The Fields of Glory (Shatter)

[Thekk]

I have to say that my first impression of Shatter was as bad as most people have reported in here. However, after having played more, I think some of the issues people have are overblown.

Yes, there are some RNG elements, but as the game progress, it becomes easier and easier to predict what will happen next and to plan accordingly. Given that the small crystals are spread evenly across the map, if you get behind early because everything spawns on the other side, you'll have an easier time near the end because everything will spawn close to you, so there is some kind of balance. You wont have the case where a S rank tomelith unexpectedly spawns behind enemy lines and you can't do anything about it.

There's also more fighting than people make it out to be. However, it happens mostly in 2 situations: right after a crystal gets destroyed or when most of the crystals are gone and teams try to catch up the lead, so it is right to say that crystals hinder actual fighting, but not to say no PvP happens in Shatter.

Now, even though I am saying that the RNG about crystals, especially of the small nature is overblown, I have to say that I feel like their impact on gameplay is hugely negative. The issue comes with their scattered positions and low HP. For many of them, there will be no contest and one company will get all the points. In the end, points even out, but while people are going for them they are in remote areas of the map where no action really happens. Since there are so many of them, that's a lot of time basically twiddling your thumbs.

Most of the more enjoyable matches I've had had one thing in common: small crystals were out of the portrait. They were either 72 man where all of them activated at the beginning and were quickly dispatched or 24 man of the big crystal variety. This had the effect of making the outer rim of the map irrelevant and forcing all three companies to stay in a smaller area, increasing the opportunities to fight. Also, in the 24 man version, big crystals take MUCH longer to destroy. This allows for strategies where you try to gain control of all outposts while trying to delay the destruction of the big crystal as long as possible to maximize your gain. It has proven quite effective in some of my matches (we came back several hundred points for the win), especially for the last crystal, but it would be very hard to transpose to 72 man with the current conditions.

To sum up, here would be my suggestions to improve the mode

• Remove all the small crystals on the map; however the downside of this would be that it would feel empty, but I think it is way too big (and confusing) to begin with
• Increase the health on big crystals by a lot on the 72 man version
• Increase the amount of points transferred from kills to encourage fighting around crystals (and make a disruption strategy more viable)
• Increase the number of outposts on the 72 man version as it can be hard to occupy one when a whole team is defending (each company could have 2 or 3). This would make it harder to ignore them and going all out for a crystal. It would also compensate for the points that originally came from small crystals. However, they should not be placed in a way that would make the outer rim too relevant again.

Another unrelated suggestion would be to let teams heal crystals, which would remove points earned by other companies. That way, you could wipe a team out, heal the crystal back up (though some kind of bonus might be needed to have some impact, especially for shield users) and "steal" the points.

I am aware that most of my suggestion would change drastically how the map is played and as such would require careful thinking before being implemented, but the consensus seems to be that Shatter could be so much more than it is right now with the right adjustments.