[img=https://www.blocknload.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/KreepySargeElizaRotation_small2.jpg] We hope you’re enjoying the new progression, the new match awards and had a weekend full of ranked goodness with your friends! We’re not stopping there, of course, and today we’re bringing you an update on our Roadmap progress and what’s in the pipeline next. But first, let’s get a couple of announcements out of the way.

Hero Rotation and Time Assault

We’re changing to a Tuesday Rotation day so today we’re bringing Kreepy the Klown to our Free Rotation, joining Sarge and Eliza. This Dream Team gives you some extra oomph in your mid-field attacks where Kreepy can keep ‘em laughing with banana mayhem while Eliza makes those laughs their last. Meanwhile get Sarge pushing forward and take that base! You'll also find the Time Assault is reset and Nigel’s “Raiders of the Lost Block” arena is ready to go.

Roadmap Update

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been learning more and more about how players are playing the game both long and short term. We’ve also learned a lot about our workload capacity and we’re getting into a release pattern we can sustain. Over the last 3 months, we’ve done the following (along with numerous bug and quality of life fixes):

• Separating Casual and Ranked - Done
• Block Rebalance Pass 1 - Done
• Progression Overhaul - Done
• Hero Balance Passes – on-going (Hero Balance is something that we keep a constant eye on. We’re watching the balance of power as it shifts from hero to hero in response to new players and veteran players learning new tactics or changing up old ones.)
• Performance fixes - On-going (We’ve made some small improvements and are continuing to investigate other ways to improve performance on various systems.)
• New Tutorial/Hero Tutorials - In progress (We’ve added functionality to teach about the build phase barrier. Supply and Blockbuster drops are on the way as we continue to refine the tutorial and we will be looking to add hero tutorials over time.)

Now we look forward to the summer and we’ve got a few other things on our immediate radar:

• More sales and short term events - we’re looking at Bundles, Double XP weekends, Free Hero weekends and Flash sales as ways to get new and old players playing for longer and buying more.
• More cosmetic content - we want to add more to buy and more rewards (yes, level 100 Block skins!). Again, we believe that having things to work towards really keeps people coming back, and of course, more things to sell helps our bottom line!
• Bug and Quality of Life fixes - this is always on-going

As for our feature development work, we want to focus on key areas:

• Encourage friendly and competitive team play and communication
• Do as much as we can to help new players understand the depth and strategic elements of the game
• Keep working towards better matchmaking at all levels

As a result, we’ve identified the following big features we’ll be working on. The order will depend on the full scope of the designs and other dependencies and we’ll update you on the particulars soon:

Squad finder – A way to find other players looking to join a squad before entering the queue to help find people to group up with before starting the match.

Matchmaking Improvements to include better squad matching

In-game communication improvements - Map ping system

Seasonal (and other criteria) Ranked leaderboards

Ranked promotion/demotion systems

Clan System - Persistent clans or clan identification

Custom game improvements - Late joining, additional custom game options, etc What do you think of these bigger features and which do you think are most important? We’d love to hear your feedback!

[ 2016-05-03 16:18:03 CET ] [ Original post ]