• Ongoing post early-access bug fixing
  
• Ongoing balancing updates
  
• Ongoing player matchmaking rule-set improvements
  
• Ongoing server optimization and provisioning
  
• Match voice chat (per team)
  
• New server added: Oceania (Sydney) (Asia / Oceania region in-game, for now)
  
• New customization items (skins, emotes, spray tags)
  

• Custom lobbies
  
• Lobby backfill during matchmaking
  
• Match backfill when players drop out of match (with human or AI)
  
• Major update to matchmaking system
  
• Major improvements to first-time user tutorial (adding basic bots)
  
• New champion
  
• New arena variations
  
• New customization items (skins, emotes, spray tags)
  
• New challenges
  

• New champion
  
• New customization items (skins, emotes, spray tags)
  
• New challenges
  

• Ranked season (beta test)
  
• "Season Pass" (beta test)
  
• New challenges
  

• New Champion
  
• New customization items (skins, emotes, spray tags)
  
• New challenges
  

• More new arenas
  
• More new champions
  
• Many more new customization items (skins, emotes, spray tags)
  
• New challenges
  
• Official launch (PC & Console - Platforms TBA)
  

• Further optimization of matchmaking rules (ongoing)
  
• Fix to address bug where solo matching would not cancel if player joins a Steam friends group while still matching
  
• Fixed a bug where matchmaking could be started when the app was not in focus
  
• Oceania server (Sydney) is officially running, however still remains in Asia / Oceania region in-game (for now)
  

• We will start featuring community content on the main menu of the game
  
• FPS cap removed during match-play, lock remains in menu (for now)
  
• Increased number of quick chat messages from 4 to 8
  

• Level progression
  

• Sometimes, when trying to group up and canceling it again, the quickmatch button does not react.
  
• Ingame Options menu disappears, when remapping menu was opened in the main menu.
  
• The ingame music doesn’t stop if the match ends prematurely, e.g.due to a disconnect, error, etc.
  
• If the matchmaking times out, the UI will continue to indicate queueing. That is not correct. Queueing up again will still work, even if the UI does not change. Restarting the game or playing a match resolves the issue.
  
• The game is likely to crash on game exit.
  
• Some pop-ups cannot be confirmed with controller.
  
• With some controllers plugged in (e.g. Switch Pro, XBox One) the button icons in the menu remain empty
  
• Acrid’s Putrid Discharge sometimes does not hit other champions when it should.
  
• Many more skill related bugs in special cases
  
• Ping has no SFX
  
• Champions are stuck in their last animation at match end
  
• Rarely no MVP is shown after a match
  
• 
  

Steel Circus Early Access Begins August 8

• We are working on getting players into the match more reliably, too many players encountered issues while loading the arena. What made things even worse is that every player that had arena loading issues also caused a disconnect for the 5 other players he or she was matched with.
  There are a couple of things we can and will improve, from actual bugs to better matchmaking that tries to find another player if someone drops out.
  This is a big topic for us and we are working on improvements.
  
  
• Make the game play experience smoother. This is another huge topic and it touches many different aspects. Net code, memory optimization, visual smoothing, interpolation of remote players, those are the most important ones.So there is a ton we can do to improve game play and reduce inconsistencies when attempting to hit other players with skills or trying to dodge theirs.
  
  
• Also, the game simulation (not to mistake with rendering graphics) currently runs a 30hz. We have plans to up this to 60hz once we fixed some memory issues. This will make the game feel more responsive and precise. Not sure when the switch to 60hz will happen, but it will happen eventually ;).
  

• Retackle issue aka tackle fest
  We agree 100% that this is a problem and there are many possibilities how to solve/improve this. But first, let me take a few steps back.
  
  We think that it is totally fine that the game can get chaotic occasionally BUT it happens way too often. A big part from where the chaos comes from is related to tackling.
  
  The way we intend tackle to work is that if you manage to successfully tackle you get the ball and have a few moments to decide what to do next before you need to react again. Frankly, that did not work at all in the last test. So the solution lies in giving players just enough time to feel the success after stealing the ball and turn this small advantage into a "play".
  
  Giving the player more time can be done by increasing the tackle stun duration but that only works to a certain degree. Being stunned too often and too long is not exactly fun either.
  
  Here are our solutions we'd like you to test:
  
  
  
  
  • Ball pickup happens now 100% reliable after each tackle (if it does not its a bug). This has quite an impact because as soon as you know that your tackle was a success you can start planning your next move whereas previously you scrambled for the ball.
    
    
  • Tackle no longer collides with other players making each tackle more predictable. It has a fixed distance and after a while, you will develop a better feel where you end up after a tackle, no matter if it connected or not. Nice side-effect, the game feels smoother.
    
    
  • After a tackle you no longer drop to 0 movement speed, you keep a bit of momentum allowing you to move away quickly from your opponent, this works also in combination with sprint after a missed tackle.
    
  
  
  
• Goal crease mayhem
  There are way too many situations where things get really messy in front of the game. However, rather than coming up with special rules like skills behaving differently or blocking movement etc. in front of the goal we want to try and fix/improve the underlying issues that cause these problems in the first place. If we fail at that or these changes are not enough we will look into other options like for example a special zone around the goal with certain restrictions.
  
  So right now we are testing two things that should improve the goal crease mayhem:
  
  
  
  
  • One is the aforementioned tackle changes. In our internal testing matching that showed a noticeable improvement but these issues are also highly dependent on play style so we need more testing to see the real impact of these changes.
    
    
  • Two, we went back to how the goals used to work last year in earlier versions of the game. The goal is now both a goal but also an endzone. This means you can run into it with the ball to score. I know that this is kinda the opposite of what you guys have asked for but I'd like you to have an open mind and give it a shot ;).
    
  
  
  So why do we think this is a good change? A couple of reasons.
  
  
  
  
  • A big part of the chaos happens when someone tries to dodge through defenders to score a goal, collides with the goal force field and before throwing the ball gets interrupted again. It is not uncommon that this happens a few times in a row which translates into chaos.
    With the change, players can now simply run into the end zone and score which does not feel janky. It is a deliberate feature now.
    
  • It makes scoring in such situations easier meaning it reduces the time of goal crease mayhem whenever it occurs.
    
  • Players should realize quicker that defending right before the goal line is now a less viable strategy which should hopefully lead to players building their defense line further from the goal, near the bumpers.
    
  
  
  
• General readability and game play feedback
  Yes, we need and can do better there, expect improvements but its not our current focus. Losing your player, make it easier to keep track of the ball is all tasks in our backlog. Not sure if we really need a mini-map, maybe we try it.
  The camera needs more work and so does the UI. We will improve those things in the future.
  
  
• Bumpers
  We know that there are some bugs where bumpers do not trigger at all. We need to fix those first. Once they work reliably we will look at how they work. Personally, I am happy with the way they work. But I like the idea that they only trigger at a certain minimum impact.
  Not that of a high priority right now.
  
  
• Movement speed & sprinting
  I do agree that this topic needs some work and what I will look into next is balancing champion sprint and stamina individually. Managing your sprint stamina is an important part of the game and maybe allowing players to sprint across the whole play field is a bit too much. At the same time, we know that sprinting is fun and being too slow sucks.
  
  Which brings me to base movement speed. Right now the slowest champ is Lochlan, he is pretty much at the bottom of the scale. Slower than that hurts the game feel. At the other end of the scale is a base movement speed that is about 15% faster than Lochlan’s. A difference bigger than that starts to feel unfair. With other words, the base movement speeds in SC can not differ too much as it breaks the game balance.
  
  My plan is to use base movement speed and base acceleration and deceleration more like a game feel thing and work on the actual movement differences between champs via sprint duration and sprint stamina recharge.
  
  
• Special Skill Cool downs
  Overall a topic that needs more observation but overall the role of special skills is to create special memorable moments, crazy plays and completely turn a situation around. They are designed around synergies and counters and should only mildly affect play-style. We want players to be creative with skills.
  
  I do think skill cool-downs could be a bit shorter but not too much. Before I start making some tweaks there two other important things that need to happen.
  
  
  
  
  • We will nerf the skill recharge pickup so that it will only recharge the special skills (not a sprint and tackle/dodge) additionally we think that they should not recharge skills completely.
    
    
  • Whenever you are stunned we want to pause the cool-down. Just a small difference but it will slightly reward players that are good at avoiding being hit.
    
    
  • Alternatively to the above, or in addition to, skill recharge pickups should appear less often than health pickups
    
  
  
  
• Champion Balance
  We decided to ditch champion classes. We were unsure about classes for a long time and we just don't think they add anything meaningful to the game. Instead, we will focus more on making the champions differ more individually.
  Expect some health, base movement and sprint changes in the near future.
  
  
• Ellika - I think is fine (for now)
  We also feel that she is a very well rounded champ.
  
  
• Cap - needs work
  His wall will get a slight nerf. It will be a bit shorter (also thinner to take less space) but most importantly its duration is now only 2 seconds used to be 3.
  We are currently discussing putting a time limit on turret mode before the gun fires automatically. You should still have enough time to chase other players, just not forever. We might limit his turret mode range as well. Cap's base movement speed is being looked into as well.
  
  
• Lochlan - ok but not quite there yet
  Not 100% happy with slam yet. Maybe we change AOE shape, the timing of the attack needs work (there is an actual bug). Warsong is much better than the previous version but not quite there yet. Slow seems fine, range too, not sure about the speed buff yet, but we will make it more obvious what is happening.
  
  
• Schroeder - needs more observation
  The high-level design idea was a high risk/reward. I think that works quite well. We are looking into interrupting him while in the ground for both swap and virtual strike. We are going to look at his movement speed and health pool again.
  
  
• Controls (twin stick)
  Short answer: we won't do twin-stick controls even though we'd love to test them ourselves.
  
  The long answer: we believe that the game would certainly be different (and not necessarily better), and would cost us too much time to find out. Also, in some areas we would need to go back to the drawing board for controls. This would touch everything from the core game play, to animations, to net-code skill design, controls game balance. You name it :(. We had this discussion internally already a year ago and we think for a game where the sports aspect is more important over brawling this is the better fit. Strafing is not exactly a natural style of movement ;)
  
  
• KBM
  As for keyboard and mouse, we will try to get the controls to a much better state knowing that even if someone can play well with them they will never feel nearly as good as using a controller. We are fine with that. I know some of you will be disappointed, and trust me the gamer in me would love to test a twin-stick version just to see what it's like.