Move Shadow Lords multiplayer daily incentives to default ranked KI

I haven’t seen anyone post about this much other than simple concerns about the mode’s viability before it launched, so I apologize if I missed something.
Let’s talk about the Shadow Lords online play mode.

Good things:

  • Something novel to play
  • Daily match and daily win incentives for SL items and gems are really enticing. This is a great idea.

Bad things:

  • This game mode adds no real depth. Most people you face are NOT using items (they are saving them for the campaign and are simply here to earn more).
  • Does your opponent have unlimited shadow meter for 30 seconds? That clock isn’t active while a move is hitting you, so if he wants he can spam shadow moves to get a 1000+ move combo over 5+ minutes between lifebars¹. So in addition to being a throwaway game (if you are going in raw to earn bonuses for your SL campaign team) this can also be a massive waste of time.
  • You have no idea if the person you’re fighting is going to be using items. Why waste a killer guardian use on a guy playing straight up KI?
  • There is no one searching this mode. Often takes several minutes to find a match.

Shadow Lords multiplayer is at best a total waste of time. At worst it is a meaningless exercise in frustration. This mode completely misses the mark for me, and I find it unlikely that I’m alone in thinking that. Default ranked KI has plenty of people searching, but could always use more. As it stands, you CANNOT earn your Shadow Lords daily match and daily win items by playing default ranked. Shadow Lords MP senselessly divides the online playing population and adds almost nothing of value to the game in the process.

How about we abolish this game mode, and move the SL Multiplayer incentives over to Ranked or Lobby play?

Or am I totally off base here? Anyone legitimately find value in this game mode?

¹I’m sure 5+ minutes is an exaggeration. Not exactly sure much time you can waste of your opponents life if you’re trying to maximize frustration, but it’s more than 30 seconds.

Or you can fix the SL multiplayer mode. All the devs would need to do is add duplicates of your single player items in multiplayer so you don’t waste them,

Also no the free shadow moves for X seconds don’t apply to I game clock I think. The in game clock isn’t even a 1to1 for real seconds anyway and has its own timer. Maybe they can visualize that timer somewhere in the UI maybe?

There are certainly ways to make SL MP a bit more fair and fun, but this game is 3 years old. We still have enough of a passionate community to make ranked games fairly diverse and easy to find, but I really think dividing online players for an unbalanced and goofy game mode is doing no one any real good. I feel like I’m the only one searching for games and I’m only doing it to earn items. Would be more than happy to earn those same items in Ranked or Lobbies where I can not only enjoy playing, but my presence actually benefits the online community.

And there is a small UI showing you how long the unlimited shadow bonus lasts, but I don’t believe the clock is active during the freeze frames of shadow moves. So if you spam a move like Shadow Cold Shoulder between lifebars, you can actually eat up a lot more than 30 seconds.

SL MP and fair, pick one.

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[quote=“FengShuiEnergy, post:4, topic:15184”]
SL MP and fair, pick one.
[/quote]This. Making SLM the default would turn so many people away from the game. Instead, a good idea would be to simply give you regular rewards/items for SL by simply playing the other MP modes (exhibition, ranked, and lobby) over time.

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Giving SL items in other mode would not be a good idea. If players want the SL rewards and items, then play SL.

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I wish It had local and that using items in multiplayer didn’t actually use your items.

[Edit] for clarity
If they move rewards to other multiplayer modes, SL-multiplayer mode will die. end of story. The only reason the rewards are there in the first place are for this mode, (hence why they weren’t in pre-release, or needed in pre-release).
You don’t get what makes the SL-multiplayer fun, it’s not about who has the best items, it’s about how much you are willing to spend to win the fight! I originally thought the mode was terrible until I realized this.
When I win with common Items I feel great! but when some one beats me and they accept a rematch, I break out the epic gear.
My only complaint is that there are no actual rewards for wins, or a partial leader board for this mode. But they had to do it that way or else people would cry the game is pay to win now.

To be fair, the mode is pretty dead already. It takes a while to find a game and it’s simply not very fun. The option of using items should remain for lobbies–its a cool addition. And the incentives are a great idea too–they just need to be lined up with a mode where your participation actually supports the game and the community, like ranked or lobbies.

I’d prefer that they add more daily rewards to the Single Player experience. Things like “Complete X number of Missions” or “Kill Y number of Mimics”, or even something like “Defeat Gargos”. That’d be a really cool way to keep people coming back.

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Takes 40 seconds to find a match is not “dead”, especially when I’m queuing for matches at 1am last night.
[Redacted][Edit] maybe 1am is a hot time for SL-multiplayer? I can’t find a match right now XD
[Edit] I found out the problem, my ques are like 30 seconds right now

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I’d play more of this mode but whenever I look for a match it takes damn near up to ten minutes but if I were to jump into exhibition or ranked immediately after I’d find a match with in a minute.

Maybe wait times are significantly longer when you filter for killer or gold players?

all my matches have been silvers who had no items yet, and this one gold gargos guy who spends elixir of greater focus at the start of the match and does nothing but shadow portal punch me until the chip damage kills my first bar. he didn’t rematch me but I got him in que 2 more times and he did the same thing.
after I almost beat him he just started quitting out every time I got matched with him.
How the hell is he crafting so many elixir of focus!??! those cost spirit cores, wasting spirit cores! how can he waste so many spirit cores on this non-sense?

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It is actually quite easy to craft the elixirs. Each time you beat Gargos, you get enough resources to make 3 to 5 elixirs. Also if he had early acess, then he could have made a bunch. I have over 150 of them in my inventory now. I could also make another 50 to 60 if i wanted to.

Use a stone skin elixir to counter the other one. It will not block all of it, but it will do half. A ram guardian would also work. You could break every one he tries to do.

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Most of these items are just not fun when facing people. Certainly not in the current iteration of this mode.

As a player who is a fan of the competitive KI scene, and who just wants to get better at the game fundamentally, I am pleasantly surprised by how fun Shadow Lords can be–really was not expecting to enjoy fighting AI. But I’m confident a mode involving using unbalanced items against humans that the game wasn’t built from he ground up to support will never be very fun for me. And since the mode is brand new and it’s already difficult to find a match if you filter your opponent at all (or if you do find a match you will face the same guy in many consecutive games), i feel fairly strongly that this mode is only hurting KI.

I don’t presume that any of our opinions in this forum will get this crazy mode removed, but I do think we have a chance of getting the SL daily game and daily win incentives to include any sort of online match since that makes a lot of sense for KI from a community building standpoint

They all have counters, it just sucks when I counter one guys lame strategy he starts quitting out every time I’m paired with him, not sure what the guys problem was, guess he just wanted to be a troll.

I get matched with the same person over and over in regualre lobys too, its because the match making algorithm pushes the person with he best connection first. Ranked mode tries to avoid this and still fails some times.

I just qued for some matches again and it is still only a 30-40 second wait for a match. perhaps in a few weeks that will change but until then I would make sure you have cross-play set to ON, that could be the reason you are having troubles finding matches.

As a side note the only 2 people I matched trying to troll and rage quit if it failed were gold players. The silver players were much more willing to rematch, and were more fun to play with. but this is from an incredibly small sample of like a dozen matches so I can’t call it a significantly accurate observation.