1. #1
    ThatDarnSteve's Avatar CommunityDeveloper
    Join Date
    Jun 2017
    Location
    Helsinki, Finland
    Posts
    115

    Developer Update: Legendary Season Rewards, Improved Matchmaking, and Improving PvP

    Developer Update 10/01/2018


    Hey, everyone! Steve from RedLynx here with another Developer Update! This one has a few interesting bits of info about what’s coming today, this week, this month, and beyond. Things have been a little quiet over the holiday season, as much of the team took time to be with their families and enjoy the holidays, but now we’re back at it, and trucking forward on improving Phone Destroyer with even more of that fiery RedLynx passion! 🔥😎

    Our next update isn’t too far off, but it is PACKED with awesome stuff - including some BIG game changers! 💥 So, it’ll still take a bit more time to finish and test.
    We’re adding new features (some of which were mentioned in AvrgGuy777’s awesome video about improving the game), making huge improvements, and making Phone Destroyer even more rad than before. I can’t spill the beans yet, but there will be some very Teams friendly 😏 things coming! I’ll get into how else we’ll be improving a little bit down below, but the REAL details will come in the notes for that update.

    So… what’s new?


    TODAY
    I’ve been seeing a lot of folks mention matchmaking as a bit of a pain in the ***, so after discussing the issue with the team, we’ve decided to jump on this as fast as we can. ⚡

    Right about NOW, we’re putting an improvement to matchmaking live server-side. You likely won’t notice the implementation in any way, but you’ll notice the impact. Normally, matchmaking attempts to find you a match quickly 🏃 - in order to do that, you’re able to matchmake with users that are +/- 5 ranks of you. Now, our matchmaking system will spend more time trying to find someone your rank, and will conduct more searches for players your rank than before, before “giving up” and moving on to expand its search to players of other ranks. 🔍

    We’re going to continue to improve the functionality of matchmaking to make it more fair and even, but for now, this should definitely help.


    THIS WEEK
    More goings-on this week include a bit of a change to our weekly stream. Rather than coming on at 7 AM Pacific, we’ll be moving to 8 PM Pacific time. That means we’ll be on pretty early here in Helsinki, but we’d like to give our Friday events more of a showcase AS THEY GO LIVE in the future. So if you’re in Europe, snag a cup of coffee with your ol’ buddy Steve, and watch with breakfast in bed! ☕☀️

    People have also been asking for a Fantasy event, and I’m stoked to say there will be an event this weekend that features Spells and Fantasy cards! It should be pretty sweet, and will allow you to score some Fantasy loot, and more awesome stuff. ⚔️ For those users who haven’t yet hit Rank 15 and unlocked Fantasy, you might want to get there before Friday! Unfortunately the event won’t be live yet for THIS week’s stream, but we’ll be showing off the cards it’ll use, so be sure to tune in! 🛡️ You can find us on Twitch via the username SouthParkPhoneDestroyer! 👍


    THIS MONTH
    Bad news first. On the 22nd of January, we will have an 8 HOUR scheduled maintenance starting at midnight (0000 UTC). 🛠️ All Ubisoft online services will be unavailable during this period, including our beloved South Park: Phone Destroyer. It’s unfortunate, but very necessary. 😿

    Now… for the good stuff! This month, we’ll have a few rad events for you all, and we’ll be giving season-end prizes to all of our Legendary players according to their rank! That means we’ll be having a Legendary Rank Reset! 😻 Top players will receive exclusive prizes, and all the prizes for every tier below theirs in Legendary! 🏆🎁 We’re still working to figure out exactly how long a season should be in the future (lots of things to factor in here, as you all know!)

    We will also be announcing what the precise prizes for each Rank group will be very soon! The end of this season will be February 1st! (Sure, not technically this month, but it’s pretty darn close…! ) So if you’ve been sandbagging, get it moving, my dude!


    BEYOND…
    Another big change coming to Phone Destroyer has to do with the stability and reliability of PvP matches, and the ability to prevent cheating or other unwanted player behaviors in PvP. 👊

    Improving this element of the game is our absolute top priority, as it truly is the heart and soul of Phone Destroyer. 💖 I mean, who doesn’t love crushing their enemies and seeing them driven before them in fair, balanced, and stable matches…?! 😏 Obviously, making changes to the PvP system is a massive undertaking, and a quite complex task, so this will take time to fully come to fruition, and be done in stages so as to keep improvements as timely and steady as we can get them. “What are these changes, my dearest Steve?”, you ask? Well, you’ll be happy to know that we decided to make the investment of time and resources required to move critical elements of PvP server side.
    🖥️

    This will be an ongoing process, but the first phase will take place with our next content update in the near future. It’s gunna be sweeeet because this change should help us to improve PvP drastically over time, and greatly limit the occurrence of cheating. I’ll have more info on how this is progressing as we near completion of various milestones! 🗓️

    We’ll have more news for you all soon on new events, our next update, and so on, but you can rest assured we are working hard on improvements, and looking forward to the future of South Park: Phone Destroyer!

    Until next time, I’ll see you New Kids on the streets of South Park! 😎

    Love,
    Steve 🚀
     2 people found this helpful
    Share this post

  2. #2

    Great Stuff

    Can't wait to hear more about those Legendary rewards!
    Share this post

  3. #3
    That all sounds great!

    I hope when you say "teams friendly" that includes smaller teams too, not just teams that have a ton of members. Small teams love the game and support it too, even if some of us have trouble making it to double digit membership!
    Share this post

  4. #4
    @ThatDarnSteve


    Ok this is a step in the right direction looking forward to the full implementation.

    Do you have a general approximation on moving the Cheat vulnerable parts of PVP to server side where it is protected? 1 month 3 months 6 months? Time frame is a bit Vague.

    Would appreciate a bit more transparency on this. Given the amount of time this issue has existed where we were told Trollbane would fix this issue which it clearly didn't, and lack of response to that inquiry we kept saying it didnt work but no one would come out to acknowledge that we were right and that you folks would be working on a new solution a lot of time has passed and due to lack of communication or acknowledgement you folks have lost a lot of trust.

    The length of time it took for you folks to finally respond to what we have been trying to say the whole time that Trolbane doesn't work and that it needs to be moved server side. Does not give the feeling that

    Improving this element of the game is our absolute top priority, as it truly is the heart and soul of Phone Destroyer.

    ...is really true. That trust is going to have to be earned with more transparency and owning up to mistakes that were made.

    We definitely do not want another we will be working on this soon to have another 6 months go by with no effective resolution or even a single reply to our statements that Trollbane wasn't working in the first place.

    You folks need to follow up on you claims and promises, you folks said that Buck was brought to the team to answer our questions yet in the forums where we ask questions we do not get replies, so how can you say someone is brought on to answer our questions and then not have follow through.

    Also Steve for the Multi Theme deck issue rather than the current fix you folks are proposing, where people can still use the bug could you guys maybe just remove the random deck function till you come up with a complete fix?

    No one is really going to miss It and it is how the bug gets used in the first place.

    While we appreciate you folks announcing that you will be working on it and soon and its top priority we have all heard that before so please follow though on this and communicate with us along the way. Cause saying you will do something soon and making us wait six month before addressing our questions about a failed system but worse not answering our questions the whole time is really unacceptable.

    So I hope this new reach out will have some follow through and you folks will communicate along the way and actually answer some of our questions when we ask in official announcement at the official forums.

    Cheers Ty

    I hope you reply to some of these questions either here or on reddit.

    Saying that you care and just answering a few convenient questions does not show communications you need to come out and answer some of the hard ones.

    Do you want to keep losing people slowly or do you want to come and actually talk to us and answer some of the legitimate concerns?

    Cause if you want to keep some of the people that are upset from leaving and you want some of the many people who have already left to return it's gonna take some ownership of lack of communication in the past and some effort of communicating in the present and future.

    Cause vague dates and promises were given before by you with no follow though after a long period with no reprocess to our questions.

    So if you folks truly care as you say you do how about a bit more transparency and communication.

    Maybe start with answering some of the questions I ask here which is almost exactly what I asked you at reddit.

    TY look forward to your response.Communicating and owning up to some mistakes in lack of communicating wold really help generate some of the trust that you lost.
     1 people found this helpful
    Share this post

  5. #5
    Speaking of matchmaking, I'm REALLY tired of being matched up against people with the same deck as I have 100% of the time. I've been doing some testing by switching deck types and cards every match, and the outcome is the same as before I started switching, the other "player" has the same type and a lot of the same cards. The outcome should not be 100% of the time if it wasn't being done on purpose.

    I say "player" because sometimes I doubt the opponent is human. At an average of about every 5th opponent, it gives me a free win as the "person" is seemingly away. The majority of those I go against, play the same way, place cards in the same spots on the field, and plays just like an AI would. None of them use emotes, I assumed it was because people cried about them so viewing them was taken out, but now I'm starting to think otherwise.
    Share this post

  6. #6
    The tinfoil hat is strong with this one. I dunno about you but I go against people who use emojis all the time..
    Share this post

  7. #7
    ItsJustBuck's Avatar Community Manager
    Join Date
    Dec 2017
    Location
    Finland
    Posts
    193

    Quick update about Legendary Reset

    Hey everyone, Buck here.

    I just wanted to clarify the Legendary Rank Reset. All players that have made the climb up to Legendary rank and earned that shiny gold shield, will be placed down to Rank 50, following the reset. This should create an exciting race to see who can make it back to Legendary the quickest!

    Hope that cleared up any questions about that topic. More info about those sweeeet rewards will be coming soon!


    -Buck
    Share this post

  8. #8

    Help me!

    It's nice to hear such news! But recently I had a problem - I was stolen account in Google Play, so I lost access to the game! I turned to the support of yubisoft, the support of the game and to Google, but they did not help. What should I do? It's almost impossible to return the account for the second time, because the hacker changed the password and phone number, and the second-stage check is disabled (in my video - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTkV05Y-RUg - CAUTION! RUSSIAN LANGUAGE!) . I have no choice but to write to one of the creators of the game! Help me! Mail for communication - vgoralex@gmail.com
    Share this post

  9. #9
    I wonder why you use rank alone for matchmaking, it is "meaningless" as long as you get matched with someone 3 levels above you, that means they have better cards than you, and you better close the game and reload (10 seconds) than spend 3 minutes being violated. You should also look for someone +-1 levels.
    Share this post

  10. #10
    Originally Posted by MrManso_ Go to original post
    I wonder why you use rank alone for matchmaking, it is "meaningless" as long as you get matched with someone 3 levels above you, that means they have better cards than you, and you better close the game and reload (10 seconds) than spend 3 minutes being violated. You should also look for someone +-1 levels.
    That is actually a really bad idea.

    1. Being at a higher level doesn't neccessarily mean better cards. Let's say you have only been upgrading the cards of 2 different themes and your opponent has evenly upgraded all 4 themes. He can have a higher level than you and still have cards in his deck that are less upgraded.
    2. A second reason why a higher pvp level doesn't have to mean better cards is that you also gain exp from giving donations. You could donate yourself to a higher level and with your proposed matchmaking system be punished for it by being matched against people who have given no donations and therefor have reached their pvp level only by upgrading cards.
    3. If matchmaking is based on your pvp level, you can theoretically reach any rank with any level. I you happen to be the best pvp level 7 player in the world and you only get matched with players level 6-8, you can get to rank 50. In fact leveling up cards could become bad for you.
    Share this post