Pre-selecting a battlerite loadout for abilities that are not available from the start did not make a lot of sense either (since everyone starts with only their M1 ability). We identified early on that any increased “pure stats” type of battlerite felt unnecessary as we would scale damage, healing, crowd control duration and cooldowns via item power instead. With the addition of the in-game item system, your abilities scale in power depending on the rarity of the ability you obtain. Consumables are doing a good job filling the void of EX abilities. We’ve thus removed EX abilities as well as the energy cost on R. Many EX abilities are defensive moves such as crowd control, the ability to leech health, or to help you to survive longer in other ways. When balancing defensive mechanics we found out that EX abilities were not really doing their job in Royale. With the addition of consumables we’ve introduced additional hotkeys and another layer of strategy and complexity to combat. Tackling Support Champions has been more challenging, as their role is to prolong and defend themselves and their allies. This meant that we had to balance out defensive mechanics, in particular healing, shields, and crowd control. Lethality needed to be increased as players need to be eliminated at a certain pace throughout the course of a match. We want to stay true to the identity of each Champion while making any changes necessary to make sure all of them are fun, exciting, and balanced to play in Battlerite Royale. Some Champions will remain relatively similar while others will have brand new abilities. – Network-system reworks and general game-optimizations to support this new experience What changes can I expect on Champions? – Progression system adaptations for Royale – New Matchmaking and ranking system – Mount mechanical adjustments with footstep sounds added, and carrots! Lots of carrots. – The Ingame HUD has been re-designed and new features have been added – Stats-system adaptations for Royale – Menu UI has received a fresh new Royale theme – New consumable item system with plenty of exciting choices – Interactable map objects such as jump pads, portals, healing and resurrection shrines – A majestic fantasy island map hand-crafted with new art, sound and music Here is a list of differences and new or updated features compared to Arena: – Champion kits and Battlerites redesigned and rebalanced The signature Battlerite combat and input system will be familiar to Arena veterans, though all Champions have been fully revised for Royale, with some champions receiving larger reworks than others. If you want to play with a friend, you can jump into duo mode. Another difference compared to Arena is that you don’t have to play as part of a team, and can play solo. Your goal is to loot items, abilities, and consumables, collect gold, and purchase upgrades to grow stronger over the course of a match and fight to be the last player standing. In Royale, matches are played in a free-for-all environment with currently up to 20 players on a map 30 times larger than a normal Arena map. What are the main differences between Arena and Royale? Now after tuning and rebalancing champion kits, adding tons of cool items and consumables, revamping battlerites, and supporting this new experience with interface changes, new achievements, matchmaking, and ranking systems, we are getting closer to our vision. With the constraints from Arena limiting us, we made the decision to protect the integrity of both experiences and create a new game instead of a new game mode. When working on Royale, it became obvious that sharing the same balance and philosophy as Arena restricted the possibilities within Royale. Simply put, Royale became a significantly different experience compared to Arena. Why is Royale becoming a new title and not a mode? There’s been a lot of information about Battlerite Royale released in the past few weeks, so we thought we’d collect what’s been communicated so far regarding Battlerite Royale Early Access and add in a bunch of new information! We hope this answers most of your questions!