Welcome to the first Developer Update of 2020! After a very busy 2019 saw the launch of Warhammer Combat Cards, we’re looking forward to releasing a host of new features and updates over the next few months to make the game even better. Some of those will be improvements and upgrades we’ve identified, while others will be long-awaited features you’re all clamouring for. We’ll go into as much detail as we can, but some of these features are either still being designed or simply things we want to tease rather than reveal. There’s lots to talk about at the start* of a new year, so let’s start with…
Ranked Mode – Beta Season 1
Ranked has proven to be a hugely successful game mode that many players have enjoyed. In fact a total of 31,618 players have played at least one battle in ranked mode, and 3,235,555 battles have been completed with 50,220,241 trophies earned and 340 people reaching Terra in Season 1! It’s been great to see this level of engagement with the first season, and we’re looking forward to see what Season 2 shapes up like. Speaking of Season 2, there’ll be a short amount of downtime before it starts as we implement some improvements, including:
- Shorter season of 28 days
- Changing the ‘ladder’ view to a vertical layout to provide a better visualisation of your progression
- Better information regarding trophy reset brackets at the end of seasons
- More segmentation of prizes within Terra
We have more improvements we will be working on during the short downtime period, including analysing matchmaking from Season 1 to ensure players can make sense of the matches they’re placed in. We will detail other improvements in a future post dedicated to Ranked.
What’s New in Version 29.5
Version 29.5 should be appearing in your app stores soon. It has quite a lot going on, although it might appear like not much has changed at first glance. Not only does it contain the aforementioned changes to the Ranked ladder and trophy reset information, but also quite a few bug fixes (more details on those later) and functionality to allow us to make some big changes to Campaign energy, which we’ll detail individually.
Change to Starting Campaign Energy
A frequent complaint from many of you was that starting with full energy meant that not only did the stability of the game suffer as people rushed to use all of their energy to trigger a refresh, but also that full energy meant an unfair advantage for those around the world who couldn’t start taking part at the same time as those already awake for the Campaign. We’re happy to announce that with this version we’re now able to start Campaigns with a preset amount of energy. We’ll be aiming to start the next Campaign (starting on 29/01/20) with 2 energy instead of the usual 6. This should hopefully align with most people’s playing patterns and mean that no one misses out at the start of a campaign.
Energy Overflow from Customer Support Requests
Another issue we wanted to address was another time-based problem. Due to the nature of the world, our hard-working Customer Support team are active when some of you are sound asleep. Unfortunately this meant that missing energy requests were sometimes fulfilled when your Campaign energy had already refilled. This new version instead converts those Customer Support-granted energy into a separate pool of energy outside of your normal refresh times. This means that you can spend those granted energy in your own time, rather than worrying about when your request will be fulfilled!
General Stability at Campaign Start
Finally**, some backend improvements should mean that the instability seen around Campaign starts should be a thing of the past. Unfortunately some requests were taking longer than desired but with the changes made to both the backend and the Campaign energy mechanics, we should hopefully see a much more stable experience.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed the camera sometimes getting stuck when zoomed in during attacks
- Corrections to Zephyrblade and Abaddon’s Special Rules descriptions
- Fixed an issue causing cards to sometimes incorrectly display as Level 1 when inspected
- Fixed an issue causing buff and debuff animation speed to be slower than intended
Known Issues
- Commissar Yarrick’s Special Rule doesn’t trigger visually
- Issues with account linking
- Occasional delays on loading certain areas of the game when first launching
- Remaining cards number sometimes doesn’t display the correct number of cards (Note: Issue will be fixed for next update)
- Some players not receiving notifications (Note: Issue will be fixed for next update)
- ‘App minimise’ bar on iOS does not go inactive, leading to accidental minimising
- Space Marine Warlords don’t trigger their own Special Rules
- Delay in buff and debuff bars filling
Things to Come…
There are a number of features the team are actively working on, and each will undoubtedly have more detail shared in future updates but for now, we wanted to give you all a brief insight in to some of the upcoming features and improvements that the team are eager to deliver. Let’s start with the big one!
Clans!
We know you’re all desperate to start up your clans and have a place to congregate within the game, and we’re very keen to get them to you as soon as possible. Clans is our top priority feature to deliver and we’re currently ironing out some finer details. One thing we can reveal in this update is that the maximum member count for Clans will be 50! We feel this is a sensible number of people to have in one clan, allowing Clan leaders to maintain a sensible member count. We’ll be announcing a release date for Clans in the near future.
Other Upcoming Features:
- Deck Filtering and Sorting
- An improved battle system allowing for new and more interesting traits, Warlords and game modes
- A turn indicator
- Player profiles with game mode stats and more
- Improvements to the upgrade screen allowing players to track each card’s upgrade journey
- Battle pass
- Allowing players to increase the animation speed in battle
- Improved information of pack contents
- Improved visuals for traits and special rules
- And more to be announced!
We’ll share more information on when these features can be expected in future and no doubt share some previews before they arrive.
Why not head over to our in-game forums, r/WarhammerCombatCards, and Discord for discussion and let us know what you’re looking forward to?
You can also get in touch via our Facebook page, leaving a comment here, or mailing [email protected].
* It’s still January so it definitely counts
**Both in terms of this section and also the time it’s taken!
Deck filtering and sorting is what I’m most looking forward too, it’s a bit dull but for quality of life it’s essential
Don’t worry, we’re aware that filtering could be better and it’s one of the tasks that we’re working on. I don’t have an ETA for the update because it has to fit around all the other work going on, but hopefully not too long.
When a card enters the battlefield and it’s Precision Shot (or similar) destroys an opponents card, but doesn’t trigger the warlords “when a card is destroyed” ability
E.g. Avatar of Khaine
A little annoying to not get the boost of “destroying” a card.
—–
Opp warlord is Badrukk
A – B – C
D – E – F (with Taunt)
A, B & C attack is > F toughness
A attacks F, destroys it, Badrukk ability triggers for A
B attacks F, “destroys” it a second time and Badrukks ability triggers a second time
And rinse & repeat for C …funnily enough filling D an E as well :/
How do you destroy a card that is already destroyed?
—–
When a card enters the battlefield and destroys an opponents card (Precision Shot or sim) and the opponents card, even though greyed out and shattered, still has it’s own effect happen (Precision Shot etc).
Maybe it’s a logic thing 🙂
We’re working on an update to the system which runs our battles right now, and once that rolls out it will fix several issues with traits and Warlord special rules. I don’t have an ETA on that rework being rolled out, but hopefully it won’t be too long.
Would small quests for Warlords or Bodyguards work? Maybe to obtain better amor or wargear as side missions or fun things to do?
Actually we did talk about a feature like that but decided it would take time to do it properly so went on the backlog. Hopefully we’ll get at some point to it because I agree it could be cool.
I think everyone that has been involved in making this app and the continued running of it have done and really do keep doing absolute amazing jobs.
I have been playing on and off since only a couple months after it was available in Aus and have love it.
I had to start a new account just recently because I couldn’t remember the one I used when I started and because of the changes you have made and things you have added it hasn’t taken me long at all to really start building my stuff back up.
Everything that has been done since it’s release and all things still to come really are awesome. They don’t really seem like and aren’t huge things but that’s the best part to me. Everything doesn’t have to be huge or over the top they just have to be what’s best for the app and I think you all have done a perfect job in doing that.
Thanks for the comments and glad you’re enjoying the quality of life improvements we’re making.
Sorry to hear you lost your account, we’re fixing a couple of issues before we get cloud saving working again, but in the meantime if you contact our Customer Service team using the help option in the game’s options menu or this link: https://support.flaregames.com/hc/requests/new, they’ll be able to help transfer your profile.
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂
Looking forward to the updates and loving the game brilliant job well done guys
Great news!
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