Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role on the MultiVersus team?
I’m Charlie, or Casmir if you find me in game, a Technical Director on MultiVersus and I joined Player First Games during the Open Beta phase of the game. While most of my time here has been focused on organizing the engineering team to build things for MultiVersus, I had an idea for a new mode, which ended up being Arena!
We’re really excited for players to learn more about Arena, can you tell us briefly about how it differs from other modes in MultiVersus?
We wanted players to be able to experience something where the choices they made prior to an individual match of MultiVersus could have an impact. We had our mutators as part of Rifts, but Arena gives you a way to power up your character in unique ways and continually build upon that from round to round. Each Arena is meant to feel unique, between what you build, what your teammate builds, the fighter you use, and what the rest of your opponents are doing as well. These new concepts also add another layer of mastery, where understanding how to use resources or item builds can help you overpower your opponents. Last but definitely not least, we wanted a game mode that supported more of your friends.
How did the concept of Arena come to be? What were some of the external inspirations for Arena ?
The biggest external inspirations for Arena were other games that allowed you to gain power over the course of the game and adapt to the knowable randomness they provide. The auto-battlers and battle royales provided a lot of inspiration when it came to the resource management, items, builds, and needing to split your focus between the larger picture, and the immediate fight you are about to have. We’re biased obviously, but we think MultiVersus is a really fun game already, so giving players a new way to experience it by adding these extra elements sounded really compelling to me and the team. We built out the mode as a prototype and thought it was a lot of fun. Theory crafting about how you can put different items together for builds, working with your teammate to craft the ultimate combo, and balancing short vs. long-term gain are only a couple of reasons we’re excited for players to try it out.
Can you tell us what a typical play session might look like?
Each Arena revolves around coins made available to you as a resource. We start every player with 10 coins, and you’ll gain more for the different things you do in the mode, including wins, getting ringouts, and win/loss streaks, along with gaining interest on any coins you stash between rounds. When the Arena starts, you’ll need to select a character from one of eight randomly selected characters, two from each of the MultiVersus classes – Mage, Assassin, Bruiser, and Tank. If you don’t have a preference, you can spend some of your initial coins to get a new selection of eight. If you’re feeling extra confident, you can choose a random character and gain extra coins to spend between rounds. Arena takes advantage of the class system as it influences the chance of seeing certain items, along with certain items that work well with different class types. After you pick your fighter, each round in Arena will start with a Shop phase, where you can spend your coins (we’ve got 40 different items to try out) to power up and change your fighter in fun and unique ways. You’ll then play the next round against one of the other seven teams, and the process will repeat until only one team remains as the winner.
How can players use coins between rounds?
In Arena mode, players will need balance short-term vs. long-term gain. If you spend all your coins right away, you won’t gain interest between rounds, and interest can be a great way to build up a supply of coins to buy more powerful items when they start to show up in later rounds, or level up items you already have. If you try to save too much, your opponent might be way more powerful than you and you’ll lose a lot of health.
With all the mutators in Arena, are there any specific groups or builds that you like to play with?
When we were building out the items, we decided on two main buckets – items that could work well together and items that would counter other builds. We know players will find things we didn’t anticipate and that’s part of the experience that we’re excited about the most. We’re looking forward to players showing us what they have up their sleeves! As a starter, players should try out a Tank build by grabbing Cement Shoes, Thorns, Bulletproof Juggernaut, and Devilish Contract, or maybe a projectile status build with Hot and Cold, Homing Rockets, Embrace the Elements, and Emergency Gadget!
How will matchmaking work in Arena?
Once you hop into an Arena lobby, you can invite up to 15 friends. If you’ve got a full group of 16 you can go with that, or you can matchmake and fill up the remaining spots.
What are some of the rewards for progression in Arena?
If players hop into Arena during the first experimental release, they are able to get elusive badges to represent their commitment to MultiVersus. All players who play Arena within the first three weeks of the mode’s release will receive the “Arenas Top 1 Finish”, “Arenas Top 4 Finish”, and “Arenas Total Knockouts” elusive badges to represent their skills in the Arena. Also as an added bonus, each Arena set a player finishes, regardless of placement, will grant Prestige currency.
How will Arena change and adapt over time?
Being an experimental mode, we will be looking for feedback on many different areas of Arena, including which builds need balancing, the structure of how Arena plays, and what players might want long-term that works well with our overall vision for the mode. As a starting point, Arena mode will be active for the first three weeks of Season 4, then it will be unavailable for one week before the mid-season patch.
What are you excited to see after players get their hands on Arena?
Honestly, I’m excited to give players another way to enjoy MultiVersus that adds another layer for players to express their skill and personality. We want to see theory crafters jump into an Arena and try to hit a new build they thought up and potentially find something really powerful. And think up what the counter to that might be. We are very excited to see all the craziness that transpires!
How does a team lose health?
In Arena, every team starts with 100 health, and health is lost based on ringout deltas—the difference between the ringouts your team makes in a round and the ringouts the opposing team makes. Health loss per delta starts at 14 in Round 1 and scales up to 32 by Round 13, with additional multipliers (damage scalars) increasing the severity as rounds progress. Tie-breaker values, which escalate from 12 in early rounds to 36 in later rounds, are determined based on the current damage of each player, with the team taking less damage being the winner. This makes strategic play and minimizing ringout deltas crucial for survival.
How do you gain more coins?
To earn more coins in Arena, players receive a base amount of coins each round, which gradually increases as the match progresses (following a round-based scalar system). Additional bonuses are earned through streak mechanics: players gain extra coins for consecutive wins, with a win streak bonus capped at four coins and an extra one coin per win. Similarly, a loss streak bonus of up to four coins is available, but no additional coin is given per individual loss.
Players can also generate coins through successful ringouts, earning one coin for every two ringouts they achieve. Passive coin generation is higher in later rounds, starting at eight coins in the first round and capping at 15 coins by round 12. Additionally, players can earn interest on unspent coins, receiving one coin for every eight coins saved, up to a maximum of eight interest coins. To maximize coin inflow, players need to balance spending on items or character rerolls with saving to benefit from interest and leveraging win or loss streaks effectively.
There are also special items that can further increase coin generation, providing strategic options for players to boost their resources as they progress through the rounds.
We can’t wait for you to check out Arena! Please be sure to follow our social channels and join the official MultiVersus Discord for the latest news about the game. We’ll be back with more updates soon. Stay tuned!
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