* = added in patch on 11/02
We've got a spooky season update for Beastieball! This wasn't one of our 10 planned Milestone updates; we just really really like Halloween and we decided to squeeze an extra update in a little bit quicker than usual to release some spooky-themed stuff in celebration. This update ended up a lot bigger than we planned, though...
This update does not introduce any new significant balance changes. The only relevant balance changes are to correct some unintended interactions. We will release one more Milestone update at the end of the year with corresponding balance changes, but we want more time until then to observe player data and test things out.
⚔️ PVP UPDATE!
- This update introduces PUBLIC LOBBIES! This is a very major new feature we have been building and testing behind the scenes for a while now. With this, you're now able to find and match up against other players anytime, anywhere and not just during timed events. This significantly reduces the barrier to entry to PvP and means many more people can play at their leisure without having to be active in external communities or have any friends.
You can visit SportNet and view a list of other players that are currently online and made themself available for matches. You can then issue a challenge to any of them, and if they accept, you will be paired and sent to a lobby together. By default, players only appear in this list if they are currently browsing for opponents. But if you enable "Continuous Matchmaking," you will appear as online and available to accept challenges even while doing other activities in the game. You can do hangouts, hunt for raremorphs, play post-game challenges, or do whatever you want while awaiting challenges from other players.
This implementation is inspired by what we've seen in projects like Fightcade and Board Game Simulator. It would have been very "easy" for us to simply enable the anonymous matchmaking queue we use for Bigmoon Bashes 24/7. However, in practice that wouldn't work well for this game. Beastieball simply has too many different things for players to do, and most of them are single-player, so we needed to engineer a system that allowed players to find others while still enjoying single-player content. This system also scales well when the game has very few active players or very many. Having clear information about how many potential opponents are active and available makes it easier to know how long it may take to find a match, reducing frustration. It also lets you find opponents in whatever your custom rules are, accounting for the fact that different players have broadly different taste when it comes to time limits, game length, undos, etc. which all have to be static in anonymous queues like we have for Bashes.
This is the most exciting change we've ever implemented for player VS player interactions. We hope coaches around the world enjoy jumping in and challenging some new opponents!
🖼️ Beastie Art Updates
-
For this update, we focused on Halloween-y Beasties! It's a smaller update than usual, but the nice thing for us is that it lightens the workload we had planned for upcoming updates.
- Yueffowl: Animation COMPLETE!
- Albrax: Animation COMPLETE!
- Skulkapi: Animation COMPLETE!
- Jellibat: Animation COMPLETE!
- Wisper: Animation COMPLETE!
- Mistic: Animation COMPLETE!
The number of Beasties marked as complete has gone from 38 to 44.
✨Game Updates
- New Story Content!
- You can now get contact information for Callisto and it is possible to max out your hearts with her
- These hangouts are a bit different than most! Come prepared for a bit of a challenge.
- Environmental Improvements!
- Check out Beastieball Academy for a suite of detailed new areas! Harlow lovingly put these together for players who spend their days grinding matches in the Tower Tourney or Draft Challenge.
- There are some subtle new background details for Tower Tourney too. A wider variety of Beasties can appear when using Rally, and you may occasionally spot other characters in the background.
- We also made some changes to models in Begonia and Attalea Path
- Team generation for Draft Challenge, Tower Tourney, and the "Random Team" setting in Sportnet has been overhauled greatly. Team diversity is much higher now, with many more Beasties and sets getting used than before.
- SP Rewards from Rank Defense have been overhauled, specifically SP earned passively.
- Previously, you'd earn 5 SP anytime your Rank Defenders defeated another player. Now, you'll earn 2 SP anytime they challenge another player, and 8 SP if they win.
- This means you'll see updates from your team much more frequently! Since wins are very hard to control, players will still earn passive rewards even if their team doesn't win very often. (And to be honest, most teams don't! Player VS AI is always statistically going to be very in favor of players.)
- Awards will apply retroactively, so if you've been playing Rank Defense in past updates you can visit Marlin for a nice little bonus.
- Sweeping fixes and changes to improve stability and memory management, particularly texture management which was a growing issue as we added more animation. Fixed many underlying engine issues as well. The game now uses much less memory in general which should vastly reduce the number of "random" crashes and errors players can encounter.
- Many stability fixes that were previously only applied to PC builds are now applied to Mac as well. There is a downside to this... Mac builds are even harder to make now and we will not be able to update them as frequently.
🎧 Audio Updates
- NEW TRACK: VS. The Magic Moons
- New Beastie voices added! We hadn't done a pass on these in a while. Listen out for new voices from these familiar friends:
- Shooga, Supassum and Supilero
- Opposur
- Noizard
- Musselbound
- Druppa and Scauldra
- Petula
- Bindiva
- Platypulse
📰 Upcoming Spooky Bash!
BIGMOON BASH: SPOOKY BEASTIES!
- A Bigmoon Bash is coming this weekend! This one is a contest between spooky themed Beasties. Jump into the game next weekend and challenge coaches around the world to help your favorite Beastie win the Bash!
🚧Other Fixes and Changes
- Various AI improvements and fixes; among other things, the notorious "AI uses stinky instead of tagging out" issue is fixed
- Adjusted sizing and positioning on Gastic, Wisper and Mistic to reduce bad overlaps in sport matches
- Changed Foggy trait to better interact with Contest/Snipe
- Direct damage (ie. via Nettle) now can wipe a shielding Beastie if they have only 1 stamina remaining as intended
- Fix for move selection not updating if a status effect is applied by an opponent Stirring Plumask on your offense turn
- Air bobbing tweens are now applied to flying Beasties when in static poses
- Fix for menu bugs when initiating a rematch with Callisto on Tuesdays
- If Ironman Mode is enabled, Ironman rules will be ignored during games that can reward EXP. This prevents desyncs in networked games for Ironman players and allows them to participate in post-game challenges normally.
- Changed Broslidon's level-up learnset to better match Leobro's
- Fixed missing collision in the Crown Stadium atrium
- Added more pop-ups for trait being ignored by Maverick
- Fixed some minor visual hiccups that can occur while AI is processing action during matches
- Beasties that are off the field no longer can appear to be Tractor Beamed
- Fixed display issues on the metamorph screen when Beasties have unusual color inheritance (most commonly players noticed this when checking the eye color of their Sprecko after it metamorphed).
- Adjusted the display size of bars in Beastie stat boxes particularly in Team Detail view
- The game no longer checks for a new Rank Defens eopponent when returning from a Rank Defense challenger match, preventing odd behaviour when a match is started before midnight and ends on the following calendar date.
- Adjusted a couple visual issues with floors in some areas
- Fixes for Mimic combined with Quick Tag in networked matches
- Adjusted some text spacing for big character reveal splash text in Chinese
- Fixed some camera pops and stutters when changing camera angles with low camera motion settings enabled
- Tweaked Beastie scale on a special endgame screen
- Improved menu flow for Tower Tourney difficulty selection etc.
- Various small stability improvements to lobbies corresponding to the new PvP features
- Fix for the wrong Beastie appearing on the "new recruit!" screen if the same specie is recruited multiple times consecutively
- Adjusted a story flag for Jack relating to commenting on your team title if the player encounters Jack before unlocking team titles
- Fix for duplicate plays in team edit menu
- Fix for Riven rematch hangout event not working if player hasn't finished the main story
- Fix for misaligned inventory text in Chinese
- Removed a buggy level load triggered by cancelling a certain in-story matchmaking menu
- Added extra collision to prevent players falling into a pit inside Rutile ballcenter at specific story points
- Fixed Dispel-like effects on certain Beastie combo plays
- *Removed randomness from AI opponents in Sports Problems
- *Fixed some collision in new academy rooms
- *Broke and then fixed targeting with the Launcher trait
- *Limited view scrolling in the map to prevent seeing stuff far out of bounds
- *Tweaked the trait on one Bandicraft set in the Tower Tourney
- *Added certain plays to certain coaches' favor lists (more accurately, fixed ids for plays that were intended to be there)
- *Changed so all games played after the end of the story use organic shroom balls
- *Fixed perma-wipe behaviour for expeditions
- *Added missing SFX for when you get a PVP challenge
- *Several lobby/quickmatch stability fixes for Bigmoon Bashes