Hey folks!

We realize you are all eagerly awaiting news about Seasons, especially when the next one is going to start, so I’m here to fill you in on where we are at with this, and some extra development updates as well!

I can tell you we’re aiming to get the next Season started around the beginning of March. We realise some of you have been hoping for the next Season to begin as soon as possible and we apologise for this delay. We’re short on resources to help us make bigger changes to Battlerite, and this has delayed us more than we would have liked. I should mention that this date may be subject to change if the improvements we are working on set us back for any reason.

But enough of the disclaimers, let’s talk about our long-term goals for Seasons going forward!

We have decided we want future Seasons to:

• Allow all players to participate in a Season, not just ranked
• Make it clearer when Seasons start and end
• Give players a greater feeling of progression throughout the Season
• Create more unique rewards for each Season
• Make Seasons feel more competitive for top tier players

Although I cannot go into detail about how exactly we’re going to achieve all of those things, I can mention a couple of things we’re working on right now for the first Season. We’re working on a system which unlocks rewards depending on how much you play within the Season. We’re still discussing if there will be some kind of entry level in order to qualify (as brand new players are already showered with quests and rewards). It’s quite important to us that we don’t create a design that’s too inflexible; we don’t expect to be able to have lots of patch content for every single Season, but we know that on some occasions we will, so the Season system design will not rely on a big patch in order to roll over and keep Seasons fresh.

We are also working hard on two supplement features that we think will improve the competitive environment for Battlerite players. Firstly, a pre-match lobby where you can pick your Champions as a team in League. We’re still testing exactly how the draft for League will work but at the moment we’re testing a Simultaneous style draft. Secondly, we really want to support regional leaderboards in-game when the new Season starts. However, if it turns out we need more time for the Season system and the pre-match lobby, then leaderboards may come at a later date.

Of course when the new Season arrives we will also bring some improvements to the matchmaking. We want to do what we can to make matches feel fairer for players and we’re listening attentively to your feedback. To all the Grand Champion players out there, we’ve heard your cries for having a limited number of players in Grand Champion. We agree this would make the higher leagues feel more competitive and we want to implement this. However we feel we won’t be able to release a Grand Champion cap until Season 2, or later.

A lot of players have been wondering if they will get any rewards from the Pre-Season. I can confirm that you will, these are yet to be announced, but you will get some kind of reward for your highest league achieved throughout the Pre-Season. It is likely to be very similar to the Season rewards in Early Access. You’ll get these rewards when we release the first Season.

Moving away from Seasons, I can give you some info on an exciting upcoming event called Legends of Quna. This event brings some brand new quests, mounts, outfits, poses and weapons to celebrate the Lunar New Year. This patch will likely take place on 13th February (we’ll let you know if this date changes).

I got permission to leak one of the outfits that are coming with this event…

We hope that you have a better insight into what we’re up to, and what you can expect in the next couple of months.

See you in the arena!

/Liz