Thoughts on Supervive after 7 hours

Hello everyone.

I've been playing Supervive over the past couple weeks, and have been having a lot of fun in the game so far. I wanted to share some thoughts I had on the game as a new player.

My Perspective ----------

Before saying anything about the game itself, I want to share my experience with games like Supervive, as my experience with MOBAs makes my experience different from most new players.

I played League of Legends for 4 years (between seasons 3 and 6), and peaked at Silver 2 in that game, although ranked was not my focus. A couple years ago, I started played Omega Strikers, and peaked at diamond in that game. I don't have much experience in the battle royale genre, with the only game I played within the genre being the playtest for Byte Breakers that ran earlier this year, which isn't much.

This experience in the MOBA genre means that it was much easier to pick up compared to most other players, and it shows in my statistics. I've mainly played duos, and in duos I have never placed below top 10, and usually place top 5, placing 4th in my only ranked game. Take that with a grain of salt since I'm probably playing a bunch of bad players that don't have the MOBA experience I have, and also I was heavily carried my first game.

Win Stories ------

So far, I have 3 wins in Supervive so far, all in duos. I've been mostly playing Celeste and Myth, and so my first two victories were on those two characters.

My Celeste win really started in the mid game where my allied Elluna and I ended up third partying a teamfight (super common in duos). We cleaned up that teamfight, and we basically snowballed that level lead to a win. This was my first Supervive win, and I've played a lot of games where hitting even diamond didn't feel as good as winning a first match of Supervive.

My Myth win had a very different story. My allied Felix and I end up getting caught in a teamfight, and I barely manage to escape the teamfight on low health. However, that teamfight continued without me, and shortly after I'm already top 2, for some reason. I escaped to the Mage Bog with Scuba Gear, and manage to sneak around to find a respawn beacon, which was followed by the last remaining team (Jin + Felix) ambushing me and my teammate. I somehow kill the Jin before he gets into melee range, and then help my Felix win the mirror, to win the game. The other final team seemed too weak to actually have won that big teamfight that got me low, so what I think happened is all the other teams ended up killing each other, and that other team ended up being unable to

My final win came when I decided to play Felix on a whim, and honestly there was no story, only destruction. My allied Shrike and I end up getting a bunch of early fights back-to-back-to-back after hitting level 4 from monsters, and we ended up snowballing those early fights into a very decisive victory, even if my teammate died a couple of times and I had to revive her.

Two Types of Bad Players ----------

After these games, I've come to the conclusion that there are two types of "bad" players: those with decent mechanics and no strategy, and those with decent strategy and no mechanics. For context, the term "strategy" I'm using to refer to using the map and the resources it provides to build your power for the mid-late game, including having an understanding of what different things do. I think how a lot of low-level games end up playing out is that you have people with decent strategy using their map to look for fights, they fight a fight against the mechanically decent players, and then either the strategic players lose because they get skill diffed or they win because they're better prepared. Meanwhile, any mechanically sound players that don't get attacked by the strategically sound players end up playing kind of passively as they don't know what to do, and while they might end up placing well they won't win against a player that's outscaled them.

I bring this up not because I want to call myself a decent player, but because I feel like this is the perfect explanation for why I have 3 wins in so little time. My Myth win came from facing strategically sound players that weren't good mechanically (hence why my teammate and I could outplay them and win), while my Felix win came from fighting a lot of strategically sound players early on that were attracted to our teamfights early on that let us outscale the mechanically sound players we fought later on.

TheIncomprehensible's Duo Queue Etiquette -----------

My successes and my road to becoming a good player I credit to what I call my duo queue etiquette, which is basically a set of rules I follow in order to optimize my success in games. For you other new players, this is a good starting point to learning the game. For players playing squads, this might be useful for you too, whether you're new or a solo player.

1. Follow your teammate. Your team is stronger when you work together no matter how bad your teammate is. Furthermore, if your teammate isn't following you, stall to make sure they do.

2. Don't commit to a fight when your teammate can't follow up. Other teams are stronger than you when they work together, and initiating a fight when your team can't follow up will usually lead to a massive loss of health, if not death.

3. If your teammate breaks rule 2, don't commit to following up. If you do, and your teammate dies, then you probably just cost your team the game. If you don't commit, then you still have options based on whether your teammate is doing well or not.

4. If your teammate is dying/dead in a very losing teamfight, then disengaging and resurrecting your ally later on is usually a better idea than fighting and failing to live another day.

General Gameplay Thoughts ---------

There's a lot to like about the gameplay overall, but I will start that you can see that this game was clearly made by a bunch of Riot people. You see Riot's philosophies on counterplay in full display all throughout the game since everything is a skillshot basically, while there's also a lot of really good game feel for even basic actions like performing a basic attack.

The characters also have some great diversity in both art and gameplay. One of the things that ends up being boring about other MOBAs I've played is that their basic attack(s) don't really change much between characters: in League of Legends, every auto-attack ends up functioning almost identically to other characters with the exception of their range, and in Omega Strikers every character has the same Strike (not counting range differences due to model sizes) except half of Kazan's kit (for reference, he's a stance character, and one of his stances changes his Strike hitbox shape). In Supervive, every character has a different LMB, so if one character doesn't have a basic attack you like (for me, that's Shrike) you can find someone else that had one you do like (for me, that's Myth). Furthermore, you see all sorts of design inspiration for the characters, with some obvious Riot Games inspirations (Shrike looks like Jett from Valorant with white hair while Bishop looks like a fusion of Vi and Akali from League of Legends) with some less obvious inspirations (Shiv looks like a female dark elf version of Raymer from Rushdown Revolt while Celeste is an obvious reinterpretation of Estelle from Omega Strikers), all of which look cool and unique.

I also like how neutral monsters work. I was a jungle main in League of Legends because it let me access the strategic elements of the game from the start of the game, but killing jungle camps isn't particularly engaging on its own because all they do is run up to you and attack from their auto attack ranges. This mean that clearing the jungle was mainly about optimizing your damage and resources to clear with the expectation you would take some damage, at least in the early game. In Supervive, they have a lot more gameplay to them, with the ability to potentially dodge your attacks and the offer to let you dodge theirs, making killing monsters both inherently fun and a legitimate test of skill.

The experience system I think is genius. The fact that you can gain experience off of monsters up to that monsters' level means that you can gain levels off of monsters to catch back up, but you can't kill monsters to get ahead. This pushes players to look for fights to get ahead, which is good because fighting players is the most fun part of the game once you hit level 3. Furthermore, one of the biggest issues with most other MOBAs is that the ability to snowball ends up creating a lot of rough experiences for a lot of players, and while this doesn't eliminate it from Supervive it does temper it a bit and allow players to keep up with their opponents.

The item system I feel needs work. Characters that want to build two Helmet items have half as many options as those that want to build two Dagger items (which in turn has half as many options as 1 of each but that's not fixable without allowing players to build two of the same item), and I think we should get one more so tanks have the same depth in itemization as full damage classes (most likely a Quickhelmet that gives health + movement speed, as the Helmet equivalent of Quickblade). Furthermore, the Mana items don't feel useful at all because it's so hard to run out of mana. I can count on one finger the number of times I've run out of mana, and the one time I did run out of mana was when I was trying out Bishop in practice mode and ran out of mana while trying to kill neutral monsters.

Characters ---------

I've been playing mostly Myth and Celeste in my time playing the game, and I have some feedback on both of them.

Of all things, I really like how Myth's LMB works. There's a lot of tactile feedback from using it that a lot of other LMBs don't have, as well as a timing challenge that makes it inherently fun to use. I also really like the interaction between her shift and her RMB. Phase walking in general seems like a really powerful status effect that's unique but could easily be an unbalanceable nightmare, so I find it really cool that her opponents can use it themselves to follow Myth through the wall. However, Myth's RMB offers some cool counterplay to the counterplay in allowing her to stick opponents to the wall they try phasing through to chase after her.

I do think there should be some changes to how her shift works overall. I think that stairs should count as terrain so you can still walk up them normally, which in most cases is just a QoL improvement that makes her easier to learn. Meanwhile, I think that the indicator should be a little bit more obvious that other players can use it to phase through walls to chase after Myth, as it seems that a lot of players don't realize you can do this.

Celeste I have some harsher feedback on. She was the first character I seriously picked up (I recognized the Estelle inspiration almost instantly), and she's incredibly fun to play. However, I have a couple of complaints about her.

The first is that her shift causes you to lose too much control if you use it off a ledge. I've had multiple instances where I used Skate to reposition during a fight, only to use it off a ledge and get launched so far that I can no longer help my teammate, even if I end it and try drifting towards my teammate after it's over. I feel like players should regain control of their character sooner after using this move.

My other piece of feedback is that her ultimate has too much counterplay. Every time I see another Celeste use it, I easily just dash out on reaction to the ultimate, and then I'm waiting for her to end the ultimate and so I can interact with her again. On the other hand, half the times I use it my opponents just sit there and let me clear them off my stage, not realizing the threat I have while it's up. I feel like Celeste should be allowed to have partial successes with her ultimate so the counterplay is still there so it's more balanceable across multiple skill levels.

I think Celeste should be able to recast it early for at least damage after a brief delay (somewhere between .5-1 second(s)) and either:

1. Have the damage + stun zone grow over time from the start of the move (think Vyce Supernova)

2. Reduce the starting damage, and have it ramp up over time, with no stun until the current 2.75 seconds are up (think Nunu Absolute Zero)

I think this change would make Celeste easier to balance across all skill ranks, and make her a bit more rewarding to take big risks with her kit if she decides to engage with a shift R combo, offering skill expression for her players.

Most Wanted and New Players ---------

I've noticed two things about Most Wanted at lower levels that I think could be addressed, as I've had the opportunity to spectate some (relatively) low-level games where Most Wanted was a part of the endgame after I died, with the players I spectated. I'll explain the situation first before I offer any proposals:

1. In the ranked game I played, the team that killed me was a Joule/Celeste team where the Celeste had been knocked and the Joule got most wanted. However, the other team didn't even try to approach Joule to knock her out before Most Wanted finished. She waited the full 2 minutes for it to finish because the risk of a 1v2 was not worth it when she was guaranteed a 2v2 if she waited, yet at the same time waiting so long for a timer when there's nothing to do probably shouldn't be necessary.

2. In another game I played, I spectated a Shrike player whose teammate got knocked. She had most wanted, but at the time she also didn't realize she had it, so she kept trying to revive her dead ally. I was really sad for her because she died trying to revive her dead ally with seconds left on Most Wanted, but then I realized this is also an opportunity to add depth to Most Wanted.

As a result of these observations, I propose the following changes to Most Wanted:

1. If you stand still and are not in combat, then Most Wanted starts ticking down faster after a brief delay (for example, counting down at double speed after 10 seconds). This should increase the pace of the match if players don't engage upon you once you have Most Wanted without affecting it in other parts of the game.

2. If you have Most Wanted and attempt to revive an ally through either their wisp/deathbox and/or a revival beacon, then those attempts will count down Most Wanted based on the amount of time spent on the revival attempt. This encourages players to take the risks associated with revival by deathbox and/or the strategic decision making associated with revival by beacon while they have Most Wanted attached to them in ways that I think they currently don't allow.

Hunter Roles ------------

Organizing hunters into categories is a good idea to help players find characters in the role their team needs, but I think the current classifications need some changes.

First, I think the fighter classification should be split into at least two categories. It's by far the largest category (mathematically it's almost half the roster), but it also has by far the largest differences between hunters. Most notably, Brall and Ghost are right next to each other on the character select screen, and are in the same category, but they play very differently. I would propose splitting the fighter category two and differentiate hunters into two categories based on their range profile: Ghost, Myth, and Shrike in one, Brall, Jin, and Joule in the other (Joule has ranged options but her damage patterns feature her using her shift to get into short ranges), and then I don't know about Shiv because I never see her played.

The other change I would make involves the frontliner class. Felix and Oath play very differently from each other, and both have gameplay that more closely resembles that of the characters in the classifications next to them. Oath has a heal and a shield that make him very functional as a protector, while Felix on paper has some of the best teamfight initiation in the game with a dashing R, two charges on his shift, and a Q that sets up the rest of your team's damage.

I'm also of the opinion that the role of "frontliner" should be a position that can be filled by most short- to mid-range hunters, assuming the frontliner is the one that can soak up damage for the rest of the team. The only qualifications for an effective frontliner would be that the hunter builds full tank and either has a range profile that requires building some durability and/or has enough utility that they're satisfying to play when they don't explicitly deal damage, especially at short ranges. In addition to Felix and Oath, I would expect Brall, Bishop, Kingpin, and Hudson to function as frontliners, possibly Jin and Celeste too if the incentives are there thanks to Jin's range profile and Celeste's wall.

Match History ------------