Season 2 Preview - Gameplay Changes

With Season 2 fast approaching, we'd like to take the time to go over some of the changes we will be doing to the core mechanics, and the reasoning behind them.

Card Type Abilities

One of the areas of concern we have with the current gameplay experience is related to the card type abilities:

• Strength - Offensive Rebound: Get +20 TURN METER

• Skill - Activate 2: Shoot 1

• Speed - Activate 2: Pass 1

• Will - Steal: Get +30 TURN METER

Balance wise, the STR and SPD abilities are significantly more powerful than their SKL & WILL counterparts.

SPD players on average get more activations than SKL players (around 20-25% more) due to their higher native playmaking. Even though the abilities look similar, SPD players trigger theirs more often. The fact that the second trigger requires 4 activations also works against SKL as there are very few players of that archetype that can reliably get to 4 activations in a single match.

STR is the most problematic because it enables chain activations on the same team. How this works is:

• One of your player activates and shoots

• You get offensive rebounds on your STR players and they get turn meter

• The turn meter they get pushes them over the activations threshold

• STR player activates and shoots

• More offensive rebounds that push other STR players over the activation threshold

• This can repeat several times, allowing 3-5 consecutive activations

Let's call this the Valaciunas paradox.

The more you shoot, the more offensive rebounds you get. The more offensive rebounds, the more activations you get. The more activations you get, the more you shoot, and so on. Overall, it's not a great experience for anyone playing against it.

When we compare it to the WILL ability, the turn meter boost from stealing occurs on the opponent's turn. This will break the consecutive activation chain, and allow for a more even distribution of the activations. You get the chance to react to what the opponent is doing, which is great for the gameplay experience.

All of this being said, we are happy with the SPD & WILL abilities, but are changing the SKL and STR ones to the following:

• Strength - Defensive Rebound 2: Get +15 TURN METER

• Skill - Shoot: Give opponent +10% FOUL CHANCE this turn

The STR ability is moving to defensive rebounding. It will now act in the same way as the WILL one, in that it will break chain activations for your opponent because it now generates the turn meter on their turn.

For SKL we wanted to try something different. We've been wanting to incorporate fouling into the core experience for a while, and taking this opportunity to do so. Gameplay wise, this makes SKL players more reliable scorers (from extra free throws) compared to the previous version.

Mismatch/Dominated

Another area we though needed improvement was the Mismatch/Dominated matrix and abilities. Currently we have SKL > SPD > STR > WILL > SKL, and the current bonuses are:

• Strength - +20 OFFENSE & +20 REBOUNDING

• Skill - +30 OFFENSE

• Speed - +20 OFFENSE & +10 PLAYMAKING

• Will - +20 OFFENSE & +10 DEFENSE

One first issues is that the bonuses mismatch gives are too powerful. They are equivalent to three tier 1 buffs. We are toning them down to be equivalent to two tier 1 buffs.

Secondly, the current structure does not make much sense when we consider how the archetypes have evolved. We decided to change the mismatch matrix and abilities as follows:

SPD > SKL SPD players get +10 OFFENSE & +10 PLAYMAKING when facing a SKL players. SPD player are supposed to be active playmakers. They are the best passers in the game, while SKL has the least steal. They will out activate, out maneuver and out volume their SKL opponents.

SKL > STR STR players get -10 DEFENSE & -5% BLOCK when facing a SKL players. SKL players are shooters, with a focus on 3P shots. 3P shots are rarely blocked, and big men don't generally defend well against them.

STR > WILL WILL players get -10 DEFENSE & -15 REBOUNDING when facing a STR players. WILL players are good defenders, but it's difficult to defend against big men in the paint. Similarly, while WILL players are the 2nd best rebounders in the game, STR players will assert their dominance in rebounding when going for the same ball.

WILL > SPD WILL players get +10 OFFENSE & +7% STEAL when facing a SPD players. WILL players will shut down the pass focused SPD players more easily. Their native high defense is already good enough to prevent SPD players from scoring, but they need a bit of help on the offensive side to keep up on the scoring side.

All these changes will be available on the steam beta branch starting next week. Details on how to access it will be posted separately.

Thank you for reading, and good luck!