Improve the Noob Experience in Gauntlet

[zealous herald]

The main issue I see with Illuvium’s Gauntlet is the low playerbase, and I think a main reason for that is what happens to new players. They hop in, land in lobbies against veterans with 5,000+ hours of practice, get crushed repeatedly, and never touch the game again. That cycle kills growth.

It reminds me of some of my all-time favorites—Bloodline Champions, Battlerite, and Supervive. All amazing, high-skill games, but they suffered from the same trap:

• High skill ceiling
• High skill floor
• Small, tight-knit pro communities
  Resulting in shrinking player base due to constant noob-bashing

To break that cycle in Illuvium, I think we need to hack directly into the dopamine system for newcomers.

1. Fix the starting rating psychology.
   Don’t start new players at 1200 only to have them sink to 600 in their first 20 games. That feels like failure. Instead, start them at 0. Then, no matter how many early losses they take, they aren’t “falling” below their starting point. It’s a small tweak but has a massive psychological difference.
   Direct evidence of this can be found in WoW - Arena and LoL Ranked. They both used to have the classic 1500 start rating system 10+ years ago, and now start from 0 / Iron Rank.

2. Smart use of bots for struggling players.
   Players with consistently poor win rates should gradually have more bots seeded into their matches. Give them some free wins. It sounds simple, but it works—just look at Fortnite, where most new players unknowingly face lobbies full of bots. People don’t complain—they’re too busy enjoying their first kills. Not everyone wants to queue for “bot matches” on purpose, but if the system quietly cushions them, they stay longer.

3. Make casual/survival modes attractive.
   Ranked shouldn’t be the only option people feel is “legit.” Casual or survival modes should feel fun, rewarding, and respectable in their own right. That way, players who aren’t competitive die-hards still have reasons to keep playing and grinding. I think we have prove of this with how big of a community favourite the Survival Arena was back in the Ascendant Arena days.

By combining psychological wins with structural support, we can protect new players from being chewed up by veterans while still keeping the competitive ladder pure for those who want the true test.

[drifting sigil]

@zealous herald

1. Starting from 0 rating — correct and obvious detail. You’re right.

2. Fewer bots for experienced players and a bit more bots for very low rating (if that rating is too low to earn rewards) — also correct. You’re right.

3. Bringing Survival back to life — great idea. Especially Leviathan Survival. You’re right.

[drifting sigil]

@zealous herald Additional Key Advantages Beyond the Core Fixes

1. Capturing the PvE Audience
   By reintroducing Survival — especially Leviathan Survival — you open the door for players who prefer PvE over pure PvP. This significantly broadens the audience beyond the competitive niche.

2. F2W (Free-to-Win) Engagement
   Adding Survival Leviathan creates an appealing and rewarding mode for the F2W community. It gives them a fun alternative grind without forcing them into Gauntlet.

3. Healthy Audience Split
   Most importantly, F2P players will face a tough choice: they won’t be able to grind both Survival and Gauntlet at the same time. This natural split in the playerbase actually benefits lower-skill players in Survival, because the most competitive grinders will stay focused on Gauntlet.

Picture the whale player:

• They have plenty of money and play for enjoyment and victories.
• They buy top-tier Illuvials, but rarely manage to place Top 4 in Gauntlet.
• Because of this, they often skip Arena entirely.

For these players, Survival Leviathan could be the perfect alternative — a mode where their investment into Illuvials pays off, and where they feel the satisfaction of winning.

And this is critical: whales, who spend heavily, are far more valuable to the project than the purely F2P grinders who only extract value from Gauntlet. That’s why they need proper attention in Arena design.

Initially, I thought Gauntlet Leviathan could serve this role — but in practice, deck composition isn’t impactful enough there. That means whales won’t achieve the consistent wins they’re looking for. Survival Leviathan, available from day one, is the real solution.

UrgentlyAddSurvivalLeviathan

[zealous herald]

I agree. We do need to recognize the other side of the coin—shifting focus here does mean some dev time away from the MMO. Still, growing the active player base should be a priority, and this could ultimately support the MMO and the project overall rather than harm it.
The most practical way forward seems to be capturing the broader casual web3 audience. That likely means making Gauntlet less punishing and reintroducing Survival.

Leviathan Survival, as you mentioned, is a perfect “two birds with one stone” solution:

• PvE onboarding → crucial for attracting the much larger casual audience.
• Utility for ownership → just as important for engaging Illuvium’s existing holders and future web3 degens.

At the moment, we’re catering almost exclusively to full-time competitive players. That’s a valuable but very small slice of the market—and even they suffer from the downsides of a small player base.

[drifting sigil]

<@&1107754780744487002>

Good day, friends. Let me ask — what are the chances of assigning a few developers to launch Survival Leviathan?
I’m not talking about a complete overhaul or reimagining of the mode, as that would take a lot of time.
I mean: just copy all the augmentations, fuses, and everything else from Gauntlet and replicate the Leviathan mode.

Ctrl C + Ctrl V

As a casual player who enjoys PvE modes, I would gladly play this.
You could even add a paid leaderboard and small competitions on certain days.

Give us some variety. Waiting for the MMO takes a really long time. Gauntlet has become quite repetitive.
I want to play Survival Gauntlet. If a separate discussion needs to be created to gather votes for and against this, let me know — I can collect signatures.

https://tenor.com/view/postal-petition-gif-22801949

[random sphinx]

besides i don't have any influence on this...
As long as the competitive mode (which we are trying to market currently) suffers critical bugs, imbalance and gamestability i wouldn't consider putting staff aside for any other mode

on the problematic mentioned in the OP, on one hand i feel that the state of the game i mentioned above is having a big impact on retention. At least that's the reason for friends in my real life to not stick to it. It's the "oh man i crashed again" (4 ppl stopped the same day), "damn i wasn't able to see the repositioning of the opponents board"(2 ppl stopped playing after a couple days) or "why i have 0 composite augments and the other dude has 3?" (1 ppl stopped playing after 10 days) and less the fact that they just get stomped.
on the other hand i feel progression also could go a long way with player retention.
Something where even if you get into the last ranks of a match, you still get progress.
The battlepass is coming which can be a first big step in that direction, at least the free version.
The experience for the Illuvials is another one, but likely is just having an impact after the player decided to stick to the game and more important for already onboarded people
Maybe there are other progression systems easy to implement that can be explored?

[next iron]

1. That's perfect, they'll just have the change the rank thresholds accordingly and/or the amount of points distributed per game

2. In Fortnite, beginners probably don't realize that they are facing bots but here they are way more likely to notice, interesting idea but I'm not sure

3. I didn't really like survival mode but now I would probably play it more if we had a leviathan version, simply because I want to enjoy the strength of my leviathan illuvials in one way or another
   That being said I agree with @random sphinx, survival is not the priority and we should make the arena more enjoyable first

[languid aspen]

1. Very much agree... ideally there should be "divisions" in the leaderboard, to avoid new people getting totally stomped by veteran players, but we don't have the numbers to support that, so if there is a way to introduce more Bots to the "starting ranks", and maybe start at a a lower entry point, I think that would be a good way to address that.
   Not sure if starting at 0 is the right number, but somewhere near 800... and make it so at Hard reset you get reset to the nearest threshold.. rating below 1200 get reset to 800, everyone else reset to 1200.

2. seems like a good idea... if you rating is less than 800 you get more bots., between 800 to 1200 a little less, and above, only very few if queue time gets long.

3. I have always been a big advocate for getting a "Survival Leviathan" as the next mode, I think this could have a big potential to get more casual players "hooked", and also be a great starting point before getting thrown into Ranked Gauntlet. so I really hope it can be picked us as soon as there are available resources to work on it.

[languid aspen]

I know Survival mode is not currently a priority. But I would love to have something like this:

It could basically work with exactly the same mechanics as Gauntlet, where you get a set of random Illuvial from a pool, you can spend your gold on buying, leveling up and rerolling. Bond ranger, get random augments, pick weapons and upgrades, as you progress through the rounds. (maybe without the reroll option to force you to try different comps, and improve re-playability in survival).

Same goal as in the original Survival, where you try to push for the highest round possible, with increasing difficulty. (you get 3 replay from last saved round, pr. game). With an element of Random waves each game. (not sure if its possible to use basics from the “BOT AI” from gauntlet to generate them).

I think there could be 2 modes… a normal one that ends after round 20, and you get a “you win screen”, mainly for people to try the mechanics, and you don't need to own Illuvials to beat it, but does require some skill/practice. And a Leviathan mode where you play with your own Illuvials, and you will need a decent team to advance beyond wave 20, with increasing difficulty. and with a leaderboard that reset weekly.

A Survival 2.0 could be with added waves with mini bosses from the MMO… Imagine you have to fight a wave of the “new creatures” at wave 15…. at wave 20 you face “the Dormn”... etc… that would be a nice way to tie it to the MMO as well 🙂

I would 100% want to play that mode with my own Illuvials. 🙂

[sinful harness]

I think the timer is also one of the issues that causes alot of frustration specially if you are new to the game or noob, we don't even have time to read anything on augments or power ups and figure out what it do to illuvials, no time to think and strategize proper positioning of your illuvials and the longer you play, seeing and using same illuvials over and over again even you don't own it the more it gets boring maybe because I'm not a fan of autobattler and not a fan of using nft's that I don't own makes me feel like there's no sense playing this game. If the arena is like Dota or star craft where you can control everything it would have been so much fun to play but anyways I don't really care much about the gauntlet anymore I just want the new overworld to come out hopefully that will be a better game.

[sinful harness]

And no offense I'm just giving my honest opinion about the carousel in arena it is just another most boring waste of time game play in arena they should just completely remove that because it takes the game so much longer to finish, very chaotic and annoying we can't even read the details of each augments and power ups passing by. Maybe if you guys can be more creative like make the drones able to blast other drones fighting for augments or power ups then maybe it can be more fun.

[zealous herald]

I have thousands of hours of autobattler and specially Gauntlet experience and I still tend to run out of time. It feels bad indeed. Specially because I came into the strategy genre to not have to be fast clicking and stressed gameplay, compared to moba / shooter.

[cloud niche]

But the more hardcore a game is, the better it gets right?

[next iron]

The more hardcore a game is the smaller the target audience I assume

[zealous herald]

maybe for teenagers, not for me 😄

[sinful harness]

I'm sure you know which games are actually fun to play vs the games you force yourself to play for money. Most people will pay to play the fun games even they don't make money from it, so If ever the new upcoming overworld we are anticipating to be fun, with true ownership of NFT's you can actually play with, and has fair valuable rewards distribution there is no doubt illuvium will be on top or maybe become the king of all Web 3 games and console games.