Hey all - as you may already be aware, recently we published a Development Update, which ran through the general progress made on the Mobile Build to date, alongside giving a brief outline on the delays surrounding this.
Nothing has changed in regards to Mobile being the next major update that SoS will receive - however, this current QoL update has been prioritised over the last week or so, in order to help the players who are struggling to find matches outside of peak hours.
For continued updates surrounding SoS's Mobile Development, or to find more players to log on with, check out our Community Discord!
Bots
If the player count is running low (i.e: Average Queue times of 10-20s+), the SoS backend will now spin up a Bot to match you against, in order to ensure you can continue progressing through the game regardless of low player activity.
Additionally, with the gaurantee of being able to find a game once a player logs on (regardless of time of day, and without exceptional queues or needing to ask people on Discord to join), we hope that players will now stick around longer in general; allowing for real players to more easily find eachother, which in result then will spin down the bots to prioritise human vs. human encounters.
The bots themselves make it known that you're playing against an AI (and we're using that term loosely) Opponent, and immediately tell you their split/steal odds (generated newly on each encounter). Reflecting on the human vs. human counterpart, the chances of a bot splitting are slightly decreased in High Stakes.
Note that all values (such as split rate, speed of encounter rate etc) may be subject to balance adjustments if needed.
QoL Improvements
In order to speed up the Queue flow, decision unlock timers have been greatly reduced (approx. 3 Seconds for Low Stakes, 6 Seconds for High Stakes)
"Wirecut" timer reduced to 15s in Low Stakes after one player locks in.
"Wirecut" timer introduced at 30s in High Stakes after one player locks in.
Approved Live Streamers can now be given shout-outs on the in-game home screen. If you're interested in streaming and getting an in-game link for viewers to find you, contact the mods on our Community Discord!
Old Pogchamp emoji replaced
Emojis now appear larger in all text chats, alongside emoji support being extended to Global Chat.
Note: with the reduction in traffic to our WebGL Builds, the above QoL Improvements list will only be available to Steam Users as of now. WebGL Users will still be able to match against Bots as normal.
With this QoL update, attention will now be focused back on the Mobile build. Myself, and the extended mod team are as always, available to field any questions or feedback on Discord. Until then, keep on keeping safe, and keep racking up those coins!
Split or Steal 1.8.2 is now Live!
In-Game Policy Updates
Before we kick off with Content news, we're going to take a quick segue into clarifying recent updates made to our Moderation routines.
The Moderators always investigate on, and action instances of players breaking our Community Code of Conduct. However, in listening to the community, we've accepted that in some cases, punishment towards repeat offenders has at times been far too lenient.
The vast majority of players who have been actioned by the Moderator team to date have not required any follow-up warnings; we've always maintained that simply by speaking with players, and re-highlighting our Code of Conduct is often all that's needed for resolving problems. In some cases, this may happen more than once - and as Moderators, we always moved forward with the mindset of more permanent actions being issued as a last resort.
While we're still keeping firmly to the idea that permanent actions such as bans should remain a last resort, we similarly needed to clarify what truly justified a "last resort"; with some players managing to rack up warnings on rule-break actions into the dozens, while still not being actioned; leading to the players being affected by an individual's actions feeling frustrated by a seeming lack of intervention on the Moderator's parts.
Starting around two weeks ago, the Moderators began consciously acting in a more proactive manner towards toxicity/abuse reports, and began applying harsher penalties towards players in cases which involved repeated instances of rule-breaking behaviour. Along with this, Moderation tooling has been improved in order to allow for better Mod Visibility while in-game.
As a note, we recognise that implementing these new policies resulted in a small minority of users creating alt accounts to ban-evade, along with posting hateful/abusive content in-game towards other players. We apologise for any players who were affected during this time, and can offer our assurances that the Moderators have subsequently actioned any accounts involved in this practice.
Following this, in taking steps to improve overall Moderator Visibility, Active In-Game Mods will now be identifiable via a unique player skin, and with a green (M) tag in Global Chat. Further to this, Moderators will be excluded from participation within any player-run ORGs, and will instead be listed as a member of a Moderator-only ORG.
Running an F2P All-Ages Game is difficult from a Moderation Standpoint, especially one which places such a heavy emphasis on player interaction. While previously we allowed for blurred lines in "acting as a mod" and "acting as a player", we're now taking the action of drawing firmer lines on these boundaries, and ensuring the role as a Moderator remains more visible, and more effective in helping the Community to remain healthy, and welcoming towards the expanded playerbase.
On to the Main Event.. The Pre-Mobile Patch!
Following months of this being by large and far the most popular requested feature, SoS is now focusing on developing, and launching a Mobile Port.
v1.8.2 serves as the basis for features which were highlighted as must-haves before moving towards a Mobile Port. While originally these features were intended to go live in-tandem as a content update with the Mobile Release, I'm instead opting to get these much-requested additions launched onto our current platforms immediately.
Note that with these features going live early, no content update should be expected to go live in-tandem with our initial Mobile launch, save for any potential bugfixes being required in the meantime.
Cosmetics Overhaul
During the original 10-week Development period for SoS, player cosmetics were mostly an after-thought. There were around 18 Skins in total, all of which were licensed assets that were essentially just shoehorned into the game.
Since then, while new Cosmetic Types were introduced in the form of Pets, and existing Cosmetic Types such as Lighting were greatly enhanced, Skins remained under the exact same system, save for fancier particle effects sellotaped on to a select few.
The largest concern around the untouched alpha-grade Skins system was that with the models simply being drag-and-dropped into place in their default state, they were essentially static containers for the default settings, and could not be changed. Changing a material on one skin would change it for several of them, and the backend was additionally not set up to send down anything besides a simple ID which denoted which unoptimized, default model & material to load in.
This system has now been fully overhauled. Alongside making it far easier for us to expand on the available in-game cosmetics in future, it now also allows for skin tone selections on a per-player/per-model basis (toggle is available within the skin browser, and compatible with all existing skins!), alongside allowing for greatly improved performance/quality on Web & Mobile platforms.
Additionally, all model portraits have been updated to reflect their newly updated formats.
Extended Events
In order to accommodate additional timezones, events will now run twice per day; once at 10am Server Time, with the following running at the usual 7pm timeslot. The in-game event notification messages have been updated to reflect these new timeslots.
Improved FTUE
While much improved since the "just figure it out" mantra of the Kongregate days, the FTUE/Tutorial Systems following the Steam launch still left a lot to be desired; with a lot of Streams/Videos of the game usually containing a bunch of overlapped text from ignored tutorials.
The Tutorials have now been re-jigged to guide new players through them, which should hopefully prevent against all the screen-clutter, and confusion that we tend to often saw stemming from this.
New Cosmetics, and Removed Cosmetics
A couple of skins unfortunately had to be removed due to compatibility problems with the new Cosmetics System. Going the way of the Dodo are; Vixen, Party Van Driver (M), and Party Van Driver (F).
Not to worry, however - taking their place are 14 new skins, targeting mid-game and late-game levels.
Performance Improvements
Last up to bat is another round of sweeping performance improvements, which will be most noticeable for WebGL players, and users running on Lower Quality settings.
Minor Daily Reward, Coin Infusions & Art Grant buffs
The Daily Reward for Coins, Coin Infusions, and Art Grants have been buffed up a bit to provide better value for mid, and late-game players.
The Road to Mobile
The above features bring us to par on where the game needed to be before we hit on for mobile. As noted on our Discord, Steam & Mobile will be cross-play compatible. Similar to our current WebGL platforms, SoS account linking IS planned for this; but for launch, we'll need to manually carry out these links via our Discord channels.
And, that's all she wrote. Myself, and the extended mod team are as always, available to field any questions or feedback on Discord. Until then, keep on keeping safe - and we'll keep on working towards getting this mobile port into your hands! ❤️
Split or Steal 1.8.1 is now Live!
An Ode to Kongregate
This patch unfortunately opens with some sad news - Kongregate have announced that they are no longer accepting new submissions to their Web Portal, and have noted that they will begin to turn off several of their social features later on this month.
Kongregate served as an amazing portal for small indie developers/studios to start getting their names out on one of the most accessible portals on the planet, alongside playing home to an amazing community whose vocal contributions towards SoS helped shape the game into becoming a lot more than a two-button simulator; leading us to our eventual launch on Kartridge & Steam, and attracting over 175,000 players in the process.
SoS will continue to receive updates on Kongregate for as long as time allows - but in the interest of ensuring the safety of your account progress in a worst-case scenario, we'd strongly recommend all Kongregate Players begin the process of linking their account to Steam. This option can be found under the "Download" option in the upper-right topbar on the main menu.
Kongregate, you will most certainly be sorely missed by players and developers alike - thanks for the many years of entertainment you brought to us all.
To anyone missing the smaller-scale browser-based chats on Kongregate, we've set up a private room on our Discord for old WebGL Veterans - simply fire off a mod support ticket with your Kongregate username, and we'll get you added on there.
New Platforms & WebGL Parity
SoS was originally developed for WebGL - and we'll continue to maintain full support for it. Today marks our launch on the ArmorGames platform, opening up SoS to a whole new group of players!
Along with this, further improvements and optimizations to the WebGL Build of SoS has continued to bring us closer and closer to Desktop Parity - with 1.8.1's WebGL Build now containing full-resolution lighting textures, alongside defaulting to 60fps mode on launch!
New/Revamped Events
Events have been revamped following the feedback received from the Anonymous Hours cycle. We've now got 3 short recurring events scheduled to happen every week, not including the standard Bonus Coins weekends.
Anonymous Hour Yes, Hour - not Hours. Anonymous Hour will run from 7pm - 8pm each Tuesday, and will retain the standard rulesets (all games are anonymous, global chat is disabled); but alongside the shorter run-time, it also now comes with a 200% Coin Bonus, adding a little more reward to the risk!
Rush Hour Next up, Rush Hour runs from 7pm - 8pm each Wednesday, which allows you to advance 2 tiers for every win outside of High Stakes; letting you get to those fancy high roller numbers faster than ever!
Splittee Committee To even out the trauma caused by the steal-spree that is Anonymous Hour, the Splittee Committee event will run from 7pm - 8pm each Thursday, and doubles all split pots for it's duration!
Double Coin Weekends Back by popular demand - the Birthday Patch Double Coins Weekend is making a more standard return, with the first Double Coin Weekend kicking off on Friday, July 10th. Along with the given Coin Bonuses, Double Weekends will also coincide with a new bonus code being delivered via Discord - more on these below!
Bonus Codes
Bonus Codes have now been added in-game, which will allow you to pick up both static, and scaled bonus coins, and artifacts. These codes will be provided both on our Discord, and to Streamers who are currently repping for us over on Twitch. If you're streaming SoS regularly, feel free to reach out for a code - and if you're looking for your first code, Log on to our Discord this weekend to pick one up!
Daily Rewards - Streak Forgiveness
Missing a day of play will no longer reset you to a zero-day streak; instead, missing a day will cause a small 3-day deduction in your current streak, allowing you to pick straight back up on your bonuses.
Late-game Art Grant Buffs
More work has been done to increase the viability of Art Grants at the late game, and their associated 10 game/40 game daily rewards; however, please note that these changes will not be noticeable for players in the early/mid-game phases.
Coming up next..
SoS will continue to focus on new platform launches in order to increase our player counts, while continuing to expand upon existing features as we've seen above.
If you want to get your say in and let us know what you'd like to see in an upcoming patch, or what kind of platforms you'd like to see us go live on, Join us on our Discord!
Until next time - keep on keeping yourselves safe. More updates coming soon ❤️
