This Patch is really really REALLY BAD

[bold light]

New gold farming tech feels horrible, you have to legit spend every single gold you earn to upgrade your items, so now buying powers from shops / repair your armor is straight trolling.

[silent bobcat]

they surely didn't think this thru

[unreal linden]

armour repair has still won me games today, explicitly because of the DPS diff caused by people desperate for that +10AP rather than damage reduction I guess

[silent bobcat]

it might not enough coin for both upgrade gear and repair armour, you had to choose one which is mehhh

also i hope they didnt try to make it exactly like league of legend... this game should be fresh and new

[bold light]

And there is something off about the new shop thing with upgrades and stuff,

Like i understand the idea behind it but having to come back to a basecamp or a shop just make the game annoying for no reasons.

I think the old system wasnt perfect but at least it was straightforward for shards, and you could chose what to do with your golds based on what you need.

I feel like the only thing They did with gold this patch is transform it from a solution into a problem :

Before if you needed something, you would just look your golds or team golds and buy stuff like armors / repair armors or res beacons to actually help you in the game

But right now there is no more solutions or anything, you just have to get golds to upgrade your items

[finite summit]

To me, the game is more of a fast pace game. But we are making the game slower and slower every patch. For scrim players, they are already playing slow-pace game, so maybe it's fine. But for most other solo players, the slow pace right now is feeling so bad

[bold light]

Maybe changes like that are ‘needed’ to make a real moba / battle royale, because like i said, i totaly understand the idea behind it,
but in my opinion it’s just not fun at all

[bold light]

Yeah exactly, making the game slower isn't fun for anyone, and as much as I love supervive, I might stop playing if the game continues in that direction.

[dreamy goblet]

I think one of SV's biggest strengths was, ironically, that it didn't really feel anything like a MOBA

Making it more MOBA-like is 100% unequivocally a mistake imo.
It took many of the interesting elements of the genre (mixed PvP/PvE, vision, item builds, unique characters) while avoiding the common pitfalls and frustration that turn so many people away from the genre

I'm much more frustrated in my average match of supervive now that my teammates can fuck up my farm rates by splitting off, just as a single example.

[muted lava]

The thing is Supervive is nowhere close to vision and build aspects to true mobas, so I still believe that they should try to find how to make best parts of mobas into the game. Clearly this patch was not it

[cedar siren]

The way I see it, the main problem is that there's a feedback loop hurting the game in the long run. My assumption is that it stems from the devs holding onto this idea of Supervive being a MOBA as part of their core vision. The pattern is something like this:

• Player count is hurting
• To retain players, improvements are made that strengthen the "vision" of the game
• Most players who don't like MOBAs just quietly quit
• The majority of the remaining player base is now composed of people who like MOBAs
• The ones who stay and criticize come across as a vocal minority
• Player count shrinks, but the existing positive feedback says the MOBA stuff is good
• Repeat loop

It's the survivorship bias fallacy. The people still playing will be most vocal about changes that shift the game more in a direction they like. The players who left won't be giving feedback at all. The game should be shifting towards the people who are leaving, but instead it's pushing further into its niche.

[unreal linden]

I think it is easier to grow a niche that can identify what they can enjoy then to assume what is causing people to leave, and let's be honest mechanics inspired by LoL is not that niche comparatively speaking, baring those 2 things in mind you can't really fault the reasoning and it's just a matter of execution from here

[cedar siren]

Personally, I think they were already growing a niche that I liked two patches ago, and the game gets further from that with every update. I was playing 4-6 hours daily from open beta's start up until the patch that removed level caps. Now I think I've played twice in the past week? And today felt worse than before. I guess I'm being vocal about it because I feel like Supervive was a game that I loved, like, a lot, and it changed into something else before I even got a chance to fully experience it.

[dreamy goblet]

I don't get the sense that they necessarily want to make the game more MOBA like explicitly, I think the issue is that Supervive broke a lot of genre conventions, it has a lot of very unique and IMO innovative systems like the daily level cap.

The primary concern the Devs seem to have is that the game is too complicated or unlearnable for new players, and in an attempt to make the game easier to understand they're returning to conventional design philosophies in key areas that made the game unique.

I really enjoyed how frictionless the game felt prior to these last two patches, how it felt that there was a strong focus on objectives and combat, reaching the level cap and upgrading your gear felt like small windows where efficient teams could seize an advantage over others, but those windows would close and teams would be on roughly the same power level for the majority of the match.
This made the game feel much more arcadey, not in the sense that it was overly simple or streamlined, but that it wasn't fighting its players desire to engage with its fun systems and combat.

I think the problem with trying to hone in on LoL's playerbase is that this game just doesn't replace the experience of league. There are too many fundamental differences that make this game more similar to a shooter than to a MOBA which I think will always keep it from appealing too strongly to the League audience.

On the flip side, the shooter audience will never be won over by making the game more like a MOBA, from where I sit this makes it a lose-lose to focus on this sort of marketing/design direction

The only way I've gotten the majority of my friends to try this game is by stressing how much it ISN'T gonna feel like playing League or DOTA to them.
At this point... I think doing that would be lying. My average level of frustration in matches of supervive has gone up by an order of magnitude, I feel adversarial towards teammates over farming-related inefficiencies, I feel like my skill as a player in fights is subverted by the emphasis on levels and gear upgrades.

The feeling of lack of control and hopelessness is one of the #1 reasons why MOBAs become toxic and frustrating, and the main thing the previous two patches have done is emulate those elements

[main swan]

Just reading it had me going theres no fucking way.

[silent bobcat]

They should refresh themselves, and develop this game in a unique way. Overall the animation and mechanics and characters and gameplay and everything about this game is very good… just some tweaking is needed which keeps things fresh and can easily run for 10 season VVVVVVV

[jaunty pagoda]

I think theres a sweet spot between these last two patches and what we had before. Something like sure you can upgrade equipment at shops, but you can also upgrade equipment from farming. So instead of relying on just shops you can balance out the need to farm with the need to upgrade equipment. Farmed a bunch so now you have levels, but missing a couple pieces to upgrade an equipment? hit the store.

[idle ermine]

no man players that like MOBAs left a long time ago, players that like mobas dont play when soloq is not available

[celest apex]

I don't know if they make this decisions based on the play-tests feedback, but if so, imo thats a terrible idea. Players that play the play-tests are nothing like your average player, and it could be very biased

When I saw the gold change and lmb skill points in play-tests patch notes, I said to myself there is no way that goes to live, that is a terrible idea... But I was wrong xD

[unreal linden]

Genuine question have you ever heard of small niche indie game DOTA 2?

[idle ermine]

turn-rate alone makes dota 2 unpleasant to play

[frank herald]

I disliked it in the playtest too! This felt like the general consensus from chatting with the people in the test games.

They also didn't publish the results from the before this patch. Suspicious; likely ignored the feedback.

The playtest was a garbage experience, wouldn't recommend. They're just gonna do what they want anyway 🤷.

[empty crypt]

Disagree heavily, I much much prefer this game when it's slower. It used to be much slower before open beta

[empty crypt]

I gave feedback that said I liked the changes and I talked to plenty of people who also liked the changes.

That playtest was the most fun I'd had playing the game in months

[bold light]

I mean i just don't want farming golds and upgrading items being the first thing i do every game, and right now if you don't do that you're just trolling.

I like the fighting phase, when you need to move fast and have good macro to be in a good position and not be trapped in fights, and good micro to actually win fights, i like to clutch with crowns, i like to poke, engage, disengage, and even res teammates when it's needed, that's just what i like about Supervive.

Obviously it's a battle royale so there is a phase when you need to get your gear, (pretty funny cause right now we can't even afford buying powers in early) but making it an obligation to go through all those new farming steps as soon as you land just isnt fun to me.

Maybe some people like those changes, but i don't.

[frank herald]

I'm glad outside of all the negativity some people were able to find enjoyment out of the changes 🙂

[empty crypt]

Honestly while I like a lot of what you're talking about too, I also read that paragraph and think "yeah that's why I quit Apex."

I spent a good chunk of time learning that game and every single match was just "RUN RUN HOLD W NEVER STOP MOVING KEEP RUNNING DONT STOP GO GO GO" and it made me absolutely hate the game when otherwise I enjoyed the gunplay and movement and whatnot. There was never any moment to breathe, no downtime, nothing keeping you from just GOING.

And that's the reason I loved Supervive when I first started. The pacing was so much better, there was actual down time, fights didn't just start the instant you saw someone, you could have different strategies beyond "kill them all" and I never felt like I was being forced to constantly sprint around. Ever since open beta hit, that part of the game has been diminishing and so has my enjoyment.

This patch tho is to me a great step forward. Tbh I don't really understand what you mean by you don't want the first thing you do to be farming gold and upgrading items. That's... how anything even slightly moba adjacent works. You have to hit your power spikes before you can take good fights. It's strategy and macro knowledge. And then you can go fight, but like... do you legit just want to fight nonstop from drop till the end?

[muted lava]

I feel like some people got used to the game state where u just endlessly fight just for the ranked points

[bold light]

Even tho i did grind ranked a bit i have the most fun when i play arena, so yes i like to fight

But like you said im also okay for downtimes and farming, the old shard system was totally fine to me, i just want farming to be more of an option rather than something that you just have to do no matter what.

And i mostly like this game because of the battle royal aspect, i don’t want to be forced to farm and be punished that much if you don’t / can’t
And imo this new gold system is just not fun at all

[empty crypt]

See I'm the opposite, I find arena extremely boring and frustrating after like 2 matches. There's just nothing to it, it's just a brawl.

The issue with making it an option is that if it's an equal option, then it will be inherently the strongest option. No matter how you slice it, killing a team gets you gold, xp, armor, powers, upgrades, and even if you can get all those things through farming, fighting has the added benefit of removing an enemy team and thus increasing your chances to win.

Also, camps have respawn timers. Enemies are on the map all the time, if you're a fast enough hunter, you never have to wait to keep gaining power. Farming, you do.

There's just no way to make them equal without making farming mandatory.

[hardy estuary]

if we're gonna keep this upgrade equipment thing at the shop/basecamp, we will probably need to rescale the gold requirements from blue to purple and so on

imo

2000g for +10 ap is certainly wrong

[empty crypt]

Altho tbh I do think this "too much farming" complaint is a bit overblown. Last patch it was an issue, this patch? I don't think so. I played a lot today, and I can remember only 1 game where I spent more time farming than fighting. And that was just a really unlucky poverty match. Most of my matches today were LOTS of fights, from Day 1 to the endgame. There were just moments in between them where I could do something else other than look more for fights.

[hardy estuary]

if anything, this patch encourages more pvp than the previous one

because killing players give you big shards

but honestly? i prefer what we had 2 patches ago, just keep some changes like level cap to 5 on day 1 (so you can get ultimates), xp on knocks

nerfs/buffs to hunters was overall ok

i dont like upgrading LMB, it feels bad to spend skill points on it

[hushed apex]

I think a lot of people miss the "Arena with extra steps and no rounds" feeling of the BR mode

[bold light]

Im not really saying that there is too much farming, im just saying that it’s just not fun to have the same loop where in early you are just farming golds then you have to lose 1min to find a basecamp to spend it all on your upgrades, and like i said previously, gold is now a problem rather than a solution, and it just feels bad.

I know there is still a lot of fights but all im saying is im not having fun in early game because i just NEED to think about all that gold things, i think it was way better 2 patchs ago

[empty crypt]

Yeah... that's just... not a good thing. Like that is not what the game was ever intended to be.

[hushed apex]

exactly

arena is RIGHT THERE

[empty crypt]

And tbh I don't really think it's rude to say it because... there's arena right there. If you like arena, you have a game mode for you!

Oop lol

[hushed apex]

lolol

🤝

[hardy estuary]

its very different, even if you like fighting

in BR there are multiple teams, you can be 3rd party`d or be the one who 3rd parties

bosses

souls

builds are different too

some hunters are better in arena, others are better in BR

i dont think the answer is "just play arena"

[hushed apex]

fair enough. "just play arena" is a broad, sweeping statement and i concede that the "with extra steps" isn't enough to differentiate between BR and Arena in good faith

BUT i do think BR is heading in a different direction and it's a good thing

[empty crypt]

Tbh I'd be so for improving Arena to be more in depth and make the fighty fighter playerbase happy, so the BR can actually be strategic and not unga bunga

[hushed apex]

exactly

[empty crypt]

I just feel like Battlerite proved that an arena battler won't succeed on a large scale. People to this day talk about how much better the characters were but the game still never went mainstream, even at its peak.

Arena games are just obsolete now unfortunately.

So idk why people are so insistent to make the BR mode Arena with extra steps

It won't succeed that way

[hardy estuary]

if BR changes that much, it goes completely in another direction compared to what brought the players here in the first place

if they wanna do that, fine, it's just that they might have to start from scratch

[stark mango]

As someone that is bored to tears by arena but found the game more fun two patches ago, I enjoyed that pve were a mix of fallback elements (safe leveling) and fun goodies for doing side activities (vaults, bosses, meteors). While I absolutely think pve needed more emphasis, I wish they'd done that by offering more interesting rewards and shapes of pve, rather than just locking basic numeric progression as a thing you need to grind for. That also would mean the hot zones that draw teams into skirmishes would be actual fun prizes as opposed to "the honor of being able to upgrade basic equipment"

[thin mica]

This is what a lot of players warned about stuff like resurgence. It just gives the wrong incentives and feeds into poor behavior. With the resurgence patch it was like "do 2-3 camps for the levels and then just constantly fight in the middle of the map to farm as much as RP for ranked" and that is just super boring and takes away a lot of depth and different possibilities to play a round of BR. As said, it was literally Arena just without rounds.

Now they try to balance the game finally back to balance out pve and pvp aspects. And i also think this have to be the way to make an interesting game over the long run. Make both aspects equally important, bringing back more points of interest (shops, bonfires) on the map where fights occur naturally and you get rewarded not just with some generic RP but with the control over the POI if you won the fight. Which is a way better and interesting approach to pvp than just the fact to you do it for the sake of it to farm max RP.

I really hope that they gonna improve that way they leading the game with the last two patches even more in future patches.

[empty crypt]

This isn't true tho. This is what Project Loki was, what the playtesters fell in love with, and what most of the pre-beta closed testing was like.

A bunch of players have joined during very bad patches and gotten the wrong idea that they were actually good patches, and now that's what they want. But those weren't the norm

[hardy estuary]

i see, i wasnt here so i dont know

i joined when open beta started

at least in my server, which has very very few players, im not seeing old names anymore (which i was seeing EVERY game becasue of the small player base) and im seeing new names now

which makes me conclude that old people are churning out and new players are coming in

(it's literally every lobby with the same players, if you play during off peak times, queue times can take up to 30 mins)

[empty crypt]

What server?

[hardy estuary]

not to mention that at least half of the teams are bots

south america

[unreal linden]

fun fact for the majority of Loki's lifespan you looted equipment raw off camps

duplicates would combine the equipment XP towards its next level but otherwise you just grabbed and went with it

[hardy estuary]

actually 30 mins is an understatement, as ive posted here before that it took me over an hour to find a game

[hushed apex]

i kinda miss this ngl

[unreal linden]

I don't miss it overall but I miss that I could loot the equipment off the dead teams

this allowed you to kinda decide "right we can probably fight this lot with slightly more equipment than us, get their loot and then taking out the god spot team is a winnable scenario"

[stark mango]

I think that's kind of a fallacy "these people who joined the game on these patches and thought they were good and loved that version of the game fell in love with bad patches and so aren't true supervive players. Unlike me, who fell in love with good patches so love a good version of the game." Like it inherently defines "a good supervive player" as alignment with enjoying what you do.

[hushed apex]

yeah i can see why it wasn't very good for the game but i do miss yoinking people's gear that i needed

[hardy estuary]

what did people do before this patch if they died with masamune?

did they just play without 1 equipment? xd

[empty crypt]

I'm not calling anyone a good or bad player. What I'm saying is that TC has a goal and a vision for what they want the game to be. It's fair to say that all the testing and communication done up till now is a reasonable assessment of what they want from the game. So when players come in and are upset that things are changing away from what they want, it's entirely fair to evaluate that in the context of what the devs are trying to do. No game is for everyone

If TC changes their goal and moves the game away from what I loved then that would suck for me but it's their game. I'm measuring what the game is or isn't based off of them, not off of my personal preference

But my preferences aligning with their game is why I played in the first place lol

[unreal linden]

I think it's more a commentary on how abnormal the game was to the rest of its history at the time it went to OBT

[empty crypt]

It'd be like starting League of Legends during the Feral Flare Junglers meta, or the AP Ezreal/AP crit GP mid meta and being angry when they get turbo nerfed because you liked them. It's fine that you liked it, but they were extreme outliers that generally subverted the rest of the game. It's not a valid take to be like "actually the whole game should always be like this!"

[muted lava]

Twitch support my beloved😭 😭 😭

[stark mango]

I mean, it can be a valid opinion, and the obt patch was an expression of the dev's vision as well since they're the ones who made it. Clearly they're modulating it in other directions, but taking "the devs tried something I like" as a justification for "the will of the devs is with me" seems like it's there just to delegitimize people that don't like whatever the devs have most recently tried. Like, your opinions against resurgence or whatever else isn't illegitimate just because it's something the devs did or "had a vision for"

[empty crypt]

Again this really isn't about me

It's about understanding the game in full context, not just one or two patches

But when people are making fallacious arguments like "look how many people are upset about this change! Wow its so bad!" You have to take into account who's giving the feedback. Are they players who want to play the game that TC wants to make or are they just not the intended audience?

Like of course people are going to dislike a change that stops them from doing things they like.

It's just a matter of if they were supposed to be doing those things in the first place or not

[stark mango]

There will be subjective camps that want different visions of the game. But navigating those by interpreting one of those as "right" or adhering to some orthodoxy seems eh.

[celest apex]

mmm I guess most players got hooked during OB and that patch didn't have resurgence neither new RP metrics, that patch was not so PVP centered

[empty crypt]

This is fair but the whole reason they started iterating was because open beta failed to capture a large audience

And from there it's just a matter of direction

[stark mango]

Like there's a difference between "you want a different version of the game than me" and "you're not fans of the real supervive". Like you're being mostly reasonable, then implying people that like a patch you didn't are wrong for liking the wrong thing.

[celest apex]

I do agree it failed to capture a large audience but I don't think that the pace of the game was the reason

[empty crypt]

Yeah agree. Maybe a portion of it but probably not the main issue

[celest apex]

I would say some reasons were Hudson op, lot of mechanics not correctly explained, to many systems, no soloQ, ranked & unranked same queue, vets stomping noobs, etc

[empty crypt]

It's just reality that devs have to decide who to listen to. They can't take infinitely conflicting feedback and act on all of it

So how do they decide?

[celest apex]

I think those were some of the reasons. At least from ppl who I know that went for Marvel Rivals instead

[empty crypt]

It's not orthodoxy it's just having some sort of baseline to work from

[carmine trellis]

I think a good way to judge these things is "what are they trying to accomplish or make the game into and how well was that executed".
If they intend to go in a certain direction and solve certain issues and the direction they go into is not what an individual likes, that doesn't necessarily mean its a bad patch. But if they set out to accomplish a goal or go into a certain direction and it doesn't really work or comes with a lot of other issues, then it can be judged as a poor patch.
I feel like I don't have enough time/experience on the patch yet to form a proper opinion on it.
But the gold economy feels pretty punishing and kind of rough to me in how its tuned. I think it makes for a potentially more demanding macro-game which does in a sense add depth, but the average ranked experience feels less satisfying in turn. Poor teams, lack of coordination/macro and misplays are punished more. Is this a good or bad thing? Idk. Maybe good for scrims/tournaments/4-stacking or for the game further down the line. But general skill-level and coordination is pretty low across elos so atm it feels rough (to me).

With some things though I wonder how they got through into the shipping patch. Like Bishops new max RMB. The mobility and poke-potential this introduces is crazy. It'll get absolutely abused for sure. The shift-momentum into max RMB/bomb impulse/lift into glide is almost like a small version of her hoverwings combo, but on such a low CD that you can basically do it in succession for crazy map traversal (going over terrain as well). Or use it to jump over a few walls and engage with punch.
Its just surprising to have it in the same patch where movement is trying to be limited across the board.

[atomic hollow]

me and my boys started playing like 4 days ago and put up with the constantly getting shit on by top ranked players over and over again because of the already terrible ranked mm, now the patch has come and we are all already considering dropping the game because now not only are we still getting shit on by the same players, now the game feels extremely slow/boring. We were not able to learn macro pre patch due to being new and just wanted to fight for the fun. Now it feels like a lost cause to even start the game, by the time we get any type of farm and are able to go to base to upgrade we get jumped by people way over leveled on us, over geared with gold shields and powers. Im not saying the games bad because im bad, for the "average casual" player its losing the fun element of it.

[dreamy goblet]

I think a good way to judge these things is "what are they trying to accomplish or make the game into and how well was that executed".
The bulk of the Dev's communications have suggested that all the major systems overhauls since open beta have been in an attempt to make the game more intuitive or easy to learn for new players.

Personally I think armor evolution and resurgence did achieve that goal, and while there are certainly problems with resurgence I never complained because I think it was a tailored solution to a real problem.

The XP cap removal and gold overhaul frankly do nothing to make the game easier to learn and only make it harder for less experienced players to keep up with teams that have more efficient farming. Snowballing wasn't a problem before these patches, and losing fights was due to a gap in mechanical skill. Right now there are so many stats-driven reasons why you might not be able to take a fight, all of which require some level of big picture macro adjustments to remedy in the future

It really feels like "make the game easier to understand" just turns into "remove the unique systems that makes Supervive more appealing to non-MOBA players"

MOBA as a genre is incredibly polarizing and making the game MORE similar to League or DOTA is going to alienate more people than it brings in. I think the balance it struck before capitalized on the best parts of this niche genre without carrying over its major divisive elements

[carmine trellis]

I'm on the side of disliking moba as well. But I think beside wanting to make the game more accessible to new players they also said they want give the game more depth and I do think that managing economy and having to be a bit more on point with macro does do that to some extent. I'm just not sure if it does it in a way that's actually appealing to the players (especially the ones targeted to please with this patch). But like i said I need more time on the patch.

[dreamy goblet]

More depth and strategy on the macro is definitely appealing but I feel like there's a big gap between interesting macro (stuff like bosses, world events, contesting objectives, and map control) and stuff that just adds friction and chores to each match

More character levels doesn't really add more depth. Interesting max level modifications to spells does. More than half the abilities in this game have horrendously boring uninspired max level buffs. Tons of characters will just always default to a single build, and spreading out your power increases over more levels doesn't make those choices more interesting it means each level has to be less impactful.

Making it harder to get your equipment doesn't make interacting with equipment more interesting. Dealing with the fact that the vast majority of equipment evolutions are either unbelievably niche or outright powercrept by the easy simple default options means players have more real choices when it comes to how they build their playstyle.

Adding tons of extra steps to your systems doesn't make your choices more interesting, it makes the RPG-lite elements of the game a chore to work around.
Number of choices =/= depth of choices, and the major system changes in this patch largely fall into the former camp; LMB levels don't really add any depth to the build process and again just distract from the lack of real interesting choices for your top level ability upgrades. Splitting your gold against multiple different types of progression doesn't make the choices more impactful, it just introduces a huge number of balancing and tuning problems to a combat system that for the most part was pretty well balanced aside from some major outliers

[empty crypt]

Hey so if you ever wanted to, I'd be more than happy to teach you and your friends more about macro and how to avoid the situation that you're talking about. I'm not the best player on the server by any means but I regularly play in GM lobbies and I've played in scrims, so I can at least help you guys understand the basics of it. I think you'd have a lot more fun if you weren't losing to being confused as to what to do (just judging by your message, that's what it sounds like is happening)

Contrary to what the discord feedback makes it sound like, this patch is definitely more active and pvp focused than last patch. Last patch was actually just "permafarm as long as you can" and I think some people are getting bamboozled into doing the same thing this patch because you technically can

But it's not required or the best way to play anymore.

[acoustic spindle]

Couldn't agree more, I wasn't a fan of the last patch but it was way better than this, my favorite iteration of the game was the version prior to the Jan 22 patch.

[languid hemlock]

If we can live in a world where the hunter balance of this patch meets the game "feel" and tempo we had pre/during the holidays then I would be happy.

Level softcaps were actually nice in steering the game macro and incentivizing PvP imo. The game feels so hoardy, greedy PvE and shopping now

Keep knocking down the OPs a peg each patch and iron out some power/progression kinks and we're in a good direction.

[lunar dragon]

The moba-fication of supervive has done nothing but turn me off further from wanting to play the br mode.

[empty crypt]

see I honestly don't understand this

to me it's only made the game significantly better

if it's just combat without major structure then I get bored in like 30 minutes.

[lunar dragon]

I hated summoner's rift in League and almost never played it, can't get into Dota 2 either. I play suoervive bc of the moba-like combat without being a moba in gamemode.

[lunar dragon]

I think we're just 2 different kinds of gamers at heart

I queue arena for hours a day lol

I have a blast

[empty crypt]

I mean yeah that's true and that's fine. different strokes.

[unreal linden]

the issue is the arena crowd nobody's ever been able to monetise

[empty crypt]

I just want to rep the type of players who like the moba elements

[lunar dragon]

And in saying this i do think that structure is good, I just don't like the moba structure that we're heading towards

[unreal linden]

I think ultimately the BR has to be one thing so arena can be another

it's the same with LoL itself, having a more niche mode supported by a wider mass appeal mode is the way to go about it

in Overwatch I actually like TDM, elimination, and control more than I like any of the other modes

and I sorta understood arcade exists because the core modes exist

(I also just really don't like modes that can tie)

[empty crypt]

This is exactly it.

There's room to accomodate everyone, but not in the same game mode.

[lunar dragon]

I'm just confused about how the gold and shops system is easier for new players. It goes from Kill camps -> upgrade items to Kill camps -> find shop -> upgrade items. Isn't that objectively more complex of a system?

I often praised the old item system for being a fantastic stop-gap between the moba basing and shop system and something more sleek and elegant. The pop-ups on the screen when you could upgrade were fantastic for new players, myself included when I started.

[unreal linden]

the process itself isn't easier but the importance of bonfires is learnt easier

this system makes it so they have to go to the place that also heals them and restores mana, and they can armour repair there etc etc

[dreamy goblet]

That feels like such a weird thing to value ngl

I feel like the RPG-lite systems are way more integral to the game than the camp system. If you don't value camps that's kind of a "whatever you'll figure it out eventually" sort of deal

[unreal linden]

it should better allow people to learn via imitation in solo queue

[dreamy goblet]

I feel like camps are pretty intuitive if for no other reason than it shows you when other players are capping them and you can stand on it to make it change colors lol

The only unintuitive part of camps was the UX of actually interacting with them. Cooking beans and packing up camps is just kind of a weird set of mechanics and the interactable pillars don't have great design language

[empty crypt]

a few ways. 1. People understand the loop, League/Dota/Smite are mainstream enough that even if people struggle to understand the shop items, they grasp the concept of the gameplay loop very quickly.
2. It gives more precise control over your upgrade order and timing. That's mostly helpful for veteran players, but it's a really solid teaching tool for new players because there's an immediate Cause Effect fulfillment from upgrading items this way. Previously there were new players who just didn't really understand how their items were progressing bc it happened somewhat passively.
3. It slows everyone down, and gives players more time for their hunter to "come online" before they're asked to fight for their life. That's not a direct snowballing nerf, but it feels like snowballing is less out of your control bc people aren't doing wild early game stuff that just instantly fucks you.

[dreamy goblet]

I have heard of zero examples of people finding "kill monsters to upgrade your shit" confusing LOL

[empty crypt]

i saw someone earlier respond to me with the point of "there's the same number of fights as before" which is true on average, but the fact that those fights happen a few minutes later is a huge deal

[empty crypt]

Do you know how many people I've heard say "Wait my items upgrade? Uhhh how? I've just been clicking on anything with a thumbs up"

[lunar dragon]

I'd argue that was a failure of the tutorial and on-boarding more than the system but that's probably the end of my 2 cents on this topic

[empty crypt]

the relationship between killing monsters, seeing like 3 different types of loot drop, picking everything up, and understanding which part of what you just looted directly contributed to your items and how much, is not as clear as "Money = Buy item"

[dry shard]

Tying all the resources into one system is the part that's theoretically easier for new players to understand, not the upgrade loop you're talking about.

The problem is that:

1. The game has no way to teach players to go to shops or where they can find shops (this was a problem I had as a new player)

2. New players won't know what they should be doing at shops (which was a problem I had as a new player and think gets even more pronounced with more stuff to do at camps)

3. Players will not have good pathing to the shops such that they're likely to run into an experienced player that beats them in a fight not because they are more skilled but because they converted their money into power first

I don't think the system itself is bad, but it would have been much better if it was layered on top of the old shard system so new players get more of a minimum of power from just playing the game.

[empty crypt]

like back on OB, you kill a camp and they drop boot shards, tiny power shards, and Vive beans. AND sometimes powers. They just kinda dropped a bag of goodies on the ground, that's not so easy for a brand new player to parse

[dreamy goblet]

This is at worst a UI problem. The upgrade shard progress on items was fairly opaque because there were just Shards™ that dropped in unknown quantities and you needed some unknown number for stuff to happen.
The fact that it's never really communicated how many little shards you have or how many you need without really scouring tool tips was just kind of a failure of the user interface to give players a good sense of how it worked

[empty crypt]

it just looks like a bunch of shit on the ground that you're being told is good

[mental locust]

I agree that the visibility isn't as intuitive anymore but I think game-design wise it does a lot to make base camps and shops more important which is a net positive

[dreamy goblet]

Kill things > get upgrade materials is the most video gamey intuitive thing ever.
There's no possible way kill things > get stuff (but this time gold) > go perform an arcane ritual at a camp/shop is any more intuitive

[empty crypt]

yeah for the record, they've already said that the shop UI is something they want to make better if they stick with this system. So you can buy and upgrade all in the shop instead of having to buy, back out, click a different part of the screen, and repeat

[empty crypt]

it's 1 system instead of 3.
And again, it slows things down. Which is good for new player experience. And everyone's experience imo.

[mental locust]

?

Upgrade Materials, how does my knife magically get better

when I pick up the magic number?

Change bad, I get it, but this is definitely better to cut out an entire currency

side note it also makes holding onto shards more viable/risky

[dreamy goblet]

Okay here's the thing, the tuning and pace is pretty much irrelevant to the gold vs shards issue because both can be as slow or as fast as the devs want them to be.

Personally, I think resource scarcity in stuff like healing consumables is a neat change, and making players fight over camps more is a good change, but these are things that can be achieved with or without upgrade shards.

The two big issues people have right now are that getting your equipment online is harder which creates much larger potential for numerical power differences among teams late game, and one resource being used for both equipment and all other resources highlights power/value imbalances between the different types of items in the game

Fundamentally, if you have two different forms of power that upgrade independently, say levels and equipment upgrades, you don't need to weigh them against eachother because they improve in parallel
If you suddenly remove XP and force players to level up using gold, it means the relative power delta between equipment and ability levels need to be balanced in accordance with one another

Do we think that removing EXP and making level ups happen with gold would be good? Personally no, I think that kill stuff > get xp > level up your abilities works pretty well and the balance of the game in regards to leveling up vs everything else probably shouldn't be put up against eachother in competition

[unreal linden]

getting your equipment online is harder which creates much larger potential for numerical power differences among teams late game

a tier is 10 AP bro

[dreamy goblet]

Okay

[mental locust]

I mean, I feel the AP value though

[empty crypt]

"tuning and pace is pretty much irrelevant to the gold vs shards issue because both can be as slow or as fast as the devs want them to be." I mean sorta? Like... sure there are things that could be done to make anything faster or slower. But the point is to interrupt the gameplay of players. Force them to stop running around, go back to base. That's always going to be a slowdown

[mental locust]

so that is pretty relevant

[lunar dragon]

Realistically rushing blue tier is mandatory on most characters. The passives are super strong and build/playstyle defining

[empty crypt]

yeah but after blue it's way optional

[dreamy goblet]

Sure! Making players go back to base and use upgrade shards to power up their equipment is an option

[unreal linden]

if you don't have blues by late game you were losing that game no matter the patch

[empty crypt]

Shards are only from PVP. That's once again creating the problem of too much pvp incentive

[dreamy goblet]

I'm not saying that's the perfect way to go but there's nothing inherently linking gold/shards to camps/shops

[dreamy goblet]

I mean all shards including the baby ones that you need a bunch of per level

Again, that system was poorly communicated but that's 100% bad UI and can be fixed with more bars on screen and shit lmao

[empty crypt]

at which point, it's just complexity for complexity's sake. why not just use gold then? It's easier to grasp

[dreamy goblet]

Instead of hiding it in item tooltips

[mental locust]

What's hidden in these tooltips right now?

[dreamy goblet]

I mean plenty of stuff but not shard progress cause they're not in the game 😎

[mental locust]

So... again. What's hidden with this system in these tool tips?

You don't realize I'm trying to understand your point while you're just being cute

[dreamy goblet]

For the reason I wrote a whole spiel, gold is used for other stuff. Separate currencies mean no competition between different forms of power

[mental locust]

Ok - so did you value the two separate upgrade paths?

[empty crypt]

They've explicitly said that they want competition between different forms of power. The xp/shard system has always been tuned to just sorta give players everything with no limitations. They want tradeoffs.

[dreamy goblet]

I'm not being cute. There's literally mountains of information hidden in advanced tooltips in this game by default.

[mental locust]

Then tell me what specifically is missing that you want pulled out

[dreamy goblet]

Yeah. I think that's a bad balancing decision in this instance. I disagree with this philosophy in this particular instance (but not in principle and not universally)

[empty crypt]

I disagree but ig that's just that

[dreamy goblet]

Yes. I think the game's balance was tighter when these two particular sets of things were decoupled, and coupling them has raised a number of balance issues that Feel Bad™

Then tell me what specifically is missing that you want pulled out
I only brought this up because I was expressing some level of agreement that the power shard system was poorly communicated, specifically because the number of shards held and required to upgrade an item were hidden within individual equipment items' tooltips. If that information was, say, in a progress bar the same way your level and shield upgrade progress was it would be much easier to understand. Hell even putting the (X/Y) numerical value of shards needed would be more clear.

The fact that the shards picked up from dead players could be dropped for other players is something the game still doesn't teach you, the differences between the 3 shard sizes is never explained. The game just did zero work to explain the system, that doesn't mean it's INHERENTLY CONFUSING it just means the tutorials are dogwater. Reworking a system because your tutorial just never explains it doesn't make any sense to me.

[lunar dragon]

Also loads of character tool tips just straight up omit entire mechanics of their abilities and all of their ratios, even cooldowns on some dashes.

If we're talking about tooltips missing information in general

[mental locust]

Ok - that's more understandable.

I think personally that because power shards are still in the game with two sizes now that I'm not as concerned about the fact that the mini ones are missing, than I am with the fact that power shards are now very different in value the further you get and that has more to do with the way gold drops scale

[dreamy goblet]

Yeah I mean that's the thing right, to me the fact that shard costs are linear and gold costs scale feels very exploity and unbalanced.
It FEELS like an untuned externality not a tightly crafted development decision.
The issue with "depth" as an argument for something is that not all depth makes games better necessarily. Sure, it means holding shards for later has value and that dying with shards can be punishing... but honestly I don't actually think this makes the game more fun or interesting and ultimately just kinda makes the gold costs of upgrades feel worse

[mental locust]

you can do the safe thing and scale with mob farm or play aggro and use shards but I think the key thing is that using shards early FEELS bad

because 'well gold value is higher and that's harder to farm'

[dreamy goblet]

I've been in sooooo many competitive gaming communities where people will die on this hill that anything that widens the "skill gap" should be kept, up to and including fundamentally game breaking/altering exploits

[mental locust]

This feels more like a tuning issue but I think it's still healthier overall

[dreamy goblet]

I think we can all agree the current state of the game is very poorly balanced LOL

I'd be shocked if I get any "um actuallys" on this one

[mental locust]

I think the snowball is way too heavy

[dreamy goblet]

Right

[mental locust]

but I can't determine what that's a symptom of

[dreamy goblet]

I mean yeah I think end games in the previous two major patches usually had all teams are relatively similar power levels, the big differences were things like abyssal powers, meteor souls, and abstract advantages like map control or access to a basecamp

In almost every end game I've seen in ranked this patch one teams is very clearly numerically dominant

[empty crypt]

really?

[dreamy goblet]

Yep. Usually there's one team with all 15s and the rest of the teams are kinda randomly splattered about between 12 and 15

[mental locust]

I still think this will end up being better for the game in the long run but I agree that as it stands, it feels like if you're ahead you can alpha-strike everybody with very little consideration for other parties

[dreamy goblet]

D2, US servers. We've always kinda had the clear 4 stack deathball premade running around but at least it felt like they were winning cause they were playing better and not because they have big numbers lul

IMO at this point I'd rather they just remove the equipment system entirely and have you pick 2 runes in character select instead LOL

If we're really so hung up on making shit easier to understand, instead of forcing new players to do loadout management on the fly every match just have them pick their passives before hand

We all kinda acknowledge that the blue upgrade is the most important one anyway, that's what defines how you play your hunter

Just wrap the stat scaling into levels and be done with it lol

[mental locust]

now I feel like that's just being facetious because you wouldn't like a farm-fest either to rush levels

[lunar dragon]

I always thought that item systems felt clunky in general outside of roguelike/lites personally

But i don't think supervive has an adequate system to replace farming/pvp for item upgrades

So as much as I'd love not having to worry about upgrading my items mid game, I don't think it would work without a major overhaul to the game

[dreamy goblet]

You probably wont like my answer here

But that's why the level cap was based and innovative

And removing it was yikers

[mental locust]

there's one thing I think is starting to become clear for me - in most of these BRs, there's much more dead time to think and manage

usually in SUPERVIVE you have like zero seconds to think

[mental locust]

I actually didn't know the hard cap was gone because every time I've been overleveled, it's because 20 people keep dropping in on my position

[dreamy goblet]

You might be onto something.

I feel like prior to the daily level cap removal once you hit your level cap your time was kind of in your own hands; you could go after objectives, powers, vaults, bosses, or just establish a position in the ring.
Walking across the map directly to a meteor beast didn't feel like a waste of time, it felt like a perfectly valid option, the only question was whether you'd make it before another team took the soul.

Since the XP caps removal it's felt like every moment not spent making number go up creates more of a disadvantage by the time you hit end game. For all the depth and strategy people tout in this new system, I feel a much greater QUALITY of depth has been lost in the reduction of emphasis on more varied and interesting goals.
I loved the sandboxy element of Supervive, how it felt like the battle royale format (which I typically hate) was actually being utilized to encourage you to go on dumb little quests.
Since this patch I feel like I'm constantly being rushed, and taking the time to open a vault or kill a boss is usually not worth it unless there's something I REALLY want.

Not to mention the fact that getting your teammates to chill with you while you do it instead of splitting off and solo farming, thus further deepening the gap between yourself and others later on, is nearly impososible

[mental locust]

like it's just the aggression they're encouraging but there is a balance here and I think the split got blown

[dreamy goblet]

The solo farming shit is a major source of frustration and one way or the other if the game is going to have such a strong emphasis on acquiring resources from PvE they really need to reconsider how loot is shared across a team. The XP/gold drop range is WAY too small right now. I get that having 4 people split up and clear a biome with infinite sharing range would be pretty unhealthy but some kind of middle ground needs to happen cause right now it feels like your teammates are screwing you over unless you're RACING to keep up with them at all times

[mental locust]

either way yes level cap back please

[lunar dragon]

Everyone star this message it's a really solid piece of feedback