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The Battlerite Effect: How can Divine Knockout bounce back.
By Punto
The Battlerite effect is a term that I just made up to classify videogames that follow this criteria:

- Polished, solid, fast paced and extremely fun multiplayer games.
- Usually arena 3v3 focused, with ultimates, and subtle ways to customize your characters abilities from the start.
- Bright, charming character design.
- Ultimately, dead or dying, with no clear cause of it.

Games that suffer from Battlerite effect, Battlerite syndrome, are games that you most likely sinked 6-10 hours non stop after you grasped the mechanics, and after stopping, they leave you with some questions like:

"how did I miss this masterpiece?"
"why is no one else talking about it?"
"why is this particular character SO FUN AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH?!"

In here, I'll debate about the game mechanics that trigger or lead to Battlerite Syndrome or Effect (abreviated like BS or BE), a little bit about why some multiplayer games have over 60k very stable players and "make it", and how can Divine Knockout hopefully bounce back before.
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Created by
Punto
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Category: Achievements, Characters, Classes, Game Modes, Gameplay Basics, Loot, Maps or Levels, Multiplayer, Secrets, Story or Lore
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
5 Mar, 2023 @ 6:06pm
5 Mar, 2023 @ 8:39pm
1,195 Unique Visitors
8 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
What is Battlerite? Why did it die? 
Context: Dead by Daylight 
Context: League of Legends. 
Context: Fortnite 
What's the problem? Why is Battlerite dead, and DKO dying? 
The Finale: How can we improve DKO's loop, and avoid certain death. 
Conclusion. Can the Battlerite curse be lifted? 
Comments
What is Battlerite? Why did it die?
Context

Battlerite was a videogame published by Stunlock Studios.

I won't put the whole wikipedia article, but it was one of the best multiplayer experiences I had in a looong time, and it didn't make it as a big, staple videogame to cling onto for years.

Maybe it was never the intention.

I've heard the phrase "this multiplayer videogame is dying, omg pls fix" applied to sooo many videogames, yet Battlerite is one of the few I couldn't pin point exactly why it didn't have a massive impact in the landscape. It had a LOT of power, a lot of bombast, and even competitions somewhat supported by the developers, something as a veteran TF2 player I can only DREAM about.

Battlerite was an extremely simple game. I could describe the feeling as... arcade-y.
Pop a coin, pick a character, queue, and mess stuff up. Matches lasted between 5-10 minutes each.
Then, it became a little big more complex. Pop a coin, now you can unlock other characters, not only that, you can unlock Battlerites for your abilities, and they would usually be 3 types, skill goes more boom, skill goes defense, skill goes haha utility. You could only equip a certain amount of them, so this gave some sort of "Builds" that you could mess around and try with your fave characters.

So far, this is sounding VERY similar to Divine Knockout.

At face value, they are extremely similar in how they feel, and how they "talk" to you, the gamer, through their dopamine releases, through the joy of customizing a build and seeing it work (or fail, rest in peace Combat Lucy), the characters have voicelines, personalities, little bit of lore, interesting and flashing designs, so you'll grow attach to them, and want to test the next cool thing that catches your eye or demolishes you in the arena.

That is the core of Battlerite. It's too similar to Divine Knockout, in a way, feeling like... League of Legends, but only the fun part, the boring slog left behind for bombastic action, with some unique twists.


Looks as messy as LoL, too.


So why did it die?

Why does a good, fun, engaging, low skill floor, high skill ceiling experience... dies?

Well... it's... simple in one way, and extremely complex in other way.

We will only explore the simple one, that is not to say is a short way, by no means. It's more of a walk in the city for 5 kilometers type of way.

1.- Five acts, usually abbreviated to four, and how they affect experiences in general.

Introduction, Problem, Climax, Finale. In drama, these acts are usually defined like Act 1: The Exposition, Act 2: Rising Action, Act 3: The Climax, Act 4: Falling Action and Act 5: Denouement or Resolution. But let's keep it simple because we're no theater kids.

If we look at the most popular multiplayer addicting videogames, we will find something of this structure each we choose to partake in the experience. It's subtle, and may not be intended, but it sure feels like we could divide the multiplayer experiences like this.

For sake of simplicity, let's use 4 videogames that are in different genres, 4 videogames people are forever calling "they're dying" even though they are raking profits, updates, and most of the time, bringing new players.

- Dead by Daylight (DBD) : Horror, asymmetric 4vs1.
- League of Legends (LOL) : Fantasy, strategy, 5v5.
- Fortnite (F) : Action shooter, free for all, Battle Royale.

These three games have little in common in their gameplay objetives and mechanics, yet they're all multiplayer, addicting experiences with monetization and customization of characters, and they're all "thriving" (at least, not dying) products.

I'll quickly breakdown the acts with the core mechanics, feel free to skip if the bible of text is too much, context is necessary in order to analyze a problem.
Context: Dead by Daylight
Choose side, Killer or Survivor, and your perks. The objective of Survivors is to repair 5 generators, power the exit gate, and escape. Killers... kill, before they achieve it.

The introduction begins slow, boring, not usually filled with too much activity. Survivors and Killers survey the terrain, acquire knowledge, and plan how to succeed in their objectives.
This, in about 5-15 seconds of the initiation of the match, already has a LOT of strategy involved, but it's usually nooot a huge, mechanical action. It's about using your experience to plan for the problem.

The problem: Generators are getting some progress, and Killer is coming to get them. In here, both sides have resources, and ways to use those resources, with skillful execution to delay, prevent or straight up stop the other side. Slowly throughout the match, resources like Generators, and how many "lives" the Survivors have become more scarce, and the match will start to tilt in one side or the other, but nothing is decided, both sides struggling as nerves mount and challenges arise.

The climax is when the invisible balance tips TOO much into one side, Survivors have lost their numbers advantage, Killers have lost their generators. There's a battle of nerves, decisions, planning, experience, what side will come on top? Players are at their top concentration, every single play is a calculated one, every single decision will have MASSIVE consequences for the any sides objective. Do the survivors cut their losses, allow only one to escape, or do they fight to get the remaining ones? Do the killer succeeds in their hunt, killing all the survivors, or does he compromise to just guard the last remaining member, securing the sacrifice?.

Then, the Finale. The survivors escape, the killer sacrifices it, the match closes, the outcome is decided, rewards are given, and the nerves, the tension, it all dissipates. It is done, everything is over. Repeat the experience, and try to change your outcome again.

Matches lasting usually 13-20 minutes, gives ample room for tense situations to start and end through every single interaction between the two sides, confrontations waning in intensity by the resource availables, the threat the survivors are put under, and the time that the killer can devote by advancing his objective in an individual way, since he can't bother multiple survivors at once.

That is an... unfavorable situation for the survivors...
Context: League of Legends.
Choose your role, your character, and in we go. 5 players need to fight 5 players, whoever destroyes the Nexus, located in the core of their respective bases, wins.

The introduction starts slowly, boring, not a lot to do. The game restricts your movement for the first 10 seconds, so you can buy your starting items, and decide what strategy will be attempted this match.

However, the match is divided, by design, in three main parts. Early, Mid, Late. These phases not only denote the state of the power both teams hold, but also the resources they can compete for, protect, or juggle, with the most important being Gold and Experience, both securing more future power.

The problem arises right when encountering an enemy champion. These, by default, are hidden in Fog of War, so they might or might not be a problem in the near future. They work as am ever present threat, helping to maintain the concentration when your character is off the playing field (dead) or when not much is there to be done at the moment, giving you some worries like: is my team ambushed, corraled, is it safe for me to stay here, to fight, etc.

In a way, every single confrontation is divided into the four parts, find a champion, bonk a champion, die or kill champion, relief and reward collecting. However, these are stackable. Each outcome in those battles will tilt the balance one side or the other, sometimes irreversibly, and also, take a mental toll in the players that failed, by disappointing their team and/or frustrating themselves. The acumulation of power is both having more strength in combat, more experience in decision making, and patience and calmness to stop the mistake into a game defining play.

By keeping players on that loop, you can easily sustain (or trap them) into experiences that might be extremely tedious or boring in the short term, because of the looming threat or excitement that comes with the possibility that a fight might start at any second.

After many confrontations, decisions, after many cycles of the loop have been completed, we have not only stacking power, stacking losses and frustrations, not only stacking experience by knowing the way the enemy uses their resources, but also very, very real, very stacked tension. All of the time played will go to waste if I lose, and it will be rewarded if I win. We HAVE to win.

The climax is reached when the most decisive of confrontations start to happen. When a single bad decision made by any of the 10 players will for sure lead to defeat. The tension is in an all time high, as any semblance of calmness is replaced by pure, constant tension. If the enemy is alive, they can win, if the enemy has more power, is less frustrated, is more skille, they can win, and they'll take with them my mental state, my satisfaction, all the proper decisions I took, and my time.

And so, they clash, they fight, and they die. Every battle shaking the very foundation of the match, until the one side breaks through, and becomes victorious. Frustrations against the enemy, yourself, and your team seep into the Team chat, and taunts, congratulations and slurs are tossed from the All chat

The finale, match ends. You see every single decision that you took with your experience and gold, the result of all of your battles in your score, and the overall performance in the damage charts. Rewards are given, tension disappear as unsatisfaction for the losing team, or pride for the winning team take hold, and your press once again, into the Summoner's Rift, to do it all over again, but this time, a little bit better.

Matches lasting between 18-40 minutes. A LOT of decisions, and a LOT of time at stake.

This player's decisions, victories and accumulative power has made him Rampage through the enemy team, as the announcer declares to everyone, he's popping off.

Context: Fortnite
I... haven't played Fortnite. And I won't for a Steam Guide that I'm doing out of boredom. No thanks.

The beginning of a match, you customize your character, and you decide where to land.

Looting, knowledge, techniques, and skillful use of the mouse are key to win confrontations, the main problem.

These skirmishes, confrontations, are the loop in which the players are participating in.

You become disilussioned if you couldn't succeed against that player or that battle, eager to try that again, but this time, with more concentration, better skills, more knowledge.

You feel satisfied, after winning one confrontation, as the tension, nerves and the stakes rises for the next one, so does your power, as the enemies loot becomes your own, in a way, taking their strength and making it yours. You've put time, and you've won before, all of this stacks so you keep focused and participating.

The Climax is the last confrontation, which may as well be your first one if you're not good enough.

Even then, defeat only pushes you to try harder, as you know what went wrong, you can improve it, and the challenge doesn't seem unsurmountable, very aware of how good it will feel to overcome the past defeats.

Victory gives you joy and satisfaction, enough turns of the roulette and you beated them all. I HAVE to try again, prove everyone I'm skilled enough to do it, but even better.

In the Finale, you reclaim your rewards, and you're inclined to try it again. What's one more try?

Matches lasting from 30 seconds to 25 minutes, the feeling of your life being so fragile makes you believe you're the only thing in the way of Victory.

Yeah, that's a simple way of putting it, I guess.


No one remembers the Coop mode of this game.

What's the problem? Why is Battlerite dead, and DKO dying?
Finally, into the topic.

Battlerite and DKO have VERY flawed 4 acts. This keeps players loving the game, but not wanting to keep playing it. Yeah sure, I can pump 100 games in a day, but after that, meh, I'm out. That's because of the tension, and how the releases and buildups of it, and the time invested to get those effects, THAT is the real reason no one comes back. They're too good, too fun. You'll deplete the tension too quickly, don't let it build much, and so, the player is left entertained, engaged, concentrated, but also, very satisfied. Like they had a good lunch, but they don't want to keep on eating.

This is healthy, in a way. It doesn't create an overwhelming addiction on players by tickling the right parts of the brain that keeps us coming back. But it's terrible business, and terrible on players that are in love with the gameplay, but find themselves desolate and bored of queue times, unreachable goals, and feeling so empty after the action is over. There's little gained, and little lost.

Introduction: You pick your characters, and you customize them before going into the match.

This is okay, perfectly fine, albeit, a little confusing. A lot of the Battlerites needed to be used 3-4 matches to fully grasp, same with the blessings and traits in DKO, but that's part of the learning curve.

Here's the problem, the loop. First of all, we have 3 complete separate modes that play very differently from each other. 3v3, 2v2, and 1v1 have different stakes, strategies, maps, gamemodes, settings, knowledge and skill sets, EVERYTHING.

Both games struggled with not solidifying the experience into one, single, repetitive, addictive mess.

So how can we manage the tension, victories and defeats, satisfactions and disilusions, when we have such a wide margin to play on. In a way, the arcade-y, party game feeling comes. Bunch of fun, bunch of choices, but.. that's about it. The game can't manage to become addictive enough in the long term because the loop is failed from the start, any game mode provides a differente queue time, experience, skill sets, everything. Victory feels very different, too, in a 3v3 versus a 1v1.

If DKO decided "This is our main experience, this is what we want players to engage and balance and learn around", then players will be funneled and restricted, yes, but also, you can manage to spice things up with limited gamemodes (Maybe for 1 hour, 2v2 is enabled, next hour, disabled), without compromising the balance or the dopamine rushes get with different, albeit similar experiences, you can also tweak the experiences so they are more engaging and addictive, finely changing each little thing, so you can recognize what makes players feel more engaged or more bored.

2v2 is clearly the superior experience, very similar to Super Smash Bros. Only win by knocking your opponents out. However, because the entire match lasts 5 minutes, divided into best of five, meaning each "life" only lasts 30 seconds to 1 minute on average, this makes for a very unsatisfactory victory, and an empty defeat, since no good, deep tension can reasonably be achieved in this short timespan.

3v3's timespan of 8-15 minutes allow for a more rich and complex experience, the stakes and nerves are allowed to rise and fall as the best of five sets and longer matches allow players to soak in the nerves and the stakes, but it ultimately falls VERY short not because of time, but because of experience: the gamemodes and the map hazards are too party-like, too random, which makes the game very fun but also, takes away all the tension it could ever build, leaving victories and defeats empty and devoid of meaning.

Which one would you prefer DKO sticks to?

Would you like 3v3 to be exclusively Knockout, with 3 sets of 3 different maps, similar to smash's 1v1?

Would you like 2v2 to be longer, have more sets, map rotation, so it's more tense and in line with a good experience? Or would you rather have it as the fun gamemode, with random party-like elements into it?

1v1's could use an improvement, I've queued for over 20 minutes without finding anything, definitely should not be the core experience.
The Finale: How can we improve DKO's loop, and avoid certain death.
I believe good changes will go a long way

I've exposed some ideas in how I, as a player, would like the game to change. After studying the context cases, I've exposed the Super Smash Bros formula as one that should be tested and tried, since it has the most amount of similarities in gameplay, and it's also a multiplayer addictive game, which I'm hoping it's the objective of this game. If it wants to be a party game, welp, leave as it is.


ONE! The gameplay is absolute! The experience must be perfected! Yet I'm sensing plenty of room for improvement...

First, I vote to make 3v3's the main game, and remove EVERY party element it has. It's ruining the experience.

Make it Knockout, each player having 1 life, best of 3 or best of 5. Then, we have sets, best of 3 or 5.

Using the info I've gathered, I can calculate that each set of a 3v3 Knockout with one life, best of 5, would last between 3-6 minutes. Best of 3 sets would make it 9 minutes at minimum, 18 minutes at maximum.

If matches are too long, then make it best of 3. That will reduce the margin to 2-4 minutes, keeping the Best of 3 sets at 6-12 minutes. That might be too short. Loading times between the maps might take longer than a single match.

If matches are too short, then give us a whole 20-30 min experience. Best of 5 matches and best of 5 sets. We would have 3-6 minutes per match, giving us a 15-30 minute experience. Now that's a golden number.

This numbers are aproximate, the only way to know is to test them, but if we're going theoretical on the solutions, we can adjust the experience as much as the tension needs. Leaving players to interact with one another for more than 10 minutes will start to make the dopamine part of our brains, the competition, the victory, the stakes all the more grandiose and sweeter.

That's the ticket. We need fun, bombastic, tense matches, so that victories and defeats, so that encountering the same player in another match has a serious impact in the psychological level, if it's the same teammate, can be positive because you know he's good, or negative because he sucks, if he's on the enemy team, positive because you may have defeated him before, making you cocky, or negative, as you want to get your revenge, prove him he got lucky once, but not anymore, this works perfectly for a villain-hero type of story.

That happens in Rocket League, Super Smash Bros, Dead by daylight, League of Legends, but it's by far the most important part of the core loop, the game experience, in Team Fortress 2.

TWO!. The feedback loop is absolute! You give your game's fun for it, you focus on it at any cost! At this rate, you'll lose all of your investment...

Now that we have the tension and gameplay somewhat figured out, we need some addiction loops to keep the gamers stuck in the game.

I know, it's predatory, and I hate it, but let's not pretend they don't want our money.

So, first of all, rewards. There's 3 currencies. Technically only 2. One of them is strictly for unlocking

That's a good start, but... experience points in the game are useless. No reward is worth it, maybe if you could customize the characters more deeply, like weapons, maybe little decor, etc, yeah, that's something to strive for. But right now, there's only the Golden Skin, by grinding the hell out of the game (which is another issue), or the paid skins on a videogame you most likely already paid for, yikes...

So, first. The game must be free. Simple as that. We can't afford to cull the player numbers more than they're already are.

Sell literally everything that a player would WANT to buy. Flash cards, emojis, emotes, weapon decor, cute calling cards, stat counters. Nothing that would impact the loop, but things that could be worth looking forward to, divide in between paid and free if you grind, and you should be set.

The hero pass is a massive issue. It's useless. Just remove it. You need to grind 3 characters to level 15 to have a good variety. That's like 500 hours. Just no.

Blessings should be given to you in two ways, you either buy them with the XP, or you can unlock them playing the game, period. Playing too much of one character builds a bar, with that bar, you can get that characters blessing for free, or another character blessing with additional costs.

The Level of a Heroe/God should give players pride on having a shiny badge plus the golden skin, but it shouldn't impact directly how viable you are to buy Blessings.

Maybe you could equip 1 major and minor blessing, buy extra with Performance Points in the arena? Stackable power? Maybe? Just a wild idea.

THREE!. Gameplays are absolute! There is no shame sponsoring ads or expensive youtubers to make your game known. But you must go all in, by all means necessary! I wonder if you have it in you - to revive.

I had this game in my library since the free giveaway. I didn't even touch it because I didn't know it. And now, 10 hours later, I love it with my soul. Let people know this game exists, after you've done all the big changes, made the game free, got progression, everything tweaked, pam, flood it on the internet with marketing, that's the only way to make it. There's plenty to change in order to DKO to make it big, but it can't go full release in the state that it is.

We may need more visibility than this...
Conclusion. Can the Battlerite curse be lifted?
We'll have to see. Check back in one year, see if something changed.













I'm really hoping it does. I love this game. It has some seriously talented developers behind it

Maybe if I motivate myself I'll do a youtube essay, like the weird kids.



Can you please nerf the stun out of this dude ffs.
9 Comments
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MaestroPoL 25 Feb @ 7:23pm 
Is people actually reading all this?
InkuShiryo 13 Nov, 2023 @ 6:34am 
I can tell you the reason. Like many other people did here. It died bc devs stopped updating it.
roy 23 Aug, 2023 @ 6:55am 
this is valid af dont listen to the other comments
Kazaar 17 Jun, 2023 @ 1:21am 
dude you need to find yourself a new game. that term makes no sense.
Salep 10 May, 2023 @ 5:14am 
''with no clear cause of it.'' ??
they died beacause of very clear reasons. people talked and explained these thousands times.
basically idiot devs.
u cant expect much from a game which doesnt use afk punishment
Jaqiqi 28 Apr, 2023 @ 9:26pm 
This is interesting to read because the reason I left is cause there's only like two interesting game modes, some champs are just stronger than others, some hitboxes don't match the moves, and everyone just picks the same champs because of course people go for the meta, that's not the players' faults, but patches don't really change champs who are just stronger so it's usually still the same champs. I stopped playing before Zeus came out but I bet the sword lady, tornado sword guy, and flying dude are still up there in strength and there's gonna be at least one of them in every match.
TheZanke 28 Mar, 2023 @ 4:38pm 
Bloodline Champions was the one for me; my favorite game. I have no idea why it failed other than the lack of RNG made people who couldnt get better sad.
Sigmund Scholomon Freud 24 Mar, 2023 @ 12:44pm 
The tale of Battlerite (or Bloodline Champions) is a sad one. The problem was in my opinion, that certain promised features were dropped, like the tournament mode. For such a competitive game, it is a must to have features where you can test (and show off) your skills in short bursts, and not only long lasting ranked seasons. What you mention about time-limited game modes hit that spot for me, but make the time-limited modes have certain rewards tied to them and let them happen regularly. The perfect example I have in this case is the tournament mode from Warcraft 3. You could get some sweet profile icons and a unique game mode stat to show off your success. I have never seen that in another game, and to this day I still ask why.

Also, "one year later" is often not an option with High-Rez games (Tribes: Ascend ;_;7)
UniCoLover7 22 Mar, 2023 @ 11:39pm 
skill issue