Leviathan Arena/Gauntlet Rework Idea to Give Access to All Players and Reward Dedicated Players Too

[peak island]

Leviathan Arena/Gauntlet should be the primary game mode for illuvium, but to do that we need to make it accessible to all starting players.

The advantage of Leviathan mode is playing with MY ILLUVIALS, the ones I captured, fused, and love--this gives a sense of progression as we make our teams better and better. It's this progression, this journey, that gets players addicted to Illuvium. The primary problem with Leviathan is that it requires many hours of dedicated gameplay to form a competitive deck, making it inaccessible to all but the most advanced, so very few will play it.

The key is giving all players a starting point from which they can improve and build a more and more powerful team.

1. To do this, we should give players access to all illuvials, but these will be starter PvP illuvials and have starter stats (all at 0%) and level (Stage 1 = lvl 1, stage 2 = lvl 20, stage 3 = lvl 40). This gives them illuvials to play, and any illuvial can used as needed to fill gaps in their collection, but if they want to have a better chance at winning they need to improve their deck by replacing starter Illuvials with higher stat illuvials and leveling them up to lvl 60.

This makes Leviathan Gauntlet and Arena modes immediately playable by anyone--allowing us to make Leviathan the primary mode for PvP.

2. For more fair matches, we would need to use a ranking system where all players start from the bottom and move upwards. The players near the bottom ranks would mainly use starter illuvials. As they replace starter illuvials with better ones, they move up the ranks to fight players with more powerful illuvials.

3. A large portion of Season 2 Airdrop rewards should go to Levithan players who 1] rank highly or 2] won a lot of games. This change also works well with Illuvium's current economy. This will drive players to play Overworld and to use the Illuvidex to purchase high stat illuvials. The more dedicated you are to collecting, the more you are rewarded.

To be clear, I am not married to this idea. I am throwing this out for feedback and thoughts. I love the current system, but it is very difficult to onboard players into the current Illuvium progression system for Leviathan PvP. What do you all think?

[rotund lark]

IMO if we want to onboard millions of players we can't gate games with NFTs.

ownership has many advantages and allure to it such as increased stats, skins, cosmetic effects and possibly eligibility to participate in leaderboards/tournaments with rewards.

[peak island]

We already are giving them access to free teams with T5 stage 3 illuvials. Just make it the entire collection, but just for pvp and at the most basic stats and levels.

[peak island]

@nova ermine

[nova ermine]

We talked about this the other day and i had my concerns but after thinking about it for a while i think thats a good idea

We have the free to play fair playing grounds to unboard people. Those interested to compete for $ will look for the leviathan modes

The jump from free to leviathan is quite high and i think making leviathan modes also have access to all illuvials for free could help people make the jump

Maybe because its free i give it a try and im fine in my first matches but then i encounter more and more people that have 1 or multiple real illuvials with stats and those are pretty strong

Im then incentivized to go get 1 or more illuvials. Its the same principal as the free starter decks that we have but instead of being shitty teams (right now they are quite good) you get all the illuvials but they are all bad compared to real illuvials that have stats

I dont see any downside for people that own illuvials either

This would make it easier for people to onboard our leviathan modes and make the queue time better. It would also enable people to go one step at a time instead of directly committing to a full team just to give it a try

[peak island]

Yeah, I agree. Seems like it would work well.

@plush vale @dusk pelican @south turtle @final trout What are your thoughts on this idea?

[final trout]

yo gizmo

afaik the illuvials are free for gauntlet. Leviathan Gauntlet, if u own the illuvials it will apply the stats.
normal Gauntlet mode, it will give u cosmetic effect like aura.

it's only ascendant arena where u need to own the illuvials, while the leviathan gauntlet the stat applies.
maybe the idea is applicable to ascendant only. altho we alresdy have fee rotating illuvials availabe.

i personally bought illuvials to complete ascendant missions

[peak island]

Sounds like Levithan gauntlet will be using a similar idea to this already then. But what about the upcoming regular Leviathan 1v1 mode? Having free starter Illuvials would make Leviathan mode acessible to all. Just always make Leviathan where you get access to starter illuvials if you don't own it. The starters will be an even start for new players to build from, but they will be far worse than the high stat illuvials with more levels.

The thing I currently really dislike about ascendant is that I am being forced to not play with the Iluvials I captured and own. It's like owning a custom Ferrari but being forced to race in a Ford Escort because everyone wants to have equalized stats as the main game. This is a collector game, let's use the collection aspect in the main arena of the game.

The problem with the free teams is that they are both too good (some very good illuvials) and bad (vs an actual team with all stages of illuvails, since starter teams are missing some of the illuvials). It also prevents half the fun of the game--assembling and building your own CUSTOM team.

I like the idea of being suggested 2-3 starter teams that you could then customize to your liking for Leviathan arena.

[final trout]

the free team usually doesnt give u s3, so thats quite a disadvantage, but yea some are decent

well yesterday i fought a smurf with titanor, gnarl, octius and dualeph so u really need to spend for ascendant

a whale prob use verdant + T5 scepter too. so far normal ascendant already feels like P2W

[peak island]

Exactly, if everyone started off with the same starter illuvials, and people started at the bottom of the ranks, instead of the middle--they could "feel" their team progressing as they collect more and more powerful illuvials put into their team to fight with. Right now, ascendent is completely disconnected from your illuvials you've spent hours leveling up in the Overworld.

I know Leviathan is supposed to connect us to our collections, but the way Leviathan is fundamentally designed makes it completely inaccessible to 98% of the players. They won't want to play it until "they have a perfect team" because only a handful of really veteran players will dare go into it.

If there was a gradient of players from small/med/large collections, they could all get pretty fair battles with each other. And it would make the multiplayer pvp game feel connected to the Overworld experience, which right it feels pretty disconnected.

[final trout]

i agree, im really bad at arena, i have spent about $500 and im still so bad because of my lack of skill and understanding of the game. it is really frustating to spend some money and still bad lol

on one hand its good that arena has a steep learning curve, but idk as a casual player is quite punishing

[peak island]

And that's where if the main pvp game was directly tied to your Illuvials in Overworld--if you lost, you can just say you just didn't level up your guys enough--and then go grind overworld to make your team better again.

[final trout]

i think its good that we have ascendant for more seasoned players and gauntlet for casual like me

[peak island]

I think gauntlet can be for seasoned competitive players too if designed well. It's just more RNG oriented.

Leviathan Gauntlet is also an amazing idea.

[peak island]

Just wanted to bump this idea for more eyes on it.

[final trout]

👀👀

[rotund lark]

👀👀👀

[south turtle]

Can you explain what you mean by Leviathan Arena / Gauntlet?

I think I know what you are saying, but if so, that’s exactly what the plan is. And has been discussed before.

But maybe we are talking about different things.

[peak island]

My understanding is the Leviathan Gauntlet you'll have access to all Illuvails to make the game work. So that is very similar to this idea already. 100%.

If my idea is already the plan for Leviathan Ascendent 1v1, then that sounds awesome! But as far as I know in order to play an illuvial in Leviathan, you have to own it for Leviathan arena 1v1 matches. This is the crucial difference in my idea. This makes the game mode inaccessible until you invest a ton of money/effort/time into the game. This inacessiblity makes it so that it can't be the primary game mode. That's the problem that this idea fixes.

My suggestion is to make Leviathan Arena 1v1 matches more accessible by giving everyone access to all Illuvials at starter stats for PvP only with 0% bonus and only starter level 1/20/40 depending on stage. Then as you catch real illuvials with improved stats and level, you increase your power level and rank up/get more rewards.

In addition, this allows Leviathan to become a large focus of the airdrop as all players can then play it. This will in turn drive player engagement long term as they make progression on improving their Illuvials stats/levels, which will then give them access to better season rewards. This completes the currently missing game loop integration between Overworld/Arena imo--and it ties the airdrop into the gameloop.

Was the plan all along to give all players starter illuvials for Leviathan Arena? I may have just missed it.

[south turtle]

Sorry you keep swapping Arena and Ascendant. That was throwing me off.

[peak island]

All good. It is difficult to keep them apart when they are currently both under the Ascendent arena option in the menu.

[sacred apex]

What do you think about this proposal ? https://discord.com/channels/760344898200666112/1292423486626856961

[plush vale]

First of all, I would not keep Ascendant in the game for as long as you have to go to a web browser outside of the game to make your team. Remove it until all of this can be done within the game. Im for removing ascendant mode regardless, temporarily, to keep focus on the game mode (Gauntlet) which was made because simply ascendant wasnt it.

Also, here are the modes were going to have which will split playerbase indefinitely:

Gauntlet Casual
Gauntlet Leviathan
Gauntlet Casual Ranked
Gauntlet Leviathan Ranked

Ascendant Casual
Ascendant Leviathan
Ascendant Casual Ranked
Ascendant Leviathan Ranked

That is 8 different competitive modes, (not counting Overworld, Survivlal, Custom etc) i dont even think Fortnite has this much lol.

We need to decide which competitive mode we want to push forward now and fully focus on it.
In my eyes, again, Gauntlet was created because we saw that Ascendant was the one to do it with.

so to me, it doesnt make sense to keep it and split playerbase.

not sure what @south turtle thinks on this specifically

but i believe Kieran has moved away from Ascendant entirely

[south turtle]

We will rework them and see where people enjoy. It’s in progress now. Most likely some modes will not be available all the time. There should be a few staples

Survival is just one mode.

Gauntlet and Ascendant it will depend on what people like.

It’s not much effort to rework because we are sharing features across all.

[plush vale]

okay i understand; nonetheless I would not keep Ascendant in the game for as long as you have to go to a web browser outside of the game to make your team. Remove it until all of this can be done within the game. Im for removing ascendant mode regardless, temporarily, to keep focus on the game mode (Gauntlet) which was made because simply ascendant wasnt it.

[south turtle]

Ascendant rework doesn’t require this.

And I agree. The old ascendant is cool but only for hardcore people.

[plush vale]

okay, wonderful. good rework by the sounds of it so far.

[plush vale]

now, regarding Gauntlet, of course we cant have it so that it ONLY automatically chooses your highest level illuvial.
We definitely need an option to easily choose which ones with want as Primary and Secondary.

1 major reason is that before any tournament/rank starts people can send very bad stat illuvials with higher levels to peoples accounts and it will choose that one instead of the ones they thought would pop up.

so yeah you can still have it so that it automatically chooses the highest level IF the player hasnt chosen their Primary/Secondary

[south turtle]

Yes, obviously.