Superball News

Hey Buckyballers,

Our next character is a Tai Chi inspired young girl!

We first revealed the character in the AMA last week and players were stoked to see her in SBT!



Her designs are almost finished, but character balance and the special effects shown in the video are not final though, and we might still change it later before she actually comes out.

Her active ability is to retreat for a short distance backward and receives a buff afterward (lasts around 1-2 seconds) that’ll enhance her next shot (powered shot) or jump (jump higher). The charging mechanic is similar to Pink’s color cannon ability and she has a total of 3 charges.



Her ultimate is to perform a set of Tai Chi moves, where she’ll absorb the nearby ball and block everyone from entering into her zone. After the set, she’ll punch out a fist wave to push the ball and knockback players. You can also adjust the direction of her aim during the animation.



We received a bunch of questions right away after showing off her skills, here are some of the questions and answers:

Can she use the ultimate while in the air?

- Yes, she can even turn around during the ultimate to completely change the direction of her aim.

Regarding the charging mechanic of her ability, is it charged overtime, or can it be boosted through punching the ball like Pink?

- No, it’s only affected by time.

After using retreat and jump into the air, can she use retreat again mid-air to fire a powerful shoot?

- Yes!

Can she use her retreat ability to jump multiple times to get even higher in the air?

- Nope, without the head jump or wall jump, she can only jump once. If she already jumped into the air then she cannot jump again.

Can she retreat backward into the opponents' goal to score a goal?

- Yes!

Can she aim the ultimate towards the ground to have the ball bounce up and then bounce into the net?

- Yes, but it might not work as effectively as you might think it would be.

What’s the range of her ultimate?

- If she is standing on one side of the stadium and uses her ultimate, it can push the ball on the other side of the stadium.

Can she get a double jump by jumping on walls?

- Yes.

How’s her ball control (magnet?)

- Similar ball control stats to Pai

Can she perform a fake shot? (shoot the ball then immediately retreat to cancel the shooting and trick the goalie)

- Yes looks like she’s really good at it! (as seen in the gif 1)

What item/abilities/ultimate can interrupt her ultimate before it shoots out?

- Any ultimate/ability/item that can stun/interrupt her from a distance, such as Pink’s ultimate, bomb, Eriel’s ultimate, Gridiron’s ultimate, etc. We might not share the full list due to the fact that this new character is still under heavy testing and will change based on her competitiveness on the field before it’s actually out.

Since we haven’t decided her name yet, here are some of the name ideas we gathered from players on discord, which one do you prefer?

- Skyler
- Gale
- Ling
- Ying

If you’re not satisfied with her name, feel free to suggest your ideas in Discord！

Other Questions:

A more comprehensive manual for characters (some character abilities was never indicated in-game)

- We’ll optimize the current character guide before we launch the game into Early Access, thanks for the suggestions!

How does the new charging mechanic for R47’s ground slam looks like?

- Right now it’ll be similar to Pink’s color cannon. However, R47 only got 2 charges and it can be filled up overtime.

How exactly does the protection area work?

- When you run into the small square box around the goal line on your side, you’ll receive a buff immediately. The buff will prevent you from being knocked back, including the new tackling mechanic, Pink’s color cannon, Lang’s double tap, etc. It has a few exceptions though, for example, Eriel’s ink bullet will still be able to knock back opponents within the area. Also, be aware that it’ll not prevent you from getting knocked down, which means the bomb, Pink’s ultimate can still knock you down even if you have the buff on. The buff will disappear right after you exit the area. There can be more than one teammate getting the buff if they all stand inside the area. Right now the mechanic is still under testing and everything is subject to change.

More game setting options

- Noted, we’ll try to add more when the game launches.

Add vertical sensitivity slider

- Thanks for the suggestions! Will consider adding in later.

Free Cam for spectator mode (good for content creators)

- Free Cam might not be a useful tool for competitive matches but it’s a great tool for content creators! We actually didn’t have thought of that before players bring it out, will definitely try to make it into the game then, hopefully before the game launches into Early Access.

If you wanna get answers from the devs and receive the latest updates about the game, make sure to join our Discord and join the conversation every Wednesday at 11AM CET for EU and 6PM PST for NA!

Have a great day and see you back on the field very soon!

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the questions and comments to the guys who were there at last week's AMA.

I have tried to organize and answer them below, if you wanna ask questions and get answers from us
as well, join our Discord and join the conversation every Wednesday at 11AM CET for EU and 6PM PST for NA!

In this AMA, we mainly discussed the idea for character lore, unfortunately our team currently lacks time and resources to make it into the game.

We're actually hiring a story writer into our team, it's going to take a while since it's not easy to get an experienced western writer here in China, especially under the current pandemic. Hopefully once he/she arrives in the studio we’ll already have a baseline of the background story to begin with.

Right now we're open to story ideas for the game as well as characters, feel free to send us messages if you have one in mind! We'll gather and look into the ideas once he/she arrives and start building stories around it.

Here’re some of the character lore ideas players have suggested during the AMA:

- Mention how/why Pink loses one of her arms
- Pink would be a mechanic for R47
- Lang is a retired karate master. He didn’t have enough money therefore became a robot to keep living
- Also, the word ‘security’ is written on the back of Lang, maybe his background story could’ve something to do with that?
- Samba is a fitness model with super outgoing characteristics
- Eriel could be a marine biologist
- Make a name for Eriel’s fish. Depending on her skins there should be different names for different fish.
- R47 is pretty bad at table tennis

Make a lore spreadsheet
- For now we’ve created a game-idea channel next to the ama section within our discord server, you may send us your character lore ideas here and we’ll check it.

Other Questions:
Make it possible to punch a bomb to punch it away (potential new item) / Idea for smoke bomb
- Thanks for the idea. Along with suggestions from last week, we now got plenty of ideas for bombs already! Will definitely look more into it while we design new items.

Bombs affection works too high in the air
- The effective area of the bomb is actually a semi-circle therefore it’ll affect players even if he’s in the air. We’ll continue to look into item balance and adjust the circle area accordingly.

Rotating shops
- A great idea! We’ll not do it right now since there aren’t many items currently available in game. It’s something that worth consider after we launched the game into early access later this year.

Passing preview for controller players
- Controller-related optimizations will be implemented in later patches, thanks for the note.

Protection mechanism for goalie
- If we’re talking about a protection mechanism for potential tackling ability, it’s definitely in our mind. Our game director has already considered adding some protections to goalkeepers if the new mechanic got implemented so stay tuned!

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the questions and comments to the guys who were there at last week's AMA.
I have tried to organize and answer them below, if you wanna ask questions and get answers from us
as well, join our Discord and join the conversation every Wednesday at 11AM CET for EU and 6PM PST for NA!

In the last AMA in 2020, we discussed ideas for new characters (preferably goalkeeper), players have suggested 2 concepts for new characters in the future:

Pandaman

- A lazy panda with the ability to use bamboo as a shield

A dwarf character

- Tiny compared to other characters but will get very big when using his ultimate

Which idea do you like the most? Also, feel free to send us your concept for our future character!

Name for the 3rd stadium

In the posts last week we asked players for the name of our 3rd stadium, here's a list we gathered from the comment section on our social media, thanks everyone for the suggestions!

- Elyse Terminal
- The station
- Neon plaza
- Iron city
- Metropolis
- Neo-Metropolis
- Orbit

General Sugestions

Special tags next to character names

- Special tags can be seen more often in MMORPG games but not really in MOBA games since it can cause distractions on the field. Maybe having the tags in the lobby would be more realistic?

Show characters ranking in the game so you can see when you play with stronger or weaker players

- Similar to the question above, plus character ranking indicator might only be useful in quickplay since players in competitive games should have similar ranking. Anyway it's a good suggestion but it'll not be in high priority.

Non-randomized items for competitive play

- We’ve received player feedback suggesting that items should either be eliminated or non-randomized in competitive play. Right now we still haven’t made up our mind yet. We’ll consider more of it when we got more time, thanks for the suggestions.

Adding Character lore/background stories

- Feel free to suggest character background stories to us at anytime! Currently we’re still working hard on new mechanics & contents related to the gameplay, therefore adding character lore is not really in a high priority. We’ll consider putting it in once we got more time polishing the game, possibly when we launch into Early Access.

Nerf R47

- We already nerfed him after the Preseason internally! We added a charging mechanism to his ground slam in which now he can only use two times at once.

Make a goalie character who is more resistant to be knocked over (for example a mirror shield ability)

- That’s a great idea! We’re currently thinking about designing a goalkeeper so feel free to bring up more ideas to us!

Item idea: Timing Bomb

- Thanks for the new item ideas! We’ll consider it when we design new items

TAB button for controller (optimize controller expeirences overall)

- We’re definitely aware of it and will optimize the controller experience in the later updates, we hope to bring the controller optimization into the February version but it still depends on our workload.

R47 runs into Pai and R47 gains some stamina

- It's actually not a bug. R47 has a mechanic where he'll receive a bit of stamina if he runs into any characters that are less heavy than him.

Tab to show items

- Yes right now you can click Tab button to see what item each player has.

Bomb cannot throw over shields

- We'll think about it.

Decrease current bomb size

- It'll be considered.

Animated skin parts

- We're currently working on it, previously there have been some technical difficulties but now we'll gradually add animated effects to all characters.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the questions and comments to the guys who were there at last week's AMA.
I have tried to organize and answer them below, if you wanna ask questions and get answers from us
as well, join our Discord and join the conversation every Wednesday at 11AM CET for EU and 6PM PST for NA!

In the AMA for last week, we mainly discussed the new 3rd stadium which you can see in our steam article here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We are 95% sure to have the 3rd stadium in the beta in February and we are considering one of two ideas for special gameplay for this stadium.
1 is to have this stadium exclusive for 4v4
2 is to have obstacles in the stadium that randomly pops out to affect the game.

We are testing the 4v4 mode this week and so far, it feels a little cramped. But we will try to keep you updated with what is going to happen to the 3rd stadium.

5th Stadium ideas & suggestions

After the 3rd stadium, we discussed ideas for the 5th stadium which is set to be a sort of High-tec training facility where characters can practice their skills. Since this is still in the concept phase, different ideas were given to how we can make this stadium.

1. Have cannons in the wall that shoots out balls. Possibly do curve balls
2. Make it possible to use the training room for the tutorial.
3. Make it possible to practice pass blocking (have very high balls to practice langs pass blocks)
4. Have a cannon shooting at the goal so people can practice goal keeping. (could this have a setting to choose how hard you want the balls to shoot (make it possible to shoot harder than R47s ult
5. Antigravity
6. For 5th stadium, have walls come out of the ground based on a timer. Players should be able to jump over them. Should be able to jump on the walls to get higher. Players should be able to learn the wall pattern so they can use it to their advantage
7. Make more smaller rooms next to the stadium to practice certain skills

Though we have awesome suggestions on how to make this stadium into a place were players can train in free-play and in the tutorial. We are not sure we will be able to make it in time for the launch of the game, but we will keep the suggestions so we can possibly work on in after the launch. That means for now, we will develop the aesthetics first and then add special functions after.


6th stadium ideas

We are also open to ideas for our 6th stadium.
1. A stadium where all matches are in first person
2. Stadium in a rave
3. Airplane stadium/flying stadium
4. Park stadium with flowers and trees and nature
5. In general more nature environment
6. Abandoned ruins of a small city picturing nowadays environment, but abandoned and overgrown
7. Underwater stadium. With sharks
8. Underground stadium (like a subway stadium)

Other stadium ideas

1. Make each stadium in 2 ways. 1 competitive and one for fun with elements that affect gameplay
2. For a future map, add pillars into the map. Even amount of pillars on each side (players can jump on them like jumping on walls)
3. Will all the stadiums have the same size?
- For now, we are sticking to the same size, but if we do 4v4, we are likely to make the stadium bigger.
4. Players don’t like the idea of having a map specific for 4v4. Instead it was suggested to make 4v4 a gamemode which can be played in custom games
- We will try to test it out first and see if it is any fun. If it’s fun, we will consider how to best add it into the game.
5. Will there be stadium specific items?
- This is something we haven’t thought about yet.
- We have a few extra items that we didn’t put on the field yet, so there is the chance that we can make this in the future.

Other suggestions:

1. For R47 put a short delay on breaking out of the bubble. (he can break out too fast)
2. Make sampa able to run on all fours
3. Give samba faster dash charge if he has ball possession
4. When sampa uses the last piece of his stamina, he would run much faster

In the AMA sessions this week we gave players a sneak peek into what the 3rd stadium will look like and now it is here for everyone to see.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We are 95% sure to bring this stadium to you for the next Beta in early February and we are excited to show off how we made it.

We started out about 4 months ago with a concept which looked something like this



The roof top in the city is the general stadium theme that we were working with.

Simultaneously to designing the cityscape, we were also working on the stadium itself and its immediate surroundings which looked more like this



At this point we were working towards a more commercial feeling on the roof top, but we ended up making it look a bit more industrial in the end.

The basic models for the stadium was created and they looked something like this





Then we started to add special designs to the stadium to make it look more interesting. Below you can see our designs for the goal posts:





While we were working on the immediate surroundings, we also kept on developing the cityscape and added elements such as these







And when putting it all together, it finally looked something like this





We are looking forward to having this baby populated with players, and also if you have any suggestions for a name, we are open to ideas at the moment.

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Have some great holidays and stay safe!

- The Devs