Arena

[winter current]

Posted on behalf of @hard blade

Arena (survival, gauntlet and leviathan) is only a few weeks away to be completed, maybe even less. I suppose when it's completed the team will focus more in developing Overworld, with I believe it's great news. Regardless my best wishes I believe Arena could be improved in different points and to do just that I'm going to propose a new arena mode.

If matches require 2 players you only have to wait for 1 more, but if matches require 8 players you have to wait for 7 more so the waiting time will be longer. In order to start a gauntlet or leviathan game that requires 8 players you will have to wait at least a few minutes if you are lucky, but plenty of times 15 to 30 minutes. If you stare at the screen that much you bore and leave, so you better go to do other things meanwhile and by the time the game starts maybe your free time is over. This makes very hard that players outside the core community join Arena and keep playing. Instead of spend their time waiting they will play another game.

Leviathan is supposed to be the game where players that have illuvials has an advantage, but in reality this advantage is minimal. In reality it's not worth to purchase or collect illuvials in overworld, at least to the purpose of playing arena. Maybe will be worth to play Overworld, but not Arena for now.

Players that play Arena don't see their Arena stats improve in any way, so there is no progress in the game, only the rank is modified by winning or losing.

The new proposed mode is a mix of a player vs player and player vs machine system.

There is different designs (illuvials type and position in the board) for rounds 1 to 40 in survival modes. Copy the different designs for each of the 40 levels and assign a rank of 200 points per level, so the highest machine round (40) will have a rank of 8000 points. When a player wins or loses a match against a machine level the rank of the player will be modified the same way as if the player would have played against a ranked player but the rank of the machine level is never going to be modified.

Players will start each season with 100 rank points. When a player click to join a match there will be a maximum waiting time of 30 secs. The system can only pair human players that are between 2 level ranks, so for example a player that has 300 points can only be matched with players that has between 200 and 400 points. If this player is waiting and a second player of 200 to 400 rank joins then the system will pair them instantly. In case the first player is waiting and no more players of 200 to 400 rank joins, then after waiting 30 secs that player will be matched with the nearest machine level. Having the same difference of 100 points from machine level 1 (200) and machine level 2 (400) the player will be matched with the next harder machine round (level 2).

This enforces player vs player, because if a player rank 395 is waiting and a player rank 205 joins both will be matched, despite both being only 5 points away from their nearest machine round. It also ensures that all player vs player matches take place between players of similar rank.

When a round starts the character of the player will start moving and attacking automatically but 5 secs after the start the player should be able to take control of it by a left click on the character. Doing this the player can control its movement with the keyboard arrows or by right clicking on the floor of the combat board to move it there in straight line. If there is illuvials between the character will take the shortest path around. When in control of the character, the player can left click to any enemy and their character will start attacking it, and will continue attacking it. Pressing space bar or doing a second left click on the character ends character control, turning it to full auto. Right click in any unit to reveal info.

No illuvials or equipment will be given for free in this mode. Players can only use what's inside their account. When in the lobby, before joining a game, there they can fill a deck that has 40 empty spaces with owned illuvials and equipment. The deck is saved and when the player return to the lobby can modify it. There is no restrictions to fill a minimum or maximum of illuvials or equipment, in fact you can join a game with all 40 spaces of your deck empty. After joining a game, at the placing time of each round you can take illuvials from your deck and place up to 10 in the battle board or exchange already placed illuvials with the remaining in your deck. Your illuvials placed for combat will keep all their stats bonuses that are shown at illuvidex. Give all enemy illuvials of all machine levels a bonus of +10% to all of their stats. If you don't place anything in the battle board when the combat round starts your team will have only your character with a basic suit and weapon.

At the end of each match, regardless if won or lost, the character of the player will get an amount of xp equal to it's new rank. The higher amount of xp the higher level your character will have. Level 100 could be the maximum level for all characters.

Add a screen of 5 x 6 = 30 different augments (or more) that will act as a book of augments. Players can cast any of those augments but they have to pay their cost. Basic augments may cost 5MP while top ones may cost 25MP.

Each round, at the placing time before the combat, the player will receive certain amount of mastery points depending on their total level.
Total level = Character % level x 0,35 + Illuvials % level x 0,65.
Character % level = Character current level between character max level x100.
Illuvials % level = Sum of all illuvials level placed in the battlefield between sum of max level of all illuvials placed x100.

With a total level of 0 the player receives 5 mastery points per round. With a total level of 100 (maximum possible) the player will receive 105 MP per round. Augments can be casted at the placement time but also at the combat time but all casted augments will disappear when that round ends. There will be 5 rounds in each match and the first to win 3 rounds wins the match. A round can be won by killing all enemy units or if when the combat time of the round is over your remaining units have more total hp than the total hp in all remaining enemy units.

Illuvials have a combat class and can have a element class. This bonus affinities will remain as it is in other modes.

Moving your character and casting augments allow real time interactions, tactics and counter tactics like luring enemies, combat at the side of the illuvial you choose, try to kill first certain enemy or save one of your illuvials that is about to die by casting a shield on it or making it immune for 10 secs. Causing certain amount of damage to enemies with meteor shower should be one of the top augments. This mode will have less augments compared with other modes but luck won't matter, only what you own in your account and your skill will matter.