Developer Update: 13/12/2017 - Next Week's Patch Notes Revealed! | Forums

[ThatDarnSteve]

Developer Update - 13/12/2017

Hey, everyone! Steve from RedLynx here. You may have noticed that over the last week the forums, and the unofficial Reddit and Discord were a little quiet. Unfortunately, I've been out with a cold, and it has been quite busy times for UbiDomZ and the rest of our team. Now that I'm all better, we have another brief developer update for you all!

THIS WEEK

TODAY we're proud to welcome a new member to our community team! ItsJustBuck will be hanging out here, answering questions, looking at your feedback, helping resolve issues, writing sweet guides, and other cool stuff! Here are a few words from the man himself:

"Hey, Phone Destroyer fans! My name is Buck, AKA ItsJustBuck, I'm the new Community Manager for South Park: Phone Destroyer at RedLynx. I'll be working with ThatDarnSteve and UbiDomZ to answer questions and pass your feedback to the development team. I have been a fan of South Park since I was a kid and working on this project is truly amazing! I look forward to getting to know you all a little better. If we meet on the battlefield, feel free to throw a fart emote my way!"

He loves fart emotes. Seriously. If you're up around rank 45, be sure to send him all the fart emotes you can. ����

TOMORROW, we'll be undergoing a period of server maintenance starting at 9 AM UTC (2 AM Eastern/11 PM Pacific). Servers will be down for a short period of time, so please be advised that playing around that time may mean you can't finish a match if server maintenance has begun mid match. It isn't expected to last long, however.

We will also be having another weekly stream tomorrow! We're bringing back a fan favorite guest, our Creative Director Justin! If you have questions for him about the development of the project, or the creative vision moving forward, be sure to tune in tomorrow. That'll be over on our Twitch channel, http://twitch.tv/southparkphonedestroyer

THIS WEEKEND we will be starting a Pirate Week event! Players who beat the event will receive multiple copies of the brand new Buccaneer Bebe card GUARANTEED. Players who make it to the fourth prize pack should get her automatically! Buccaneer Bebe is a really awesome ranged unit. Keeping consistent with her schtick throughout themes, when Buccaneer Bebe kills a unit, she receives a buff. In this instance, it comes in the form of an increase to her damage. That means if you're out there slaying rats from behind a tank, Buccaneer Bebe is your first mate! She'll drop 'em quick and become all the more dangerous for it! Check out her badass card art below!

��- BE ADVISED, THE CHANGES BELOW THIS LINE WILL BE RELEASED NEXT WEEK -��

NEXT WEEK ��️

Next week we will be rolling out a technical update. The date isn't set in stone yet, however, as there is still further testing to be done. We'll have more info for you as soon as possible. Regarding the contents of this, though, I got you covered! This technical update will include some bug fixes, balance changes and other modifications, and behind-the-scenes improvements to the technical infrastructure of the game.

Bug Fixes ����️

- Disconnection Kenny has been modified to be transparent. This will allow you to see what exactly is going on behind the scenes when this pops up, but be advised, it won't be pretty! We've decided to make this transparent so that you can still see the action going on behind the scenes, and potentially react to it better when your connection resumes full functionality. You may see some issues like rubber-banding, or odd unit movement, or strange unit interactions, but we feel this is better than the alternative of not being able to see anything at all, and thus not be able to respond to the situation if you resume connectivity.

Some players have speculated that this is caused by some form of cheat, but that doesn't appear to be the case, as this pop-up is governed by YOUR client. This is caused by your device experiencing some form of lapse of connection. This can happen in a number of circumstances - minute fluctuations in network connectivity (even on WiFi!) happen from time to time, and the result is a disconnection of this variety. This can happen when switching on or off of WiFi, when changing cell towers, when moving between coverage areas or providers, when a player is connecting via a VPN, or any number of possibilities. Other services are not typically affected by these minute fluctuations (such as streaming video, or music) because they buffer, whereas Phone Destroyer is totally real time. In the future, we will be looking into solutions to make this experience far more stable.

Additional bug fixes:

- An issue where card pack opening animations were not displayed correctly has been fixed

- Banned Players will now be removed from the leaderboards

- An issue where music did not play correctly has been fixed

- An issue with Marine Craig's upgrade stats not being shown has been fixed

- Dozens of other minor fixes and improvements have been made

Modifications ��

Some minor modifications have been made that should improve the player experience. Namely, they are:

- Offers will now have a scrolling UI so that players can cycle between available offers - no longer will you be blocked from purchasing one simply because a new offer was put up

- Card Donation Count will now be reset in the Teams UI weekly - many team leaders have expressed a desire for a way to determine whether players on their team are still active in-game; now, every Sunday starting THIS SUNDAY (technically before the full update) the amount of donated cards will be reset in the team UI. Your overall donation stats will still be available, however.

EDIT: Overall donation numbers are not yet available in-game, but they will be added to player stats soon! At present, only weekly donation stats are displayed.

- The amount of wins for The Great Playwall of China have now been reduced. Don King Butters will now require you to win the following amount of matches:

Level	Current Win Requirement	Updated Win Requirement
Level 5	1	1
Level 10	1	0
Level 20	3	1
Level 25	4	1
Level 35	6	2
Level 41	7	3
Level 55	10	5
Level 60	10	5

Balance Changes After Next Week's Update ⚖️

- ��️ PC Principal will now be locked until Rank 25's Arena - Tower of Peace

- �� Catapult Timmy
This engine of destruction has had his pestilence factor decreased - now, Catapult Timmy will only spawn 2 rats, rather than 3. Previously, Catapult Timmy had nearly the efficacy of spawning rats AND a powerful ranged unit. Now, he'll still pack a punch, but he should be more balanced at this point rather than overpowered.

- ✌️ Zen Cartman
This rotund little pacifist was having an issue where a bug and an out of control upgrade tech tree was causing his attract range to get insanely large. He's still a reliable damage sink, but now his range has been reduced. His range at all levels will now be 2.2. This appears to be the sweet spot, after extensive testing. Zen Cartman will still be a massively useful unit, but he now won't be overpowered as he levels up.

- �� Purify
Many high-level players have spoken out about "the little spell that could", and we felt they had a lot of validity to their points. Our one energy cost cards are designed to be flexible, yet situational - they should be there to augment decks with higher energy costs so that players can keep things versatile. However, with an area of effect that spanned the entire battlefield, this versatility became a bit overpowering. In order to make this a more skill-based card, the range has been reduced. The starting radius for Purify was decreased from 3 to 1.5, and each upgrade now provides .007 additional range. Using the cleansing light of Purify to its fullest will now require timing and positioning, not just a random flick of the wrist.¨

Regarding balance, we will continue to listen to player feedback, combine it with data, and work toward a more exciting, competitive experience. There will be more balance changes in the future to be sure, but we will let your thoughts and playstyles guide us to the promised land of The Balanced Gameplay Kingdom.

Leave your thoughts and feedback down below, and feel free to shoot us a message on Facebook, drop us a tweet on Twitter, or build us a wall of text here on the forums! We'll use that feedback to help us make Phone Destroyer better. Until tomorrow's stream, I'll see you on the streets of South Park!

Love,
Steve��

[S4wert]

Not received the pack card. Lost my cash?

[RuleDenis]

Really nice update, i like the smaller radius on purify the nerf for catapult timmy(im using him), but you should do the same thing with mecha timmy (lower his mind control range, it shouldnt be global). When someone can put this card right after i put my tank behind my NK, it forces me to drop a unit near midle just because he can turn my troop against me. and he can still w8 kill the unit then mind control.

[Banquo911]

When you're having an easy time of someone they'll often stop playing after you take one of their health bars. Some babies do it after two. It's a lot more fun when you win with the other person playing cards right until they're knocked off, and I am sure to always do this.
A change to the win/lose mechanic might encourage people to play through to the end. differentiating between time out losses and outright losses was my thought - not losing a rank star (and not gaining one) for a time out loss/win would definitely incentivise playing through to the end.

[Stizz001]

Please give is the ability to filter cards in the deck building room. Whether we want to see just one or two attributes like scifi and mystical, or if we only want to see all spells, or all fliers, or all ranged. This would help a ton when you are trying to find one card to add to your deck, or if you want to say compare cards to figure out which show attributes to use (ie compare scifi vs adventure). I know a lot of people have wanted this, and not only would it be a huge upgrade to the players, but it should not be too hard to create either.

Thanks and I hope to see this soon.

Stizz001

[VWrath]

Legendaries are fun cards on paper. I have most of them (missing Stan of the Nine moons, Mecha Timmy and Medusa Bebe) and they all function differently and feel fun to use. The problem is that when you get to higher ranks, they become entirely impossible to use. It's impossible to keep a legendary at the same level as your common and rare cards. Heck, epics suffer from this a bit too but at least at level 3 they have access to enough upgrades to be usable in certain cases. However, even at level 2 (but often level 1) legendaries just don't have enough raw stats to be played. I'll see a few (I'm rank 50 atm) mecha timmys or others but they are very rare. I'm not saying at level 1 a legendary should be more powerful than a level 5 card but at the same time they are expected to be stronger than regular cards and right now they just aren't getting played. Everyone will play their Heidi, their zen cartman, their cupid wendys, catapult jimmys, etc. I barely ever see someone pull out a ninjew or event a gw cartman. I know that both gw cartman and mbp got nerfed earlier in the game's life but right now they sit unusable. It's a little dumb that a 3 cost zen cartman is objectively more useful in nearly all situations than a 6 cost legendary card for the same character. Same for Kenny. Inuit kenny is garbage. The effect is useless on offense because you're often killed by the lazer and at 4 cost you're better off with fantasy kenny or mystic kenny just because they cost less and do similar damage. Even cyber kenny has a better effect in a lot of cases for the same cost. It just sucks that I can never use my legendaries. There's no casual mode to just play for fun and whenever I try to build a team with them, they just get outclassed by level 4 and 5 cards that cost less and do more.

Just a thought. Thank you.

[MNTwinsRock]

Is there a fix in the works for the bug of when trying to open the first PVP Pack, the connection error Kenny popping up and then freezing the whole game??? Been waiting weeks for this.

[ahmerali222]

Cant agree enough about modifying Mecha Timmy's range, the rest of the nerfs are extremely welcome. Cat Timmy and Pirate Ship Timmy can't shoot unless an enemy is in range, why should Mecha Timmy be different? Makes Mecha Timmy way too powerful in a game that already has enough game-breakers.

[jc322011]

Mecha Timmys range needs adjustment.

Fireballs radius reduced.

HHK needs checked, he literally hits Nathan every time, no matter how many cards played.

Heidi needs cost increased.

[AdeptPopRocks]

[B][SIZE=3]- 🙏 Purify
Many high-level players have spoken out about "the little spell that could", and we felt they had a lot of validity to their points. However, with an area of effect that spanned the entire battlefield, this versatility became a bit overpowering. In order to make this a more skill-based card, the range has been reduced. The starting radius for Purify was decreased from 3 to 1.5, and each upgrade now provides .007 additional range. Using the cleansing light of Purify to its fullest will now require timing and positioning, not just a random flick of the wrist.¨

Well, I am rank 50 & I think if you nerf purify too hard, many other spells and abilities will be massively overpowered for play styles that don't spam negative effects at their opponents. For example, this will make my deck extremely vulnerable to Alien Queen Red, Poison Spell, any form of Global Speed Boost, Stan The Great or any other spell/ability that an opponent can cast on every one of my units... None of these things take any more skill than playing a purify card, yet they can render everyone of your units useless until they are dead...