Slapshot: Rebound News

[h2]Taking a stance on toxicity.[/h2]
We've taken note of people's experiences and there are still far too many instances of people behaving in unacceptable ways.
This update helps address some of these issues further, and while it will not solve everything, it is a step in the right direction.
Over the coming updates we will be adding more of these features as deemed necessary to help form a welcoming community.

[h2]General[/h2]
- From now on, when a person gets muted / banned with help from your reports, you will be notified of it
- Improved hate speech detection to take into account some creative ways to be an asshole
- Increased automatic chat bans from 3 days to 1 month when detecting hate speech;
-- We were afraid of false positives when we first launched automatic mutes but have seen a 95%+ effective rate
-- If the system mutes you and you believe it was a false positive, please submit a ticket using #help in Discord.
- If someone is caught by our automated system, their chat ban will be announced to other players in the same match
- Upgraded Unity engine to LTS 2020.3.9

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
- Fixed collision detection between the net and cones in practice mode
- Improved stats UI to allow for bigger numbers (thank you Valo for reporting this)
- The match sharing website now correctly shows arena, periods and which period (for matches played after the update)
- Hair colors will now level up correctly

GLHF
Erveon & team

[h2]General[/h2]
- Added a website to share your recent matches with in-depth stats (button in player -> stats -> recent matches)
- Reporting a server will now attempt to generate a report for us when you have it enabled, helping us fix more server related issues
- Added a (free) white puck as a variant of the normal puck to use on dark ice

[h2]Cosmetics[/h2]
- Added hair color, facial hair color, stick cosmetics, stick tape color, stick base color; these will show as 'none selected' for existing accounts
-- Added 6 natural hair colors, these are free for everyone
-- When getting different hair colors, it unlocks for both hairstyle and facial hair
-- When getting different stick base or tape colors, these can be applied to every stick you have that support it
- Reworked the default look of gloves to not intersect with the player and be higher fidelity
- Added a new variant for the premium jersey
- Added 15+ new cosmetics
- Gave 70+ existing cosmetics new variants

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
- Fixed a bug where you would be put in spectator mode the entire match sometimes
- Fixed an occasional leaderboards updating issue (didn't properly clear a cache, causing memory overflows in Redis)
- Fixed an internal issue for handling reports, let's get some more toxic people out of the game

[h2]Shop[/h2]
- The next featured / daily shop (hitting a few hours from this post) will be 100% never seen before items, including sticks!


Our focus now will be on gameplay balancing, competitive and ranked.

[h2]- Gameplay balancing[/h2]
Most notably, there's been a bigger discrepancy in the skill level of controller and keyboard & mouse players now that people are reaching higher skill levels. There are several areas with dash, hitting and bounciness that we are investigating to balance better to create more fun gameplay. We'll be rolling out a new process to apply to help with feedback on this soon.

[h2]- Competitive[/h2]
Leagues, tournaments and other events focused on taking Slapshot to the next level deserve to be in the spotlight. One of our initiatives to fuel this is to make a better system to provide in-game awareness and several other tools to help people run these events. This patch introduces the match sharing website, which kicks off these line-up of improvements for the competitive scene.

[h2]- Ranked[/h2]
We're getting rid of our current MMR system (elo) in favor for something custom built (inspired by TrueSkill) that will make it easier for the system to place you in an appropriate skill level faster and provide more fair matches to truly measure your skill at the game. Ranks and other supporting elements will be introduced with a ranked playlist.

We may choose to roll these updates out over multiple patches.

Good luck, have fun
Erveon & team

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
- Fixed puck and player interactions acting weird since last patch
- Debug UI (ping and version) no longer show over replay UI
- Fixed an issue where the variant unlock popup could show behind the scoreboard at the end
- Fixed an issue where new players might not get their default loadout if they loaded in too fast
- Made item levels refresh when earning experience instead of requiring a client restart
- Fixed the Slapville horn being insanely loud

[h2]Cosmetics[/h2]
- Added variants for: Punkin beanie, Patreon hat, Default gloves

[h2]Other[/h2]
- Added a banner for premium so more people might get it (please ːwinter2019sadsnowmanː)
- Added a Discord jersey you can claim from the slider or clicking the Discord link in Extras
- Cleaned up our internal reports system to act on them even better

[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
- Puck deflection off the head is no longer slowed down
- When a 4th player is spawned (for customs), they will spawn behind the face-off closer to the goal

[h2]Arenas[/h2]
- Added outdoor arena as an option in custom lobbies

[h2]UI[/h2]
- When sliding the camera options, your UI becomes transparent so it's easier to see the result
- Added a 'switch team' button in appearance and shop so you can see cosmetics from the blue team as well
- Added a 'Periods' toggle to custom lobby creation
- In the Shop, previewing a cosmetic will show you all their variants too

[h2]Cosmetics[/h2]
- Changed cosmetic level calculations and added a max level of 20
- Added variants, when levelling cosmetics if they have a '+' in their thumbnail you can unlock different versions of them
- Added 'puck' cosmetic type; Pre-launch Patreon supporters will have their Pux Puck unlocked automatically
- Added a bunch of new cosmetics and hundreds of variants

[h2]Other[/h2]
- Added kbps in and out debug in network debug interface
- Made it easier for admins to follow up on player reports real-time
- Created an analyser to find MTRs that are of interest to the data centre to help solve latency issues
- Reduced game bandwidth usage by 30-40%

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
- When losing connection to chat services, it no longer pops up and disrupts gameplay but notifies you in chat instead
- Music no longer plays during gameplay when loading from practice mode
- When pressing 't' while typing something (e.g. a report or console command) it will no longer open chat
- Fixed bug where audio settings wouldn't always correctly be loaded at game startup
- Fixed minor stutter when dashing or braking on high latency


Next up is hair and stick colors + different stick cosmetics. We're also gearing up the work on a ranked playlist. In the meantime, gameplay sessions will be conducted to figure out how to make the game more competitive and fun in the longterm. Many more things coming too.

GLHF
- Erveon

For this update, most efforts were focused on stabilising existing infrastructure and Slapshot Services.
Leaderboards are back, lots of database issues have been resolved and other really boring things that'll generally just result in a smoother experience.
We're nowhere near done with all the improvements on that front though, so more of that is coming in later updates.

[h2]General[/h2]
- Reintroducing the leaderboards, real-time this time!
- Added automatic latency / MTR reporting to the game, you can use 'mtr' in the dev console (button under esc) to trigger it manually
- Main menu now has the new Slapshot song (there's another one when you're in a custom lobby)
- Changed a few quickchat options

[h2]Arena[/h2]
- Goal spotlight fades in now instead of being abrupt
- Increased the movements of the arena audience

[h2]Cosmetics[/h2]
- Added variants (in preparation for next patch) for mouthpiece, mouthpuck, devil horns, whistle, star, electric guitar
- Added new cosmetics: Tusks, samurai helmet, cheddar, scratch, lion backpack, skull mask, whiskers, unicorn backpack
- Added item of the month for Patreon supporters: Aviator goggles

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
- Ears no longer show through the futuristic helmet
- Queue notification will no longer make your ears bleed
- Endgame screen text contrast has been improved
- Moved default controller buttons for zoom & spawn puck (replaced by quick chat)


We're still heavily focusing on stabilising the game, the game may be in Early Access but that doesn't excuse some of the issues that have been occurring. We're working very closely with our host to address some issues there. One idea that'll partially help is to introduce more locations (such as NA Central in Chicago) to bring our servers closer to the people. Other things like the cosmetic variants are still being worked on (but don't take priority over stabilisation). Outdoor arena soon™