Feb 9

Beastieball - banov

If you've been testing and keeping up with our Experimental changes, then most of this is not going to be new to you! Check out the Major Changes section near the end for updates on game mechanics that weren't part of the previous Experimental updates.

New Features

Introducing a new Field Effect, Quake!

Quake: Volleying to your ally deals 25 damage to that ally, and reduces the amount of Quake by 1. Quake also lowers by 1 at the end of your offense. When applying Quake, it does not "stack" like Lay Trap, but merely sets the target field to the target value.

Quake has been added to replace all splash damage in the game (ie. secondary damage done to allies via moves like Explosion, Bang, and Mindfield, as well as the Echo trait). Splash damage in general has been the cause of many of the game's most unintuitive interactions with respect to how Beasties are wiped, points are scored, etc. It makes it easy to force opponents into unplayable and unfun situations where both of their fielded Beasties are WIPED. And because splash damage scales with damage dealt to the initial Beastie target, it gave players a way to deal high amount of damage to ally Beasties that otherwise would resist their attacks, invalidating many defensive matchups. It never quite felt right or made sense, and it was time to do something a little more interesting.

Quake provides similar utility to splash damage (it often deals damage to Beasties that are allies of the one you targeted). However, it puts more power in the hands of the team that has had Quake applied to them, giving them the option to avoid damage by taking fewer actions instead. It's another tool that can be used by stall-focused teams to slow down the pace of the game and build up damage through means other than direct offense. It also offers more direct counter-play into teams that heavily rely on frequent passing or increasing their action count, strategies which have emerged as more popular than others over time.

Bigmoon Bash Features

You'll now receive prizes from participating in previous Bigoon Bashes when you open SportNet.

We also expanded the feature set of Bigmoon Bashes to allow players to represent different Beasties and increase a global score by playing. The upcoming Bash will be a ocntest between the 3 starters, with players able to influence the outcome and fight for their favorite! For more info on the Bash, check out our announcement here.

Info Guide

We've added a new menu purely for explaining game mechanics in a simple, readable format. This guide includes detailed reference information on different FEELINGs and Field Effects. It's available from your phone menu as well as during any sport match where no time limit is set, and it replaces some of the more dry and inaccessible NPC dialogue that we previously relied on to convey the details of some game mechanics. In future updates, we intend to add images to some guide sections so it isn't all just text.

Etc

Added a "copy to clipboard" button for Team Codes in the Team Setup > View/Edit Details menu

Beastie Art updates

Note: Much more is in production than what is reflected here.

Riplash: Cleaned up design
Boldlur: Cleaned up design and sketch poses added
Albrax: Cleaned up design and sketch poses added
Debugly: Cleaned up design and sketch poses added
Wisper: Cleaned up design and sketch poses added
Lunaptra: Cleaned up design and sketch poses added
Hydrolm: Cleaned up design and sketch poses added

Balance Changes

Many story encounters have been modified in accordance with below balance changes. In general our intention was to make use of new play and trait changes without affecting the game's overall difficulty balance. Final boss fights in the post-game Expedition mode have had their difficulty notably adjusted with the intention of making each Boss more equally threatning (some were overperforming and some were unerperforming).

FEELINGs

Wiped: Introduced a new RUSHED RECOVERY mechanic. Generally, anytime WIPED is cured by counting down to 0, Beasties fully restore their stamina. This recovery is now reduced by 10 STAMINA for each stack of WIPED above 1 on the Beastie if they recover earlier than they would naturally. So a Beastie recovering with 2 stacks of WIPED will restore to 90 STAMINA; 3 stacks to 80 STAMINA, and so on.

The intention of this change is to reduce the effectiveness of some methods of recovery that circumvent the downsides of being WIPED OUT too easily, such as Team Chant and Torch Pass. WIPED is a special status in the game and any amount of this Feeling applied to a Beastie should be relevant.
Tender: Beasties that are TENDER are now prevented from feeling TOUGH. If a Beastie is already TOUGH, TENDER does NOT remove the feeling.

This small change adds some more usefulness to TENDER, which hasn't seen much use and is outclassed by many other Feelings.

Plays

(NEW!) Rumble: Support play that applies 2 Quake to opponent’s field.
Explosion: Now called Eruption. No longer deals damage to the entire field. POW is now 60 (from 70). Applies 3 Quake to opponent’s field, and 2 Quake to your field.
Mindfield: POW reduced to 30 (from 45). No longer deals damage to target’s ally. Instead applies 2 Quake to opponent’s field.
Bang: Now called Boom. BODY type attack (previously SPIRIT). No longer deals damage to target’s ally. Instead applies 1 Quake to opponent’s field.
Updraft: Costs 40 STAMINA to use (from 34).

Players have discovered many uses of Updraft that give a lot of value with very little drawback. This tweak gives opponents greater opportunity to limit how many times the play can be used, introducing more effective counterplay.
Juggle: Now shifts its user sideways.

This change means players need to plan a little more in order to make effective use of Juggle. Previously, the move was too easy to use in too many circumstances, giving players great benefit without any drawback.
Dump: Target now always get an easy receive.

Dump has been a little too easy to use, and difficult to play against. This adds a slight drawback to one of the strongest and most-used attacks in the game. It also better reflects the move as a simulacrum of a setter-dump in real volleyball.
Bounce: POW increased to 70 (from 50). Now auto volleys to the target’s ally.

Bounce was previously too similar to Careful Shot and Slice, without offering any interesting distinction. There also was no solid attacking option for Beasties hitting sideways using Body POW. This adjustment gives Bounce more of a unique niche, and indirectly buffs Goofsder, a Beastie that has been underperforming.
Soulcrusher: POW reduced to 110 (from 120).
Vigor Beam: POW reduced to 125 (from 135).
Careful Shot: POW increased to 45 (from 40).

Traits

Echo: No longer deals damage to target’s ally. Instead applies 1 Quake to opponent’s field.
(NEW!) Welcoming: +40 Stamina to your ally as they Tag In. This is now Bongus’s recessive trait as it no longer gets Crafty.

Crafty was seldom used and not very effective on Bongus, whose POW stats are overall lackluster. This trait better cements their role as a strong pivot and supporting Beastie.
Performer: Boost to DEF increased to x1.5 (from x1.3).

Surgus and Plumask, two Beasties with this trait, have been somewhat underperforming. Our intention is to give these two more of an edge and make them more viable relative to other Beasties.
Restless: Removed from the game! Seakit now has Hunter, Scrubbub and Grubiron now have…
(NEW!) Momentum: 1.3x damage just after moving or tagging in.

Restless was not a very well designed trait. In the vast majority of circumstances, it was entirely useless. And when it was useful, it was overwhelmingly effective to the point where it had no interesting counterplay. Our intention is to offer these Beasties options that are more generally useful and better convey their theme.

Beastie Changes

In general, since our last patch, Mind offense has been dominant in PvP. One of our overall goals with these changes is to bring the game to a more equitable balance where Mind attackers aren’t more effective than others.

Across the board: Beastie’s “Ally training” values have been adjusted to better reflect each Beasties’ specialties and create more diversity among the cast.
Sprecko + Surgus:
- Playbook: Added Toppler, including to level-up plays. Boom is now a friendship-only play.
Bongus:
- -Spirit DEF: 90 (from 95)
- +Mind DEF: 65 (from 60)
Surgus:
- -Spirit DEF: 90 (from 95)
- +Mind DEF: 65 (from 60)
Illugus:
- +Body POW: 65 (from 60)
- -Mind POW: 90 (from 95)
  Compared to its family members, Illugus has been overperforming, particularly because it gets more value from its traits and plays. This change slightly reduces their stat efficiency to make up for their otherwise more effective playbook/traits.
Armantis:
- -Spirit DEF: 70 (from 105)
- +Mind DEF: 105 (from 70)
Bandicraft:
- +Body POW: 67 (from 60)
- -Mind POW: 85 (from 92)
  
  This slight change reduces Bandicraft’s overall stat efficiency to make up for their otherwise more effective playbook and traits compared to Hopra and Kassaleet. It brings Bandicraft’s effectiveness more in line with other Beasties that have the Captain trait (Beetlback and Tortanchor). It also better solidifies Bandicraft’s specialty as a supportive setting/passing Beastie.
Blitzwift:
- -Body DEF: 62 (from 68)
- -Mind DEF: 47 (from 57)
  
  Since high-level players have discovered Blitzwift’s effectiveness as a supporter Beastie, it has made waves. These changes make Blitzwift a little more fragile, and easier for opponents to mitigate. In general Blitzwift has always had a stat total that is a little bit too high in tandem with a trait that is overwhelmingly useful.
Conjarr:
- +Spirit DEF: 85 (from 63)
- -Mind DEF: 63 (from 85)
- Playbook: Added Eruption and Mind Read. Removed Boom. Adjusted level-up plays to include better offensive options.
  
  Although used to great effect by a handful of high-level players, Conjarr tends to struggle competitively. We adjusted their defensive spread and gave them easier-to-access offensive plays as well as new support options. Their indeterminate, multi-faceted role is something we want to preserve, but we also want to give them tools to succeed on more casual teams.
Debugly:
- +Mind DEF: 99 (from 91)
Goofsder:
- -Body POW: 80 (from 90)
- +Mind POW: 95 (from 85)
Riplash:
- -Spirit POW: 29 (from 30)
- +Mind DEF: 105 (from 100)
Scauldra:
- -Body POW: 20 (from 35)
- +Mind DEF: 65 (from 50)
- Playbook: Removed Boom (and updated level-up plays)
Shloom:
- +Body POW: 110 (from 100)
- +Spirit POW: 110 (from 100)
- +Mind POW: 110 (from 100)
- Playbook: Added Rumble
  
  Shloom has been underperforming compared to most other Beasties, owing to how difficult it is to make good use of with its difficult trait. The intention of this change is to make it more threatening with a little less set-up.
Varkabond:
- -Spirit POW: 50 (from 55)
- +Body DEF: 60 (from 55)
Boldlur:
- -Body POW: 86 (from 88)
- -Spirit POW: 22 (from 30)
- -Spirit DEF: 82 (from 87)
- +Mind DEF: 55 (from 40)
- Playbook: Added Boom and Rumble
  
  Boldlur is designed as a premier tanky Beastie, but its particularly weak Mind DEF meant that it was often WIPED quickly. The intention of this change is to neutralize its greatest weakness and make it more consistent.
Duggout:
- -Body POW: 50 (from 54)
- -Spirit POW: 100 (from 105)
- -Body DEF: 90 (from 95)
- -Spirit DEF: 60 (from 65)
- -Mind DEF: 75 (from 80)
  
  Duggout has proven to be an overperforming hyper-aggressive Beastie with a lot of quick setups into high damage. Its Unflappable trait particularly limits the counter-play available into it, making its defenses more operative in determining its longevity on the field. The intention of these changes is to make offense more effective into Duggout. It also lowers their stat total to be the same as Diggum's.
Yamyth:
- Playbook: Added Rumble. Removed Relentless, and updated level-up plays to better incorporate Boom.
Deluja:
- Playbook: Added Boom
Sefren + Zephyre:
- Playbook: Removed Boom
Turogue, Turtaneer, Tortanchor:
- Playbook: Added Boom, including to level-up plays.
Millimine + Demolipede:
- Playbook: Added Rumble
Major Changes
Yearnings
Previously Beasties would always have Yearnings for plays that they learned via level-up. This was intended to ensure that Beasties were always rewarded with a play that would be essential to their kit by completing a Yearning, and also to maintain the value of plays typically only learned via friendship. In practice, many players would neglect their Beasties' yearnings and then were frustrated to not get access to plays as indicated in the Beastiepedia. What was designed as a fun surprise for players would lead to confusion and disappointment.

Yearnings now happen only for friendship plays, so they are strictly "bonus" and do not interfere with a Beastie's expected level-up progression. Care was taken to ensure that Beasties will tend to learn high-value plays from Yearnings, to make them worth players' time. Additionally, they are signposted more obviously whenever a Beastie gets a new Yearning.

Away Teams
We have made some modifications to how Away Teams appear across previous updates with the intention of having them appear more consistently for players in the post-game. In the initial release, they appeared as you explored, but would appear in scenes that the player was exiting, so they always required backtracking to reach. They were later changed to always first appear when the player is entering a new scene, so that players would encounter them in-person before finding them on a map. This made them more consistent to find, but confusing for some players who expected to be able to find teams by looking at their map.

This behaviour is ideal for players in the single-player adventure, who are generally more focused on making forward progress and exploring new areas rather than grinding against away teams. But in the post-game, players are hungrier for surprises and new challenges. We've changed Away Teams so that in the post-game they now appear with MUCH greater frequency, and will ambiently spawn in random locations on the player's map while you're exploring or taking on post-game challenge modes. This makes it much easier for players to find renewable sources of resources like money and Social Battery.

As before, be aware that you can also disable Away Teams in the game settings.

Replays
The game now auto-saves your most recent match replays and keeps them listed above your manually saved replays. Players can visit the COACH menu and choose to manually save any auto-saved replay to keep it in storage before it's overwritten.

Replays now save to the top of the list rather than the bottom, making it faster to find your most recent matches.

Sport Camera and Selection
I addressed several more issues to do with this. They're all small changes but should hopefully create a nicer experience for more players.
- The camera angle when selecting actions in offense was adjusted by 5 degrees to reduce how much Beasties overlap on your team.
- Corrected mouse selection bounds and render positions for Beasties during sport matches, particularly in high-elevation areas.
- Re-factored how Beasties are selected particularly when handling cases of Beasties at varying sizes overlapping each other at some angles. When using keyboard or gamepad, the game should now be 100% consistent with highlighting the correct Beastie as you browse between options. It may still look odd in some situations though, as there's only so much we can do if there's a giant Beastie standing in front of a tiny Beastie for example, but these changes should ensure that no Beastie is ever unselectable.
Text Changes
We have made a significant change to how ALL VISIBLE TEXT in the game is loaded and displayed, in preparation for the localization process. This also meant greatly updating and expanding our font set, which may change the appearance of text in some places, but also fixes issues with certain symbols missing in some contexts.

Other Fixes and Changes
- We found another area of the game's underlying engine (Game Maker) which was unstable and potentially buggy on some systems. The issue had to do with how memory was allocated in some circumstances, and could lead to sudden and unpredictable crashes, including when the game was starting up. Because this error is very hard to reproduce, we're interested to see whether this fix has any impact on some players' stability.
- Added and fixed several issues to do with new features when they were added to the Experimental branch
  - Added audio for Quake VFX
  - Fixed broken shadows on Quake FX
  - "Momentum" trait not giving a damage boost on the turn after tagging in
  - Fixed a crash when the Unflappable trait interacted with Quake damage
  - Adjusted the order of healing events when a Beastie gets a "full restore" so that it doesn't bypass the intended design of Rushed Recovery
- Changed some behaviour when using tokens in the Gym for stat training. When reducing a Beastie's stat using tokens, tokens will conditionally remove extra stat points to "flatten" the points and remove unused extra points that aren't enough to contribute to a bonus. This should help with removing junk points when trying to optimize a Beastie's training.
- Adjusted "high-skill" AI to value protecting its lanes a bit more
- Damage previews correctly display predicted damage based on the user standing where the play requires them to be (ie. Dump and Cut Shot always assume you are attacking from the net). This was working for a while, and then was broken when we added other requested damage preview features in a past update.
- Fixed an issue with the shadows of ropes appearing before they were dropped
- Players can no longer fast travel to the Zip Station in Domain Park until clearing a major story encounter there (preventing an odd softlock)
- Froofulk's metamorphosis story scene no longer triggers during Expeditions.
- Added a hint for when Beasties' friendship is strengthened at the Diner to the extent that they will likely form a close bond the next time they play a match together.
- Fixed issues with line breaks in some speech bubbles
- Adjusted layering on neck accessories to work beter with hair (there are still 2 hairstyles that have bad layering interactions, we will be fixing this in a future update).
- Added stricter safety enforcement for team size and makeup when uploading teams for online play (ie. PvP lobbies, away teams and team codes).
- Fixed issues with how Bigmoon Bash Rank was updated locally to avoid errors where it appears to go down
- In Randomizer game modes, certain Beasties which are impossible to recruit from the wild can no longer appear as Raremorphs
- When two Beasties are in the midst of a storyline related to their relationship, but grow apart without completing the storyline, the storyline will not advance unless or until they rekindle their relationship. If the new relationship does not match the type of the previous one, then the storyline will be outright cancelled and may appear for another pair of Beasties another time. This is to prevent rare issues where Beasties could get into softlocks by having multiple relationship changing events stacked, or have a storyline change their relationship in a way that no longer makes sense after their relationship has naturally changed to something else.
- Camera state is now reset before close-ups ie. on Beastie level up, hopefully fixing conditions where this screen would be unusually zoomed in
- Adjusted layering so that Beastie status effects should always layer above 3d geometry in the background
- The game FPS now is lowered when the window is out of focus, to reduce resource usage and hopefully correct a reported issue from one player using overlay programs
- Corrected an issue where, when doing the story in a peculiar order, Riley could call the player and react to a scene which had been entirely skipped over
- Corrected an issue where thrown Beastieballs could sometimes linger invisibly on the screen and be interacted with if they "expired" during a sport match.
- Corrected issues with Beastie pair interactions in locker rooms sometimes creating situations where one Beastie became uninteractable
- After high-fiving, Beasties now try to return to their starting position, preventing common issues where the player and Beasties position could drift with repeated high fives and eventually go out of bounds.
- Adjusted layout of several scenes to correct areas where players could easily clip out of bounds and get stuck
- Corrected the color that the map blinks when displaying Beastie habitats
- Reduced how often the game checks for updates from the internet, lowering bandwidth usage.
- Fixed an issue with Slide have boosted power on the Serve
- Updated wording on some Recruit Conditions to be more clear
- Fixed crash related to entering certain symbols when naming Beasties
- Fixed an issue with a certain save file/data corruption that could happen from the player respawning badly in a certain post-game area
- The game now defaults to having "Borderless Fullscreen" enabled to prevent issues on some monitors (apparently; I'll be honest, I don't know what this means, but someone asked for it in a feedback report).
- Netcode now reliably detects when a player has disconnected and ends the game for both players accordingly, rather than hanging forever. This change will take effect in a shortly upcoming server code update.
- Corrected issue with Craig giving players the Old Guidebook regardless of research progress.
- Removed flashing effects from scenes in the Mermaid Club if flashing effects are disabled in settings
- Corrected issue preventing Raymond from appearing in the lobby before story boss matches.
- Adjusted spacing of some UI elements
- Added clearer outline for Beastie stamina bars during sport matches
- In-match effect popups now clear more quickly when Sport Speed is set to higher speeds
- Adjusted collision on some tree models to prevent players from easily getting out of bounds in some area.
- Adjusted some level layouts to prevent jank. Made it possible to backtrack from a certain screen in a post-game area.
- Fixed some typos
Thanks! And Remarks on upcoming updates
If you actually read all of this then; wow, thanks! Although not every aspect or feature of the game may be visibly progressing as fast as everybody would like, I hope you can at least acknowledge that we're getting a lot done on this game at a pace that probably borders on unreasonable.

One reason for the urgent pace of changes: we're trying to lock down all of the major features and text in the game so that we can move into a phase of localization. Localization is something that many players request, and will help grow our audience, but it also means that it's going to be more slow and difficult to add new features or events without taking every language into consideration going forward.

With this in mind, as the project advances, we aim to shift the focus of updates gradually away from balance and feature updates, and more towards art and content updates.

I've been working 7-day weeks on this project for as long as I can remember at this point. I really love this game, and I'm deeply grateful that I have the opportunity to make this game, and that we have such a warm and wonderful community supporting us all the way. Thank you very much. I'm going to go on a short vacation not too long after this update goes out, so that will be one reason why you might not see as many things changed in the next update ;P

Thank you for playing our game. I look forward to seeing some of you on the field in the upcoming Bigmoon Bash.