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It's been close to 6 months since my last patch notes post, so it's time to go through my code commits and collect the list of player-facing changes. If you have feedback on the format of this type of update, please let me know. Going forward, I plan to use announcements threads like this for both (a) comprehensive patch notes posts every so often that exhaustively list everything that's changed from a player-facing perspective (the idea being that going through these can fully catch you up) and (b) one-off threads for bigger or more important changes that would benefit from more immediate feedback. I think this balance lets me make small tweaks and fixes on the fly without having to spam everyone with announcements for every little thing. With that said, on to the details...
Features:
- Stash reordering: Items in stash can now be re-ordered. Click/drag on desktop. Long-hold/drag on mobile (see announcement).
- Buy unequippable items: All items can now be bought to make upcoming upgrades a bit smoother (see announcement).
- Overflow stash items: Stars are no longer needed to see inaccessible stash items (see announcement).
- Monthly Crescendo: To keep competition relevant throughout the entire month, energy exchanged per battle will increase steadily throughout the month. This is currently set to 5% per day in June (down from 10% per day in May) based on player feedback. See the May announcement thread, May feedback thread, and June annoucncement thread for plenty of discussion.
- 10 member clans: The ranking clan member cap was reduced from 20 to 10. This was done to lower the barrier for a clan to effectively compete and make the top spots more attainable for smaller, focused teams. See the links in the previous bullet for discussion on this as well.
- Click-to-pause buffs: Click/tap buff icons to pause/unpause. A small QoL change to make it easier to quickly stop/start buffs (from suggestion).
- Clan energy history: Added an energy history chart for the top 10 clans to the clans homepage (see discussion).
- Cancel showroom orders: Arrived orders can now be canceled, just like unarrived orders (from suggestion).
Bug fixes:
- Buff purchase: Fixed a bug where a global buff being active would prevent you from buying its regular version (from bug).
- Mobile stash: Fixed a bug making opening the details popup for stash items on mobile unreliable, which was caused by the stash reordering feature (from bug).
- Emoji bar: Fixed a bizarre and oddly-specific (Firefox-only + only when logged out) rendering issue with this (from bug).
- Historical clan rankings: Fixed a small rounding error that could lead to the wrong level being displayed on the clan history page in a very narrow set of edge cases.
- Unread post count: Forum posts from deleted threads will no longer contribute to your unread post count.
- Buff sort order: This broke when adding global buffs in December. It is now fixed (from bug).
- Start-of-month energy: Fixed a bug that caused energy to not enter the game until 1am instead of midnight on June 1 (from bug).
Misc:
- Text input font: Changed in places like forum post entry boxes from fixed-width to the same font as the game (from suggestion).
- Anti-cheat: Invested further into the system, continuing with past increased focus after November 2024 cheating.
- Deleted forum posts: Rather than be totally hidden, deleted posts now have a "removed by moderator" stub to (a) give transparency on forum moderation actions, (b) give a signal that the forum is actively moderated, and (c) give a hint of when a thread may be confusing because of context that was formerly present and possibly replied to but now removed.
- Forum moderation: In an effort to make the forum a more welcoming environment for new players and veterans alike, player communication rules are being more regularly enforced.
- Ranking clan members: On clan profile pages, the rank column now has a yellow background for rows where that bot is contributing to ranking.
- Unequippable items in stash: Just like in the showroom stock, unequippable items in your stash now have a red background.
- Mobile stash: Added light haptic/vibration feedback when starting/ending drag.
- Global buffs: Global buffs are now visually distinct from regular buffs. They have a 2 pixel gold outline. This may change (see post.
- Daily energy exchange increase: The daily rate is now visible to players as a global buff named Monthly Crescendo, rather than being a hidden system detail (see post).
As for what's next: I'll mostly be continuing to focus on the clan competition aspect of the game. The Clan competition changes for June + looking ahead thread has a list of specifically what to look out for (but note that the list is tentative and may change). I'll continue making smaller QoL updates and bug fixes in parallel with these larger changes. Some additional items to look out for at some point (no timelines just yet) are better player analytics to understand engagement/retention (I talked about this a bit in my last patch notes post), Discord server setup (see post), and introducing a comprehensive player code of conduct that will likely replace the existing player communication rules in the interest of making the game and community aspect a more welcoming place for all players.
Past patch notes (I'm going to start including this list in all patch notes announcements):