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It’s that time again - our preview of what to expect from Skullgirls Mobile in 2021!
While we have done our best to reallocate team members internally to help give both titles the support they need, at the end of the day we are still a small (but growing) team adapting to juggling a lot of new development.
One of the key goals we had for the start of 2021 was to ensure that we had an established, sustainable strategy in place for new content for both SG2E and SGM, hence our announcement of the SG2E Season 1 Pass and our partnership with Future Club which promises (at least) 3 additional brand new characters in the months to come.
Now that Annie / Season 1 has launched successfully on Steam Early Access, we are in the process of finalizing tuning changes for her (and other characters), finishing her Story Mode, and prepping the DLC update for PS4, all within the next couple of months. While there’s still plenty to do, once these initial releases are out of the way, we expect to have more bandwidth and flexibility to recalibrate our development efforts across SGM and SG2E.
While this has all required a bit of extra up front attention to properly set up, we’re confident that this investment in our development pipeline and process will help us set the right foundation for both versions in 2021 and beyond.
Of course, we still have plenty in store for SGM that we can’t wait to share with you (more on that below!), but we just wanted to provide some context up front in light of the unique circumstances.
Thanks (as always) for your patience and support! <3
As such, what we describe below may not 100% match exactly what makes it into the game - it should at least give you an idea of where our priorities lie in the not too distant future.
1. New Content
All the traditional favorites! Characters/Fighters, Master Story Modes, Origin Stories, etc.
2. Quality of Life Updates to Old Modes & Systems
While many of the current gameplay modes have served us well over the years, we know many of them are a little long in the tooth and could benefit from updates to better serve their original intended purposes while minimizing tedium.
BRAND NEW CHARACTER #2
As noted earlier, we are hard at work with Future Club on our 2nd brand new character! Unlike Annie, who launched on mobile first and then made her way to SG2E months later, we are building this new character with the intention of both characters being made available at (more or less) the same time.
Expect all the standard goodies that come with a new character -- a slew of new Fighters, Prize Fights, Daily Events, Relics, plus a new stage and more. We’ll be announcing the new character in the near-ish future, so stay tuned to our social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) and/or the official Discord for the latest news.
FACILITATING FIGHTER PROGRESSION
Leveling up your Fighters in Skullgirls requires a lot of time, energy, and resources. While some of this is by design (we are a F2P Fighting RPG, after all), there are definitely aspects of it that have proven to be more tedious than originally intended.
As such, to help improve this moving forward, we plan to explore a number of options, including those below:
XP Events
As many of you are already aware, we recently did a test run of a new XP Event called Holodeck Hazards that was very well received. We are in the process of taking all of that feedback into account to make the event more rewarding/viable for a wider variety of players and to determine a schedule of availability that is a little bit less demanding. Stay tuned!
XP Consumables
While it can be awesome to get a new Fighter that you’ve been coveting for ages, we know it can be disheartening to know - even with XP Boosts - how long it will be before that Fighter will be leveled up enough to be in a usable state. As such, we are exploring XP Consumables that you could collect and spend to immediately provide significant spikes of XP.
Evolution
We know it’s common practice for players to level up “food” Fighters that will eventually be used for Evolution so you can wring as many Skill Points out of them as possible. We are exploring revisions to the Evolution process that will render this process obsolete.
Duplicate Fighters
Although we added ways for players to consume Diamond Fighters to beget resources, we are interested in exploring more methods by which Duplicate Fighters can provide more value to your Collection in the future.
DAILY EVENTS & PRIZE FIGHTS
For many players, the vast majority of their time is spent playing one of these two modes, each of which have known points of friction that we’re eager to improve upon.
Daily Events
While Dailies provide a reliable source of Skill Points, Gold Moves, and Canopy Coins, the process of “mining” the event for those rewards ceases to be compelling as players progress into the mid-late game. We are looking into ways in which players who have established mastery over that content will be able to glean those rewards with far less effort and overhead.
Prize Fights
When Skullgirls Mobile first launched, Gold Prize Fights were invaluable tools for burgeoning mid-game players to be able to secure Gold Fighters for each Character to help bolster their Collection, conquer new content, and facilitate Diamond Evolution. As time has gone on, the PF point thresholds required for players to achieve the top 10% reward has gotten so high that this is no longer a reliable source for those players.
As such, we are looking into ways in which we can provide more compelling and rewarding Prize Fight content for late game players so that Gold Prize Fights can cater to their original intended audience and more closely fill their original role.
INCREASED RELIC AGENCY
While there is a certain purity to raw RNG, our current Relic logic leaves much to be desired, especially for players who covet certain Fighters. As such, we are planning to explore methods by which players will be able to exhibit more agency to get the Fighters that they want.
ORIGIN STORIES
This really speaks to two different chunks of content - Master Origin Stories and Brand New Origin Stories:
Master Origin Stories
We are excited to provide (long overdue) Master versions to our existing Origin Stories! Specifics are TBD, but you can expect that they will roll out in the order that they were originally released.
Brand New Origin Stories
These are a little bit trickier to predict given the array of resources required to deliver them (and how some of that overlaps with the resources needed for new Character development), but we are itching to do more of these as soon as we can. While we can’t strictly promise a new Origin Story before the end of 2021, know that it’s something we’ll be pushing for!
OTHER POTENTIAL FEATURES / IMPROVEMENTS
While the ultimate priority of these features is still TBD, we wanted to briefly acknowledge them to reassure you that they are indeed on our radar, even if their fate for 2021 is still up in the air:
Prioritizing features inherently means deprioritizing others. Without going into all of them, we minimally wanted to acknowledge one key feature (or set of features) that we know are top of mind for many of you:
Guilds
...yeah.
I mean, when you think about it, “Soon” is relative, right?
In brief, while we’re incredibly excited about the potential for Guilds and Guild-related Content, to do so properly requires a fair amount of infrastructure and supporting features. We have a plan, but realistically we feel that fortifying the core of the game per the notes above are ultimately more important for our long term success.
Looking forward to sharing more about our Guild plans as we approach 2022!
In the absence of our ability to physically gather, we’ve been looking for more opportunities to do live event-style giveaways. First up, look no further than the recently announced Skullgirls Championship Series! Make sure to tune in to the Qualifiers and Finals to unlock access to juicy in-game prizes.
Also, two of our team members stream regularly on Twitch and are known to periodically give away goodies -- be sure to follow TheAlmightyBones (Twitch, Twitter) and JujuBlu (Twitch, Twitter) so you don’t miss out!
WRAPPING UP
That's about it!
Needless to say, we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds, and we wouldn’t be in the position to be able to give Skullgirls the attention it deserves without your dedication and support.
Lastly, if there’s anything in particular you are hoping to see in 2021 (either as a part of the items mentioned above or as something new entirely), don’t be shy about sharing them below - we’re always listening!
Thanks once again for all of your support!
<3 MightyZug (Charley) and all of us at Hidden Variable:
AlmightyBones
belltier
Cellsai
ChatCop
Cleverfox
Genasi
Grimlock9
jennygenius
JuJuBlu
Kromenak
Liam
Pen Stroke Pony
PsychotronTM
Sam Handwich
sixteenbits
FIRST THINGS FIRST
As many of you are no doubt aware, this post is coming a bit later than usual. While there are a number of factors at play - the most notable has been the fact that Hidden Variable has recently taken over development of Skullgirls 2nd Encore (SG2E) in addition to Skullgirls Mobile (SGM) as a result of the events of last year, all of which has kept us pretty busy!While we have done our best to reallocate team members internally to help give both titles the support they need, at the end of the day we are still a small (but growing) team adapting to juggling a lot of new development.
One of the key goals we had for the start of 2021 was to ensure that we had an established, sustainable strategy in place for new content for both SG2E and SGM, hence our announcement of the SG2E Season 1 Pass and our partnership with Future Club which promises (at least) 3 additional brand new characters in the months to come.
Now that Annie / Season 1 has launched successfully on Steam Early Access, we are in the process of finalizing tuning changes for her (and other characters), finishing her Story Mode, and prepping the DLC update for PS4, all within the next couple of months. While there’s still plenty to do, once these initial releases are out of the way, we expect to have more bandwidth and flexibility to recalibrate our development efforts across SGM and SG2E.
While this has all required a bit of extra up front attention to properly set up, we’re confident that this investment in our development pipeline and process will help us set the right foundation for both versions in 2021 and beyond.
Of course, we still have plenty in store for SGM that we can’t wait to share with you (more on that below!), but we just wanted to provide some context up front in light of the unique circumstances.
Thanks (as always) for your patience and support! <3
2020 RECAP
As a quick reminder of all of the fun stuff we accomplished over the course of the past year:- FUKUA emerged from our dreams to haunt our reality. We all now have nightmares of Splitting Image to show for it.
- ANNIE OF THE STARS at long last made the leap from the silver screen, kicking off a whole new set of Characters still to come! (Sagan also stole the Loading Screen spotlight from George… for now).
- Rift Battles got a HUGE update to make them completely asynchronous.
- Molly setup Mission Control, introducing Accolades and Deployments.
- Heaps of new BUFFS (Miasma, Auto-Block) and DEBUFFS (Fatigue, Guard Break, Immobilize) were added. You’re welcome / We’re sorry!
- Adding up Annie, Fukua, and Holiday Fighters (Gang Green, Time Thief, and Beast King), 25 New Fighters joined the fray.
- Shiny Fighters are Shiny! Good luck with that
REDACTED% chance to get them! - Teeby and the Viewing Parlour burst onto the scene to provide the RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS content you all craved.
- Event Prize Fight rewards were updated to be juicier.
- We added the Fighter Catalog to make it easier to review the SAs for every Fighter and what you need to complete your Collection.
DISCLAIMERS
Just like our 2020, 2019, and 2018 Preview posts, the features below are going to be discussed in very broad terms. This is intentional. While we have clear goals, the route we take to achieve them often changes once we sink our teeth into the task at hand (and a little air of mystery is nice from time to time).As such, what we describe below may not 100% match exactly what makes it into the game - it should at least give you an idea of where our priorities lie in the not too distant future.
2021 ROADMAP
While there’s a lot to talk about, the sets of features we have planned for 2021 fall into these two main categories:1. New Content
All the traditional favorites! Characters/Fighters, Master Story Modes, Origin Stories, etc.
2. Quality of Life Updates to Old Modes & Systems
While many of the current gameplay modes have served us well over the years, we know many of them are a little long in the tooth and could benefit from updates to better serve their original intended purposes while minimizing tedium.
BRAND NEW CHARACTER #2
As noted earlier, we are hard at work with Future Club on our 2nd brand new character! Unlike Annie, who launched on mobile first and then made her way to SG2E months later, we are building this new character with the intention of both characters being made available at (more or less) the same time.
Expect all the standard goodies that come with a new character -- a slew of new Fighters, Prize Fights, Daily Events, Relics, plus a new stage and more. We’ll be announcing the new character in the near-ish future, so stay tuned to our social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) and/or the official Discord for the latest news.
FACILITATING FIGHTER PROGRESSION
Leveling up your Fighters in Skullgirls requires a lot of time, energy, and resources. While some of this is by design (we are a F2P Fighting RPG, after all), there are definitely aspects of it that have proven to be more tedious than originally intended.
As such, to help improve this moving forward, we plan to explore a number of options, including those below:
XP Events
As many of you are already aware, we recently did a test run of a new XP Event called Holodeck Hazards that was very well received. We are in the process of taking all of that feedback into account to make the event more rewarding/viable for a wider variety of players and to determine a schedule of availability that is a little bit less demanding. Stay tuned!
XP Consumables
While it can be awesome to get a new Fighter that you’ve been coveting for ages, we know it can be disheartening to know - even with XP Boosts - how long it will be before that Fighter will be leveled up enough to be in a usable state. As such, we are exploring XP Consumables that you could collect and spend to immediately provide significant spikes of XP.
Evolution
We know it’s common practice for players to level up “food” Fighters that will eventually be used for Evolution so you can wring as many Skill Points out of them as possible. We are exploring revisions to the Evolution process that will render this process obsolete.
Duplicate Fighters
Although we added ways for players to consume Diamond Fighters to beget resources, we are interested in exploring more methods by which Duplicate Fighters can provide more value to your Collection in the future.
DAILY EVENTS & PRIZE FIGHTS
For many players, the vast majority of their time is spent playing one of these two modes, each of which have known points of friction that we’re eager to improve upon.
Daily Events
While Dailies provide a reliable source of Skill Points, Gold Moves, and Canopy Coins, the process of “mining” the event for those rewards ceases to be compelling as players progress into the mid-late game. We are looking into ways in which players who have established mastery over that content will be able to glean those rewards with far less effort and overhead.
Prize Fights
When Skullgirls Mobile first launched, Gold Prize Fights were invaluable tools for burgeoning mid-game players to be able to secure Gold Fighters for each Character to help bolster their Collection, conquer new content, and facilitate Diamond Evolution. As time has gone on, the PF point thresholds required for players to achieve the top 10% reward has gotten so high that this is no longer a reliable source for those players.
As such, we are looking into ways in which we can provide more compelling and rewarding Prize Fight content for late game players so that Gold Prize Fights can cater to their original intended audience and more closely fill their original role.
INCREASED RELIC AGENCY
While there is a certain purity to raw RNG, our current Relic logic leaves much to be desired, especially for players who covet certain Fighters. As such, we are planning to explore methods by which players will be able to exhibit more agency to get the Fighters that they want.
ORIGIN STORIES
This really speaks to two different chunks of content - Master Origin Stories and Brand New Origin Stories:
Master Origin Stories
We are excited to provide (long overdue) Master versions to our existing Origin Stories! Specifics are TBD, but you can expect that they will roll out in the order that they were originally released.
Brand New Origin Stories
These are a little bit trickier to predict given the array of resources required to deliver them (and how some of that overlaps with the resources needed for new Character development), but we are itching to do more of these as soon as we can. While we can’t strictly promise a new Origin Story before the end of 2021, know that it’s something we’ll be pushing for!
OTHER POTENTIAL FEATURES / IMPROVEMENTS
While the ultimate priority of these features is still TBD, we wanted to briefly acknowledge them to reassure you that they are indeed on our radar, even if their fate for 2021 is still up in the air:
- New “Everests” to provide challenging content for late game players (e.g. a "Tower of Trials")
- Move Loadouts and other Move Organization improvements
- Move Stat Rerolling/Augmentation
- Voice Packs
- Fight Replays
Prioritizing features inherently means deprioritizing others. Without going into all of them, we minimally wanted to acknowledge one key feature (or set of features) that we know are top of mind for many of you:
Guilds
...yeah.
I mean, when you think about it, “Soon” is relative, right?
In brief, while we’re incredibly excited about the potential for Guilds and Guild-related Content, to do so properly requires a fair amount of infrastructure and supporting features. We have a plan, but realistically we feel that fortifying the core of the game per the notes above are ultimately more important for our long term success.
Looking forward to sharing more about our Guild plans as we approach 2022!
IN OTHER NEWS
LIVE EVENTS & GIVEAWAYSIn the absence of our ability to physically gather, we’ve been looking for more opportunities to do live event-style giveaways. First up, look no further than the recently announced Skullgirls Championship Series! Make sure to tune in to the Qualifiers and Finals to unlock access to juicy in-game prizes.
Also, two of our team members stream regularly on Twitch and are known to periodically give away goodies -- be sure to follow TheAlmightyBones (Twitch, Twitter) and JujuBlu (Twitch, Twitter) so you don’t miss out!
WRAPPING UP
That's about it!
Needless to say, we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds, and we wouldn’t be in the position to be able to give Skullgirls the attention it deserves without your dedication and support.
Lastly, if there’s anything in particular you are hoping to see in 2021 (either as a part of the items mentioned above or as something new entirely), don’t be shy about sharing them below - we’re always listening!
Thanks once again for all of your support!
<3 MightyZug (Charley) and all of us at Hidden Variable:
AlmightyBones
belltier
Cellsai
ChatCop
Cleverfox
Genasi
Grimlock9
jennygenius
JuJuBlu
Kromenak
Liam
Pen Stroke Pony
PsychotronTM
Sam Handwich
sixteenbits
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