Split or Steal 1.7.3 is Live!

Split or Steal 1.7.3 is now Live!

Priority Queue & Better Matchmaking

As spoken about at-length in the Dev Log on combating In-Game Toxicity, new measures have been put in place in order to try and stop the causes of toxic behaviour, rather than just fighting against the symptoms of it.

This new matchmaking format was originally rolled out in a very barebones format, and only affected new players since the 1.7.2 patch cycle. Overall, the system worked as intended - and has greatly improved the overall experience of the game for newcomers; making for a healthier in-game environment, and increasing overall retention of new players.

The primary focus of the work invested into the 1.7.3 patch was towards improving this system, using the observations gleamed from games played both by new users, and from better examining the general game history from our existing users.

As of tonight, this new matchmaking system will be being rolled out across the general playerbase. As with all major changes to existing core features, this rollout will be continually monitored; with updates made, and communicated on our Discord where necessary.

ORGs - Officer Roles & Transfers

One of the Longest requested features that has hit SoS since back in the WebGL days; ORGs now allow for additional Officer Roles, alongside allowing for full transfers of ownership.

ORG Owners can now assign users with the rights to manage applicants (accepting, or rejecting player applications to their ORG), alongside rights allowing a user to kick existing members from their ORG. And no, don't worry - someone you hand kick rights to cannot kick you as the Owner.

Alongside this, if life as a CEO is getting stale, you can now fully transfer an ORG's Ownership into newly elected hands.

Chat Improvements & Emoji

Brace yourselves.

The chat input field finally gets put into focus automatically when you start a new round!!

Along with this feat of technological advancement, you can now also more clearly see your own chat (via colour-coded names, inclusive of High Stakes/Anonymous rounds) - and, to top it all off, player animations now work as expected in High Stakes/Anonymous rounds.

Emoji & Chat Actions

One of the more pleasant surprises from an earlier patch came about from the inclusion of simple /roll, and /flip commands. Given that SoS is a game primarily based around social interactions, this shouldn't have come as such a surprise - but one place where we fell down, was in not communicating these well enough to new players. As a result, these features see a lot of use with players who were around for the patch where they launched - and barely any use among new players.

So, alongside being added as clickable buttons on the Chat UI, we're welcoming /card to the fray (draw a card from a standard deck of 52), alongside a small selection of in-vault animated emoji which can be triggered once per round.

I'll be hoping to expand more on the general chat systems (inclusive of ORG Chat) in some upcoming QoL patches. Given that it's the primary game mechanic in SoS (outside of the two buttons), it's very much deserving of more love.

Kongregate/WebGL Stream Splitting

With the major tech stream split between Kongregate/WebGL and the Standalone releases, porting updates to our Web Platforms is now a more arduous affair.

While all backend updates (such as the new Matchmaking system) will be reflected immediately on Kongregate/WebGL, changes which require clientside updates (such as the new ORG Roles, and Animated Emoji systems) will not appear in-game until the porting process has been completed.

While splitting the tech streams on these allows for far better performance and stability in the browser, it comes at the cost of a heavy amount of development time. Currently, I am estimating a minimum of a one week delay between minor patches/mini-updates being reflected on Kongregate/WebGL, until I can invest the time needed for developing better tools to aid in a faster porting process.

All Major Updates will continue to be deployed globally on all platforms, at the same time.

1.7.4+ : The QoL Cycle and Beyond

Since 1.7.0, SoS has followed a Mini-Update cycle which has introduced minor feature updates, and Quality of Life improvements in each patch.

Currently, there's still a substantial amount of new content which can be funneled in through the Mini-Update/QoL cycle, alongside a near-endless amount of QoL updates that are all very worthy of taking top spot for development priority.

However, while the Mini-Update schedule could practically be endless, it would also mean the end of major update patches - like the ones which originally brought us HQ's, Organizations, Karma, Artifacts, Leaderboards, Infinite HQ Scaling, and Heists.

Well, save for the black sheep that is Heists, all of these systems fundamentally changed the game in much greater ways than the Mini-Update cycle patches ever could.

As such, I'm currently committing to only one more Mini-Update; which I will primarily be focusing around purely QoL updates. Following this, development will then shift towards the next Major Update. I'll be sharing details on the next Major Update, alongside plans for releasing on new platforms (such as Android/iOS) over the upcoming weeks.

If you haven't yet, please be sure to join us on our Discord to find more players, ORGs, two-button-meta arguments, battle-hardened WebGL Veterans, and more!

More updates coming soon - please look after yourselves, be kind to eachother, and wash your hands before entering that Vault! ❤️