Arena QOL/Feedback

[subtle arrow]

Now that gauntlet is feature complete the focus is on polishing and balancing for this last phase before the marketing push

Here's a thread to gather our ideas and sentiment

Ill start off by separately posting my 10 points so that everyone can 👍 / 👎 each of them

I encourage everyone to also add their ideas by continuing the list 11), 12), etc, to polish and improve the game regarding QOL

cc: @sleek totem @halcyon geyser @hollow stump

1) Creep Round Composites/Items
a) Im not a fan of picking up items personally, id prefer if we just get them instantly
b) The little balls dropping should be colorful and or have some sort of effect to distinguish them from the enemy illuvials
c) I dont like that we got to have a free bench space for creep round items. I dont know if the left little platform that just got added was meant for this but it would make a lot of sense if the items would go on there instead of our bench

2) Matchmaking
We still have the issue where we can dodge someone for the entire game or face the same person twice, even in 7 people lobby due to ghost apparently not counting in the algorithm

3) Region Selection
It would be nice to have a sound for rolling and one associated with each regions along with some effect or something

4) Changing Items
As we are now able to change items i would like to be able to do it easily. Its very time consuming right now as we need to put the illuvial on the bench and it removes all augments. My suggestion here is to have left click remove the augment

5) End Game Screen and Animations
Its only 3 screens but it feels too much for nothing. I would suggest removing the 2nd screen (our team), I dont find it useful at all since we also see it in the last screen. Being able to press space to skip instantly and not waiting couple seconds for the animation would also help

6) Illuvials Facing Us
Please bring back the illuvials facing the board. It feels much more natural to me and ive only heard negative opinions on this new feature when it was implemented

7) In-Game Chat
The chat box is extremely big for a feature thats not used 90+% of the time. I would suggest only having a little text saying "chat (y)" or something and only when we open it we get the giant rectangle thing. If someone write in the chat there could be the red dot notifying us beside the "chat (y)

8) Shop UI
Overall i like the UI but theres a black big transluscent bar on the top to complete the rectangle shape. I think the UI would look better without it

9) Bonding
Bonding has improved but i think something nice to had would be to be able to see the bond (e.g. aegis/frost) when hovering over the illuvials icon for the bond. It would also be very useful to see what were the ranger composite synergies in the end screen

10) Illuvial positionning
I personally really liked the feature that the illuvial were dropped on the last second when positioning. Sometimes we are 0.Xs from placing it and it gets reverted fully back which doesnt feel good and it made for atleast 1 perfect positioning that the opponent can only expect and not react too. I dont know what was the reason but removing this but id like to see it back

[dawn comet]

I think that this is the single most important QoL improvement they could implement by far, it holds as much weight as every other one combined if not even more

The ideal would be to directly reposition them on the board without even having to remove them 1st so I put a thumb up and down because I agree that it should change but not in the way you're suggesting

[dawn comet]

I see that you disagree on this one @ionic kite and @calm oyster, curious to know your opinion

If you time it correctly you can already position at the last 0.3s without giving enough time to your opponent to react but for people who don't time it correctly it leads to frustration

The only downside I can see is when the timer runs out while you were dragging your illuvial which puts them in an even worse position than before, it never happened to me as far as I can remember though so I assume that this frustration will happen way less often than the frustration I mentioned above

[violet wasp]

I personally like speeding around and picking up the items. However, I agree on b and c. I would also like to add that you should always be able to open the crates. Sometimes it is bugged or not allowed for some reason

[violet wasp]

We definitely need to adjust the way we can move items. I wonder if we could just drag and drop the items from one Illuvial to another or if this would be too difficult. Selecting items if your illuvials are positioned really close to each other, could be a hassle.

[ionic kite]

IMO if you have a certain limited time to do your actions per turn then no action should be done automatically once the timer reaches zero. If you want to surprise your opponent in the last second then you should do it yourself and not expect it to happen automatically.

[dawn comet]

I'm not sure to understand your point since you actually do an action when you're dragging your illuvial to the desired position
I don't understand why automatically dropping it when the timer runs out would worsen the experience, it only improves it by removing frustration

[ionic kite]

the action isn't complete until you move and release the illuvial. In chess for example if your time ends and you're still moving your piece, it doesn't automatically place the chess piece on the board, you just lose the game.

and I might be wrong here, but that's how I see it 😅

[dawn comet]

In chess you lose if you run out of time, it's not like in gauntlet where you have a set amount of time to position and if you're too slow with 1 illuvial you're still fine, you're not out of the entire game

This comparison is only somewhat relevant for when you have mate in 1 but I'd say that it's irrelevant since in chess time is a resource used as a weapon: you can play in a way that puts time pressure on your opponent and hope that they run out of time

It's not the same in gauntlet, you could say that when you're playing corner comp and you wait the last 10 sec to reposition your entire team to the opposite corner you're putting time pressure on your opponent but having the dropping of the last illuvial you're dragging automatized isn't the equivalent of automatizing the entire preparation phase

A more correct comparison would be 1 chess move VS 1 entire gauntlet preparation phase
If you do 40 actions and 1 is automatized it's not the same as automatizing the 40 actions

[ionic kite]

yes I'm not saying this should be like chess, I just used it as an example to try and illustrate my pov that an action should only be considered valid when fully complete.

We should try to figure out if this is beneficial or not to have in the game on the overall sentiment of the community. But the argument of being frustrated for not doing everything you wanted on your turn is not the most convincing to me tbh. That just says you need to improve your APM or be more mindful on the number of actions you take per turn.

[dawn comet]

The argument is more that "I'm at the end an action, my illuvial is at the position where I want it to be and I just need to release my click, I'm releasing it but at this exact moment the time runs out and my illuvial comes back all the way to its initial position even though my action was 90% done"

It depends if you see clicking, dragging and releasing as 3 different actions or 1 action, if you see it as 1 action then it's very frustrating that the last 10% of it aren't automatized especially if you don't see the release part as the core of the action

These 3 actions are so strongly related to one another that our brain consider them as 1 whole action naturally

Also in chess your time runs out once while in gauntlet it runs out 20+ times, so 20x more opportunities to get frustrated

[ionic kite]

well now that we have movement being click-drag-drop I can see your point being more valid that before where you had to click 2 times. I have no problem if when the timer ends the iluvial is simply dropped where you currently dragged it.

[honest ocean]

for QOL, the grayed out screen you have to watch for 30 - 60 sec after losing a game is super annoying. often i just alt f4 after a match becouse of it, if we have to wait for other rounds to finish for something reason, put in some stats or something for me to watch, a grayed out screen is asking me to alt f4 😛

[nocturne pawn]

i think this is a great middle ground for helping those that play this type of game because they don't want APS to dictate how good they are. While still heaps of room to have better APS by moving more than 1 unit near the end. Also just feels good having that one move you dont need to stress about

[sleek totem]

Hey @subtle arrow, thanks for this useful initiative!

11) Indicate the remaining copies of each Illuvial

• Explanation: Display in real time how many illuvial copies are available in the shop pool.
• PRO: Easens the capacity to plan towards an illuvial. Also, this would indicate if a player has a shop roll freezing a particular Illuvial. Say there are 5 Mjolls left, but 2 players have 1 Mjoll in their shop and they are not rolling, the actual Mjoll supply would be 3, but this can't be known through scouting alone. This feature brings this onto the table besides from the QoL part.
• CON: It partially downplays the reward for scouting opponents, as you still want to know what comp they are going for, but counting their illuvials isn't key anymore as that would be done by the system.

[dawn comet]

This one is either an amazing or a terrible idea

If we had a lottery ticket on which we could see our odds of winning and expected gain, it would lose its magic and a lot of people would stop playing

With this not only would gauntlet lose a lot of skill expression, it's not entirely clear to me that casual players would prefer it even if it hugely casualizes the game

Most players would play way better but in a way that would be more obvious, less rewarding, more mathematically correct

I find this idea interesting but dangerous as well

[uneven python]

I'd like to see all 8 players current elo displayed somewhere. Either on a TFT style pre game loading screen or by each players name in game. That way I can roughly guess what I stand to lose/gain based on my performance.

[normal plank]

"lot of skill expression"... "hugely casualizes the game"
I feel those are strong words for simply counting the illuvials that are already out of the pool.

For me it would go one stepp closer to a more relaxed gameplay like most other autobattlers are.
Currently gauntlet is all about who can click faster through all the stuff needed to be gud followed by a who is faster to reposition and this would give some seconds here and there to relax.

[dawn comet]

It looks like a small detail but it isn't in my opinion, it's one of the most important reasons why I scout because it's an information that heavily impacts money management and even comp building/aggressiveness

I can see why it's appealing and I'm not against trying this idea but I'm not exaggerating when stating that we would lose a lot of skill expression

I often lose a lot of gold because I realize too late that I'm being too contested, if we all had this information nobody would roll to get a unit with 0 remaining copies in the pool which is a huge mistake that hugely weakens those who make it

[normal plank]

i do see your point for sure.
For me personally, i wouldn't even link it to skill. (except we say counting to 20 is an expression of skill)
It's more like put in hustle to get an edge not aquire knowledge to improve your gameplay.

[tight trail]

How about a feature to notify when there are less than a certain number of illuvials remaining (for example, 10 remaining)? I hope we can find a solution that strikes a good balance between casualness and gameplay.

[honest ocean]

imo counting dont have much to do with skills, i think changing your playstyle and being able to change things up on the move based on information given is far more important

it makes players take decisions to impact there playstyle, i think keyword here is decisions. i do not think new players not knowing about a max limet etc and losing to someone who know make the one who knows a better player
where i do think, what you do with the information on a fair playground shows true skills to adapt.
think viewing opponent is still useful on a high level to counter what your opponents is building

[dawn comet]

It could be interesting to have it in 1 region and it would be a nice way to prove that the pool is bugged if it works properly