Update 1.7 is now Live for Split or Steal!
Please note: this is a Major Update which requires you to update your Game Client. You will experience buggy/unexpected behaviour if connecting with an outdated client.
Before we get into the Patch Notes - I hope you're all keeping safe out there. With many of us currently experiencing the realities of self-isolation and quarantine (myself included), I'm hoping tonight's update gives you all something new to enjoy through these times.
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Infinite HQ Upgrades
Previously, owed to older systems designed around less players, HQ buildings could only be upgraded once - at a one-time steep cost.
Building upgrades have now been fully revamped, allowing for infinite scaling and upgrades - and restructured in cost to allow for players to start upgrading their buildings far faster.
Note that all current Level 2 buildings are now equivalent to Level 7 buildings under the new upgrade structure. Your buildings will automatically upgrade to Level 7 once you log in.
HQ Building Rebalance
The original HQ system was heavily designed with low player counts in mind - massively favouring coin generation for long-term build strategies, at the behest of Split/Steal bonuses. As our player base grew with the Steam launch, and subsequent update patches, HQ's were in essence working against the game - with low split/steal bonuses and high idle coin bonuses, the incentive to play became less and less as you progressed through the ranks.
As such, all HQ buildings have been redesigned to offer higher split/steal bonuses, alongside all buildings now offering at least 0.1% ORG split/steal stats.
HQ Building Refunds
Long-requested, finally here - you will now receive a 70% refund on your base building cost, alongside 70% of its total upgrade worth when demolishing a building.
HQ Unique Bonuses
Unique HQ Buildings now award an additional +25% bonus - finally giving us reason to have more than one building type stacked out across an entire HQ!
Artifacts Rebalance
Artifacts were originally designed with the idea of 25 Million Coins being an unspeakably high amount of cash - which was a flaw which again stemmed from a far smaller playerbase.
After the Steam playerbase explosion, queue times remaining consistently under 5-10 seconds, and active ORGs working together to increase their bonuses, this 25 Million Coins suddenly became a very small sum for many mid and late-game players.
Artifacts have now been rebalanced to scale with the individual player - and will increase in price for every one purchased per day. The price will then reset at midnight, every night.
This new system allows for cheaper artifact purchases for early-game players, while greatly increasing towards the mid and late games; allowing for players at the later game stages to instead begin investing towards their HQ upgrades, rather than their late-game content being click-cycling on the buy/open artifact buttons.
Lighting Prices Rebalance
In a similar vein to our player population explosion, lighting has now been rebalanced; with flag lighting now costing 750k coins (up from 250k), and Show-Off lighting being re-adjusted to 75 Million coins (up from 25 million).
While better representing the progression which these lighting types entail, this also allows for players to reap a higher daily artifact bonus from the Lighting cosmetics.
New Cosmetics
The ultra-lategame cosmetics have arrived. For the very small segment of players who have managed to earn over a TRILLION coins, there are now unique ultra-showoff models available in-game for you. As a note, these cosmetics are designed to be a literal endgame achievement - nobody should be expecting to earn these in any short manner of time.
The lighting roster has also been updated - featuring more new Country Flags, and one new show-off lighting to celebrate all things.. cow-related.
Sweeping stability & performance improvements
A massive amount of work on this patch went in to improving overall game performance, and ensuring that SoS can better recover from issues such as temporarily losing network connectivity.
Please note however, as with all sweeping changes in these departments, we should expect a small amount of teething problems on these revamped systems for a short time post-launch. If you do bump into any unexpected issues or bugs, please report them on our Discord!
Scaled Purchases
One last remnant of the past today - in-game purchases of coins/artifacts were always reliant on the player being in the early, or mid-game to be in any way beneficial.
These purchases have now been set up to re-scale according to individual progression rates.
UI Readability Improvements
7/1 and O/0 look different now. IT FINALLY HAPPENED!!
Additionally, numbers are now displayed in written formats for ease of readability; i.e: "250,000,000,000" will now appear as "250 Billion".
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A lot of core SoS features have been revamped for this patch; most notably, in Artifact click-spam buy/open being moved towards the dustbin, in favour of a new infinitely-scaling HQ system which allows entire ORGs to benefit from their late-game counterparts. For long-term players, these new changes may take some adjusting to - and may feel frustrating at first.
These changes are expected to greatly change the balance of the game - and will be monitored over the upcoming days & weeks, with tweaks being made where needed to ensure these new systems make for more enjoyable play for all.