Thoughts and Bugs

So, I have reported a bunch of these bugs through the PBE client as well, but I figured I would include them in my list of thoughts about the game mode so far.

First off I have to say I am really enjoying the game mode. Thanks so much for experimenting in this genre, so let's get right into this.

1. [Items] Items are super fun and super impactful in every game, throughout the entire game, rather than just late game. Some items feel odd, clucky, hard to quantify (shrink for example... it doesn't even show the percentage), or are just plain underpowered, but mostly the item system feels super vibrant. Although at the same time it seems overwhelming, especially without a cheat sheet handy for the entire game.

2. [Items] Piggybacking off the last one, items are often so impactful that bad item RNG, or being last pick in the carousel can actually hard lose you a game. Sometimes you need tear or you lose, and you go through krugs and get 3 chain vests and a giants belt, then kill raptors and get zero items, but because you had a win streak at the beginning you are also always last pick in the carousel.

3. [items] Ability power items feel both very strong and very situational. It would be great if utility abilities had like... a duration extension from ability power increases, so that they were less situational.

4. [items] The item storage UI needs work (although that is probably obvious). I don't like how they can be dropped on the board without returning to the item box, and often move around randomly all on their own. I just want them to stay still!

5. [items] The difficulty of transitioning your carry items from one champion to another was never that big of a deal in auto chess, which made upgrading to better carries much easier. You just threw them on the board. If you had no more use for the previous carry you sold it and moved the items, otherwise you just left the carry on the board with the items, since they probably weren't impactful enough to matter or has similar benefits regardless of which champion had them equipped. They sometimes were, but more often than not you didn't have to sell your 3-star 1-cost to get that one mana item onto your new 2-star 4-cost. In TFT right now, you absolutely have to switch your items to the newer better unit, or they just can't contribute nearly as much. With items this impactful, it might be interesting to explore allowing freely swappable items.

6. [champions] Early game champions are often fairly weak when compared to equal star higher cost units, but allow you to get 2-3 star very easily early on. Late game champions are often super strong even with only 1 or 2 stars, however, the rare champions (3-cost blue) often fall oddly between the two, which either ends up being a lucky 2-3 star right before entering late game, or an extremely useless 1-2 star while already being in late game, unable to find the matches. Very few of the 3-stars have game changing powers. Yes, Veigar ulti is strong, but only if you get the lucky 2-3 star early on. Yes, Rengar and Eve can nuke your team randomly like any other assassin, yes Aatrox does some damage, but none of them are easily accessible until after their real usefulness (having slightly higher stats) somewhat falls off without gambling and getting lucky. Would you rather have a 2-star Shen for your blademaster synergy or a 2-star Aatrox? Without demon synergy as well, Shen is almost always better, even though he is 2-cost. 3-cost in general just feels very weak. Shyvana and maybe one I am forgetting are rare exceptions, but that is only because their power fits their cost/timing. It really doesn't for most of the rare category.

7. [econ] The game often feels more about getting a 2-star carry and then collecting items for it than actually upgrading champions. Obviously you want 3-stars, and obviously they are very good, but items and their synergy with the carry you are aiming for seem to have a far greater impact than anything else. This seems to make a lot of the economy system less impactful, since finding the carry and synergy you can 2-star all of and start getting the items for is more important than stockpiling. This might be possible to offset by allowing buying random item components for 10-20 gold, but this could also further empower the strength of items compared to champions.

8. [carousel] I like the carousel, but it has some issues. Early on you do not take enough damage to care about being last, so it's almost always best to sandbag early to get a good pick in the first 1 or 2 carousels unless you got stupidly lucky in early draft with an easy 3 2 star noble or something... even then you need to get your late game items ASAP, so delaying them by not getting them in the carousel is potentially harmful to yourself.

What I mean is that you need to get some of the main carry items forcibly early on, so that you don't have to worry about getting RNG screwed later. Easiest way is by forcing carousel early when damage is too low to care about. Win streaks just can't make up for the items you get unless you already have the important pieces to your comp and are okay with whatever drops are left. Yes this is part of the current strategy and "meta" that is forming, but it is somewhat forcing a singular early strategy due to the importance of specific items, and having only one way to try to forcibly obtain them.

9. [carousel] Because of how screwed you can get for being the "leader" early on, it might be better to allow an option at the carousel to just get an item or just get a champion. For example, everyone took everything except chain vest elise and giant's belt lucian, so your options are basically some gold and chain vest or some gold and giant's belt, but you know you are screwed if you can't find tear, recurve, bf sword and maybe a dust before reaching round 20, so having a "shop" or something beside the carousel that allows buying a Tear for 10 gold (not participating in the shared draft, but also not permanent access to buying tear). This would allow the person in first to use their gold lead to get an item they absolutely needs, but would also diminish their current lead. They might even still get a tear if nobody wanted it.

10. [carousel] The shield rings are super annoying. Can they please work like fountain wall instead of teleporting?

11. [spectate] Checking other players exists, but is about as clunky as it gets. During combat units are dead, and you often go to the shared arenas, which becomes immediately confusing who you are looking at and whose units are whose and all that. You need to be able to see what your opponents are drafting, so that you can either counter, or just simply not try to build it if you see two people with 3 star Darius already. Having a tab menu that showed champion icon/stars on the table and on the bench would be much appreciated. Would extra super special if it also included gold and W/L streak in a color coded number beside the gold. Viewing a quick enemy synergy list would also be very useful. All of these things exist in the current auto-chess ... app (I think it's the mobile app)?

12. [spectate] Just another note on spectating. If you are currently viewing an enemy player (such as when you are dead) and they go through a portal, you will not follow and will be left staring at an empty board. Please jump through the portal with them as the viewer.

13. [balance] Damage scaling with champion rarity makes the game seem very snowbally late game. If you mess up your positioning late game even slightly, you could be full aced with their entire team up, taking 35+ damage easily. It might seem somewhat minor, but the increased damage when compared to auto chess makes games feel a bit less strategic and a bit more RNG because a single loss simply ends the game without allowing for repositioning.

14. [balance] AoE and healing are both very very powerful. Not because they themselves are strong effects that will just win fights, but because of how they can snowball a specific fight, causing much more massive damage to be dealt to the opponent. If the first unit the enemy attempts to target it capable of healing through all damage dealt to it, the entire enemy team will then live and will deal considerably more damage to the enemy for a win than if they won based off having a slightly superior stat team. The same goes for AoE, but to a slightly lesser extent. If you can wipe out all of the enemies in a quick AoE, you win much harder than if you have a slightly higher stat fight with single target abilities. There is just too much healing on too many different units with very little windows of weakness. Nidalee and Noble bonus being two of the most ridiculous without items involved, but Darius, and Warwick have all caused some slightly advantaged fights to swing super heavy to one side for damage. This is specifically an issue in early/mid game, when damage is starting to matter, and suddenly a healing or AoE champion swings a fight super hard and ends up dealing 15 damage.

15. [balance] Pirate bonus giving 0 gold fairly often feels TERRIBLE. Even if I got less gold on average, I would prefer getting 1-2 gold every round instead of 0-4. If I equip the pirate bonus for three rounds (because I think I am in the lead for a little bit), and I get zero gold from it in all three rounds, I am not going to just be okay with it just because that is how RNG works.

16. [balance] Glacial is somewhat overpowered. If you complete the set, you win the game almost regardless of what anyone has, even if you don't have many items. It's just silly how strong this is. It could be fixed by adding a per-unit cooldown on the stun (preventing permastun) or drastically decreasing the proc chance--just something that allows a different comp to fight back against this.

17. [balance] The number of viable early game strategies that I can remember are limited to: Noble, Knights, and Wild (void is kinda early if you can get reksai from the first wheel, but usually not). Nobles hands down is the strongest by not even remotely close. That's fine, however Nobles also includes Garen, who is probably the strongest individual unit early game. Not only that, but he is also included in the Knights synergy. The strongest early game unit probably shouldn't have the two strongest early game synergies as well. This seems to be a common thing too. The strongest champion in each tier based on stats/ability seems to also share the best synergies, which just makes them clearly better than all other options. In auto-chess the strongest individual units where usually demons, who cannot synergize with each other, and can be even further countered by witchers. It would make sense to have Yasuo and Blitz be overtuned, since they can't really synergize with many people, but having Garen, Sejuani, and even Leona be extremely powerful individually when they also have some of the best synergies is way off.

18. [little legends] OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE THEM. It's worth noting that some of them have very loud sound effects when winning (specifically the masked ghost). I don't know if some people like this, but I sure don't. I like his sound effects. I just don't want him to do it automatically when I win. I'm okay with having control of an annoying sound effect or someone spamming it. Just not automatic every fight. Unless it is really cute and not repetitive (demacian silverwing has the best dance).

19. [little legends] The knockback from damage is super annoying if you are using the pirate synergy, since you have to wait for it for so long sometimes to grab your gold.

20. [little legends] If I walk off the platform by accident. I can't walk back onto it. There should either be a hotkey to jump back onto the platform, or just be able to walk onto it naturally.

21. [minor balance] 2 star champions seem a bit overtuned at the moment. Getting 2 and 3 star champions by luck of the draw early is extremely powerful. Often times a single 2-star unit will auto win every fight regardless of enemy synergies, especially if that unit's name is Garen or Darius.

22. [minor balance] It feels absolutely terrible to lose to the #1 player by a landslide and take 15 damage. It feels much worse to be placed against the exact same player in the very next round and take another 15 damage without any meaningful changes to your team between those two rounds. You shouldn't be able to play against the same player 2x in a row if there are still 8 players in the game.

23. [minor balance] Due to its proc condition and how the game works, redemption probably needs sped up a bit. It might need a lower heal if that is the case, but it often misses, doesn't heal before everyone else dies, and already needs one of your units to die for it to proc. It might be fine in its current state if it procced when they reached 1/2 HP, but the way it is you usually want it on your front line or early bruiser champion, which means that once they die, your back line dies half a second later all at the same time, making the item very inconsistent.

24. [bug] Gunblade seems to not be working correctly. It heals for auto attacks, and I believe it heals properly for most single target spells, but things like Aatrox ability don't seem to give any HP back even if it takes out 1/2 the HP bars of the entire enemy team. If it is "working" it is heavily undertuned for this game mode.

25. [bug] The shrink item sometimes causes an enemy champion to jump up and down a star level repeatedly, resetting its HP and making it invulnerable.

26. [bug] There have been several selection issue bugs, where a champion I just obtained becomes unable to be selected. I can move them around by swapping them with other units, but they don't highlight and can't be directly clicked (similar to if the unit belonged to the enemy). The bug only lasts one round, and fixes immediately after combat ends and all the units reset to their positions.

27. [???] Does Runaan's work on melees? What does it do on Graves? I tried it, but couldn't figure out if it did anything.

28. [???] Does BT work on the entire AoE of Graves AA? I couldn't tell 100% whether it was working or not.

29. [???] There will be super detailed match history right? I want to see items, synergies, build path?, reroll count. This gunna happen?

That's all I can think of for now. I know I missed some thoughts, but it's already a ton, so whatever.