Leviathan

[hardy widget]

Good evening fellow Rangers and Team 🙂

I wanted to check in on Leviathan Mode and its balancing approach.
From what I last heard everything arround balancing was unclear, just that it will be drastically changed with the goal of roughly a 80% skill expression and 20% pay-to-win, which sounds great for competitive play.
However, I have some concerns from an economic sustainability perspective.

With the marketing campaign supposedly launching in April, we’re getting close, yet we haven’t seen any major structured events to test Leviathan’s balance. Since this mode (beside from Beyond and cosmetics) is expected to be the key revenue driver until the mmo-lite goes live, it should be thoroughly tested before marketing ramps up again. The first tournaments will play a significant role in shaping how new and existing players perceive the value of Illuvium’s core assets.

My main concern:
From my experience with p2w game modes, money is king!
Whales spend insane amounts to dominate low spenders and get that feel-good satisfaction.
I’ve seen:

• The top five spenders in a city builder game burn over $100,000 in speed ups and recruiting in three hours just for a bad try to eliminate the top player.
• Whales in gacha games create 20+ alt accounts, equipping them with top-tier heroes and weapons for roughly 5k each account, just to have fun in guild wars and obliterate average spenders.

But I’ve never played a P2W game where a low spender had a fair chance against a whale. (Not saying they don’t exist though, just never faced them in my gaming life)

If a high-end, perfect-stats, max-level deck can still be beaten by a pro player using an low/average-cost deck, will enough whales feel incentivized to buy in and pay big money to complete their high end decks?
While skill-based gameplay is crucial, if Leviathan Mode doesn’t offer strong value to high spenders, could that impact the ecosystem’s long-term sustainability?

I fully understand that balancing will be an ongoing process, but I also believe we can’t afford to miss the mark significantly in the first iteration.

Would love to hear from the team or council if any updates on Leviathan balancing and it's marketing approach can be made public:

• Will levels still play a role in Leviathan Arena?
• How significant will individual trait differences be?
• Are any test events planned to assess balance before launch?
• Can any details be shared on the marketing rollout? (Tournaments, leaderboards, in-game events, hunting events, etc.)

Looking forward to hearing thoughts on this!

[static bronze]

I have no specific answers to your questions, other than I will be hosting tournaments for Leviathan mode as soon as custom lobbies are good to go.

But IMO Stats and the advantage you get from having the highest stat/level illuvial should scale with the player base.

Earlier on, there is no need for massive 110% increases. The differentiation from F2P to P2W will already be good enough to separate whales from regular gamers with even 8% as we can see from how strong the augment and mystic buff can change the game. We will want massive variation once there are so many whales playing that we need massive individual stat increases even where one level from 60 - 61 would be significant.

But if we come off too strong as p2w these almost entirely F2P TFT players will have no interested in jumping in.

The biggest whales in their ecosystem on spend money on drone blasts and cosmetics. They value F2P and no P2W. We have to convert them. And that will happen incrementally.

We can always make the strength difference increase and value to the higher stat and level illuvials(if levels are still in). Reducing it once there is a large player base will be harder. Look at how much resistance there is with the few players we have now.

I do agree we need extensive testing though and make sure it feels right and unfortunately we have next to no data right now. I am still Optimistic even at 25% a player who barely jumps in gauntlet , only basic overworld understanding could come with perfect stats and still beat someone good like Slickz or Fox spirt. with no stat illuvials. But Obviously IDK we need to test.

Before that we need to get scouting, weapon systems, carasel, general balancing and several other features before we can make meaningful adjustments to leviathan.

[fiery carbon]

@hardy widget How right you are. Absolutely right. I completely agree with every word you say.

[fiery carbon]

"The biggest whales spend money on drone effects and cosmetics"?... The most important thing is a physical advantage. Due to the constant attacks on the Leviathan mode (I mean the constant talk about its weakening), I lose the desire to drain my money into the game. I don't want to speak for other people, but I assume that @minor matrix stopped donating for similar reasons. Leave the P2W mode as it should be.

[hardy widget]

I don't think there's a good conversion rate from f2p to p2w from a tft audience ever, but who knows.
I feel the characterics of that consumerbase is completely different, they like competitive play, they like free to play... (and they get the full gaming experience for free already.)
For sure there is some coming over, but that's those who play tft but also like p2w games and collection games, and least don't play much of f2p games, and those still whale in with the thought to obliterate.
I feel even if we are after tft audience, those are the ones who pump dau in ranked arena, but most whales in leviathan will be individuals coming from elsewhere but heared about Illuvium.

I honestly don't think someone super casual ow can beat any pro like you mentioned above with the direction they told. Infact they actually said they wana do it that a pro with an average deck still stands a fair chance against the super whale.
Also keep in mind, you can't compare the stat difference from an casual deck to a whale deck form 0stats to max stats... An average deck is still somewhere in between 0 and max stats. (probably arround 60% of max stats)

[minor matrix]

Unfortunately this game won't be interested for whales in future. Whales won't be play on deck they want to send to rant iluvs or hire good palyer. In this situation we dont have delegation system and this current sytems 25%\24% stats/levels dont interested.
Everybody saw behaviour team for everybody who invested in game. They will use in future treasure for f2p, promotion etc and sell company