ashecitism
Member
Recently Paladins got a new executive producer who came over from Smite, since Paladins was suffering from lack of executive decisions. Yesterday he posted the patch notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...3qhIsC07JgOBMSOQjZ4Cydd3cDRjvcqtjWzq0LtG6/pub
Cards Unbound was basically the much maligned Battlefront 2 esque system.
Cards Unbound was basically the much maligned Battlefront 2 esque system.
Hello all, HiRezChris here. I’m the new Executive Producer for Paladins and was, until very recently, the Executive Producer of SMITE. My first month on the team has been busy to say the least!
I wanted to loop you guys into some changes that we are working to implement as fast as we can, based on your feedback.
I’ll talk first about Cards Unbound, then about Battlegrounds, and then about where we want to take Paladins in the future.
CARDS UNBOUND
Let’s start first with the elephant in the room: Cards Unbound.
Looking solely at the metrics, the Cards Unbound system introduced in OB64 has actually been successful in increasing our overall player engagement and new user conversion, while at the same time helping increase our revenue per player.
However, we are not blind (although some of the recent MSPaint troll posts on the Paladins reddit have perhaps made us wish we were - lol).
We know this system has angered many of our most loyal fans and become a point of continuous contention in the Paladins community (and even inside of Hi-Rez). Your voice has been heard loud and clear.
Our team will be working over the next major release cycle to remove Cards Unbound from the game. We will be replacing it with a new system that I believe the community will be really excited about -- including the re-introduction of the deck building point system, and a method for obtaining cards that will be way less grindy.
We want the focal point of the card system in Paladins to be about fun ways to customize your champion to your favored playstyle. We also want to unify the COMPETITIVE and CASUAL experiences with the card system so that we use the same system for both (no more separation of bound vs unbound).
We are still working out the details of the new system, but the rough outline of our current thinking is as follows (NOTE: Subject to some change, but hopefully this communicates the general direction we want to head):
The release plan is to start testing this new system as soon as we can on PTS (hopefully, next week). Your analysis and participation will be very important over the next few weeks as we work the kinks out of this design and deliver the best possible product to you in the next update.
- Legendary Cards will now be called Talents.
- Talents will only have a single level.
- Talents will be unlocked for free by earning XP and gaining Champion levels (for example; level 1,5,10,15).
- All Champion Cards will now be free (No cost or grind).
- Deck creation will return to a point system where players can distribute 15 points across the five cards they select for their loadout. Each Champion Card will have five ranks to choose from.
- Talents will not have ranks, and are not included in the loadout point cap.
- Talents and Decks will continue to be chosen at match start to allow players to tailor their playstyles based on their opponents.
- New Talents will be added over time and give further varied playstyles.
- Champion Mastery will no longer be capped at level 25. Instead, it will work similarly to Player Account leveling (which has no cap).
- Card chests will be removed from the game.
- We are evaluating the best options to compensate players for their previously earned cards, and hope to share details soon.
BATTLEGROUNDS
Thank you so much to everyone that has been helping us test Battlegrounds over the last few weeks -- first on our public test server, then starting yesterday in a larger scale Alpha running in the main game client.
The job our team has done on this mode in such a short time is incredible -- and I first want to give a huge shout out to our employees that have really rallied around and embraced this new way to play Paladins under seemingly impossible deadlines.
After seeing the results of our recent external testing and some exciting internal tests of additional changes to the mode, we’ve decided to make a few big changes in regards to Battlegrounds:
Why make this change?
- We are going to remove the alpha version of Battlegrounds from the core Paladins game, effective tomorrow.
- Over the next few weeks we are going to make a number of aggressive changes to the mode that, based on internal testing, we think will make it considerably more engaging and fun. Our codename for these changes inside the Studio has been YOLO -- if that gives you any indication of what lies ahead. Hopefully, you will enjoy them as much as we have in initial testing.
- When we re-release the mode, it will be in a separate game client under a different name. The mode will have the current map and some of the elements from Paladins as well as some significant changes -- but it will be re-launched as a NEW GAME. We expect it to be free to play, with monetization around skins and visuals.
- We hope to start public testing of an early alpha mode of this new game as soon as we can (within weeks).
In short -- we think that the things that are necessary to make Paladins Battlegrounds great and amazing are in conflict with the things that will make the OG version of Paladins that we all know and love great. Right now, we are in a spot where the changes we need to make to each mode are in conflict with what the other mode needs. We think that having separate teams focus on separate games will produce a greater result. We also don’t want users to be confused about what Paladins is and should be: Paladins should be the best damn hero shooter ever made -- and we want the Paladins team focused on that goal. We’ll aim to do the same with the Battle Royale game and the team working on that.
THE FUTURE
If you missed the patch notes show earlier this week in which I introduced myself, let me reiterate our goals for Paladins in 2018:
We made great strides with SMITE over the years while I was on that team focusing on these goals. And I know that we can catapult Paladins to the next level doing the same here.
- Listening to your concerns and being as transparent as possible in addressing those concerns
- Releasing high-quality updates, part of our commitment to implementing those quality of life issues that you all have been asking for
- Ensuring that we listen to both the PC and Console players equally
- Improving the art quality of our game
- Adding fun content exploration events like SMITE has done for years
- Continuing to improve and position Paladins as a world-class shooter experience
- Never losing focus on what makes the game great. Focus focus focus on the core game experience and the core community for the competitive hero shooter game we all love.
I believe the changes detailed above will move us very positively in this direction. We want to make Paladins as awesome of an experience for our players as possible and thank you again for sticking with us and being passionate about the game!
Oh, before I forget, we have really been enjoying the art that you all have been producing and posting on the Paladins subreddit and it has inspired us! We have some great artists among our players. We should do some sort of community vote and get some of the best art pieces into our game as sprays!
Just a thought, let me know what you think in the comments below.
Tune in tomorrow at 1PM, we will be going over more details in the Dev Insight show. twitch.tv/PaladinsGame
You can follow me on Twitter: @HiRezChris
