Sunday Rivals News

Hope everyone is enjoying Season Mode so far, in this update I've made some long needed changes to how difficulty is handled in game. For starters, I've replaced the terms 'custom skill' and 'skill level' with 'difficulty' throughout the UI. I've also removed 'Normal' as a difficulty option and replaced it with 'User', so the default difficulty in the game will be connected to user sliders. Speaking of, gameplay sliders have received a face lift, with new slider options and more detailed comparative ratings:



How the sliders affect gameplay has been completely rebalanced and better utilizes the entire 0-100 range to give you more granularity in tweaking your performance. I've also added the ability to independently adjust run blocking, pass blocking, pass rush, run defense, and pass defense. If you haven't tried them out yet, now's a good time to give them a run!

Additionally, I've updated the 'Easy' and 'Expert' preset difficulties in the game to be more challenging and less punishing, respectively. To round things out, I've also a new 'Pro' preset difficulty in case Expert is too much. As a reminder, these difficulty settings do not use your User slider values in game...

Lastly, I've made some small improvements to Season Mode, including reworking conference-style playoff seeding to respect divisional standings and the addition of a 'Playoff Picture' screen in the Standings section.



Check out the full patch notes below for all the details. Thanks for playing!

Difficulty

• 'Custom skill' has been renamed to 'difficulty' throughout the game
  
• Broke out blocking slider into 'run blocking' and 'pass blocking'
  
• Broke out attack slider into 'pass rush' and 'run defense'
  
• Re-balanced all sliders to better utilize the entire 0-100 range
  
• Added 0-100 numerical value to difficulty
  
• Removed AI-specific sliders
  
• Force-reset sliders and save files
  
• Replaced 'normal' difficulty with 'user'
  
• Added 'pro' difficulty
  
• Renamed 'beginner' difficulty to 'easy'
  
• Rebalanced 'easy' and 'expert' difficulties to be more challenging/less punishing
  

Season Mode

• Added 'playoff picture' to the standings screen, showing tentative playoff matchups starting in week 4
  
• Conference-based playoff seedings now factor in division placement over league ranking
  
• Adjusted seeding for 16 team 'ranked' playoff brackets
  

Rosters

• Improved the overall defense for multiple teams, particularly CHI, BAL, and SEA
  
• Adjusted how OVR's are weighted for running backs (more speed, less skill)
  
• Adjusted how OVR's are weighted for defensive backs (more awareness, less speed)
  
• Decreased ENG rating for most DB's in the game
  

Bugs

• Fixed a bug where the incorrect round number for ranked playoffs was shown
  

I'm ecstatic to announce that Season Mode is finally in the game!

In the v.16 update, pick your favorite team and battle your way to the SRFL Bowl, with full support for custom teams and a handful of options to customize your league and schedule. Check out the full breakdown here, or read on below for the highlights:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Before you hit the field, check out the pregame screen which gives a complete breakdown of positional ratings and statistical leaders to help you prepare for your team's game:



Afterwards, see the top performers at every category in the postgame screen:



Along with typical league standings, there's also a full league ranking system:



Every stat in the game is tracked, sortable, and viewable per-team or via top-10 league leader lists:



You also have full access to every game on the schedule. Play it, sim it, whatever you want:



There's a lot to play with in Season Mode right now, with plans to improve and expand every aspect of the mode going forward. Future updates will integrate directly into the mode, including team strategies, playbook expansion, lineup options, awards, and much more. I look forward to sharing that progress in the upcoming months!

As always, I'm open to all your suggestions and feedback, let's make Season Mode something you want to play for years to come! Full patch notes below:

Game Modes

• Added Season Mode
  

Customization

• Added the ability to swap player positions from the edit team screen
  

Rosters

• Updated many default rosters defensive players to be in the correct positions again
  
• Updated default custom leagues to have all fields correctly filled out
  

Bugs

• Fixed a bug where helmet 3 wasn't loading correctly in game
  

While I'm currently hard at work on adding Season Mode to the game, I wanted to patch in a few small changes that can make their way into the mix now. Going forward, you'll be able to change the quarter lengths of your games from the 'options' menu where you setup your teams



I've also renamed the defensive positions to better reflect where they actually line up on the field, as well as normalizing those positions across all formations.



An unfortunate side effect to this change will impact custom rosters, as some of your players may not be in the positions they were before. I'm hoping to come up with a solution for this in the next major update.

As I mentioned before, Season Mode is coming along strong and I'm looking forward to you all getting a chance to try it out in the near future. Thanks for your support!


Gameplay

• Added 'quarter length' to the game options popup for all modes
  

Playbook

• Changed DL & LB position names to better reflect their actual field positions
  
• Normalized where DL & LB's line up across all formations
  

Misc

• File format updates for future releases
  

Hey yall, I wanted to share two devlog videos I made recently to better outline the upcoming year of Sunday Rivals!

First up, I shed some light on planned features heading towards the v1.0 release, as well as answering some questions from the community:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Next up, check out a fantastic custom college football league made by community member Jackrabbit JB, along with Part 2 of Community Q&A, including some thoughts on a potential Franchise Mode:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I appreciate everyone's support and feedback and can't wait to share all the work being done on Season Mode soon! As always, let me know your thoughts and fire away if you have questions of your own, either in the forums here or on Discord!

Bugs

• Fixed an issue where the up man would play the snap before the punter, breaking punts