The State of The Arena — Dev Update
Let’s talk about the arena experience till now and what we have learned and aim to change.
Greetings Knight! The year 2023 has begun and we have a lot to work on. Let’s begin with the first development update. Our first-ever season is live and it is full of action and adventure. I want to take the time and talk about it more and talk about what we have learned, and what changes we are aiming for to provide the best experience possible.
Creating a competitive environment in gaming is hard and is always subject to change in almost every game out there. From league of legends' controversial role-based matchmaking to Valorant’s smurf problems, nailing down PVP is a very hard thing to do. The most important aspect is to listen to the community, look at the data and adjust when needed.
Since we launched Season 1 we faced some issues around MMR, matchmaking, game balancing and to that, and we implemented many changes to tackle these issues.
But we are not done yet. I would like to talk more about the issues we have identified and what we are planning to do to improve the system.
Due to power differences between players, there are cases in that very strong players are matched against much weaker opponents. Such matches do not create a fun gameplay experience nor tell anything about each player's skill level. That’s why we will make sure that no MMR changes happen in such a scenario and trophy changes are reduced to a minimum.
To avoid such cases we are aiming to implement a 3-layer matchmaking system in which each layer consider the player's characteristic for deciding who to match with and not. These layers are the Account Level, Player MMR & Team power. We hope this reduces unfair matchmaking drastically.
Now let`s talk about ranks. Currently, we have 5 different Ranks in the game separating the players from each other. We know that the top of the top can be very competitive and fierce. To make sure only the most skillful and hardworking players climb within the top ranks, we will decrease trophy gains and increase trophy losses to create a more competitive environment. This change rewards players with Skill more and punishes losing more to let the top players give their best in the matches.
Ultimately this issue also revolves around the low player amount in the lobbies. As the play counts grow in the coming months, matchmaking as a whole will automatically improve immensely.
While doing all these changes, we know that it can be frustrating for players to adapt. Also, the season did not start very fairly due to some unexpected issues. Because of this, we are increasing the Season 1 duration until the End of January to allow everyone to adjust to the changes, and also more time to finish the battle pass and get those juicy NFTs! Also for the Season 1 Reward, we are aiming to make a rather broader distribution to keep everything fair and as a token of appreciation for everyone participating and helping us improve the system. We will announce the distribution model soon since you have some more time now to climb.
Now let`s briefly talk about what changes we plan for the next season. First of all, we will introduce a preseason period of around 3 weeks between each season. In that period we will test and experiment with the system and get feedback during that time and reduce drastic changes during the season to keep the competitive integrity. Our goal is to make each season feel different. I will touch on the coming changes in a different development update.
Thank you so much to all of our players for your continued support. We truly appreciate each and every one of you and are really grateful. Your passion and dedication to our game keep us going, and we couldn’t do it without you.
Cheers
About forest Knight
Forest Knight is a tactical mobile RPG where you assemble teams of heroes, equip them with uniquely designed and powerful NFTs to defeat the Skeleton Master, and climb the leaderboards against other knights!
Sometimes knights do know best, and we understand that. We want to make every one of you count. Come and join our game! See what Forest Knight offers in Early Access!
If you haven’t already, you can join our Telegram group, Telegram Announcement Channel, and Discord community. Follow us on social media, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
See you on the battlefield!
