Three suggestions to improve the game
I heard that one of the events this month would be a level cap of 9, the "first truly competitive event". So I came back, made my up to Master league, and waited for the event to roll around. I've got to say, that was the most fun I've had in Rivals. THAT is the way the game ought to be. So, with the experience I've had so far, here are the three key changes that Rivals needs to go from above average to top tier.
Change #1:
As I've talked about so many times before, get rid of unit levels. Introduce cosmetics, commanders you have to buy, etc. Just get rid of unit levels. Not gonna argue for it in detail, just look at my past posts. There's a staggering amount of reasons to change it.
Change #2:
The deck size needs to be increased from 6 units to 7. To start with why this needs to happen, let's go through the process of a classic C&C match. First of all, you've got a map. This map has features, terrain, tech buildings, etc that influence your strategy. One map might favor rushing, another might favor turtling. Rivals has this same effect on your strategy with the maps in the pool. Some are better for turtling and running two harvesters. Others have forward tib spots and make it hard to defend just one harvester. Others still are more balanced between the two.
Second, you now need to decide what units you're going to build. Throughout a desktop C&C match you'd have full access to all the units in your faction's arsenal. What you use fluctuates throughout the entire match, every unit in the game is balanced against each other. You build your forces from engagement to engagement and build better units as you grow your economy.
It should be obvious why a limited unit deck per match can hamper the strategy and competitive factors of the C&C formula. You don't know what map you're going into and you don't have full access to all the units. Getting the wrong map or going up against the one deck that perfectly counters yours can ruin a match. Now, a quick sidenote. Some decks are just bad. Running Scarabs and all tech units? Your deck is bad and you should feel bad. But there are still decent decks with a specialized hard counter out there. In other words, a limited unit selection maximizes the effects of bad luck.
Regardless of gameplay reasons, there are technical reasons to limit the number of units in Rivals. Despite how powerful modern phones are, they still haven't scaled well with increased unit graphics, animations, etc. Having every single unit available to you in Rivals would clutter the UI and significantly increase the hardware requirements. It's just not feasible.
So, with gameplay and technical reasons in mind, I think that the deck size needs to be increased from 6 to 7. This would allow for more well rounded builds. The more options players have, the more competitive and fun fights will be. This will also make niche units, like the Scarab, more viable. Scarabs aren't bad just because of how they work. They're bad because you're sacrificing a slot that could go to another unit. I've played around with Scarabs in Masters, I think they are actually close to being a solid unit. I just can't afford to give up a unit slot to use them.
Change #3:
The game controls could be improved in two areas, accuracy and functionality. Accuracy is obviously a technical problem. My experience as a developer doesn't include mobile games, so I've got no idea what improvements, if any, could be made. But I do know that when I'm microing units there's plenty of times where either a unit just doesn't get selected or the wrong one gets selected.
It would be nice to also get some more advanced controls. Here's a few that I've thought of:
- Double-tap deployable unit to manually deploy (i.e. have an MG squad setup after being built without having to move them off and back onto the tile)
- Hold and rotate clockwise/counter-clockwise to set unit facing (very important for units like Nod artillery)
- Drag to set manual unit path
- Double-tap enemy unit to pursue at all costs
I'm sure there are others, but those are the key ones I can think of. Having these would be a great QoL change.
Again, Rivals has amazing potential. Not just as a mobile C&C game, but as an RTS on its own. With these changes I'd honestly put it in my top 10 RTS games of all time; it'd come very close to top 5. I'll stick around for the monthly events, but it'd be nice to be able to enjoy playing regular matches as well. Until unit levels are gone that's just not going to be a thing for me.
