Steel Cradle Leviathans in raids SUCK. In Easy and Medium raids, the Levis are super weak and have really lame weapons. In Hard raids, either you have a team with retchers, porcupines and incinerators and the leviathan dies in less than 5 seconds, or you get a mid or weak team and the leviathan absolutely hammers you, plus the insane number of normal enemies that pop up during this time. Players start to run low or run out of repair kits and choose not to respawn, because Steel Cradle gives you the lowest number of points and resources out of all raids, and it is not worth the extra repair kits to most players.
Here are my suggestions:
- Redesign Hard Raid Steel Cradle Leviathans to match the faction they are playing for (armor, speed, weapons, general appearance). The Steel Cradle Levis have been exactly the same for years. Every other enemy in raids has been updated, some even multiple times. Give the Steel Cradle Levis some love!
- The Leviathan should spawn IMMEDIATELY after the 3rd stage of Steel Cradle is completed (or the timer runs out). This prevents porcupine/incinerator players from just being able to get into position and insta-kill the Levi, since it takes like 20 seconds to activate and leave the little construction box.
- Either nerf the Levi’s durability (especially the weapons - they are very very hard to degun), OR give huge points bonuses for destroying parts or dealing yellow damage to the Levi. A normal raid boss gives up to 60 points for destroying it. I don’t know the exact HP/durability of the Steel Cradle Levi, but my guess is it is 4-5 times more durable and has twice the firepower of the normal raids bosses. So why not let it give out 200, or even 300 points? My normal Steel Cradle scores are usually in the 800-900 range. If four players share an extra 300 points, that will put all the players in the range of 1000 points, which is much more acceptable for a Raid that can be as difficult and risky as Steel Cradle.
- Reduce the number of other enemies that spawn when the leviathan appears. If you do not kill the leviathan within like 10 seconds, you get absolutely swarmed by enemies, making the raid immediately 10 times more difficult to complete. Which, again, makes it so much less rewarding to be only getting 800 points instead of 1200+.
I know raids aren’t super popular, but they are a great way to farm important resources, and can be quite fun for casual players. I myself have played over 3000 raids and actually really enjoy it as a gamemode. Steel Cradle is definitely my least favorite raid option because of the wild inconsistency of how hard the Leviathan is to kill based on the team composition you get. In my opinion, Steel Cradle should be the most difficult raid, and as such, should pay out far more points and resources.
