Hello everyone, I'll try and be brief, I am developing an autobattler, with more focus on armies rather than individual units. I don't wanna go for the same gameplay mechanics as all of the other games (I cannot compete with them and there are enough of them). So I was thinking of a different system, but I am not sure if that would break the core concepts of the AutoBattlers and what made them fun.
Games are not with 8-10 different players but rather you just play X games until you either lose X games or win X games till the end. In which whatever happens first corresponds to the amount of MMR you will get. After each match, you get to draft more units. It's still progressive, the matches are played at your own pace, can pick it up anytime.
I like it, but its straying too far from the classical autobattler and it doesn't include rolling, and it lacks counterplay/ interactivity. It solves some issues I have but presents others.
I am trying to make an autobattler which these core ideas in mind:
> Fun, familiar but also new and fresh
> Fast-ish (mobile friendly, casual friendly)
> Interactive (as much as an autobattler can be)
> Strategic and skill-oriented, but still having variance in-game to game basis (some kind of rolling or random units that you pick out of)
> Social, this point is contradictory to the previous idea I imposed, as the idea of not being in a match with 8 people but rather just going at it whenever you queue up is killing the excitement of dominating other players
> Comebackable, you arent utterly defeated and get some help. This works for lose streaks in other games, but I am not sure how to implement it here, battlegrounds has huge swings in power if you hit the right minion but thats too much RNG
I am slowly developing gameplay for the game, the actual game, but I cannot figure out the matchmaking and the general idea behind the match. How it will play out, in what way will the players get their units, how they matchup against eachother, lose, win… Any input on what makes autobattlers fun, how to go about this problem, how to hit my bullet points and so on. Any opinion/ idea/ critique is appreciated. I am still on pen and paper stage and am considering every option I can think of.
Would an AutoBattler with matches like Hearthstone's Arena or MTG Draft still keep its appeal?
I like the core of your pitch here. Not having to play all 10 rounds sequentially is a big win in terms of respecting the player's time. I can fit in one round while waiting at the bus stop, where I probably can't fit in 10 rounds.
Cross-round comeback mechanics are liable to feel grossly unfair if you aren't playing against the same players in successive rounds. If I queue in and matchmaking puts me up against someone who has lost their last 5 rounds, and I get steamrolled by a comeback mechanic through no fault of my own… That's not fun.
You might be better off wiping the board and making players buy from scratch each round? That way the momentum from round to round is easier to calculate (and hence matchmake), as it is defined solely by income instead of units/upgrades.
And if you find that you aren't tied specifically to the 10 round cadence anymore, it opens up the possibility of a few hero units that can be permanently upgraded… Or even of structuring this more like a roguelike - rather than playing a fixed 10 rounds, you play rounds until your funds run dry and your party is wiped.
@swiftcoder Those are some really interesting points and ideas. I'll write them down and sit on them.
