Hello there,

Am i the only one who think spark system is cheap ?
Maybe it was made to not affect the balance of bots, which initially is a good thing, but that mean it almost change nothing.

Maybe i'm lonely on this, but when spark patch came out, i did take a look at it, took me like 1min to check them, nothing much to think about, i did not need to think at all, so i was a bit disappointed.
You can see no one talk about them, if there wasn't sparks it would be the same.

What about upgrading spark system and making them more interesting, give more reflexion about them than just "i need 6% standing and i'm done", for vets "i already got 6%, i'm done".

First, i think it would be nice to make spark having only one kind of bonus and give the ability to fit more than one spark on your agent.
Lets say 3 spark of 1bonus, and there will be almost anykind of spark bonus in the game.
You cannot fit more than one kind of spark. But 3% & 2% bonus sparks might be two different spark ?

About getting sparks, make it harder than just choosing them from a menu...
Some basic sparks can still be choosed from the start for newcomers.
Standing requirement still needed to fit most of them.

Different solutions,

1 - assignements could give some sort of "points" which could be used to unlock different kind of sparks.

or

2 - sparks could be dropable & manufacturable items. if manufacturable, they have to be randomly damaged when you loose your bot, sometimes no loss, sometimes 1 or more destroyed.

or

3 - not like this much but there could be an achievement system to unlock them, people usually like this, getting killing blow on a superior observer with your arkhe, stuff like that.

Anyway, i know they were originaly designed to replace in some ways the attributes.
Also i know you said you'll probably add more sparks in the future but i would like to see more works and more brainstorming inputed in Sparks, cause IMHO they are almost uninteresting actually, they are a small disappointment.

TL;NR - make sparks more like a build system, to give more specialization aspect & make new ways to get sparks.

I just think sparks could be an interesting feature instead of being transparent.