Maybe you thought it would be someone else greeting you this time, but it was still me, Christian! Good to have you guys here. This week I will share with you some tidbits about the patch last week, talk some about what was happening last week besides patching, and let you know a little more about what I will be doing as I transform into a gameplay person once again. Let’s get started.
Patch 0.13.1.0
Like I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, July, and to a certain extent parts of August, was a time of improving upon existing systems and updating pipelines. This has saved us time and will continue to save us time in the future as we develop Battlerite further. What it also meant was that the first real patch we made after these reworks would be sort of a test run of how well all the underlying and now updated systems worked. Of course we tested things on our own first, found a lot of problems and took care of them, but in the end letting thousands of people play will inevitably uncover something that was overlooked. Overall it still went over pretty well I’d say, but I’m sure some of you noticed that bugs had snuck in and stayed along on the ride to you guys. So if some of you felt that the patch was a little more buggy than usual, that might be why.
An “unintended feature” that got in the patch was related to the Private Match update. If you’ve tried it out you know that you can now select server region directly in the lobby and that you will return to the lobby after completing a private match. This update also lead to the unintended feature that you now can play as the same champion as someone else on your team, allowing for matchups such as these:
This is something that snuck through in part because of how difficult the current UI is to work with and leaves plenty of room for error. We also had a lot of other problems with the updated Private Match during internal testing just because of this. In the end though we decided that this unintended feature will, for now, stay in the game. If you want to have a private match where 3 Pestilusses face off against 3 Vareshes, then by all means go nuts! I just want to give everyone a heads up on the fact that the game has not been made with duplicate champions on the same team in mind. This means you might experience some unintended behavior or weird interactions. Essentially, things may get wacky, but as long as you have that in mind, go ahead and have fun with it!
Last Week
Ok so besides the patching, is there anything I can share from the Studios of Stunlock from last week? Well, work has been continuing on champions but more on that at a later point.
Additional work has also gone towards game modes. We recently found something we feel is very promising and have been pouring time into it. The overarching theme and visuals are still something we are working on, but in terms of what the game mode is about – it is related to how Rocket Balloon Brawl works, but on a bigger scale and a bit more… varied in its scope. We’re still rapidly iterating on it and big changes still happen every now and again so what I could tell you about it today might not stay true for very long. I’ll stop there for now but I’m certain we’ll have some more details for you guys regarding the game mode in a few weeks or so.
I also mentioned previously that we were looking into ways to make the Battlerite system more flexible and easily applicable to potential game modes. Last week some time went into this. This work includes coming up with drafts with proposed changes for the Battlerite trees of individual champions, to try and see if we can come up with good solutions that work in the different cases we have. It’s time consuming work and requires a lot of theorycrafting which often leads to interesting discussions, but also sometimes leaves us with more questions than answers afterwards. As it is looking right now there’s a chance the changes we’re working on will affect how the Battlerite system works in the core game mode. We will only go through with it if we believe that the pros outweigh any potential cons, but I just wanted to give you guys a head up. It’s an ongoing process and we will continue to ponder it in the weeks to come. When we arrive at something more conclusive that we’re excited about we’ll tell you guys more.
What will Chris do?
As I’ve mentioned before, Liz will soon be heading over from a comfortable temperature in California to a Sweden that’s progressively getting colder. I’ve also told you guys that I will be returning to the gameplay team to give it some more muscle and allow it to do all the things we want to do. I have yet to tell you what I will be doing in in the gameplay team though. While some of the details may change and plans may be remade, it is looking like I will be part of a team that will supply you guys with patches in between the bigger content patches we do. In that team I will act as the driving force to put together balance changes and smaller champion (gameplay) reworks, along with coming up with simple event quests we can run when we don’t have other cool stuff going on coupled to Brawls or whatever. Me doing this will allow the people who sit with new champion development to focus on that task, without having to pause and work on existing champions. The same goes for those focused on game modes or more encompassing systems. Right now I’m not yet sure when you guys will get the first of these smaller patches, and I’m sure I’m sounding like a broken record but expect more news about this soon.
Regardless I’m excited about getting to submerge myself in gameplay stuff again. It’s going to be tons of fun!
Closing Words
I know it’s not necessarily very exciting to hear “stuff is in the works, you’ll get more details later” but right now we’re at that point where a lot of things are slowly but surely being crystallized into something more clear. And when they get more clear, we will make sure you hear about them. It’s looking like you guys will get a lot of information during September and I think you will be excited when you get it. Either way, thanks for reading!
/Christian