An Improved Battlegrounds for Beta Showdown 2

Everdawn: Champions
3 min readJun 16, 2023

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After receiving community feedback, we have made some adjustments to Battlegrounds’ gameplay to create a more slick and enjoyable competitive experience. We always value your feedback and strive to make Battlegrounds the best gaming experience possible. This article provides a brief summary of those changes, ready for the sequel of our inaugural Beta Showdown.

Bugs

  • Saskia Bugs ~ as you know, the bug when playing Saskia meant that by selecting cancel on her Warrior ability her health would diminish and the other player’s game would freeze. We have now fixed this bug!
  • Graveyard bugs ~ previously, opening the graveyard during an opponent’s turn would completely break the game. We’ve implemented the temporary workaround that the graveyard can now only be opened during your turn.
  • GPU Hogging ~ we have now resolved this issue by locking the GPU to a maximum of 60 FPS.
  • Miscellaneous Bugs ~ lots more has been fixed under the hood to ensure games are playable to completion.

Conceding

We have now added a concede button to the gameplay menu to offer players the option to concede after the fourth turn. The points allocation is the same as in a regular match; the player conceding will receive a loss and 1 point as if they played the game to completion, the opponent will receive a win and 3 points.

To continue to discourage, we’ve also added disconnect handling as a facet of match reporting to keep an eye on any prospectively unsportsmanlike behaviour. We will be detracting a point from anyone who disconnects and awarding 3 to their opponent.

Please note that the concede button is always available, but if you concede before turn 3 then it counts as a disconnect and you get 0 points for the match.

Shorter Turn Time

Due to popular demand, we’ve now reduced our turn time from 120 to 90 seconds.

Deckbuilder

While we can’t offer a full deck builder yet, we’ve now added a total of 6 decks to choose from. We’ve also added 4 new playable cards! They are:

  • Ogre Blood Transfusion — Common Beast Hunter Strategem
  • Fireball — Heroic Arcane Strategem
  • Spore Cloud — Legendary Beast Hunter Strategem
  • Deft Hunter — Heroic Hunter Unit

The image of them is included at the top of the article for you to check out. The Beast Hunters needed a little love, and the 1–2 punch of the Cloaked Wanderer and Deft Hunter on turns 3 and 4 can load your board with some serious ranged firepower. This can be combined with the permanent +2/+2 buff given by Ogre Blood Transfusion for a significant late-game swing, though that buff at only 2 mana can also be played on turn 2 to make your 1 drops pose a true threat early on.

P2 Balance

The data showed Player 1 had a significant advantage in Beta Weekend 1. As some of our more astute competitors pointed out — this was in large part due to bad draws leading to player 2 losing control points in the early turns if they lacked 1 and 2 drop cards. Mulligans now return the full 3 cards and player 2 will draw an extra card on their first turn for a total of 4 (plus their Warrior). This is not the final plan for P2 balance but should improve P2’s odds greatly, and the data we collect during this tournament will be instrumental in helping us fine-tune the balance between the sides.

That covers the major improvements we’ve implemented since the last tournament based on your feedback and our goal of making the game more stable and fun to play in a competitive environment. We recognize there is still room for improvement and continue to value your feedback.

Tomorrow the new build will go live on Elixir, please check Discord for an announcement when it is available for download, and when access reopens. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow, ready for our Beta Showdown, Round 2!

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Everdawn: Champions
Everdawn: Champions

Written by Everdawn: Champions

Everdawn is a medieval fantasy gaming brand created by Nexus Play. Everdawn: Champions is a tactical TCG where collectable cards come to life.

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