devtrackers.gg
I want to outline my initial thoughts of what works well and what wheels feel squeaky after playing about 6 hours of Arena 0.3.0 in PBE last night. Please feel free to add feedback to the following, or to disagree if a mechanic that I liked or didn't struck you differently.
Organized by delta from 0.2 to 0.3.0:
Number of teams: Pretty much a fully net positive. Having more players and fewer early game redundancies makes counter matchups decided in draft feel less like they dictate the outcome. The only pain point here is 8 bans, meaning only the first choice player gets to ban: I understand the baseline logic behind keeping bans static at 8, if only to keep more variables static between iterations and avoiding too many champs that never see play, but I think the 'feel good' approach would be to give all 16 players bans, and to tweak balance in the mode itself for champs who see 50%+ ban rates as result of the higher ban quantity.
Lobby/UI: Choncc as shopkeeper is pretty amazing, even if it is just for the Empyrean thematic. Would be great to see Little Legend tacticians as the mode shopkeepers given the thematic crossover with TFT via augments and anvils--very good IP crossover to tie together. The 8 lobby cells feel a bit cramped, but the need to be able to move around in that 30s is such a minor concern it doesn't merit addressing.
The biggest pain point here is lack of UI clarity. I like the new UI and feel it is necessary for the larger number of teams, but unless I am just missing it, stat shard selections (my own as well as others') are simply not displayed. Additionally, the normal expanded stats tab in the bottom left seems truncated so I cannot see other stats like omnivamp at any given point.
Prismatic Items/Augments: Worth mentioning the few new augments I have seen have been related to anvils (pricing/selling/etc), which feel impactful for high roll playstyles.
As a system, Prismatic Items feel great and offer high roll players a real chance to shine even with unusual picks (Moonflair spellblade/Runecarver Sona anyone?). I think the potency of some items will need to be tweaked (down specifically), but I will leave u/Adeadmansname or others with more data driven mindsets to break these down. Also, some of the 'returning' items feel as if they could use a boost (Radiant Virtue and Everfrost in my opinion), but again data will do a better job driving this than my anecdotal experiences.
Pain points would be not being able to shift hover over proc effects in the triple card selection screen to see ratios of scaling effects. Should be done.
Really loving the changes overall. Thank you for the extended period of play in advance!
External link →