Jumpala News

The first public Jumpala tournament was a success! We had 8 participants and played 35 games over the course of 3 hours. Most of the participants were new to the game and had never participated in any of our prerelease tournaments. Even so, every player brought their best—there were so many intense matches, tight plays, and narrow comebacks. I imagine the intensity will only grow stronger in future tournaments.



Congratulations to Timmcd for his victory! Unfortunately, the leader of the Winners Bracket had to duck out last minute, so we didn't get to have that final match—but that's not to say Timmcd's victory wasn't well-deserved!


For those interested in the numbers side of things, here's a look at the character picks and their performance in the tournament:



Bommer had a strong showing this tournament, having been picked twice as often as the next-highest character. Frore and Ribbon were the least picked characters, but they had the highest point averages, and neither character lost any of their matches. (To be fair, Frore was only played in one match, but she took a 3-0 victory!) It'll be interesting to see how character picks and win-rates vary over time!

All of the tournament matches are available on YouTube. You can also watch the final match below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Character Balance[/h3]

• Reduced Cid's special activation time by 50%
  
• Increased Cid's SP cost from 3 to 4
  

I've received a lot of feedback from the community about how strong Cid is. Don't think I haven't been listening :) These changes make Cid much less likely to be able to chain his ultimates and encourages more use of his special ability.

[h3]User Experience[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where Bommer's tutorial could get stuck when using her ultimate without standing on a locked row
  
• Fixed an issue where the in-game Invite dialog would continue to show in a private online lobby
  
• The Steam Invite dialog no longer appears automatically at the start of a private lobby, but can be manually triggered
  

Think you have what it takes to be the next Jumpala Champion? Join us for our next tournament! The tournament will take place this Saturday, January 30th, at 2:30pm EST.

Sign up here: https://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/cFuanLixHR
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/8ceswSK

Jumpala tournament rules are as follows:

• In Game Options, change Stage Speed to Fast.
  
• Proving Grounds and Twilight Canyon are considered neutral stages. At the beginning of a match, all non-neutral stages are considered "locked" and cannot be chosen.
  

For the first game in a set, players can choose their characters, and a neutral stage will be picked randomly. The loser of the first game can choose ONE of the following options:

• Change (and unlock) the stage of the next game
  
• Force the winner to change their character
  
• Change their own character
  
• Rematch with no changes
  

Unless forced to change, the winner of the match must keep their character. Once you're forced to change off of a character, you cannot rechoose that character for the remainder of the match.

If a stage was not picked, it will be chosen at random from the pool of unlocked stages.

The tournament will be double elimination, with each set being best 2 out of 3. Semifinals and Finals are best 3 out of 5.

Hope to see you there!