What type of Solo Competitive Content would you like to see?

I believe we need more opportunities to grind the game and use our shiny new champions! I’d like start a discussion about what kind of content you’d like to play.

I’ll start. I like the idea of being able to design your own short maps. The player would be able to choose between a random selection of local, global and linked nodes for their map and then pick champions from a random pool to allocate onto different nodes as defenders. You’d then go up against other players and attempt to compete/explore their maps whilst they attempt yours.

I think this would reward people with in-depth game knowledge of which defenders benefit the most from which nodes and also reward people who have the necessary skill to explore a map. It would also be non-trivial since luck is a factor. I also think it would be a new opportunity to give yourself something to do. Perhaps both competing players would have a day to play each other’s maps.

This probably belongs in the suggestions/requests forum, but I aim for it to primarily be a discussion and want as many people as possible to participate. If it must be moved then so be it.

Comments

Ace2319

That could be very cool! I personally am wanting something that’s quick. Takes about 5-10 minutes when I have a bit of free time but not enough to do a full quest.

Typhoon

A completely randomized maze, 100 sublevels, with no map visibility that resets monthly. Difficulty and prizes increase the deeper you go.

BitterSteel

I've had an idea for a solo competetive mode I suggested to Kabam for one of their summoner sanctum surveys, I've since had more time to fine tune designing one, (obviously all the exact numbers can change) I would probably say something like this:

What is the event?

You match up with the opponent and you have 8 fights to plan for your defence: 4 on one path, 4 on another. You each get the same, random pool of 64 nodes. Each fight has 4 slots, one hard node, two medium and one easy. This stops a player from placing 4 horrific nodes together.

What is the Node Pool?

The random Node Pool is made up of 16 easy nodes, 32 medium nodes and 16 hard nodes. So of those nodes, you'll select 8 easy, 16 medium and 8 hard. This enables a choice, you don't just get 8 random nodes and have to choose where those 8 nodes go, you can reject some in favour for others. I think that adds to the strategy. If there are too many nodes in this pool, it could easily be tuned to 48 or whatever and vice versa.

When I say easy, medium and hard you might not know exactly what I mean, so I'll give a few examples:
Easy - optimist, bane of damballah, bleed abilities are X% more effective, feat of indestructible
Medium - Aspect of death, backblast, bubbleshield, explosive personality
Hard - Encroaching stun, aspect of war, can't touch this, Emp Mod

Essentially, easy nodes are ones that don't have much impact on your gameplay except in rare cases, medium nodes can be a pain, but should be easy to counter/avoid, hard nodes are ones that really affect your gameplay or option you bring to the fight, and you'll need to focus on countering it.

Placing nodes and defence

So you have your pool of 64 nodes, and you go to each fight, and you can select which 4 nodes go on each fight. You select an easy node, 2 medium nodes and 1 hard node. The reason the paths are split in 2 is that if it were just one path, you'd throw all your hardest nodes on one fight, making it an absolute bloodbath, the two paths force you to split your eggs into two baskets as it were.

So, I've got my 2 paths sorted, I've placed an easy, 2 mediums and 1 hard on each fight. Now I place my 8 defenders (this content doesn't lock your champions out of other quest/events). Honestly, you could design this with defenders being chosen before hand, but I think that takes the strategy out of it a bit. You want to know which of your defenders work well with the nodes you've randomly pulled, and I think that adds to the RPG knowledge of the game. If you pull an enhanced power gain node, you benefit from knowing that Vision Aarkus works well with that node, rather than bringing Aarkus as a defender and then hoping you get something that benefits him.

Attack Phase

So you chose your nodes. You chose the defence to place on them, and you've placed them. Now attack phase starts. You choose 2 or 3 attackers to use, and decide which path you want to go. Each player could have 3 free revives per go or something.

Obviously some sort of scoring takes place, maybe health lost, hits taken, items used are all taken into account. The winner wins, and that's that. You get your rewards, and continue.

Overall

Depending how in-depth you want to go with planning, that could take between 10-30 mins, the UI should be easy enough so that you can view easy, medium or hard nodes separately so it's not overwhelming. Attack phase is 4 fights, so could take about 15-20 mins? Timers can be implemented for both, but I'm not sure if the fights themselves should be timed.

Overall, depending on seriousness, you're looking at something that you can pick up and complete in 25-50 mins. I think it would be great to tag an alliance mate to this mode and say let's have a quick one, throw some nodes on in 10 mins and duke it out. Or challenge someone you're having an argument with on the forum (what's that like?) to a battle of MCOC instead of wits, and really take your time setting out a well-made, meticulous defence.

Lastly, if you wanted a really quick match, one thing I thought of would be 2 options for a game mode when you match up, automatic defence and manual. You'd both have to agree which you were doing before starting. If you choose manual, you go through the process above that I outlined. And if you choose automatic, both of your nodes get picked for you randomly, but importantly, you have the same defence nodes. I don't think there's much fun in one person getting all the tough nodes, plus, it takes away the option for the loser to say "You just got better nodes". In the automatic mode you choose your 8 defenders though, that's not random. The auto version is just to reduce play time, for those who want a quick match.

Other ideas

I had vague ideas about attacker/defender bans, and maybe an extra node slot for beneficial nodes if it's too hard for attackers, with nodes like foresight, flare, juke, life transfer etc - which would force you to select places to put those nodes. Also, perhaps different difficulty modes based on tier, or just what the two players select, like an easy mode where you have no hard node slots, just two mediums and an easy, or a hard mode where you have 3 mediums, or 2 hards. Whatever you like. But these are all extra layers of complexity to discuss.

What do you think? Like I said, numbers can change this is mostly just the skeleton of the idea, and the real meat on the bones would be down to testing what works best and what doesn't.

But essentially, here's the TLDR: A choose your own nodes, and accompanying defenders, to populate a 1 on 1 battlefield to challenge friends/alliance mates. Nodes are from a random pool of easy, medium and hard, fights have 1 slot for easy and hard, 2 for medium. Once nodes has been selected, or randomly filled with the auto option, you choose defence, then progress to attack. Winner takes all.

The_Sentry06

I'm looking forward to the mode Kabam showcased in last year's summoner showdown.

And_Another_One

I've had an idea for a solo competetive mode I suggested to Kabam for one of their summoner sanctum surveys, I've since had more time to fine tune designing one, (obviously all the exact numbers can change) I would probably say something like this:

What is the event?

You match up with the opponent and you have 8 fights to plan for your defence: 4 on one path, 4 on another. You each get the same, random pool of 64 nodes. Each fight has 4 slots, one hard node, two medium and one easy. This stops a player from placing 4 horrific nodes together.

What is the Node Pool?

The random Node Pool is made up of 16 easy nodes, 32 medium nodes and 16 hard nodes. So of those nodes, you'll select 8 easy, 16 medium and 8 hard. This enables a choice, you don't just get 8 random nodes and have to choose where those 8 nodes go, you can reject some in favour for others. I think that adds to the strategy. If there are too many nodes in this pool, it could easily be tuned to 48 or whatever and vice versa.

When I say easy, medium and hard you might not know exactly what I mean, so I'll give a few examples:
Easy - optimist, bane of damballah, bleed abilities are X% more effective, feat of indestructible
Medium - Aspect of death, backblast, bubbleshield, explosive personality
Hard - Encroaching stun, aspect of war, can't touch this, Emp Mod

Essentially, easy nodes are ones that don't have much impact on your gameplay except in rare cases, medium nodes can be a pain, but should be easy to counter/avoid, hard nodes are ones that really affect your gameplay or option you bring to the fight, and you'll need to focus on countering it.

Placing nodes and defence

So you have your pool of 64 nodes, and you go to each fight, and you can select which 4 nodes go on each fight. You select an easy node, 2 medium nodes and 1 hard node. The reason the paths are split in 2 is that if it were just one path, you'd throw all your hardest nodes on one fight, making it an absolute bloodbath, the two paths force you to split your eggs into two baskets as it were.

So, I've got my 2 paths sorted, I've placed an easy, 2 mediums and 1 hard on each fight. Now I place my 8 defenders (this content doesn't lock your champions out of other quest/events). Honestly, you could design this with defenders being chosen before hand, but I think that takes the strategy out of it a bit. You want to know which of your defenders work well with the nodes you've randomly pulled, and I think that adds to the RPG knowledge of the game. If you pull an enhanced power gain node, you benefit from knowing that Vision Aarkus works well with that node, rather than bringing Aarkus as a defender and then hoping you get something that benefits him.

Attack Phase

So you chose your nodes. You chose the defence to place on them, and you've placed them. Now attack phase starts. You choose 2 or 3 attackers to use, and decide which path you want to go. Each player could have 3 free revives per go or something.

Obviously some sort of scoring takes place, maybe health lost, hits taken, items used are all taken into account. The winner wins, and that's that. You get your rewards, and continue.

Overall

Depending how in-depth you want to go with planning, that could take between 10-30 mins, the UI should be easy enough so that you can view easy, medium or hard nodes separately so it's not overwhelming. Attack phase is 4 fights, so could take about 15-20 mins? Timers can be implemented for both, but I'm not sure if the fights themselves should be timed.

Overall, depending on seriousness, you're looking at something that you can pick up and complete in 25-50 mins. I think it would be great to tag an alliance mate to this mode and say let's have a quick one, throw some nodes on in 10 mins and duke it out. Or challenge someone you're having an argument with on the forum (what's that like?) to a battle of MCOC instead of wits, and really take your time setting out a well-made, meticulous defence.

Lastly, if you wanted a really quick match, one thing I thought of would be 2 options for a game mode when you match up, automatic defence and manual. You'd both have to agree which you were doing before starting. If you choose manual, you go through the process above that I outlined. And if you choose automatic, both of your nodes get picked for you randomly, but importantly, you have the same defence nodes. I don't think there's much fun in one person getting all the tough nodes, plus, it takes away the option for the loser to say "You just got better nodes". In the automatic mode you choose your 8 defenders though, that's not random. The auto version is just to reduce play time, for those who want a quick match.

Other ideas

I had vague ideas about attacker/defender bans, and maybe an extra node slot for beneficial nodes if it's too hard for attackers, with nodes like foresight, flare, juke, life transfer etc - which would force you to select places to put those nodes. Also, perhaps different difficulty modes based on tier, or just what the two players select, like an easy mode where you have no hard node slots, just two mediums and an easy, or a hard mode where you have 3 mediums, or 2 hards. Whatever you like. But these are all extra layers of complexity to discuss.

What do you think? Like I said, numbers can change this is mostly just the skeleton of the idea, and the real meat on the bones would be down to testing what works best and what doesn't.

But essentially, here's the TLDR: A choose your own nodes, and accompanying defenders, to populate a 1 on 1 battlefield to challenge friends/alliance mates. Nodes are from a random pool of easy, medium and hard, fights have 1 slot for easy and hard, 2 for medium. Once nodes has been selected, or randomly filled with the auto option, you choose defence, then progress to attack. Winner takes all.

I love this idea! It seems as though you and I are along the same lines with the solo competitive content ideas. The randomised node pool of 64 should be the same for both players (i think you might have mentioned that) to avoid players feeling disenfranchised if they got a lacklustre pool of nodes.

I prefer your idea since you mentioned that players could use their own champions as defenders, rather than picking from a pool. I think this would incentivise more people to rank up defenders if the rewards were good enough.

The automatic/manual nodes is a good way to streamline the idea for casual players that only have 20 minutes to spare. The key to your idea is that the champions you ultimately elect to use aren’t locked out from other content (and you have full access to your roster, even if some champs are locked out due to being in other modes). I think people want to be able to use their shiny war champs somewhere other than just war.

This is easily scaled, too. For players who want a more rigorous experience, there could be different playlists offering a larger map with more nodes for each fight (and vise versa).

Thanks for your input and I hope you benefit from my feedback