Superball News

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone!

Here we celebrate Christmas and New Year with an all new special episode of My Time at Pathea.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
2020 has been a big year for us.

We have announced My Time at Sandrock, we launched the game Ever Forward, we had SBT in open alpha and open Beta.

Next year is expected to be even bigger as we are expecting to Launch both My Time at Sandrock and Super Buckyball Tournament and we have been working hard to get the games ready for you.

At Pathea we thank everyone for all the massive love and support for our games. We’re looking forward to bring you more amazing content in the coming year, can’t wait to see you next time!

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!

1. Fighting and tackling

What kind of fighting are we going to implement and how is tackling going to work?

- Though Players have suggested an actual ball steal function for the game, this is something that will take us a lot of time and we would basically have to rework a major part of the game to do so.
- Instead, the idea from our director is to combine tackling with fighting.
- So at the moment we are testing adding extra fighting skills for each character.
- This would work in the way that you can attack a player to knock them back, but it should be affecting the ball. This way you can push people and take the ball from them.
- There will be a limit to how many times you can use it on the same character. (the limit is not decided yet)
- But basically if you attack a character more than the limit, the character would get an immunity buff where if you hit him/her you would be knocked back yourself.
- This is what is shown in the gif below.



2. Items

Will we have an indicator to show what items everyone has.

- Likely no, but we might add an indicator to show whether or not a character has an item.
Will we bring back item spawn indicator?
- This is not decided yet.

3. Spectator mode

Are we going to improve spectator mode and how?

- There might be more angles added to the game
- But we are not sure yet which ones to add

4. 2nd Ultimates:

We are currently also working on designing alternative ultimates which can be obtained through character leveling and will be picked prior to starting a game. We are still working on the idea, but so far we are leaning towards your teammates being able to see which ult you have picked, but your opponents cannot see it. Ideas were discussed last week and you can see them below.

Pink
a) Make the beam be soft and act like a whip which is controlled by the mouse. Would only work on the ball. The whip can be flicked by moving it in opposite directions. (high skill ceiling)
b) 5 very short beams instead of one long beam. 1 beam on each finger. Ball can be passed from one beam to the next.

Pai
a) Run on the wall for a certain period of time (like samba’s ult)
b) pai creates a big blind for everyone who is looking towards him after he homes in on the ball. Or in field of view of the screen. Like a flashbang lightning bolt. Works better if your camera is facing it. Pai drops down and is able to run with the ball afterwards.
c) Activate a buff where he can shoot lightning bolts at other characters giving them a ministun, while having this buff he can not pass or shoot/ or have ball control. He will be able to shoot the bolts out several times.
d) channeled for a sec (hear thunder sound as a warning) then he would send an electric shockwave through out the stadium which stuns everyone who doesn’t jump over. Uses all his stamina as well. Slows the ball down.
e) Pai flys to the ball take it in the air and move forward for a bit (more defense based) don’t waste the ball with taking a shot, because most goal keepers defend against it really well

R47
a) A channeled ground slam that affects a much larger area (like an earthquake)
b) R47 hits the ground and a long narrow line on the ground moves forwards and hits all object in front of him (use the girder as the hammer)

Lang
a) shoot a cone of air in front of him, pushes the ball and gives same status effect as tornado. Could also be channeling for a sec and then knock over moving characters. (if people are standing still, they don’t get knocked over)
b) Use fighting style combos (copy fighting arcade games)
c) Lang spins around and boxes everything around him
d) Channeling, Lang beats many times on the ball before it’s finally shot out with high power. Double curve. First to one side and then to the other

Gridiron
a) Put a black hole which is mirrored on the other side of the field. After he goes through he teleports to the other black whole. Sucks him back in after a few seconds.
b) Shockwave pushing every oponent on the field back and also sort of shooting the ball away but no one gets knocked down

Eriel
a) lets her fish dive down through the ground as if it's water, and pops back up to eat anything in a certain area, causing a short cc. could be a placed trap, or maybe it follows the ball and eats the ball. if it eats the ball it could reset ball possession or maybe spit it up in the air. main difference here should be that it doesn't bring the ball back to her. (people can see a fin in the floor so they can see where its going.
b) Eriel throws her fish at the ball which then eats the ball and spits it out (shoot it out)

Samba
a) Run on walls
b) A larger samba/tiger looking image behind him picks up the ball and shoots it out

5. Suggestions:

2 characters using their ultimates at the same time for a combined super ultimate

Add deployables:
- We are considering deployables such as traps or supporting deployables. But so far we don’t have anything concrete

Suggest shorten the afterstun of pinks ultimate to nerf it a little (her current stun feels a bit too strong).
- This might change after we add more fighting elements

Players want to see more counterpicking and countering other players picks
- This might happen more as characters get more skills and by adding more characters to the game.

Suggest diminishing bully/status/push effects with the goal area. Then nerf the goalies a bit.
- We will have a look at balance issues regarding the goalies after adding the fighting/tackling element. Since a lot of rebalancing is likely to be done around this anyways.

Hi Players,

From now on we'll post an article every week that covers topics, questions and answers from last week's AMA. You can join our Discord and ask us questions every Wednesday at 11AM CET for EU and 6PM PST for NA.

AMA on December 9th

Tournament:

1. Players would like a bo3 for all games before the semi-finals for the next tournament.
- We have to look into whether or not we can do this for the next tournament.

2. Players enjoyed that they could pick their own teams.
- It brought more consistency to the team play and the tactics which were used.
- Many new players got very good very fast in the week leading up to the tournament because they practiced a lot.
- We will try to go with this format again in the future and we hope it will work well again

3. US tournament lasted about 2,5 hours
4. For tournaments after the official launch, it was suggested to make tournament seatings based on the average MMR of the players in each team
5. Players have different feelings of winning and losing depending on which strategies and playstyles were employed.
- This is something we will monitor more closely in the future as we wish to give our players an overall positive experience no matter the outcome of the matches
- At the moment it is mostly based on the Chinese players, since we have had the chance to play with them. But when we reach the official launch, we will begin to monitor western player behavior much more closely.

6. It was suggested to have Klose_quarters as the commentator for the US in the next tournament.
- We will contact him and see if he is interested
- This might also take some pressure off of Lark, who covered both the EU and US preseason tournament and did an outstanding job at doing so.

Game suggestions:

1. Implement more airplay
- We are currently working on a new character who should be having air-related skills (still undecided. We are still testing a few different ideas)
- We are looking into an idea that was mentioned a few weeks ago related to a skill/item to place air trampolines within the arena for more airplay

2. Invisible ramp in dragon stadium
- This is a known problem and we are working to fix it

3. Ramps in harbor arena
- This is intended and is a thing that will make this map unique.
- Other small elements which will be unique to other stadiums

4. In tutorial, measure the skill of the player against different level bots. Then players can practice more before they are thrown to the sharks.
- We are planning on optimizing the AI behavior to be more in line with player skill so they will play more even games.
- Regarding having matches against easy, medium and hard AI’s, this has a few pros and cons like they will understand more nuances of the game, they might find it too easy or hard and quit
- We had about 70% of all new players who played and finished the tutorial.
- We are working on a few different ideas on how we can optimize the tutorial so players are better prepared for the actual matches.

5. Give more color options for the skins, especially for rare colors
- For now, we are trying to make as many skins as we can before the official launch of the game. This is a costly and time-consuming task for us and we have chosen to outsource some of the skins.
- Regarding the color options, we are considering adding more rare colors, but this will also affect the potential of other skins which are already in rarer colors. So we are still considering whether this will benefit us or hurt us in the long run.

6. Make it so players buy skins for a base coin fee and get other colors for an extra fee or get them in season pass
- We are considering this suggestion

7. Cross server data (international stats)
- it will take a long time and we would have to store all data in one location which is a problem if players are not located close to the server (we might combine stats for eu and na later on though)

8. Can the game be playable offline (training + custom game)
- At the moment we are not considering this

9. Character proficiency rewards
- The current growth system will change
- Character proficiency rewards will include 2nd ultimate + other things.
- We are still working out which things to give away as character proficiency rewards which can be purchased in the shop and which to include in the season pass.

10. More emotes in the game
- We are working on making more of these
- If anyone wants to make some cool emote designs, we will also consider them

11. Suggestions for boards: players who reach 100% stay on top even though they quit
- Thank you for making us aware of this problem. We had not previously considered this and we will try to change it somehow so it will not include players who leave

12. Dodgeball needs more balls
- We don't know if it's funnier in dodgeball mode with more balls. If many players want it to happen and it's truly interesting, we may consider such a modification and test it out.

13. A small countdown before items used to be in the game and was removed a while back
- The count down was removed because we changed the effect design. Some of us believe that the countdown is a useful design and we may add it back if the team agrees with that

Balancing:

1. Pink
- We are testing the idea of replacing pinks knockback with a mini slow

2. Hitbox for R47 and gridirons shield is off
- We are aware of these and they are balance-related. Since hitboxes are one of the easier methods we can change the balance of characters, we are still reworking these and will try to adapt the visuals down the line to better match
- For R47 we are more likely to increase the size of the hand instead

3. Dodgeball
- We are aware that character balancing in dodgeball is quite off.
- For now, we are focusing on the balancing for the main game and it is subject to a lot of change, so we currently don’t have time to balance the characters for dodgeball. But if it becomes popular down the line, we will look into excluding some characters/suggest certain characters and even make special balancing for this mode.

Bugs:
1. Stamina bug related to high ping. Stamina reloading time matches ping

2. Samba dash can be cancelled if turning to side
Others:

1. A schedule was requested to show the timings of items and energy spawns.
- We currently do have a list for this as it is something that follows an algorithm. If we were to extract it, it would take some time and it is likely to be subject to change.
- Hopefully, we can release such a list after the game has had its official launch.

2. Ranked mode was missing during preseason
- Players enjoy seeing a board which is not about investing time, but about actual skill
- We will bring back ranked mode at official launch.

Spoilers:

1. The air-related character mentioned earlier is hidden somewhere in our preseason trailer

Weekly AMA sessions
Hi everyone while the game is down until early February, we have decided to host a weekly AMA every Wednesday. Here we will release new content and discuss with you your ideas on how we can improve the game.

This weeks AMA will be hosted in the AMA voice chat and AMA text channel today (December 9th) EU time: 11 AM CET
US time: 6 PM PST (9PM EST)

Topics: Thoughts on the Preseason, the tournaments and the balance of the game.
If anyone has any other things they wish to discuss, we are open to that too.

The AMA will be hosted in our Discord, some make sure to come join us.

Also we have finished cutting the tournaments and have uploaded the videos for those of you who missed it.
EU: https://youtu.be/WN3DtHfBjRs
NA: https://youtu.be/VsVwmz42jwA
China https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ZA411W7M1?p=5

Hi Players!

Today will be the character tutorial for R47, our first designed character ever.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Despite often play in defense, R47 is actually an all-rounder with excellent ball control and shot power, making him one of the best midfielders in the game.

We'll have more character tutorials coming out over the next few days so stay tuned for more!

Don't forget to wishlist the full game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059110