Reflecting on Relics: Limitless Potential and Limited Execution
As you may have surmised by the title, I am going to be yapping about relics in this post. Why relics? Well, because I find them to be a very unique presence in the game and their development has also been quite interesting to me. I'd like to discuss their place in the game, what I believe to be their flaws, how they have changed over the years and what I would like to see when it comes to relics.
As always, this is a discussion so feel free to share your thoughts. I'd love to know how others view relics. And if you work for Kabam (especially if you are somehow involved with or know about relic development) I would love to hear your input as well.
I'll break up the post into smaller sections to make it more digestible so without further ado, let's just get into it.
The Relic Timeline
To give important context about relics I think we should consider how they came into the game. I don't have exact dates but I'll outline the general timeline. Even before their release, the idea of relics existed. Many players wanted a way for characters to be customized and the idea of attaching some sort item to characters to augment them was quite popular. Eventually we did get our first form of relics the Battlecasts.
Upon their release, Battlecasts were met with mixed reviews. Some people were big fans, others didn't like their addition but I think a majority of people were just somewhat indifferent to the release of relics. I think there were a few reasons for this but the most prominent one was that relics needed time to find their place in the contest.
More so than other additions, relics came with a large initial dump of information. Relics were an entirely new chase item, they came with their own crystals, their own rank up resources, their own iso and most importantly their own abilities. While nowadays, we understand most of the relics quite well, upon their release it wasn't so clear. It took time for people to grow familiar with collecting and ranking relics. And it took even more time for people to learn which relics were good with which champs. However, once people did discover the more potent applications of relics, their popularity rose. Eventually we got more additional battlecasts added to the game and those were met with excitement as well.
Everything I described above I refer to as the old age of relics. A period of time associated with our introduction and exploration of the relic system. Now, if you have been active in the game for some time you might already know what followed this old age of relics. A drought.
Eventually we stopped seeing relics being introduced. Relic resources were still present in the game but no new relics were added. The relics we did have were becoming "solved" as in we knew which champions they worked best for and most often simply let those champs hold those relics. During this period relics grew to feel stale. People didn't care as much about them and most people only used relics for the striker feature. The hype for customizing characters with relics definitely died down as we saw no new additions. Relics were still being used, but it was clear the feature was rusting away and needed some sort of update.
So why didn't we get new relics? Well, I don't know if Kabam even made an official statement, buy my and I believe the prevailing opinion, is that relics were simply too much work to implement. Making relics that were useful for a wide variety of champs and also balanced is a tricky task and I think it may have been more than Kabam could handle. In addition, I think they weren't seeing a big enough return on relics. This is pure speculation as I don't have the numbers but I can fairly confidently say that relics never sold as well other rewards like champion crystals or traditional rank up resources. The combination of these two reasons is why I believe we stopped seeing new relics being added. They just weren't worth the effort.
This drought lasted quite a while, it felt like years though it might have just been a year or a year and a half, I don't recall the exact dates. Eventually we did see an update that kicked off the modern age of relics. This I believe we are all familiar with.
The modern age of relics came with a completely new form of relics, the Statcast. Unlike battlecasts which augmented champion abilities, Statcasts only provided stat buffs and in addition were available up to a seven star rarity. I think Statcasts were a much simpler way of implementing relics for Kabam and they weren't a miss with the playerbase either. Though, I wouldn't call them a hit either. Statcasts were just... inoffensive. They were a nice addition, that made champions marginally better but they were always considered a downgrade to the battlecasts we had before.
I think the biggest sin of Statcasts was that they were boring. You really didn't need to put much thought into them and could throw any relic onto any champ and see similar results in most cases. I think with relics the striker feature has always been one of the best parts about it, but that became even more so with Statcasts. The best part about any statcast was the striker it gave you.
Having the striker be the best part of a relic I think is an inherently undesirable outcome. Because if you're just using a relic for the striker then there is no customization, no need for ranking relics, or collecting relics of different rarities. Having strikers be the best part of relics homogenizes all relics and I feel ultimately foes against the core of relics which is character customization.
The Current State of Relics
So now knowing all of that context, are relics a "success" in modern MCOC? Yes. No. Kind of. Relics do play a fairly big role in the game but I think as a whole, most players don't care too much about them. Some Battlecast relics are still very prominent and I think the overarching sentiment is that the Battlecasts are the best form of relics. However, we have not seen any new Battlecast additions nor do I think we will see any in the future. Statcasts are the focus for relics moving forward and I think in that way relics fail.
As I said before, Statcasts are simply too boring to earn mass-appeal. They're a very safe option and you won't see people complaining about them, but they're also just incredibly uninteresting. Most players will just throw on their highest Statcast onto their highest champs and then forget about it. There are a few exceptions, I think we've seen overtime that Block Proficieny and Crit boosting statcasts are among the most popular, but even then, they're not anywhere near as interesting as Battlecasts.
This is where my title comes in. I think relics have limitless potential in the game. They offer a new direction for progression, they provided improved depth to the game, they make it more customizable and can also be used to help buff older champs. The possibilities with relics are endless, these are the possibilities exemplified by the Battlecasts. And then there's reality. There's Statcasts. A very one dimensional and simplified version of the relics which provides marginal buffs and little more. This is the limited execution I am referring to .
Other Issues With Relics
I think aside from the core problems described above there are also a handful of other issues with relics that I won't delve into as deeply but will list here shortly.
Relics are incredibly cluttered and feel messy. Especially Statcasts with the multiple pools and with every champ having multiple relics with different stat buffs.
Relics being included in prestige feels like an unnecessary addition especially considering how much more difficult it is to obtain seven star relics rank up resources. I think having 30 champs and 30 relics for prestige is an absurd ask.
In addition to this, for Statcasts, having multiple pools of champs is kind of annoying. I and I think many others don't care enough to look into which pools have which champs to try and target them.
This is more personal, but I also dislike the UI for relics. I wish the abilities were listed more like champion abilities on their own page with a bigger popup. The current, rank up and level up page for relics I'm just not a fan of.
Similarly I think the process of adding or swapping relics between champs could be much more streamlined.
There might be other things I'm not thinking of at the moment. These are just some of the things that came to me first.
Improvements to Relics
In the spirit of keeping this criticism constructive, I would like to share my opinions on how relics could be improved.
I think the biggest thing is returning relics to a customization feature. We need more Battlecasts and less Statcasts. Battlecasts are inherently more interesting and engaging for players and if I were in charge of improving relics the first change I would make is to halt Statcast production and restart Battlecast production.
However, I think Statcasts could also have a good place in the game if we saw one change...
Statcast relics should activate synergies.
I know this sounds like a bold change but hear me out. By allowing Statcasts to activate synergies it would solve multiple issues. Statcasts would become a more customizable feature, synergies would once again find a place in the contest, certain underrate champs would get nice buffs and relics would play a more active role in MCOC.
Now if this were added I would want it to be with Statcasts only. No new relics. No synergies on battlecasts. Battlecasts already augment abilities so I think they wouldn't need the synergy addition. Also the synergies should not be activated on defense. Defenders don't need to be made more complicated.
Now I know the biggest argument against this would be that, "Oh that would be broken" but would it really? Synergies are already an intrinsically balanced part of the game. If a synergy exists it's because Kabam has decided that it fits into the game. Additionally, I think with synergies there are diminishing returns. A champion like Nico who is already incredible powerful will no doubt get a decent buff from a synergy, but it won't be as impactful as a lesser used champ getting a buff from a synergy. This is because the less you can do in the game, the more impactful any additions to your kit become. Whereas if you can already do everything, doing one thing slightly better isn't as big of a deal.
I think by making Statcasts activate synergies new life could be breathed onto both relics and synergies. It would be a healthy addition to the game that allows us to make characters more customized and make gameplay more engaging.
I could go on and on but I think I've hit the character limit already so I'll stop here. Once more, I encourage anyone reading this to speak out and let me know how you feel about relics in the game.
