Last edited on 15 August 2016 - 12:25 AM by MasterGberry

Hey everyone. Here with what might be a surprise to many of you, but we are already announcing the launching of Season 14 for ArenaPvP and as of this post open beta is now live on North America. We will only be testing on North America to try and put as much strain/load/players on one region as possible to try and break it. I want to go over all of the changes that have happened since the start of Season 13 and why we are launching Season 14 so quickly.

Why are we launching Season 14 so soon after Season 13?

This is not the first time we have made a season super short. The last time we did this was back during ArenaPvP Season 6 before many of you knew what Badlion was. During this season we had tried to implement a different rating system and matchmaker but it was too negatively received by the community because we did not have enough players. To be honest a lot of the issues that are coming from back then have come back around in season 13. The main issues being rank visibility and matches taking too long to find. The difference is now we have over 10x the players we had during season 6. Still the complaints are the same and we have taken the time to fix all of them in season 14. Rather than force people to continue to play something they are not happy we would rather cut the season short and start a new season to have all of the issues fixed. Season 14 will be what season 13 was supposed to be, amazing.

Why did you not wait for the Season 13 launch if you knew there were problems?

As I had mentioned in some other posts already, the season 13 launch was a mistake. There was a mixture of issues between (1) Un-tested code with real stress testing (1000s of players) (2) me being super busy with IRL and not having enough time to look over design decisions for season 13 (3) bad communication within the development team about what was and was not done (4) pressure that season 12 had already been going on for 4 months and our population was slowly declining because of it. If things had been a bit different season 13 would have been delayed longer, but the decisions that have been made are done and as a result all we can do now is work forwards towards a better future.

Biggest Changes in Season 14

I will now go over the biggest changes of Season 14. If you want a complete list you can find them below in the next section.

Matchmaker

The matchmaker for Season 13 was a step in the right direction towards making a better matchmaking experience, but it had some serious design flaws which have been flushed out now to make a proper matchmaking experience. In other games where a match or set of rounds can last between twenty minutes and an hour players do not mind waiting five minutes to get a good fair match. Unfortunately for Minecraft the matches are very fast, as a result players need a mixture of fair matches and quick matches to keep them busy. This being said the new matchmaker:

1. Scans the rating range way faster now. It also scans based on how many players are online (really fast for regions like Asia/AU).
2. Will not remove you from the queue if you cannot find a match right away.
3. After 20 seconds of trying to find you a match will just shove you against the first player it can find if you have not found one yet.

This all being said the new matchmaker should be way faster than the old one and should make everyone really happy. During peak times you will have great matches made up since there will be players of all rating ranges online. During lower time you will still find matches but the quality of the match might not be as good (but this is the trade off we have to go with).

Rating System

The rating system in season 13 is the correct approach on how to design a skill based system. The problem with the season 13 system is we did not properly display enough information about how far you are progressing within your current tier and division. This by far is the largest problem with the new rating system, players want to be able to see how much they are progressing. At the start of the season you could not even see how many points you were gaining or losing. We fixed this but it didn't really fix the overall issue since you have no idea how far you are from getting your next division (such as going from Silver II to Silver I). As a result we are now displaying a point system in addition to your tier and division.

In case you are not familiar with the terms used in the previous paragraph: a tier is one of the following: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Emerald, Diamond, Masters; a division is V, IV, III, II, I. When you start off in a tier you start at the bottom (which is Silver V for instance) and slowly work your way towards the top which would be Silver I in this example. Once you reach the top of Silver I the next rank is Gold V and you repeat the progression.

How the point system works

For the new ranking system we want to show you how far you are to getting into your next promotion match (will be discussed shortly). As a result we are now implementing a point based system where you can see exactly this. The bottom of a rank is 0 points and the top of a rank is 1000 points. When you reach 1000 points your next match will be considered a promotion match. If you win the promotion match you will be bumped up to the next division or tier. If you lose the promotion match you will stay in your current tier/division. The opposite for reaching 0 points in a tier/division. If you lose the demotion match you will be demoted down a division or tier. If you win the demotion match you will stay in your current tier/division.

The Party System

The party system is what Badlion has needed for a long time. A way to play with your friends across a variety of game modes on Badlion (friend system coming soon as well). There were some design issues though with how the party system and the matchmaker system were integrated together. There was one of two options: (1) Lock the party from being changed when in a match (2) Make a copy of the party for the match. Stupidly we chose option #1 even though we had had similar issues in the past with it. This was another lapse in communication between the development team which we have now fixed since we have some new internal tools to make development/communication easier for us going forward. As a result in Season 14 I personally re-wrote all 3 major systems you see above to make sure that they all work properly, and I opted for #2. This as a result should allow players to properly be able to make changes with their party and not get the bugs of "You cannot do this right now" forever.

The Chat Rework

Chat is a very important part of the game. It allows you to communicate with other players from around the world and feel the real experience of playing an online game versus a single player game. Chat has been re-done for Season 14 also to properly allow a better set of communications between players. First I will go over the lobby chat.

The Lobby chat servers are now somewhat synchronized based on the region. What do I mean by this? Rather than having a single region such as Europe with up to 3000 players online at once talking in a single chat, we have broken it down into smaller chat servers. Each chat server will consist of a maximum of 500 players in it. You can switch chat servers using the items in your hotbar on the ArenaPvP Lobby. Donator+ and higher will be able to bypass the restriction on full chat servers and join them even if it’s full. By default we will start by populating chat server 1 and keep going as needed. It does not matter which AreanPvP Lobby you will be logged into in order to talk in a lobby chat server. It just depends which lobby chat server you are assigned to. We will also have a premium lobby chat server for only Donator ranks and higher to be able to chat in (they can manually join it). We will remember your preference for joining the premium chat lobby if you have chosen to join it.

Now for in game chat. Normally when you are playing any normal online game such as Starcraft, League of Legends, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, etc you are in an isolated chat with the people playing the match you are in. We have opted for the same approach. Now when you join a game there will be two chat modes available. Match chat and party chat. You can switch between the two of them and respectively talk to the designated group. This will give the ArenaPvP servers a more professional and isolated feel to it when you are playing a match.

Every change since the launch of Season 13

There have been so many changes in ArenaPvP Season 13 since we first made it public. The list of them is just too long to put into this announcement post. As a result earlier I released a special developer log with all of the changes which you can find here: https://www.badlion.net/forum/thread/131648

The biggest things to mention are: (1) A much better spectator system (2) region wide duels (3) more quality of life things such as countdowns, animations for ranking up, etc (4) lots of bug fixes.

All of the other new features in Season 14

- Redesigned Tablist for lobbies
- Custom kits are back and can be used for duels (an old feature that wasn’t available in Season 13)
- Ability to fast join a queue after your match ends (chat message sent to you where you can click it to requeue up for the same ladder again)
- Ability to control friendly fire in party matches (party fight option)
- Better server crash handling (so people don’t get assigned to non-existent servers)
- Redesigned combat tag system to be consistent with more games on the network
- Main region properly tracked on website for region leaderboards (finally!)
- Graphs showing your progression on different ladders during the season (time to show your improvements during the season!)
- Lots of internal clean ups

Conclusion

I am extremely confident in saying that ArenaPvP Season 14 is going to be what Season 13 was meant to be. It will help us to grow as a network as we have spent the time designing so many tools and new features that are going to be used for all of our upcoming game modes such as SG 2.0, UHC 6.0, CTF, SkyWars, and so on. There will be a friend system coming to Badlion very soon as well which will help tie everything together into a more social friendly game environment.

You can join the open beta at certain times by joining beta.badlion.net during the specified time window. We will announce when the beta servers are available on our twitter as well. The available times are:

Monday August 15th 11 AM - 2 PM EST
Tuesday August 16th 11 AM - 2 PM EST
Wednesday August 17th 1AM - 4 AM EST
Wednesday August 17th 11 AM - 2 PM EST
Thursday August 18th 1 AM - 2 PM EST
Friday August 19th - All day starting at 1 AM EST

We appreciate any and all bug reports that can be filed on the last issues. The planned release date for ArenaPvP Season 14 is going to be August 20th, 12:00 AM PST. This is subject to change depending on how many issues come out of the beta testing. If there are no major issues then the launch date will be as it is stated here. If there are problems we will edit this thread and change the launch date and make an announcement on Twitter.

Screenshots

Player Network Rank + Highest ArenaPvP Rank



Rank Up Effect



New Tab List in ArenaPvP Lobbies

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:30 AM

First and hype

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:31 AM

WELL GANG GANG THEN @Metarus @Suitability

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:42 AM

Looks great :) Really not a fan of build having health like it does in uhc though.

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:44 AM

Question: What is the typical amount of points you would get if you kill a player. Idk if it's mentioned or not but I still wanna know :)

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:44 AM

gg

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:45 AM

Can't wait!

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:53 AM

COOL

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 12:59 AM

To have if they put the former ping in SA, mas badlion hosted SA (Also mini uhc sa) and more mods SA. TRY not to ignore it, it is a small community, but it continues being his and thanks to you we could do it. I wait turn the previous ping that is something that many do not like me and they changed NA, since it was the same quantity of ping. Former ping: 60 - 70 New ping: 140 - 180. I wait solve it and mas. Obviously also for other regions. PUT HIS BETTER EFFORT <3

Last edited on 15 August 2016 - 01:19 AM by SoulzHD

Would you be able to tab any player no matter on what chat you are?

Can you add another option for global chat if you are in a match?(pls)

Add online staff members back to tab?

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:21 AM

We are not adding online staff members into the tab list. Use /report if you want a mod's attention for someone who is cheating.

As far as the tab completion no matter which chat you are in…we can look into it, no promises though.

Not planning on having a global chat for the server you are on. The idea is to create an isolated environment for your match.

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:22 AM

We have been working with our provider in South America to try and resolve the issues, but we are waiting their response at the moment.

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:22 AM

HYPE!!!

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:24 AM

+/- 150 points i believe for an average match

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:25 AM

Are you guys gonna put a asian uhc?

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:29 AM

Sounds great

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:38 AM

sounds awesome; however, I feel the player network rank tag should be toggle-able. As a lion donator being spammed with "Gift matches" or "please wl me to EU-1" gets very annoying, and turning off PM's is the last thing I want to do. Other than that, I have no complaints, this server has a bright future ahead.

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:54 AM

Exelente. I hope that the response is good and that they receive it soon.

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:54 AM

Yes we are going to, just been busy with a bunch of other things.

Posted on 15 August 2016 - 01:54 AM

Good point. Will see if we can add a toggle for people to hide their ranks above their heads.