Theses are some minor stuff and I think most of it should be addable with relative ease (minus the modifiers).
Theme 1 - What to do with leaderboards
Basically, there are three options:
- Drop them
- Leave them as they are
- Improve on them
As they are now they provide some minor information but not more due to several hickups. Most of us are mature and intelligent enough to understand that the existence of leaderboards does not make Weaves a competitive mode. As such, I think, improving a bit on them is okay. The proposed suggestions shouldn’t take really much workforce and people don’t lose something if they are improved on. That said, personally, I would like see the following changes:
- Give each ranked Weave a small table where it shows if we completed it and how (meaning solo, duo, etc. ). Also displaying our score for each “mode” would help. All of this information is already tracked it just isn’t displayed.
- Reasoning: We currently have not many information sources to check our progress. We can see the highest beaten Weave and also the lowest consecutive chain. Granted this problem is more for the first 40 Weaves but even with the later Weaves we can’t check how we have beaten them. Right now I couldn’t tell which Weaves I have already solo’ed. There is no reason to not display the information.
- Re-adjust how the position on the boards is determined. Currently, the only thing the system does regard is the highest beaten Weave and then with how many points. This means that someone who has beaten only Weave 120 but nothing else, has a better position than someone who has beaten Weave 1-119. This is nonsensical. Change it to an average score over all Weaves for a specific block (see next point). Unbeaten Weaves will be regarded as zero, essentially lowering your score and your placing.
- Group the Weaves in smaller and larger blocks like 1-10, 11-21, … then 1-40, 41-80, 81-120 and lastly 1-120 (or do Weave Boards). Give out leaderboards for every single block.
- Reasoning: Currently positioning is only interesting for those who can beat the highest Weaves. However, there might be people interested in playing for the first 10 or 40 Weaves but who can’t complete the higher Weaves. Basically they have no motivation for the boards in anway because it is out of their league. With lower separate boards they have however a playground. However, it needs some kind of separation to avoid higher Weaves player taking the Recruit boards. Maybe make it so that end of the season you will have to decided for which block you want to submit and you can only chose one. Another problem is the information increase which is not suitable with a system designed for console access (in-game boards). You actively need a drop-down menu. So remove the board in-game and make the board checking an outside game process.
- Rewards. Give out reasonable rewards and announce them before hand. With the Emporium now in the game, you have several tools at your disposal. You can give out Shillings as rewards. But I would go further and say give out a random/chosen premium cosmetics for people and even future DLC’s as rewards. We are talking here about 50-100 players per season at best. This should not influence your income to much.
- Cheating of the boards: I have confidence that actual cheaters will be caught by checking of the telemetry data. They are no problem. I have no idea however if you can game the system by joining late in a Weave. As such I propose that people who join a weave after it started will receive a score of zero but get the Weave still checked as completed. The system can differentiate this as shown by Deeds where late (re)joiners can still get the normal mission reward but not the Deed reward.
I think there was more but this is everything I remember right now. If changed (especially point 1-2 shouldnt be to much effort) I would like to change it already for this season as it does influence nothing much (especially point 1-2)
Theme 2 - Weave Modifiers
With the Weave grouping, replaying lower level Weaves might become more interested. However, replayability (as well as accessibility) still have issues (read Weave Boards for ideas how to tackle the construct around the Weaves). As such it could be interesting to provide some minor modifiers which can ease or mix up the Weaves a bit whily simultaneously serve as mulitplier to increase your score for the Weaves. Such modifiers could be:
- Randomness: On TOP of the static spawns the game will add random spawns as well. This could be only specials or everything.
- Double Winds: At first I wanted just an additional Wind modifier but there are two winds which are bound to objects so it might be complicated. As such I thing for the start it would be interesting to pair two winds together which can be activated with this. Suggested pairings would be:
- Beast and Light: This one is actually interesting. You would need the Totems to decrease your curse but they also strengthen the enemies. As such you have to make a choice when you destroy the Totem because it effectively removes your chance for curse decrease.
- Azyr and Aqshy: Azyr actually is fun but the lightning damage is rather miniscule and mostly serves as stagger for the enemies. With this combination, the lightning would become a suitable tool to decrease enemy hordes and monsters while providing a larger threat too.
- Gold and Ulgu: Yea, the ultimate suffering for ranged careers. This pairing would force you to step up your melee game.
- Death and Jade: Well, only pairing left and super annoying. But yea, avoiding death orbs while outmaneuvering the thorns will provide difficulty.
- Timeout: Effectively removes the timer from the mission with a given multiplier of zero. So you can still progress in the Weaves but you can’t get points for it. In its current iteration this would be a no-go. However, if you change the way your position on the board is calculated this would become a suitable option.
Especially the double winds could also be considered as suitable mechanic for later seasons to built new Weaves around.
Theme 3 - General stuff
Because it literally can not be said often enough: Don’t let Weaves restrict our progress! This means:
- Weave Quickplay should count towards the Weekly Quickplay Quest
- Weaves should count towards Weapon Quests (the 1000 killing ones, and the Lord ones if we ever get Weaves with Lord refights)
- Weave monsters should drop loot dices, especially in quickplay but in ranked Weaves too. Are they pointless most time? Yes, but they don’t hurt either.
- Add a guaranteed Ravaged Art spawn in the final areas, so that you can get 1 Art per Weave.
- Grims and Tomes are most likely left in adventure mode and should not be integrated into Weaves
- Completing Champion+ Weaves should count towards the 100 played games per career challenge.
There is literally absolutely no reason why the above mentioned points can’t or shouldn’t be applied! I herey ask you kindly to change this as quickly as possible.
Theme 4 - Other related Weave threads
Some of them are still open. Personally I think both the Weave boards as well as they Editor are interesting projects to be considered.
That was everything. If you managed to read through all this consider me impressed. Even if you agree on pretty much everything else, I would like you to at least acknowledge and support the points made in Theme 3. They don’t hurt anyone and provide convenience for other people. It can’t be that we have to make a choice between progressing in the Weaves OR Weekly Quests. For the most part this should be the same process.
Theme 5:
Fatshark should switch the General Weave challenges with the Season 1 challenges because it makes much more sense reward and time-Investment-wise.