As my religion enforces me to repeat myself over and over again, I will use this chance again to promote the idea of making Weaves more adventurous by clumping them to smaller groups (8-10 Weaves) of same difficulty where you can take different pathways to reach from the beginning to the end of the group to give choice. Detailed description can be read somewhere else.
Other than that my focus today will be on the Leaderboard and score system as well as the accompanying points of rewards and replayability which can all be adjusted without to much work.
Currently ranked Weaves can only be joined while being in the Keep. This hinders progress on Weaves for most public players who don’t want to rely on pre-made groups. We know from Season 1 that it is technically possible to join midway ranked Weaves. So there has to be another reason why this is currently not possible. Only halfway logical conclusion would be the leaderboards. However, we can have both: non-abusable leaderboards by joining midway AND easier progression for public players.
Suggested Change #1: Players when opening or searching a lobby will have a checkmark if they play for leaderboard or not. If yes, other players can only join prior to starting the Weave. If no, other players can join midway.
Another problem (which has to be solved before the rest can be adjusted) is the positioning on the leaderboards. Currently, the leaderboard only cares for the highest score on the highest beaten Weave. This means that someone beating only Weave 137 will have a higher position as someone beating Weave 1-136. This is BS!
Suggested Change #2: Separate leaderboards into smaller groups of Weaves (let’s say 10) and determine position on these leaderboards by the average score over all included Weaves.
This would enable us to actually compete for the top position on these sub-boards by replaying Weaves in them and give lower skill players also the chance to compete without the need to go the full way up. With this we get to:
Suggested Change #3: Give out rewards for the top position per sub-board. This would be an ONCE-a-Season reward which would enable FS to give something actually useful.
Ideas are found fast from a red weapon of choice, to a premium cosmetic of choice, to the Eternal Serpent Frame or a Shilling reward (once! a season). What the player gets would be mentioned with the start of the season and be different for different sub-boards. In order to avoid frustration for players, each player should only be eligible for one or two rewards per season. If he has mutliple top-spots on multiple boards he can chose which reward to claim. On the other board subsequent position will become eligible. This is in order to avoid Godplayer xyz to hog all low-difficulty boards and killing competetion before it even started.
With a now actual meaningful leaderboard and rewards and reason to replay certain Weaves, we could also “separate” Weaves into necessary challenge and additional challenge.
Suggested Change #4: Reduce the amount of joining specials per Weave and remove the timer. But add voluntary challenge modifier for increased score.
This is where replay value could be added and also to make the basic Weaves more accessible skill-wise. As without the modifiers they would be easier than the current set. Possible modifiers for leaderboard players could be: Add random special spawn, add second (suitable) wind effect, add timer, etc. This could be either a multiplier or an absolute bonus to the score (depending on the modifier). With this players have an easier time to get more Weaves and to get the higher frames but if they want to get the ONCE-a-season reward they would have to use the modifiers to get better results. We could even go as far to give solo players the chance to play Weaves disabler-free without modifiers. Because it is difficult enough already.
Overall these changes would enable a better accesibility for the Weaves so that public players can more easily play and beat them for Frames while still having (and actually emboldening) the competitive side of the Weaves for additional rewards. As bonus Weaves are getting a tiny bit more replayable. Most of the work would be concerning overhead with only minimal changes to the actual Weaves themselves needed (like determine which specials to remove without the modifier).