them for yourself if you think that you will be targeted. Then it will become much more of a mindgame, where you could defend someone else to get some extra gold or you could buckle up and reduce the amount of damage you take yourself.

The team battle royale, íf you can send units to mess with your enemies looks rather vague with the 4 teams you are showcasing in the image. If you play 2 v 2 v 2 v 2, then team 1 would send units to team two, who send to team 3, to team 4 that then comes back to bite you. If Team 1 ruins their economy by sending the most powerful units to mess with Team 2, then Team 2 becomes weaker and can't mess with team 3, which in turn allows Team 3 to mess with Team 4 who become less powerful and team 1 will then have less annoyances coming for them but is weaker because they started this. So to me I feel like everyone will just send the easy stuff and hope that someone starts this chain and they turn out to be the number 3 in the chain.

I feel like it would be a lot of indirect conflict and may be better to be just limited to two teams with 2 or 4 players in a team. You mess with the opposing team, they mess with you in return. It worked just fine in LTD2! 👍

(Edit: changed the team numbers to start at 1 cuz it would be more intuitive?)

[brittle spruce]

Played the SC2 version the other day.

I played this more than I played the main SC2 game. I approve (after games out)

[fast pelican]

I like the concept, we don't yet know the scope of PvP so perhaps some of this will be in the finished PvP/arena mode. I agree with your statement in the document that this would have to wait until the initial roadmap is completed and launched.

[bright silo]

Great points! If I try to steelman both of those scenarios:

If you have someone next to you who leaks a lot, this could actually "feed" you and give you extra units to defeat, which would give you extra mastery points. Alternatively, if you are struggling already, it would make it even harder. So, I think there are multiple ways in which good or bad players next to you could influence you - which I don't think is a bad thing. It would give some more variance for casual gamers.

For the team battle royale part, I think there is a misunderstanding as sending the most powerful Illuvials does not necessarily destroy your own economy; it is vital to build up income. Basically, in LTD2, there were two ways you could do it - either save up your economy to send big on specific hard waves to make them leak, or you constantly send to maximize your income and get the biggest economy at the downside of "feeding" the enemy team because they get extra mastery points each round by killing those extra units.

Let's play through the example of 2v2v2v2. Team 1 sends constantly to get the biggest income - meaning Team 2 gets more Illuvials to kill, giving them more mastery points. So, they are now leading in economy. They decide to play it smart and send only every 5 waves to create a huge strong wave and make Team 3 leak. Team 3 recognizes this and sends more often to build up better income and economy to be ready for the big sends, which then gives Team 4 a lot of extra mastery points, allowing them to also play the tactic of sending big units every 5 turns to Team 1, who are spamming sends to increase their economy. In this example, it kind of balances itself.

Compared to having a 2v2, the best tactic will almost always be to send not often but big to make the enemies leak whenever they send. The indirect conflict could add another layer of tactic since you need to think ahead more.

I really like the idea of bringing mind games into the game mode with this Among Us-style aspect! We saw how viral Among us went for a while because of how funny it is to watch entertaining people like streamers having those mindgames. A downside to that could be that it transforms the already niche game mode of tower defense even more by putting the Among Us niche on top of it. It might get less enjoyable for casual gamers at a tradeoff of having more streamability and being more fun to watch and more fun to play with your friends!

[bright silo]

100%, it would be nice to hear input from a team member to know if we're talking about stuff that is already planned for the arena. But even if we are, I'm sure they would be happy to get opinions on the matter from the community. Maybe a Cheeky @molten storm Ping will do the trick.. 😄

[molten storm]

Sorry on this front, I don't have much time to go in depth with analysis. We don't have any scope right now for new modes, anything relating to that would be something to think about after we've got PvP done, after we've got Survival finished ect.

But if the community has an idea they love and wants to shape and develop it. More than happy to pick up in a few months.

[pastel crow]

Wait there’s a stand-alone game similar to squadron TD in StarCraft???
I know what I’m doing this weekend..

Like @brittle spruce said, I played squadron td (and a couple other custom games) more than SC2 multiplayer itself.

I think this is a genius idea, even if the details need to be fleshed out some.

I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it until they announce plans for it, illuvium NEEDS to allow for friends to play together. You just can’t launch a game where everything is pretty isolated.

[polar sphinx]

Feeding you is fine, but the issue is that you would need to know what the enemies are doing before the wave starts, or you won't be able to anticipate on it. If you have a random person next to you, and there is a strategy to clutch the first waves for optimal results, those would go down the drain unless your neighbor holds. If this holding is up to the other person being good enough, or them expecting you to do the clutch, it would be either very risky, or downright silly to try. If you have a teammate, at least you can discuss things with them.

Team battles:
You are right. but if team 3 leaks, then they will not get the amount of gold that team two had already gotten from the earlier waves. Basically team 3 could start with easy sends, but they can't go as greedy as team 2 could since they know that team 2 is saving up. They send whatever they can, but still have to beef up their defenses to be able to defend the potentially killing wave.

Team 2 obviously also isn't in the most favorable position, as they have to save up points that could have generated income instead if they had sent something.

So initially Team 1 would have a large economy, Team 2 would have a medium one, team 3 medium and team 4 high.

Team two sends annoyingly and expensively to Team 3, who would get leaked once by Team 2, which results in a downgrade to bad economy. to make up for this they resume sending easy and regularly to 4, which just makes that team 4 has an even easier time, and they can send more to 1 who was also already doing well, having both team 4 and team 1 go to Very high economy levels.

In a 4 way battle, I don't think any team would benefit from starting to send big waves. After all, you are messing up your economy while you would give the team two down the line an easier time. But yeah this argument can go both ways. If you start sending annoyingly, the other person may end up doing the same. So everyone either sends continuously, or sends difficult-to-defend stuff.

Mind games
Definitely agree that it may get too niche for the average player 😅 but it may be a cool spin-off of the current games that are being developed.

[polar sphinx]

in a few months sounds just fine! 😄
I feel like this LTD-type gamemode would be able to use a lot of the already available game-mechanics. Such as the same hexagon flooring, omega abilities, pathing and overload mechanics.
But it's obvious to me that these are just ideas and will only be further explored if the game is sufficiently laid out to be interesting to the community. 🙂

[polar sphinx]

have fun! LTD 2 is quite sophisticated though, so you may require some time to get used to it. I stopped when they started adding more and more units with synergies together that just never worked for me, while others pulled them off. Saltiness kicked in shortly after 😄

[bright silo]

I like thinking through these scenarios. 😄

You can anticipate what the enemies will be doing, just like in other games. They could do X or they could do Y, and then you can plan a strategy accordingly. If they do X, I can get away with my risky strategy A and get ahead. If they do Y, my A strategy will fail. Do I want to risk it, or do I go with the safe strategy B, which will work in both scenarios?

Team battles:
It's a good example that you drew out. It could definitely go that way, but there are many other ways it can play out. It seems like the two obvious strategies would be to save up to send big every 2-5 waves to make it as hard as possible for the enemy and make them lose a wave, or send constantly to increase your income the most. But I think there are more details and nuances that can go into it, like, for example, in LTD2, you know the waves, you know that wave 5, for example, will be fire rogues, 6 will be air tanks, etc., and you can check the enemy's team. So you can figure out when they will have the hardest wave according to their composition, and that would bring variance and more tactics into it by everybody focusing to send on different waves. Also, you can bend the rules to make the players play the game differently. If you figure out that it would be more balanced to not send constantly, you design it more towards rewarding making the enemy leak, to set the meta around that.

I get the concern that in a 4-way battle, you could defeat your direct opponent but it would indirectly feed the person that is sending to you, giving you a harder time, or shenanigans like that, but I think with the right game rules set, this can be balanced, and I stand with - the more players, the better. The motivation for this is multiplayer. And if you are 5 friends that want to play together but it's a 2v2, you will go play something else. The bigger the lobby, the better for the multiplayer aspect, but the harder it is to balance it to have fair games.