• [2018/06/22]
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OFFICIAL: 2023 PREVIEW

Yay new gamemode and avatars lets go. Excited for new fighter drops makes the game feel like a traditional gacha game now, looking forward to see how they are handled. Hopefully we dont get powercrept in new releases. I would still like a better pity system. New golds every month means elemental exclusives are going to be even tougher to pull.

Battlepass and anti cheat are good additions. Battlepasses are usually grindy in pc/console games but if the pass has missions like clash of clans style where normal play fills it up then I can see myself purchasing the pass. Depends on the rewards being worth the price ofcourse.

Profile customizations are neat give us borders for completing the story star missions and I will get to grinding them. Character box space increase means me and Calikeezy and other hoarders are going to be very happy.

Happy for european timezone friendly giveaways. IIRC Zeows giveaway where I won 2e key was european time so I should be able to join more giveaways now.

RIP Guilds but atleast they are moved to concept instead of coming soon now so people should complain less about them not being in game yet.

So, am I interpreting this graphic correctly? Is each pair of Gold/Diamond silhouettes the new fighters EACH MONTH?!
...
24 new fighters a year? 12 new Golds/Diamonds a year? That seems...unbelievable! "Cats and dogs, living together! Mass HYSTERIA!"
RIP StrongestAntiMeta who did a 60 diamond relic opening and me who did a 14 diamond relic opening just some time back. Although I guess the new fighters wont be immediately available to pull in regular relics but lets see.
 
It would be rad if one could obtain the Skull Heart somehow and it grants you a wish (a million coins, 10 diamond rings, etc.).
As someone with no luck pulling shinies, I’d really like a long term goal of getting a skull heart that would make a variant of your choice a shiny! Even if it’s at a slow rate of grinding an entire year for just one of this ultra rare item…
 
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New game mode news is interesting, I hope it's something unique and won't necessarily be dominated by the same group of top players that always seem to dominate Rift and PF (would be really cool if it were cooperative but that seems doubtful given how far away Guilds are). Not particularly excited about the Battle Pass/Backstage Pass, as it will undoubtedly just make it even easier for paid players to get further ahead of f2p players. Also a little concerned about new fighters every month, that's going to balloon the roster and make it harder to not only complete the roster but also to outfit new additions with adequate moves. And the fighter/move caps still in effect at the moment won't make that any easier. With the collection cap adjustments not coming until at least 2-3 updates from now, that'll be several new fighters added if they stick to the planned monthly drops. Kinda sad that Guilds are still so far away, imo this game is really missing some cooperative play between players. The rest of the updates don't really make me feel one way or the other.
 
Aku Menunggu Update ini, aku ga bisa menunggu lebih lama buat ini hehe


REEEPPLLLAAAYYYYSSSSSSSFurRowqWYAEctHR.jpeg
 
This is really the nicest big update I've seen



I feel happy to see can replays in updateFurRowqWYAEctHR.jpeg
 
I want to be excited about new features and QoL, but I can't...
I really really hate Battle Pass as a concept in general and in SGM in particular as well as I'm concerned by a promissed avalance of new variants.

The previous comments basically said it all:
- BP will only widen the gap between f2p players and whales if it has something substantial and if not, what's the point? It's inherently dividing time sinking meta-mechanic and I was very glad that SGM was one of a few modern mobile games [heck, even modern games in general] that doesn't have this sh*t...not anymore, I guess.
- The amount of new variants monstly/yearly only tells me one thing: either quality or devs' well-being (likely both) will have to be sacrificed for this to happen. And no amount of "cool new toys to play with" can justify this.
- Again, agreeing with mentioned above, a majority of the players except whales and/or people who spend most/all of their free time in SGM, this pace will be impossible to catch up to and a very detremental experience.

I'm extremely happy to see an increase in variant releases, the strategies of team building are really the heart and soul of the game for me, and the droughts between variant releases was one of my least favorite aspects.
Funny you say it like this, because the periods of "content droughts" actually help to polish said content and cultivate new strategies and combinations, instead of chasing next new shiny thing. This is especailly important when this new content is not just cosmetics, but something that affects gameplay.
 
Lots of responses! Thanks for all the thoughts, folks! I'll try to answer a few questions/comments:

So, am I interpreting this graphic correctly? Is each pair of Gold/Diamond silhouettes the new fighters EACH MONTH?!
👀

How are the monthly relics going to work? I assume they will be exclusive to the monthly for a while and then released generally. The usual 3 or 4 months? Or will that also change?
Yep, new Fighters will be timed exclusive in a similar fashion to current new Fighter releases.

New Game Mode - Can’t wait to play it! Will you guys be doing some beta testing like with rift and PVP?

Character Ability Adjustment - super excited about this! Filia’s treatment made her much more enjoyable, and I can’t wait to see how Peacock and Painwheel will transform. Calling it here that Peacock may become the most annoying defender once the banjo move is reworked and she starts dodging everything with the hole idea!

Replay function - very nice to more easily share memorable moments. Will this include rift replays so you can see how others took down your defense? On a related note, is an improved Training mode still in development or concept?

Wish item - can you look into letting us adjust input sensitivity? Ever switching to iPhone14Pro the screen is very slippery and I can’t maintain a block consistently. It’d turn into a grab so easily that I lose a lot of high steak fights due to this unintended slip up.

New Game Mode:
There's no plan for a beta for this one. We're confident we'll hit the ground running with it!

CA Adjustment:
Just to set expectations, this is specifically about updating Peacock and Painwheel's CA activation methods. We don't currently plan on giving Peacock and Painwheel full move overhauls like Filia got.

Improved Training Mode:
This is still something we'd love to to, and we're not ruling it out, but the stuff listed above is currently higher on our priority list.

Inputs:
You may want to open a bug report post about that so our QA team can investigate.

But it's only concepts so I doubt even you guys know what that really means, here's hoping we all stay alive long enough to find out! Lmao.

We have a pretty good idea what New Characters(...ish) means, and I'm pretty dang excited!

is there a chance in the future that trading could be added? If so, how would it work? :]

No plans to add Trading. It would cause massive problems and would likely break the entire game no matter how many restictions were put on it.

If this was any other game I would be very worried about a Backstage Pass but SGM has some of the best monetization I've seen in a mobile game so I'm gonna trust you guys. The premium track sounds, let's say... SNAPpy?

Let me freaking filter my moves by Crit Resist so I can go back and delete years of mistakes.

Your faith is appreciated! We won't let you down! ❤️

Can't go into specifics about our plans for Move Management QoL just yet (that's why it's in concept), but we all feel that firction too!

Will more than 5 blockbusters/special moves be added for a character in battle? For example, it would be cool for Valentine to have a choice of all VIAL HAZARD at once.

No plans for that particular update. Val already has too many dang vials as it is!

I'm thinking of moving to USA so I can finally go to one of those live events and get my Number Cruncher

Here's hoping you can make it to one of my streams then!

- The amount of new variants monstly/yearly only tells me one thing: either quality or devs' well-being (likely both) will have to be sacrificed for this to happen. And no amount of "cool new toys to play with" can justify this.

If you check the list of names at the end of the post compared to last year's Roadmap you'll see the HVS Team has grown quite a bit in the last few months! We're able to handle the extra design load for the new Fighters without a drop in quality or dev well-being, don't worry! (But you're very sweet for thinking of us ❤️)
 
Very nice to finally see the roadmap for this year! I'll share my thoughts with you all, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. This is mainly feedback for devs as well, so if you are one, please please read this :) (I have some words about the roadmap itself too, but I'll talk about that last)
  • Brand New Game Mode
    • It’s been EONS since we added a new Game Mode - it’s about time we fixed that!
    • Our goal is to make up for lost time and ensure that there is plenty for everyone to do beyond “just” grinding Prize Fights and Rift Battles day after day.
    • While this will be a major step towards that goal, there is much more to come!

  • Monthly Fighter Drops
    • Building on the extended Prize Fight duration changes we made in 2021, we’re making an effort to make our foundational monthly Live Ops content more meaningful and content-rich.
    • As such, starting with our next update, you can expect to see brand new Fighters EVERY MONTH (featured in the monthly Relics) moving forward.
Very excited about the much needed new game mode, and very pleased about getting new fighters much more frequently now. Last year I wished so bad for the old characters to get some love, either with new variants or changes to their kir/CAs... which takes me to...
Character Ability Adjustments
  • Once upon a time, the notion of a Character Ability button was unheard of. Real Skullgirls Mobile players double-swiped up or down to trigger special abilities, accidental inputs and unreliability be damned!
  • Well, it’s a new era, and it’s about time that folks like Peacock and Painwheel received proper Character Ability buttons of their own (along with a few tweaks to make their abilities that much more useful)! 👀
CA adjustments! I'm SO glad you're doing this, I was about to do a thread about it but now I guess I'll just share my concerns here (that means this part will be long, sorry about that!)
It's probably not necessary to talk about the whys of the CA button being needed, so about the upcoming tweaks: Peacock needs some real help with her gameplan, in the sense that she just gets hit randomly all the time, and that just spamming her moves won't net her much at all unless it's Inkling/Wildcard we're talking about. And Painwheel, in my opinion she's generally powercreeped and that's it, it's not her gameplan what's flawed.
So, some of my ideas for Peacock's new CA:
- New cancels: allowing to cancel specials into hole on hit would allow to capitalize on hits (hit confirming, in fgc slang) by allowing to get a knokckdown and at least one more special to be chained (maybe a faster startup on the attack would help as well). But why stop at that? Cancelling into hole on whiff would allow Peacock to have a safer zoning plan, and a slightly hard to use, but very satisfying counter to pesky Annies fullscreen punishes, for example.
- Debuff on hit: another way to make Peacock's zoning more viable could be inflicting a useful debuff with her CA. I think immobilize and specials/BB disabling are the ones that would help her the most.
For Painwheel's CA, I'm not much of a PW player but I have a couple ideas as well:
- Armor: flight does evade a couple moves, but very, very few ones, and the reward on hit is abysmal. So, to adress the first problem I'm thinking about armor. Why? Because it actually sinergyzes with the more offensive MA, grudge, which is... not very useful honestly. And to be fair I think if devs go this way, they could also update the MA to trigger on armored hits instead of crits, or on any hit but without the armor, but I'm not getting my hopes up wit that heh.
- Lifesteal on hit: this is to adress the second problem I talked about! Getting that hit with flight is not an easy task, even with armor, so why not actually reward for using it instead of just abusing unblockables or the new PA? And to kill 2 birds with one stone, why not give Painwheel a much needed method to regain at least some hp.
I know this is probably not enough to make Painwheels so much better in terms of power relative to the rest of the cast, but it's a step forward that, I think. Some of her kit needs some love as well.
  • Exclusive Avatars
    • As a building block towards more robust customization and expression features, we’ll be adding the ability to collect brand new Avatar portraits that go beyond your Collection and include a variety of new Characters and art styles.
  • Chat Presentation Updates
    • What’s the point of new Avatars if you don’t have a place to properly celebrate them?
    • We’ll be updating the presentation of our Chat windows to display your chosen Avatar alongside every message you share.
    • Consider this a refinement looking ahead to more improved social features in the future!
  • Backstage Pass
    • We all know and love Battle Passes, don’t we? Who doesn’t love more free stuff?!
    • ALL players will be able to engage in “Mission”-like Daily/Weekly/Monthly goals to accumulate points over the course of a month to earn a bunch of new FREE goodies!
    • A Premium Track for spending players will also be made available that provides even more juicy rewards.

I was not expecting any of this, but I do think that more profile/avatar customization and flare will bring more life to the game and its playerbase, and even more so if it's part of the road to guilds system. So I'm glad to hear it's coming soon! And about the Battle Pass, sure, I'm more eager to see QoL changes for the game, but why would I turn down new objectives and stuff to do in the game? And I even get rewards for it, I'm down for it.
New Character - Marie
  • Oh, right! At long last THE SKULLGIRL HERSELF will soon be fully playable!
  • Keep an eye out for all sorts of in development teasers on our social media pages leading up to her release later this year!
I am very excited to see Marie as a fully playable character both in 2E and SGM (and god that animation looks GOOD), but more impnortantly, I'm glad it's just one character being released. I think last year, with 2 new characters being released, the rest of the game was kind of put aside when we really needed some refreshing changes. Like the ones we are getting now with a new game mode, avatar customizations, weekly objectives and old characters tweaks!!! So I'm very glad for the general line of upcoming content for this year and the next.

  • Collection Cap Friction Adjustments
    • Nothing like eagerly heading over to open up a brand new Relic you’ve just acquired, only to be slapped in the face by a pop-up demanding you clear out space in your Collection, make your bed, take out the trash, etc.
    • While some Collection limits are necessary for technical reasons, we want to find ways to minimize its impact on the Relic opening process.

  • Fight Replay System
    • Fight replays are currently used internally as a development/debug tool. Now we want to bring that functionality to everyone! Why? Several reasons come to mind!
      • See how your opponent beat your Prize Fight or Rift Node Defense Team
      • Share an epic, down to the wire performance you’re particularly proud of
      • See how other players cleared a particularly challenging Story Mode node
    • Hopefully this can help make it easier to share knowledge and memorable moments with the community and progressing players.

  • Anti-Cheat Improvements
Regarding these changes, they all sound good although I was neither expecting them, nor hoping for them. But I do have a lot of trouble when opening a bunch of relics at once (which happens frequently), and I know many people complain about cheating so that's good. And on the replay thing, it's a very cool feature that I would never asked for because it's something big to implement, but if it's already there and it just takes a couple things to fully add it to the game I think it could be worth the time!
  • Auto-Leveled Fighter Slot
    • We think it’d be neat to have a way to assign a single Fighter to a slot that will temporarily boost their level and Skill Tree to mirror one of your top Fighters.
    • Handy for brand new Fighters that you want to try on for size prior to making the full investment to permanently level them up!

  • Move Management Quality of Life (QoL) Improvements
    • Reviewing, filtering, sorting, and selling moves en masse is kind of a pain. We should fix that.
  • ...
  • Offensive/Defensive Movesets
    • Ah yes, that which was teased alongside Loadouts and Retakes, but never fully released.
    • Turns out this is… complicated. Lots of strange edge cases and odd UX challenges that caused us to put this on hold for a bit. Still eager to get it in once and for all!
YES PLEASE. About the "variant demo" of sorts you are thinking of, I think it'd be a really cool addition to the game. Many of my variants sit unused in my collection because I fear to invest in them, even if I theorycraft a lot about them.
And as someone with a low-end phone who really suffers loading times, the move loadouts was a top-tier addition to the game (which I did ask for a lot, tysm!), and having a predetermined loadout for each individual fighter I think is a must-have feature alongside it. Of course I was sad it was not implemented, and even more sad when nothing more was said about it for a couple patches; but I think it's perfetly understandable if it's tough to implement atm as you informed us, so I'll wait, anxiously but with what patience I can manage to have :). This kind of takes me to talk about the roadmap itself, and what it means to us as players.

I know I'm probably not saying anything new, but I can't stress enough how important communication with the playerbase is for games in general, non-triple A games particularly, and this game specially. And I say this game because I think devs have generally been very open about the development of the game and have engaged A LOT with the community. Hell, devs even go to the chat and talk to us sometimes. And I think this attention and engagement is a large part of what took this game this far, and I love it.
That being said, I think communication has been kind of poor as of late, and not very transparent. You guys were very open about what happened with servers last year which I highly value, yes, but I think there should be a better intention of hyping us a bit about updates, for example. The time between each update varies but it's generally long, and with very little to just no news about the game at all until it's a week before the update. And there's a lot of stuff we want that are commonly not even adressed as a problem, I'm thinking about Rift getting stale (yes, Rift did get changes to its rewards and grind problems, but gameplay/meta is still the same), about the weird damage scaling with variants like Flytrap (was this adressed as a problem? please correct me if I'm wrong), or even atk/def loadouts not being implemented and remaining silent about it for like, half a year.
Keeping that in mind, and the fact that the roadmap came in May this year, I have to say I was not very happy to not only not see communication being adressed as a problem in this post...
Outside the usual vagaries of game development, the main reason this is going out later than usual is that I was fortunate enough to be able to give a talk at the Game Developers Conference this year about the journey and design philosophies behind Skullgirls Mobile.

...

Anyway! Even though that gobbled up more of my time than I anticipated, that’s all behind us now - eager to share our plans for the coming year at long last.
... and honestly, not happy at all about this part minimizing the issue. I'm trying to be as polite as I can about it, as I really disliked that bit.
So, to make the feedback more constructive: why not give us a thought or two between updates? It can be a behind the scenes in development, a hint about what's coming (nothing overly specific so it doesn't mean pressure for you guys), or whatever. For reference, I think you could check out what Risk of Rain 2 devs did last year with their "dev diary". In a game where communication was far less common, I think it was a very needed measure to keep the playerbase happy and ensure we know the game is still getting love one way or another.

Well damn that's a lot so I doubt anyone will be reading this after all, but if you did please do tell me about how wrong I am and why, and I'll be glad to talk about it, whether you are a player or a dev :)
 
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I'm looking forward to the QoL and CA changes! New variants and tweaks to already-existing ones are always great to have -- I hope they'll allow for fun new gameplay niches.

Maybe the Peacock and Painwheel changes will pave the way for Double's CA tweaks. Or maybe with the balance changes, Heavy Handed will finally be a decent variant...?

As for what I'd like to see, it'd be great if we could filter BBs by their level; seeing only BB2s or BB1s for example. I dislike how every time I sell a move on the equip screen I'm sent back to the top of the move list. ...Also, since aerial special moves were added a while ago, maybe using bursts midair? That's a thing in 2E, right? Those would be nice.

Someone above suggested a sensitivity setting. That'd be *amazing*. A similar suggestion is like, when I press on a move that's currently on cooldown, I'd actually like it if the game ate my input instead of registering it as a normal tap. Sometimes match modifiers or debuffs like miasma/slow do the thing at *just* the right time to ruin my streak lol.

I wonder what the new game mode is. I doubt I'd ever be able to guess it, but I think I'd honestly have fun playing through a retelling of the SG2E stories ngl.

Something else that'd be really fun to have are alternative voice packs. These were teased many roadmaps ago, among other really cool things like Versus rewards and a Skullgirl battle. I hope these become a thing eventually...
 
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I'm SO glad you're doing this, I was about to do a thread about it but now I guess I'll just share my concerns here (that means this part will be long, sorry about that!)
It's probably not necessary to talk about the whys of the CA button being needed, so about the upcoming tweaks: Peacock needs some real help with her gameplan, in the sense that she just gets hit randomly all the time, and that just spamming her moves won't net her much at all unless it's Inkling/Wildcard we're talking about. And Painwheel, in my opinion she's generally powercreeped and that's it, it's not her gameplan what's flawed.
So, some of my ideas for Peacock's new CA:
- New cancels: allowing to cancel specials into hole on hit would allow to capitalize on hits (hit confirming, in fgc slang) by allowing to get a knokckdown and at least one more special to be chained (maybe a faster startup on the attack would help as well). But why stop at that? Cancelling into hole on whiff would allow Peacock to have a safer zoning plan, and a slightly hard to use, but very satisfying counter to pesky Annies fullscreen punishes, for example.
- Debuff on hit: another way to make Peacock's zoning more viable could be inflicting a useful debuff with her CA. I think immobilize and specials/BB disabling are the ones that would help her the most.
For Painwheel's CA, I'm not much of a PW player but I have a couple ideas as well:
- Armor: flight does evade a couple moves, but very, very few ones, and the reward on hit is abysmal. So, to adress the first problem I'm thinking about armor. Why? Because it actually sinergyzes with the more offensive MA, grudge, which is... not very useful honestly. And to be fair I think if devs go this way, they could also update the MA to trigger on armored hits instead of crits, or on any hit but without the armor, but I'm not getting my hopes up wit that heh.
- Lifesteal on hit: this is to adress the second problem I talked about! Getting that hit with flight is not an easy task, even with armor, so why not actually reward for using it instead of just abusing unblockables or the new PA? And to kill 2 birds with one stone, why not give Painwheel a much needed method to regain at least some hp.
I know this is probably not enough to make Painwheels so much better in terms of power relative to the rest of the cast, but it's a step forward that, I think. Some of her kit needs some love as well.
I like your Peacock suggestions a lot! Dunno how to feel about the Painwheel ones, though. Grudge really isn't useless; it's plenty useful on variants like Rusty. I think it's made for attack-oriented Painwheels, since they allow her to tank one or two hits more than usual and then counterattack more effectively.

Frankly it's a bit unfortunate that their attacks won't be changed at all. I barely (if ever) use Painwheel's Hatred Install; I'd like to see it receive some help. Maybe it could actually buff her moveset a little like in 2E.
 
I like your Peacock suggestions a lot! Dunno how to feel about the Painwheel ones, though. Grudge really isn't useless; it's plenty useful on variants like Rusty. I think it's made for attack-oriented Painwheels, since they allow her to tank one or two hits more than usual and then counterattack more effectively.

Frankly it's a bit unfortunate that their attacks won't be changed at all. I barely (if ever) use Painwheel's Hatred Install; I'd like to see it receive some help. Maybe it could actually buff her moveset a little like in 2E.
The armor stuff does take inspiration from 2E actually! Another reason why I think it would fir her theme very well. About grudge being useless, if I did use that word let me take it back, it's not. But very frequently it won't stop anything from one (or two, or three)-shotting you, as other MAs such as Umbrella's or Val's would (not that I'd use bitter end with offensive Umbrellas though), so I think it's veeeery underwhelming, even more so compared to her deffensive counterpart tainted blood.
 
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Just as an Idea as for changing Painwheels character ability, wouldn't it be cool since as it will be replaced with a button - that button to be like a stick to move painwheel while at her flight risk? 👀
 
Just as an Idea as for changing Painwheels character ability, wouldn't it be cool since as it will be replaced with a button - that button to be like a stick to move painwheel while at her flight risk? 👀
I think...
it’s about time that folks like Peacock and Painwheel received proper Character Ability buttons of their own (along with a few tweaks to make their abilities that much more useful)!
that is very much hinted at in that statement.👀
 
Good stuff! Excited about everything this coming patch except maybe the season pass, never been a fan of them, but more free stuff is free stuff so I'm okay with that

Also, if we actually get two new variants every month, I'm excited to see a certain Eliza variant down the line!
 
Good stuff! Excited about everything this coming patch except maybe the season pass, never been a fan of them, but more free stuff is free stuff so I'm okay with that

Also, if we actually get two new variants every month, I'm excited to see a certain Eliza variant down the line!
To be fair, alternative ways to get money for them means better chances for the future of the game as well. And I say alternative because I think they focused a bit too much on characters last year for that lol.
 
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