• [2018/06/22]
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OFFICIAL: Rift Battle Rework Details

Liam

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Hidden Variable Dev
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Hey everyone!

As mentioned previously in our 2020 Road Map Thread, Rift Battles are receiving a large overhaul this year. In fact, what we have planned is so big, it's actually more of a REWORK.

Due to the large volume of changes, it's taken us a little longer than usual to share the details on what we have planned - apologies for the delay! Without further ado, we're excited to announce some of the high level goals and plans for Rift Battles in our next few updates:

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This Rift Battles rework is still under heavy construction and we are early in development. It is EXTREMELY LIKELY that some elements of this rework will change as we implement these changes. As such, please take each change listed below with a grain of salt - things may end up different!

RIFT BATTLES ARE ASYNCHRONOUS

This is the big one. Instead of being actively paired up with a player who is searching for a match at the same time as you, you'll now attack defense bases without the other player being there, similar to Prize Fights.

We know how important matchmaking is to our players and Rift Battles as a whole, and we feel that we'll be able to deliver matchmaking at the quality that we're all looking for with this change.

Currently, trying to find a player who is in your Rift Rating and Fighter Score range who is also matchmaking during the same 10 minute window isn't working for the majority of players. We've needed to widen these matchmaking ranges more and more over several updates to make sure that players can find matches at all, which unfortunately leads to even more unbalanced matchmaking.

With asynchronous matchmaking and pairing, you'll be able to instantly find viable matches against players that have close to the same Rift Rating as you. This will be simple and easy for everyone to understand with no special under the hood magic.​

PLAYERS CAN CHOOSE FROM A LIST OF OPPONENTS

Instead of being locked into fighting a specific base after matchmaking, you will be shown several opponents to choose from that have similar Rift Rating to your own. You'll only be given limited information on each of these bases before you choose which one you'd like to take on. Once you start a fight against a base, you'll have to finish that one (win or lose) before you can move on.

While this list of opponents can likely be refreshed much like Prize Fights, a bonus will be awarded to players who can win against all of their opponent bases without refreshing.​

RIFT BATTLES ARE FASTER AND SNAPPIER

Rift Battles are currently high stakes, pretty stressful, and they take two hours to complete. With this rework, we'd like Rift Battles to be much quicker and easier to break into bite sized chunks of content so that you can play as much or as little as you like with your available free time. You can also take your time! Beyond the overall season deadline, each individual Rift Battle is untimed - so you can take as long as you want to complete a particular battle.

As such, the new Rift Battles map will be smaller, and the conditions for the Rift Battle ending will be simpler. Either you clear their map and WIN, or you lose to any node and LOSE. (exact win/loss conditions subject to change pending playtesting)

After that, you're free to start another Rift Battle immediately. No more waiting around for an hour and a half before you can see if you won or lost!​

RANDOMIZED NODE MODIFIERS

While our new Rift Battle base is smaller, we're going to keep things fresh with randomized Match Modifiers that change every season. This means that what was once the "Reactive Armor" node one season might be a completely different node next season.

Although there are fewer nodes on each map, you'll nonetheless need to build a variety of defenders and Catalysts if you want to take advantage of the Match Modifiers for that season, and you'll need a variety of attackers to counter the defense nodes that your opponents come up with!​

"OKAY... BUT WHAT ABOUT <SOME FEATURE?>"

Some of these changes likely raise more questions than they answer. However, we're intentionally not diving into the specifics of other changes just yet. This post is just about sharing our birds eye view goals and aspirational goals for the Rift Battles rework to keep you informed on what we're working towards.

That said, if you have questions or feedback, please leave it down below! While it's unlikely that we'll be responding to questions asking for more details on a specific feature mentioned (or missing) in this post, everyone's thoughts and discussions are more than welcome.

Please also note that feedback shared on Discord, Reddit, YouTube, MySpace, Tumblr, Neopets, and private Club Penguin servers, etc, is likely to be missed. If you want us to read it, please share it in this thread.
We'll be sure to share details as we get closer to the release of this feature (potentially as early as 4.3). As always, thanks so much for all your support!
 
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You guys actually listened to us for real? And rift becoming Prize fights? No more competitiveness and complacent nonsense? No more same rubbish?

Did you just do that?
 
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This rework in general sounds nice! So how will defense work? Will you gain Rift Coins every time someone loses to your map?
 
Excellent, I feel a little sorry that many invested in 5 gelid armor nodes. Question, will there be a beta for this?
 
As such, the new Rift Battles map will be smaller, and the conditions for the Rift Battle ending will be simpler. Either you clear their map and WIN, or you lose to any node and LOSE. (exact win/loss conditions subject to change pending playtesting)

I get the idea behind this, and it's about equal to how upper ranks are now anyways, but I'm interested to see if and how this'll shift the meta. Definitely seems like offense went from mostly the meta to almost entirely again, with one caveat: fighters that are usually defensive (Meow and Furrever, Armed Forces) can be a saving grace in being safe to clear a node, even if just barely. So their investment and bringing them as backup is still a big benefit.

Also based on the few given details this has high potential to put more points in the system than remove which would bring Gold 1 back, which is very exciting news!

Overall I'm very optimistic about the future of rift, can't wait to see the next updates!
 
I'll just dive in! Can't wait for this
Sounds like a huge change and for good, honestly I'm not a Rift player, but with this sign me up!
Thank you for all the efforts and hard work you're doing for the game
 
RIFT BATTLES ARE ASYNCHRONOUS

This is the big one. Instead of being actively paired up with a player who is searching for a match at the same time as you, you'll now attack defense bases without the other player being there, similar to Prize Fights.

...

Instead of being locked into fighting a specific base after matchmaking, you will be shown several opponents to choose from that have similar Rift Rating to your own. You'll only be given limited information on each of these bases before you choose which one you'd like to take on. Once you start a fight against a base, you'll have to finish that one (win or lose) before you can move on.



Just a concern with how I’m understanding this: how do you opt in or out of matchmaking to preserve your rating? And how do we “defend” without the player skill or scores being relevant?

The nice thing about a rating/ranking system is being able to get to a threshold and stop so you get the rewards you’re happy with for that season.

Hopefully this kind of “feature” of a ranking system will be intact when it’s moved to a PF style matchmaking... like you put your base in the first time you Rift that day, and you’re only forced to kept it in for so many battles...

A big problem would be: you get paired repeatedly with players vs your AI and have no control over your outcome. Currently lots of players win at all Ranks by score not Rift Base difficulty. Without that in the Rifting system it seems very strange to me..


These changes are gonna be great, I’m sure, either way. Thank you for listening to the players and undertaking such a big rework of Rifts. It’s a mode that everyone should be able to enjoy and play.​
 
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Will we get our ranks to reset accordingly? This isn't a problem for me but I'm curious! It'll be fun to start over again.
 
The update I've been waiting for.

Looking forward to see the whole thing!
 
Hey everyone!

As mentioned previously in our 2020 Road Map Thread, Rift Battles are receiving a large overhaul this year. In fact, what we have planned is so big, it's actually more of a REWORK.

Due to the large volume of changes, it's taken us a little longer than usual to share the details on what we have planned - apologies for the delay! Without further ado, we're excited to announce some of the high level goals and plans for Rift Battles in our next few updates:

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This Rift Battles rework is still under heavy construction and we are early in development. It is EXTREMELY LIKELY that some elements of this rework will change as we implement these changes. As such, please take each change listed below with a grain of salt - things may end up different!

RIFT BATTLES ARE ASYNCHRONOUS

This is the big one. Instead of being actively paired up with a player who is searching for a match at the same time as you, you'll now attack defense bases without the other player being there, similar to Prize Fights.

We know how important matchmaking is to our players and Rift Battles as a whole, and we feel that we'll be able to deliver matchmaking at the quality that we're all looking for with this change.

Currently, trying to find a player who is in your Rift Rating and Fighter Score range who is also matchmaking during the same 10 minute window isn't working for the majority of players. We've needed to widen these matchmaking ranges more and more over several updates to make sure that players can find matches at all, which unfortunately leads to even more unbalanced matchmaking.

With asynchronous matchmaking and pairing, you'll be able to instantly find viable matches against players that have close to the same Rift Rating as you. This will be simple and easy for everyone to understand with no special under the hood magic.​

PLAYERS CAN CHOOSE FROM A LIST OF OPPONENTS

Instead of being locked into fighting a specific base after matchmaking, you will be shown several opponents to choose from that have similar Rift Rating to your own. You'll only be given limited information on each of these bases before you choose which one you'd like to take on. Once you start a fight against a base, you'll have to finish that one (win or lose) before you can move on.

While this list of opponents can likely be refreshed much like Prize Fights, a bonus will be awarded to players who can win against all of their opponent bases without refreshing.​

RIFT BATTLES ARE FASTER AND SNAPPIER

Rift Battles are currently high stakes, pretty stressful, and they take two hours to complete. With this rework, we'd like Rift Battles to be much quicker and easier to break into bite sized chunks of content so that you can play as much or as little as you like with your available free time. You can also take your time! Beyond the overall season deadline, each individual Rift Battle is untimed - so you can take as long as you want to complete a particular battle.

As such, the new Rift Battles map will be smaller, and the conditions for the Rift Battle ending will be simpler. Either you clear their map and WIN, or you lose to any node and LOSE. (exact win/loss conditions subject to change pending playtesting)

After that, you're free to start another Rift Battle immediately. No more waiting around for an hour and a half before you can see if you won or lost!​

RANDOMIZED NODE MODIFIERS

While our new Rift Battle base is smaller, we're going to keep things fresh with randomized Match Modifiers that change every season. This means that what was once the "Reactive Armor" node one season might be a completely different node next season.

Although there are fewer nodes on each map, you'll nonetheless need to build a variety of defenders and Catalysts if you want to take advantage of the Match Modifiers for that season, and you'll need a variety of attackers to counter the defense nodes that your opponents come up with!​

"OKAY... BUT WHAT ABOUT <SOME FEATURE?>"

Some of these changes likely raise more questions than they answer. However, we're intentionally not diving into the specifics of other changes just yet. This post is just about sharing our birds eye view goals and aspirational goals for the Rift Battles rework to keep you informed on what we're working towards.

That said, if you have questions or feedback, please leave it down below! While it's unlikely that we'll be responding to questions asking for more details on a specific feature mentioned (or missing) in this post, everyone's thoughts and discussions are more than welcome.

Please also note that feedback shared on Discord, Reddit, YouTube, MySpace, Tumblr, Neopets, and private Club Penguin servers, etc, is likely to be missed. If you want us to read it, please share it in this thread.
We'll be sure to share details as we get closer to the release of this feature (potentially as early as 4.3). As always, thanks so much for all your support!

Feck YEAH! This is almost all of my ask list for Rifts and then some. Really looking forward to this!

Glad you guys have been both listening and giving this a lot of thought.
 
Love you guys! :D All of the major concerns have been addressed in a way that makes sense and based on the collective feedback. Can’t wait for rift to slowly improve over the year.
 
Fascinating, I'm curious to see how this all turns out!

I don't have too much to add, but I'm glad to that matchmaking is getting a changeup, especially the part about Rift Rating being the only factor the new system considers since I've posted a couple long rants discussion posts about the the problems in the current system, specifically about how Rank in the current system is a poor indicator of collection strength / game skill / base building strategy etc. due to Decay and the fact that it's only a secondary factor in the current matchmaking system.

Also curious to see how the bases change and the seasonal modifier mixups, since it seems to me like that will help mix up the meta a lot and reward strategic base building more.
 
Ok so after thinking about it for a while, a few thoughts come up:

1. Asynchronous rift battles - I know this doesn't apply to everyone but I do quite enjoy the 1 v 1 battles and then receiving feedback from your opponent on how your base defense performed. It allowed some kind of player interaction within the community but I guess this is mostly limited to players that are available in Discord. It would be cool if there was some kind of feedback system in place, such as through a replay feature.

2. Choosing from a list of opponents - In Prize Fights, the incentive to choose a stronger opponent is the amount of exp and (usually) the greater points you get. For the defenders, they get a bit of points (unsignificant tbh) when they successfully end someone's streak. I'm curious to see how this plays out in Rift and how the point system will work. This is quite important as it'll determine the cut-offs between tiers. Hypothetically speaking, what prevents someone from climbing the top by choosing 'easy' bases?

3. Faster and snappier - Great. A few of the lower duo nodes don't usually do much anyway unless you have a full 20 variants of invested defensive fighters. Most players could only afford to invest in the triple nodes. The WIN/LOSE condition is interesting and although it is subject to change, I do think that simply clearing a map for a WIN is too easy and doesn't reflect a player's capability. Maybe the win conditions could differ between tiers? Also, does this mean Rift scores are scrapped? I personally think Rift score should still be present, perhaps not as a WIN condition but maybe to determine the amount of points you get or something. Players with high skill play should and deserve to be rewarded (not me lol).

4. Randomized node modifiers - I love this. Every week will be different. But is also means the feedback system might be redundant since it'll change next week anyway..

Overall, the point system and rift score is what I'm mostly concerned about. These changes are amazing for the majority of players but for higher end players, I'm just wondering how these changes can still distinguish who is amongst the best of the best.