OFFICIAL: 7.0 Update Notes - Guest Stars Debut!

[VecSK]

O wiki (e wikis de outros jogos) nunca foi trabalho de um desenvolvedor de jogos atualizar. É um esforço da comunidade. Eu e um punhado de pessoas tentamos o melhor com a quantidade de tempo que temos, mas somos apenas alguns e não é nenhum dos nossos trabalhos também. Sinta-se à vontade para ajudar se quiser, mas não reclame sobre isso para os desenvolvedores lol

E não está

 

[VecSK]

Yes, what really matters is the distant future. Improve gameplay and balance the game. Well, that's what I see, most people in the game's public chat say the discount is general.

 

[VecSK]

I know day one opinions can be fickle, but I feel like this update will irrevocably change the trajectory of the game in such a way that needs to be addressed.

To get to the point, Guest Stars should not have stats. At the very least, not in their current state. Locking such a significant stat boost behind 4 million canopy and universal retakes (which are already scarce) makes them fairly inaccessible and exacerbates the stat grind, especially given the context of an economy that is not at all tuned for the feature (and judging by the pittance that is the Show Me Your Moves pf, I doubt this new one will do much). The evolving mechanic is also poorly thought out: when optimizing move stats, you can pretty quickly gauge whether or not to keep upgrading a move. Having stardust increments tremendously obfuscates this, forcing you to spend a rare resource to roll instead of just coins. If it rolls poorly, you're just out of luck.

A lot of people are doomposting about GS' implication on Rift, particularly on defense. At this point, it's too early to make any absolute judgment on their disruption to the meta; I will say on my part, I don't it will affect things too disastrously because you can feasibly shift around just three GS if you're concerned about stats (obviously more if you want to specialize, but it still heavily favors offense).

I wouldn't count this as a silver lining, though. The crux of the issue with GS stats is they're simply not compelling gameplay-wise. If they won't ruin Rifts, one certainty is that they will be a pain to upgrade and optimize. GS were intended to add a layer of nuance to gameplay (and this I appreciate), but implicating stats shifts their focus so heavily onto the stats min-maxing that it overshadows everything else. Late game SGM basically converges to one big stat check. And even if having all maxed GS isn't the intention, or is supposed to be a luxury rather than an expectation, that doesn't matter. In practice, the core substance of GS - the relics, the prize fight, the stardust, the retakes - is upgrading them. GS as a whole don't feel good. I don't want to worry about more upgrading in favor of the same system, and I don't want another prize fight to clutter it up. I want a new system.

To put it politely, though, I don't think a lot of the idealist criticism in this thread is any closer to an improvement. I feel like a lot of the hitherto disdain toward this update is more a means to legitimize latent cynicism than analyze the problem in a meaningful way.

Story mode is often echoed as a panacea to the game's stagnation. I think it would be nice to have more story content, but it's disingenuous to say a lack of new story content is why people feel burnt out. Ultimately, story mode is still a one-time occurrence that doesn't expand on gameplay. If people complain about the repetitiveness of Parallel Realms, why would adding master origin stories be any different? I see a similar trend with a perceived lack of fighter reworks. There are a few variants I agree could be retouched, but 1) we've had quite a few recent reworks and complaints of game stagnation have not slowed and 2) hasty reworking can very easily lead to the homogenization of variant abilities for the sake of meeting the bar of the current meta. These are band-aids on a much bigger problem.

That problem is, as alluded to, a lack of gameplay variety. As in, the core structure of this game has not changed. Between all the different modes, the approach and end goal is always the same: look at opponent team and match modifiers, build an appropriate counter, and defeat the opponent by counteracting the abilities and modifiers. You can say dailies and Rifts serve different purposes, but at the end of the day, between each independent battle, it's all the same. And with great predictability. Modifiers are set in stone with virtually no real variety. Parallel Realms might as well be another prize fight.

This is what makes some variants "obsolete". When the goal of everything in the game is the same, there will be variants best at that one goal and variants that will never find a place. The game needs something to reward abilities and approaches that aren't just Deadeye and Precision through a stock defense ability. Something that makes use of an entire collection, or is randomized to keep me on my feet. Or at the very least, something that doesn't amount to a series of functionally identical battles.

This update as a whole feels like a half-baked idea stitched on an increasingly bloated infrastructure. Upgrading GS means another prize fight to worry about. Buying stardust means another currency piled onto Rift. Coming from someone who likes Rift, I don't think the game mode was meant to sustain all of these crucial aspects of the game. I don't think prize fights were meant to be the principal source of new fighters, income, retakes, shards, the monthly "event", and now GS, all simultaneously. These resources should either be spread among new game modes, (adjusted for time commitment of course) or there should be a way to obtain the same resources pool through different means.

A manifestation of this "stitched on" feeling (and perhaps a less "serious" criticism) is the UI. Maybe I need to get used to it, but the collection UI feels clunky and discordant. The icons are nondescript and incohesive, the moves bar is cluttered, and GS now complicate move loadouts. And most egregious to me, (and objectively the least consequential detail) the GS relic render looks really bad. There's no lighting or texture, the star looks amateurly put together, and it all presents more like a CAD model than anything else.

The mistakes of this update have already been made. I don't think at this point GS stats can be rolled back. I'm also still not cynical enough to take the "dev's don't care about the players" angle, but this definitely isn't helping. Ultimately I hope none of this turns out as bad as a lot of us think it will, I hope we will see more transparency in the future, and I hope everyone seriously examines the state of the game.

Agree with all and i think 90% of the community.

 

[SvenZ]

I won't lie. I'm disappointed Guest Stars are another way for stat gain... It's already expensive as it is to max out a character and their stats, both in terms of retakes and coins. Now we have yet another variable thrown into the mix...

 

[SvenZ]

This update as a whole feels like a half-baked idea stitched on an increasingly bloated infrastructure. Upgrading GS means another prize fight to worry about. Buying stardust means another currency piled onto Rift. Coming from someone who likes Rift, I don't think the game mode was meant to sustain all of these crucial aspects of the game. I don't think prize fights were meant to be the principal source of new fighters, income, retakes, shards, the monthly "event", and now GS, all simultaneously. These resources should either be spread among new game modes, (adjusted for time commitment of course) or there should be a way to obtain the same resources pool through different means.

From business point of view, their inclusion is brilliant. Upgrading and acquiring them costs a lot of resources and that means a big spike in revenue from all of the whales willing to invest into the game.

However, as a downside, this will likely push away a lot of casual players. Bloating the game with mechanics is not the way to go for attracting a casual audience. My personal goal is nearing completion, and I'll probably uninstall the game come 2025

 

[Dusty00]

I know day one opinions can be fickle, but I feel like this update will irrevocably change the trajectory of the game in such a way that needs to be addressed.

To get to the point, Guest Stars should not have stats. At the very least, not in their current state. Locking such a significant stat boost behind 4 million canopy and universal retakes (which are already scarce) makes them fairly inaccessible and exacerbates the stat grind, especially given the context of an economy that is not at all tuned for the feature (and judging by the pittance that is the Show Me Your Moves pf, I doubt this new one will do much). The evolving mechanic is also poorly thought out: when optimizing move stats, you can pretty quickly gauge whether or not to keep upgrading a move. Having stardust increments tremendously obfuscates this, forcing you to spend a rare resource to roll instead of just coins. If it rolls poorly, you're just out of luck.

A lot of people are doomposting about GS' implication on Rift, particularly on defense. At this point, it's too early to make any absolute judgment on their disruption to the meta; I will say on my part, I don't it will affect things too disastrously because you can feasibly shift around just three GS if you're concerned about stats (obviously more if you want to specialize, but it still heavily favors offense).

I wouldn't count this as a silver lining, though. The crux of the issue with GS stats is they're simply not compelling gameplay-wise. If they won't ruin Rifts, one certainty is that they will be a pain to upgrade and optimize. GS were intended to add a layer of nuance to gameplay (and this I appreciate), but implicating stats shifts their focus so heavily onto the stats min-maxing that it overshadows everything else. Late game SGM basically converges to one big stat check. And even if having all maxed GS isn't the intention, or is supposed to be a luxury rather than an expectation, that doesn't matter. In practice, the core substance of GS - the relics, the prize fight, the stardust, the retakes - is upgrading them. GS as a whole don't feel good. I don't want to worry about more upgrading in favor of the same system, and I don't want another prize fight to clutter it up. I want a new system.

To put it politely, though, I don't think a lot of the idealist criticism in this thread is any closer to an improvement. I feel like a lot of the hitherto disdain toward this update is more a means to legitimize latent cynicism than analyze the problem in a meaningful way.

Story mode is often echoed as a panacea to the game's stagnation. I think it would be nice to have more story content, but it's disingenuous to say a lack of new story content is why people feel burnt out. Ultimately, story mode is still a one-time occurrence that doesn't expand on gameplay. If people complain about the repetitiveness of Parallel Realms, why would adding master origin stories be any different? I see a similar trend with a perceived lack of fighter reworks. There are a few variants I agree could be retouched, but 1) we've had quite a few recent reworks and complaints of game stagnation have not slowed and 2) hasty reworking can very easily lead to the homogenization of variant abilities for the sake of meeting the bar of the current meta. These are band-aids on a much bigger problem.

That problem is, as alluded to, a lack of gameplay variety. As in, the core structure of this game has not changed. Between all the different modes, the approach and end goal is always the same: look at opponent team and match modifiers, build an appropriate counter, and defeat the opponent by counteracting the abilities and modifiers. You can say dailies and Rifts serve different purposes, but at the end of the day, between each independent battle, it's all the same. And with great predictability. Modifiers are set in stone with virtually no real variety. Parallel Realms might as well be another prize fight.

This is what makes some variants "obsolete". When the goal of everything in the game is the same, there will be variants best at that one goal and variants that will never find a place. The game needs something to reward abilities and approaches that aren't just Deadeye and Precision through a stock defense ability. Something that makes use of an entire collection, or is randomized to keep me on my feet. Or at the very least, something that doesn't amount to a series of functionally identical battles.

This update as a whole feels like a half-baked idea stitched on an increasingly bloated infrastructure. Upgrading GS means another prize fight to worry about. Buying stardust means another currency piled onto Rift. Coming from someone who likes Rift, I don't think the game mode was meant to sustain all of these crucial aspects of the game. I don't think prize fights were meant to be the principal source of new fighters, income, retakes, shards, the monthly "event", and now GS, all simultaneously. These resources should either be spread among new game modes, (adjusted for time commitment of course) or there should be a way to obtain the same resources pool through different means.

A manifestation of this "stitched on" feeling (and perhaps a less "serious" criticism) is the UI. Maybe I need to get used to it, but the collection UI feels clunky and discordant. The icons are nondescript and incohesive, the moves bar is cluttered, and GS now complicate move loadouts. And most egregious to me, (and objectively the least consequential detail) the GS relic render looks really bad. There's no lighting or texture, the star looks amateurly put together, and it all presents more like a CAD model than anything else.

The mistakes of this update have already been made. I don't think at this point GS stats can be rolled back. I'm also still not cynical enough to take the "dev's don't care about the players" angle, but this definitely isn't helping. Ultimately I hope none of this turns out as bad as a lot of us think it will, I hope we will see more transparency in the future, and I hope everyone seriously examines the state of the game.

Very well written review of this update and an objective, analytical snapshot on the current state of the game in a constructive way. Hats off to you!

Devs, please consider beta testing bigger updates like this and communicate more with the player base, not just through surveys. Which reminds me, did Zug ever show up as Guest Star in Bone’s streams to chat with players?

 

[Dusty00]

Settings > Gameplay > Show popup if missing moves, Show popup if missing guest star.

They did add the toggle this update, best qol.

Oh I didn’t see that in patch notes and didn’t think to check settings. Thanks for pointing this out! There should be a dedicated social post about this imo.

 

[SvenZ]

I feel like all of the work that was put into Guest Stars could've resulted in a stand-alone character being 60-70% complete. The fact they're spreading out their work on all guest characters at the same time, means that the likelihood of ever seeing them as stand-alone characters anytime soon is very, very slim. If not completely out of the question, depending on how profitable the whole guest star system is for them.

The more I think about it, and the more I play the latest patch, the less confident I feel about SGM going forward

 

[evilgordo]

Settings > Gameplay > Show popup if missing moves, Show popup if missing guest star.

Yeah, this was kinda a big QoL addition and should have been explicitly mentioned in the updates notes, instead we get a 30 year old Simpsons reference (that's not to say I didn't appreciate the deep cut reference, but given the choice, I'd rather of had the QoL announcement)...

 

[BallotBoxer]

Guest Star notes:

• I don't like spending rare Universal Retakes. I'd rather use other surplus resources (I have 700 bronze keys, 300 silver keys, 1000 gold keys, 900 red rift tickets) I'll never use. Imagine using bronze keys on bronze Guest Stars!
• Please add a SHINY transfer option. I'm hesitant to upgrade my non-SHINY Guest Stars with the irrational belief it would be a waste since a SHINY version might come along.
• Legitimate-War on Reddit listed all of the default Guest Star abilities here.
  I want to add it to the wiki, but I'm not sure where. For organization, I don't think each variant (e.g. Blastermind Brain Drain) should get their own page, but each GS should have one? Thinking of the future beyond Roxie (https://www.labzerogames.com/3rdcharacter/)

I like how GS add complexity. More stats, more buffs/debuffs, and silly animations that I hope don't go on too long (fun fact: I rarely use Valentine's BB3 "Dead On Arrival" because the cinematic is annoying). Calling for GS assists gives SGM more 2nd Encore flavor. The Rifts could probably get a boost in complexity too if more catalysts were added.

 

[ZeoW]

Legitimate-War on Reddit listed all of the default Guest Star abilities here.
I want to add it to the wiki, but I'm not sure where. For organization, I don't think each variant (e.g. Blastermind Brain Drain) should get their own page, but each GS should have one? Thinking of the future beyond Roxie (https://www.labzerogames.com/3rdcharacter/)

Guest Stars definitely should have a main page like Prize Fights. I'll see if it looks nice to have everything together, but if not, we'll make character pages and have the main Guest Star page reference each character.

Can't do it today, so probably tomorrow.

 

[Dusty00]

Guest Stars definitely should have a main page like Prize Fights. I'll see if it looks nice to have everything together, but if not, we'll make character pages and have the main Guest Star page reference each character.

Can't do it today, so probably tomorrow.

Just a shout out to you for maintaining the wiki. Your work and commitment is greatly appreciated.

 

[7evan]

I know day one opinions can be fickle, but I feel like this update will irrevocably change the trajectory of the game in such a way that needs to be addressed.

To get to the point, Guest Stars should not have stats. At the very least, not in their current state. Locking such a significant stat boost behind 4 million canopy and universal retakes (which are already scarce) makes them fairly inaccessible and exacerbates the stat grind, especially given the context of an economy that is not at all tuned for the feature (and judging by the pittance that is the Show Me Your Moves pf, I doubt this new one will do much). The evolving mechanic is also poorly thought out: when optimizing move stats, you can pretty quickly gauge whether or not to keep upgrading a move. Having stardust increments tremendously obfuscates this, forcing you to spend a rare resource to roll instead of just coins. If it rolls poorly, you're just out of luck.

A lot of people are doomposting about GS' implication on Rift, particularly on defense. At this point, it's too early to make any absolute judgment on their disruption to the meta; I will say on my part, I don't it will affect things too disastrously because you can feasibly shift around just three GS if you're concerned about stats (obviously more if you want to specialize, but it still heavily favors offense).

I wouldn't count this as a silver lining, though. The crux of the issue with GS stats is they're simply not compelling gameplay-wise. If they won't ruin Rifts, one certainty is that they will be a pain to upgrade and optimize. GS were intended to add a layer of nuance to gameplay (and this I appreciate), but implicating stats shifts their focus so heavily onto the stats min-maxing that it overshadows everything else. Late game SGM basically converges to one big stat check. And even if having all maxed GS isn't the intention, or is supposed to be a luxury rather than an expectation, that doesn't matter. In practice, the core substance of GS - the relics, the prize fight, the stardust, the retakes - is upgrading them. GS as a whole don't feel good. I don't want to worry about more upgrading in favor of the same system, and I don't want another prize fight to clutter it up. I want a new system.

To put it politely, though, I don't think a lot of the idealist criticism in this thread is any closer to an improvement. I feel like a lot of the hitherto disdain toward this update is more a means to legitimize latent cynicism than analyze the problem in a meaningful way.

Story mode is often echoed as a panacea to the game's stagnation. I think it would be nice to have more story content, but it's disingenuous to say a lack of new story content is why people feel burnt out. Ultimately, story mode is still a one-time occurrence that doesn't expand on gameplay. If people complain about the repetitiveness of Parallel Realms, why would adding master origin stories be any different? I see a similar trend with a perceived lack of fighter reworks. There are a few variants I agree could be retouched, but 1) we've had quite a few recent reworks and complaints of game stagnation have not slowed and 2) hasty reworking can very easily lead to the homogenization of variant abilities for the sake of meeting the bar of the current meta. These are band-aids on a much bigger problem.

That problem is, as alluded to, a lack of gameplay variety. As in, the core structure of this game has not changed. Between all the different modes, the approach and end goal is always the same: look at opponent team and match modifiers, build an appropriate counter, and defeat the opponent by counteracting the abilities and modifiers. You can say dailies and Rifts serve different purposes, but at the end of the day, between each independent battle, it's all the same. And with great predictability. Modifiers are set in stone with virtually no real variety. Parallel Realms might as well be another prize fight.

This is what makes some variants "obsolete". When the goal of everything in the game is the same, there will be variants best at that one goal and variants that will never find a place. The game needs something to reward abilities and approaches that aren't just Deadeye and Precision through a stock defense ability. Something that makes use of an entire collection, or is randomized to keep me on my feet. Or at the very least, something that doesn't amount to a series of functionally identical battles.

This update as a whole feels like a half-baked idea stitched on an increasingly bloated infrastructure. Upgrading GS means another prize fight to worry about. Buying stardust means another currency piled onto Rift. Coming from someone who likes Rift, I don't think the game mode was meant to sustain all of these crucial aspects of the game. I don't think prize fights were meant to be tsimultaneously the principal source of new fighters, income, retakes, shards, the monthly "event", and now GS These resources should either be spread among new game modes, (adjusted for time commitment of course) or there should be a way to obtain the same resources pool through different means.

A manifestation of this "stitched on" feeling (and perhaps a less "serious" criticism) is the UI. Maybe I need to get used to it, but the collection UI feels clunky and discordant. The icons are nondescript and incohesive, the moves bar is cluttered, and GS now complicate move loadouts. And most egregious to me, (and objectively the least consequential detail) the GS relic render looks really bad. There's no lighting or texture, the star looks amateurly put together, and it all presents more like a CAD model than anything else.

The mistakes of this update have already been made. I don't think at this point GS stats can be rolled back. I'm also still not cynical enough to take the "dev's don't care about the players" angle, but this definitely isn't helping. Ultimately I hope none of this turns out as bad as a lot of us think it will, I hope we will see more transparency in the future, and I hope everyone seriously examines the state of the game.

Hard agree with this comment. Personally w, Iould love to see more QoL changes and character improvements/reworks rather than flashy new mechanics being added.

I think a big HUGE issue for the game throughout its lifetime is its heavy reliance on RNG. The rewards from daily events are RNG (I have no clue how they are calculated), and a lot of character's SA involve RNG. Even a significant number of character moves rely on some chance of working. Not to say a game can't be balanced around RNG, but the fact that some character's moves have better chances than others for no discernible reason is something I'm afraid I have to disagree on.

Personally, I think the system that has the most room for improvement is upgrading moves. The fact that it's so expensive to upgrade a move and not receive the stat total you want is so high-risk, low-reward. I still have the same complaints about the retake system from my post about a suggested rework 3 years ago, where that fundamentally retakes don't really solve this issue and actually compound even more RNG. I don't mind that upgrading moves is a huge investment, but when the risk of not getting of you want are so probable it just makes me not want to upgrade any move to max, let alone the new resource of guest stars.

 

[Dusty00]

So it looks like 600 rift coin catalysts have been added back to CoC this patch.

 

[Krazete]

what's that stun icon doing there