amber bane
I would like my companion drone to give me little hints during game play e.g. highlight the area on the board, where I should place my next Illuvial.
These hints are in-game currency and can be earned from other actions/shop or are free and plenty for Arena beginner modes.
Maybe a hint can be unlocked in stages e.g. first it shows you what Illuvial to pick, if this is not enough for you then it shows you where to place it next. If you don't need all stages you earn additional hints.
There are endless ways to implement such an "AI Teacher" on top of a complicated game.
We often talk about the lack of progression in current game designs. If we could make "learning the game" the actual progression and package this learning effect in some nice gamified dopamin producing way, we could achieve both.
People like learning new stuff, when they are not overloaded, are rewarded by a teacher (drone) and slowly become independent and see the progression they make. And the hints can be subtile, so they don't even know they are helped e.g. Illuvials can only be placed in certain board areas.
They also have to loose fear from failure e.g. we can offer a undo/redo in certain game modes. You try your best and if you still loose the round, you can try it again, instead of loosing the whole game.
We can keep the core game very complicated for e-sports etc. while at the same time make it accessible for casual players and add some gamification.
When casual players know, that they are playing a difficult ranked/e-sports game and can still be good at it, they might actually have even more fun than playing a simple game.