Thoughts and suggestion about armory: How can we make it "feel" better for new players?

[severe magnet]

At the moment, my current opinion about the armory is positive- there have been a lot of discussion posts discussing pros and cons about the armory, so I won't get too much into this.
I do believe that if players are able to get past their initial hesitation about even trying to grind out the armory, then it can be a genuinely fun system that also keeps players interested in playing more.

People are upset about the competitive advantage this holds, but I personally view it as something similar to Clash Royale's ranked (trophy) system (except Clash Royale allows for more p2w parts of their 'gacha')
In Clash Royale, the ranked ladder is moreso a function of card strength and skill.
A very skilled player who has low leveled cards can still climb, but a less skilled player with max level cards can still struggle to climb, even though they theoretically have every reason to win based on their advantage.
Given time, this distribution of players across all the trophy ranges will balance out and become relatively fair based on this function of skill + account strength.

Right now, this distribution doesn't quite exist in Supervive because everybody is starting out and this function has never had the chance to emerge yet, which leads to more negative perception.
But given some time, a player who gets more relics and perks should naturally climb as they have an advantage, leaving the lowest mmr bracket and making it more fair.
Drawing back to the example from Clash Royale, it's really rare to see someone in the 0-2000 trophy range to have lvl 13+ cards because the moment they do get those cards, they naturally climb way higher.

TLDR: if we give the armory system more time, along with ranked/matchmaking evening out as players start to climb, the armory system will also turn out to be more fair. It isn't like that right now, so the perception seems to be way lower than it should IMO.

Now for the suggestion:
Given that players are getting turned away from this armory system because of the shock factor of "this person has a gold relic but i dont and i just lost because of that", one way to alleviate that greatly is to give each new players a "gold relic selection box" either for free or through some early/beginner missions, or even better- as a reward for completing the tutorial.

All the new players will be able to look through and select a gold relic of their choice without any of the RNG, meaning that it's less 'shocking' for them to see someone roll up to them with a gold relic (because they have one themselves).

TLDR: "Legendary Relic Selection Box" reward for completing early missions or completing tutorial so that new players can be more incentivized to play the game and use their gold relic while they grind for more of them

Also, this could even have value as like a weekly mission type of thing too: maybe something like a "Guaranteed Purple+ Box" as a reward for completing every weekly mission could help out with this

[manic schooner]

Better solution: remove rng from the armory completely

[granite plume]

I think more people in general like gambling vs not gambling in general

[manic schooner]

Do you think more people prefer skill based games or rng stats based games?

[granite plume]

Im sure people like a mix of both

I just cant imagine people would like games like tft better if they completely removed all rng

[manic schooner]

Surely that's why we see 0 competitive games where such system is implemented

[granite plume]

TFT is competitive

[manic schooner]

It's completely different genre and rng only inside the matches, not outside

[severe magnet]

They already have a system similar to this with a rotating shop

[gilded stag]

Or maybe introduce duplicates protection 🤷, getting all unlocks before getting duplicates

[severe magnet]

Only thing I might say is that the prices might be a little bit high

[severe magnet]

There actually are some that I can think of- particularly a lot of mobile mobas have an RNG system with what runes they can upgrade

[granite plume]

What about crits, would you say games should get rid of that completely?

[manic schooner]

Google how crits work in dota or lol

It's ok to have some rng in game. It's not ok when people start the game with so drastic difference in capabilities

[manic schooner]

Imo let's remove bad system rather and change to something that can live long and make competitivness of the game better than try to fix it

[severe magnet]

I think as I said in my post, this perspective is very valid and reasonable, especially because there's almost like a 'whiplash' going from an only skill based -> account strength + skill based system

That's also why I mentioned that adding systems to alleviate this whiplash is also something that can help a lot

I think it's less common to see systems like this on PC games (where ranked/win % is based on how strong your account is in COMBINATION with skill level)
but it's something that's seen pretty commonly in a lot of mobile games

[manic schooner]

For a good reason, pc players don't like that stuff

[severe magnet]

So your whole point is that a group of players does not enjoy this system- I don't think it's fair to claim that this system is objectively bad though

[granite star]

agree]

[severe magnet]

I don't think we should ignore the group of people that don't enjoy it, but there is a very real group of players that do enjoy the armory system.

And I think we can call for compromises that help both sides enjoy it

[manic schooner]

It's bad for the competitiveness of the game, it's bad for marketing, it's bad for new players or players who won't play 24/7, it's bad for the survival of the game. I really don't know who pitched this idea in Theorycraft and how it got approved. Maybe Asian players like such things, but then again what was the point of beta for everyone but Asia for a few years?

[gilded bronze]

I personally dont see how the rng of the system makes the game better

Im personally a fan of selection boxes and stuff if we have to keep the armory as a system but I would generally agree with the notion that the weekly and daily specials need to be greatly expanded or the rng needs to go

[onyx cloak]

we spoke about it today and a better system would be:

1. make ALL items accesible to EVERYONE.
2. create and select your build in home screen before u load into a game.
3. buy ur build that u created in game by collecting gold etc.

[blazing hollow]

I like your idea, I think prisms acquisition should be better too. I could see it being you keep all of your prisms but if you extract it you get double? Then it wouldn’t feel as grindy. I sort of like the armory but I see people’s frustrations

[onyx cloak]

ofcourse, im not saying my solution is the only solution! ofcourse there could be other systems, like making it so every item is available in forge and u can unlock and level them as you please. as long as the RNG aspect is gone its fine

[paper nova]

i highly doubt that. 0 per cent true in my gamer friend group at least. if we gamble its with money, not our gaming time and enjoyment

[keen juniper]

I think that fully removes the idea they're going for (increasing retention by rewarding grinding, and allowing adaptability within the match even after theorycrafting a build for yourself).
I would just suggest that they let people choose like 10 items (idk maybe 4 relics, 4 grips, 2 kicks, and them some amount of perks) full for free at the start. That way people can still go for whatever they want and you don't start the game at a disadvantage, but you'll still need to play more to unlock the rest of the items. (Prism drop rate or at least drop consistency should be increased too. Right now you can get like anywhere between 1-600, which isn't reassuring for new players.)

[paper nova]

agree that ending the game with 1 prisma feels extra bad compared to before (funny how the brain works, 0 > 1 in this case xD and so does ending with 15, considering the high item prices) problem with a relevant guaranteed prisma gain is it encourages botting. which is always a pain in the ass to deal with. quests help a bit by guaranteeing a standard amount for everyone, not too sure what to do about it. if they higher it and then are forced to lower it coz of bots people will get mega angry