We’re resurrecting the Dev Update again! We want to make sure that you’re in the know of everything going on in our world. Read on to hear some Shine Fusing fun facts, a recap of what we’ve been up to, and some sneak peeks of what’s up next.
Some recent highlights
Shine Fusing!
For those that missed the Q + A with Kindofsquishy and Jams, and/or have otherwise been under a rock the past week, we’re very excited to have launched Shine Fusing. This is something we’ve been cooking up for a really long time, so it has been really gratifying to see everyone getting their hands on the feature. We promised you graphs, so here - have some graphs!
As of June 5th 2022, 27,033 Shadow, 3,466 Gold and 833 Diamond cards have been minted for sets that are no longer sold (so excluding Mortal Judgement). This is the equivalent of 325,940 Meteorite cards being burnt.
The median trade value of Meteorite Genesis cards has gone up by over 60%, with Meteorite Trial of the Gods increasing in value by nearly 92%. Of the more widely available sets, Meteorite Core cards have increased in value by nearly 20% and Meteorite Mortal Judgement cards by over 42%. The only set that hasn’t experienced a major change in median trade values is Divine Order, though this set does currently have the highest supply. Please note that these figures cannot be considered an indicator of future performance.
$GODS spent in the Forge has gone up over 3x what it was prior to Shine Fusing launching. This means more $GODS for the Staking Rewards Pool when it launches!
First turn advantage
We’re very grateful for the time you all put into both testing the mana pip update, and providing us with feedback. We collected a stack of data on whether or not this made a difference, and though it made the game feel like there was a difference for a lot of you, it didn’t necessarily do anything to address the problem - particularly at the higher ranks. We aren’t going to move forward with this solution in the long term, as we feel the overall impact on the game has a lot of negative potential, without there being enough positive outcomes on the cards.
HP Bug
This one was solved a little while ago, but we wanted to take a moment to touch upon it as it was something that meant a lot to us internally. The infamous ‘God HP Bug’ took us 248 days, approximately 6389 coffees, and at least 6 detective noir trope references to solve, and it caused us a lot of grief while at large. Like all good crime mysteries, we realize now that the answer was right under our noses the whole time.
When this author reached out to the dev team to gain an understanding of the investigative tactics involved, she was met with a series of diagrams and dot point lists. Eventually, we landed on the TL;DR of the problem being so obscure it was evading all our attempts at reproduction, but we managed to get there in the end - by catching it red-handed during our daily stand up where we play the game and talk about the day ahead.
When asked for further comment, the devs involved simply twirled the mustaches they inexplicably had grown (presumably for this exact moment for some reason?) and quoted Sherlock Holmes until we muted them on Slack.
This isn’t the last time you’ve seen our team crack the case, and certainly, with our newly appointed Player Experience Task Force combating other bug crimes, we’ll be cleaning up these streets in no time at all.
Some things to look forward to
Bot squad
You will have no doubt heard by now, but we’ve assembled a crack team of experts to deal with the bot problem. It’s worth noting to any botters still hiding out there - we’re coming for you. Using automated software in any way is against our Terms of Service, and wherever you are, we will find you, and we will kill you(r account - with a ban - we aren’t Liam Neeson). We’re working on integrating some bot report tools that will enable players to give us the exact feedback we need to make calls on bots, so you can look forward to that too.
Automated weekend ranked rewards
This week will mark the first time we’ve distributed the Weekend Ranked rewards with no hands! The training wheels are officially off, and it now frees us up a lot more to put our focus on developing those other features you’ve been itching for. Daily Play and Earn, anyone?
UX/UI designers joining us
As our hiring efforts come to fruition, we’ve had a bunch of new employees join the fold, not least of which are some researchers and UX/UI designers. You’ll start to see more surveys more regularly, but what you might *not* necessarily see is the ramped-up internal playtesting that comes with those hires (and a few others). We’ve always been very proud of our ability to ‘punch above our weight’ when it comes to playtesting, but we know that we’re a ways to go before we’re the perfect polished game we’d like to be bringing you all. This will help a lot with that and folds into our overall strategy of reforging our foundations so that we can build into the future.
Open deck list
This one is still a little while away, but we know that deck peeking has been something that many of you have had lots of thoughts on. We’ve run through as many options as we can here, and have landed on full transparency as being the only non-flawed solution here. So we’ll be building in a feature that enables everyone to be on exactly the same page from the start, with an open deck list. We are aware this may have broader effects on the meta, so we will be sure to keep a close eye on it.
That’s it for this week, mortals. Tune in for future instalments as we aim to bring you more regular updates on what’s going on with the team.
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