Greetings Players!
To start the new year off right, we wanted to answer a number of questions we’ve seen in the last few months on topics related to cheating.
One of the things that’s important to understand is that cheating in PUBG MOBILE is not the result of just a few bright kids in their mom’s basements finding a neat new way to get an advantage in-game. PUBG MOBILE is one of the most popular games in the world, and that means that talented teams of unethical engineers are constantly trying to find ways to cheat, and our security team is working 24/7/365 to shut them down as soon as they pop up.
Regardless of who is behind the cheats it’s our obligation to keep your gameplay fair and secure which we take very seriously. Our Security Team is very skilled, and they are experts at detecting and rooting out cheaters. No matter who creates the cheats, we will find the people attempting to use them and keep them from impacting your gameplay.
Now, on to your questions:
“How are you making sure Leaderboards are Fair?”
The Leaderboards in PUBG MOBILE are some of the most heavily scrutinized areas of the game. We utilize multiple strategies to monitor individuals on the leaderboards, including (but not limited to): machine learning, eligibility restriction, manual review, and the Video Review Station. Right now these systems work together very efficiently, but we have plans to both increase restrictions on who is eligible and improve the accuracy of our automated detection in the coming months. We’ll also be increasing the number of staff specifically dedicated to keeping the leaderboards clean. We want our Leaderboards to remain a source of pride for those who put the effort to achieve them, not as a source of accusations about hacking.
“Is it possible for people to get unbanned by paying a service advertising on social media? Does ‘Anti-Ban’ work?”
One major problem companies selling cheating software face is their customers get banned in PUBG MOBILE. Which is really bad for their business. But since these companies have few morals their best strategy is to lie to their customers and claim that they have technology that doesn’t exist. They are selling services to cheat in a game, they aren’t honest or trustworthy groups of people. Anti-Ban doesn’t exist, cheats can’t prevent reports from being sent in game, if someone gives them money to reverse a ban then the money will be stolen with nothing received and maybe the person’s payment information stolen as well. It’s not like someone can complain that “they stole my money after selling me cheats for a video game” and expect anyone to take them seriously.
“Why not have Region Lock for Servers based on Region/Phone Verification/Etc.?”
One of the questions we see most often is some variation of “Why don’t you use technology xxxx?” Rest assured that all of these different options have been strongly considered and evaluated. Unfortunately there are a number of compelling reasons as to why some options are also problematic, including: legal restrictions in different countries around the world, ease of evasion,and negative impact on honest players.
One of our strongest values here at PUBG MOBILE is bringing people together across the world, no one wants people to be cut off from friends and loved ones they connect with in PUBG MOBILE.
The sad fact is that none of these solutions are a magic bullet that will have the impact that people hope for. Utilizing commonly available software you can make your phone appear to be connecting from anywhere in the world, generate local phone numbers, and obscure details about your device used for identification. These changes wouldn’t hurt hackers, but they would hurt honest players.
“Which is harder for you to catch cheaters on, Android or iOS?”
Another very common question we get is why cheaters are harder to catch from one operating system or another. The truth is that both Android and iOS have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to detecting cheaters, and we have experts in both operating systems that know how to leverage those strengths and work around the weaknesses to catch cheaters regardless of what type of mobile device they use.
As well as looking for cheat software, we observe the effects in-game very closely to determine if cheating behavior is taking place. Regardless of the type of device, the ultimate proof is in the game data. When people cheat, they leave telltale signs that we can find to catch them even if it's not a cheat that can be detected directly. Ultimately the device itself can’t hide that; if someone cheats they will be caught.
“Why aren’t certain types of cheats automatically detected immediately?”
Our goal is always to maximize the speed of catching cheaters and minimize the amount of time they spend in game. But accuracy is important too, and sometimes we need to investigate deeper due to network issues that can appear to be cheating or a poorly performing device that starts behaving unusually. As soon as we have 100% confirmation of cheating behavior taking place, we immediately ban the account in question. This happens during games, when connecting to the PUBG MOBILE servers, or during reviews of server data whether the individual is online or not . As soon as we can prove someone is cheating, they are gone.
Our systems that operate in real time often rely on computers interpreting data in-game which takes a certain amount of processor resources and memory. Other times it’s based on people reviewing games in real time and manually taking action, but computers detecting and automatically taking action is by far the most common case. With tens of millions of players logging in daily, and thousands or tens of thousands of matches (each containing up to 100 players) going on simultaneously, the amount of computing power and memory usage is of a scale that is difficult to imagine.
This is a real limitation, that our very talented engineers are always cognizant of and working around to create effective and speedy solutions. However there are some things that a human can do quickly but can take much longer for a computer to verify. A computer has to manually investigate every possible way something could happen and verify that it is impossible in every way before it can make a definitive assertion. A trained person can see something happen with a glance and immediately make the correct determination. This is why we utilize both computer-based and real human observation, as well as some added systems like the Video Review Station to enhance our efforts and catch cheaters much more quickly.
“How do you penalize people for teaming with cheaters?”
Teaming up with cheaters to gain ranks or rating is an indirect form of cheating, and is subject to an escalating series of penalties ultimately potentially leading to account banning. For a first violation this is a simple removal of any ranks or rewards gained, along with a warning and an extended period of observation. People who repeat this behavior after being warned have greater penalties applied.
You don’t have to worry about possibly being randomly matched with a cheater; we can spot this and it’s not something that will get you in trouble. But if you see a teammate cheating, or even just suspect they are, it’s best to report them and let us make sure. If people tell you they can help you rank up super-easily, or it’s impossible for them to lose, be careful. They might just be taking a risk with your account too.
“Why do creators sometimes get banned?”
Creators are often some of the most talented players to play the game, and sometimes their skills in game are so amazing that it’s difficult to believe that they are possible. Our automated detection systems often flag them for review, because they play at an extremely high level. There was a case of one pro esports team that I watched get more than 10 chicken dinners in a row, playing together in classic matches at the start of a new season. In normal circumstances 30 chicken dinners in a row would be extremely suspicious. But professional players playing together after thousands of matches against the other best players in the world can do some pretty amazing things.
The other, sadder, side of the coin unfortunately relates to human jealousy. There have been cases where jealous individuals unfortunately attempted to falsely accuse some top creators. The lengths that people will go to when motivated by jealousy are incredible, and they from time to time have managed to create extremely compelling evidence. Other times they have attempted to take control of a Creator’s account and then have the account banned that way. Because Creators have to deal with these issues more frequently, we work hard to verify any actions taken against their accounts more completely, and eliminate all other possibilities.
“What security measures do you utilize to make sure Esports events are free from cheating?”
Much like Creators, pro Esports players are incredibly difficult to analyze. They are playing the game at a different level, routinely making shots that would be impossible for the average player, and doing so over and over again. If a normal player suddenly displays the ability to shoot through smoke and reliably hit their opponents without being able to see them, this is a dead giveaway that something is likely going on. For Esports players, this is actually not uncommon.
In a match at the Spring Split 2019 PMCO championships in Berlin, we watched a single player fight through smoke and systematically take down RRQ Athena, one of the most accomplished teams in all of PUBG MOBILE. He was playing on a device we provided, in an environment we completely controlled, and there was zero opportunity for any cheating to occur. So it’s hard to analyze their results.
Fortunately for these events we can do a lot more to ensure that cheating doesn’t take place. The situation with Covid-19 has made this slightly more complicated, but we’ve adapted and applied these strategies to online only events. These can include high tech solutions (like doing a much more thorough real time analysis than is possible in normal games), low tech solutions (like providing them a device they can’t install new software on), and many more things we can’t give you details on (because we want to keep cheat creators in the dark on how we catch them). Trying to cheat in esports is a great way to get banned very quickly.
“Will multiple reports of a player in a short period of time trigger an automatic ban?”
Bans are never issued solely on the basis of reports, but player reports are a great way to alert our security team to potential problems. Reports help us prioritize and evaluate who we need to look more deeply into. If we know that someone is acting suspiciously in game, we can direct far more resources into verification (either machine based or human observation) of their game play. The more people that report someone, the more suspicious it looks and the faster it can happen. So lots of reports won’t get someone banned directly, but it will help us catch cheaters faster and more accurately.
“What else are you doing to combat cheating in PUBG MOBILE?”
We’ve made a lot of improvements over the last year that have greatly reduced the ability for players to cheat in game. We’re catching them quicker, identifying them more accurately, and providing fairer and more competitive games for our players. But we can’t rest on our accomplishments, cheaters aren’t going to stop trying to get any advantage they can. In 2021 we’re working on expanding our Security Team to help us respond more quickly, being even more accurate to ensure no one gets falsely accused of attempting to cheat, and cutting cheats off at the source wherever we can. Many of the initiatives we’re planning on need to remain confidential to maintain the element of surprise and achieve maximum impact, but we’re committed to sharing more information more frequently so that you can know what is being done to keep the game safe.
Thank you,
The PUBG MOBILE Team

Lost Ark EU Beta (Soon) - Summer release

Temporary Free-MP game suggestion to replace MW?

PUBG MOBILE - Update 1.2 (Patch Notes)

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The new Runic Power Mode is available for a new combat experience! Take on the challenge in Power Armor Mode to duke it out on a technological battlefield. Metro Royale's New Chapter has started. Build up Honor to show your strength. Get the Runic Power themed Royale Pass to complete missions with ease.
To give everyone a better gaming experience, PUBG MOBILE will be pushing out updates starting from January 12. The server will not be taken offline for this update. This update requires 615 MB of storage space on Android devices. The iOS version requires 1.5 GB. Please note that players on different versions cannot team up with each other, so please update as soon as possible.

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Update the game between January 12 and January 17 (UTC+0) to get:

2,888 BP
100 AG
Acolyte of Justice Backpack (3d)

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Runic Power Gameplay (January 12 to March 7)
Runes from another world have brought three special powers with them. Choose the power that suits you, collect Rune fragments, and use them to aid you in your fight to become the final winner on the battlefield. Choose Erangel in map selection to experience this exclusive gameplay mode.
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Gameplay
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Players will choose their Rune energy type on Spawn Island. You will need to choose to bring either the Flame Rune, Arctic Rune, or Wind Rune into the current match.
After selecting a rune, you will get 2 skills. The first skill summons an object, and the second skill gives you a boost. Using these skills consumes Rune energy.
Rune energy can be obtained in matches.
Rune Abilities
- Flame Rune:
  - Summon skill - Summons a wheel of flame that rolls forward slowly, dealing burn damage to enemy players it touches.
  - Boost skill - Adds a burning effect to your Ammo for a short time.
- Arctic Rune:
  - Summon skill - Summons an ice wall. Each block of the ice wall can be destroyed separately. When the ice wall appears, it will lift up players or vehicles directly above them.
  - Boost skill - Adds a freezing effect to Ammo for a short time. Freezing reduces the effectiveness of healing.
- Wind Rune:
  - Summon skill - Summons a semi-transparent shield of wind that reduces the damage of bullets shot from outside the shield.
  - Boost skill - Increases your movement and reload speed.

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Power Armor Mode (Launches in EvoGround on February 5)
New high-tech Power Armor has been created on Livik. To create your own set of Power Armor you must bringing Nano Crystals and an Armor Blueprint to the Matrix Base. You will have 2 additional chances to respawn yourself or your teammates during a match. Matrix Events will also be available for you to participate in during each match.

Respawn
- Teammates can be respawned at research stations. All players can respawn twice. You can choose to respawn yourself or your teammates during a match. Players respawn with basic equipment.
Power Armor
- Power Armor Chest Piece: Reduces chest damage and increases backpack capacity.
- Power Armor Arm Piece: Reduces arm damage and increases melee damage.
- Power Armor Leg Piece: Reduces leg damage and fall damage. Gives a quick dash ability.
- Assembling the full Power Armor set unlocks its ultimate weapon, the Dragon's Breath Grenade.
Matrix Events
- Matrix Event 1: Improved regional supply output.
- Matrix Event 2: Multiple Matrix airdrops and significantly increased supplies in each airdrop.
- Matrix Event 3: Life Detectors in research stations are activated and can be used to detect surrounding players.

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Metro Royale: Honor (From January 12)

The Newest Chapter
- Metro Royale: Honor will be available after the game is updated. In keeping with our Season tradition, at the start of a new chapter your rankings and inventory in Metro Royale will be reset. Fame and NPC Favorability, however, will be retained.
  - New rewards will be available in the latest chapter. Accumulate Honor to get voice packs, outfits, and other permanent rewards!
  - Added new weekly rankings, including Loot and Elimination Rankings.
  - Improved enemy AI from Steel Front and the Cobras to make them more intelligent and challenging.
New Metro Royale Honor System

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Your Honor represents your strength in Metro Royale Mode. Accumulate Honor to get voice packs, outfits, and other permanent rewards.
Honor is obtained by defeating players or picking up Honor items. A player's Honor level increases when a player reaches the maximum amount of Honor. Honor can also be obtained by completing weekly missions.
Honor is reset whenever a chapter is updated. Players will start with an initial amount of Honor based on their performance in the previous chapter.
New Solo Mode
- In Metro Royale Mode, all maps and modes support Solo.
- Solo players won't encounter players who play as a team.
Metro Royale Improvements
- Mail can be read in the Metro Royale Lobby.
- Removed the NPC chat feature.
- Missions do not award any more Fame after your Fame reaches the max level.
- Missions do not award any more Favorability after your NPC Favorability has reached the max.

New Firearms, New Options
FAMAS
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A new assault rifle that uses 5.56mm Ammo. It can be loaded with 25 rounds, has the fastest Rate of Fire among rifles, and is outstanding in close range firefights.
The FAMAS can be equipped with a Muzzle (Rifles), Scope, and Mag (Rifles). There is no foregrip, but it comes with its own bipod that reduces recoil when shooting with it in a prone position.
Only appears in the Livik Classic Battle Royale map.

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Game Performance and Other Improvements

Basic Performance Improvements:

Improved the loading logic so that backpacks open faster the first time they are opened.
Improved the performance and rendering efficiency of Cheer Park so that many players can appear on the same screen.
Improved the power consumption of high-end iOS devices so that devices are less likely to overheat because of the game.
Android users can use the incremental update feature to update game resources, significantly reducing the size of resource downloads needed to start the game.
Android users can now download the initial game pack in the background.

Security Improvements:

New Security Zone updates waiting for you to discover.
Enhanced the detection for auto-aiming, x-ray vision, long-distance jumping, and movement speed hacks.
Enhanced the detection for grass-removal hacks.
Enhanced detection and protection against unofficial versions of the game client.
Adjusted the condition to enter stat-related rankings from Lv. 30 to Lv. 35.
Further improved the efficiency of the report and feedback systems to provide more timely and accurate feedback.

Basic Experience Improvements:

Sight Model Improvements

Improved the Holographic Sight, making the model clearer for players.
Improved the model of the 2× Scope to make it more natural.
Improved the 8× Scope to make the movement of the crosshair more natural when changing directions.
Adjusted the frequency at which the black circle of the Muzzle shakes to make the shaking more realistic when shooting with a weapon.
The landing animation has been improved to better correspond to the speed at which players land.
Made the landing process smoother.

Skydiving and Landing Action Improvements
Feature to Cancel Reloading

Tap the shoot button when reloading to stop reloading.

Firearm Balancing:

Bolt Action Sniper Rifle Enhancements

Increased the damage of the Kar98K and M24.
Shortened the interval between shots for the Kar98K and M24.
Slightly increased the bolt action speed of the Kar98K and M24.

Other System Improvements:

Social System Improvements

Friend sidebar: Players can now view their friends' online status to find out what mode they are playing and the size of their teams.
The Crew feature will be upgraded and is under maintenance. It is expected to return in v1.3.0.
Added a feature that gives players exclusive points that can be used to redeem rewards when they team up with their old friends who've recently returned to the game.
Added a search feature.
Added the following to the filter: Time of Acquisition and Owned.
Added a quick voice feature to delete all.

Voice Pack Inventory Improvements

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Other New Season Content

Royale Pass Season 17: RUNIC POWER (January 19 to March 21)

RUNIC POWER themed interface and rewards: Spin the Wheel of Fate to obtain upgraded rank rewards! Choose between Resplendent Dawn and Deadly Sickle at rank 60, and reach rank 100 to get the majestic Guardian Armor Set and the new themed UZI and M16A4!
RP missions have been overhauled to lower the difficulty while increasing the point rewards! Added season match time rewards. Accumulate match time to collect point rewards. Added RP point rewards to weekly Activity progress. Complete missions to accumulate Activity and collect point rewards.
RP Activity Pack event: Purchase Activity Packs to rank up your RP quickly, and collect Mission Activity Points to convert them all into UC refunds. Purchase the RP Activity Pack to immediately get RP Points of equivalent value and extra crate coupons. You will also activate the Mission Activity Point rebate, and the Mission Activity Points you collect can be converted into UC refunds.
The adventure event is back with the RUNIC POWER theme: Go to the RP exclusive event tab and obtain Metro Badges to go on an adventure like no other. Unlock the story as you explore and choose to advance for free or after making a purchase. Collect exclusive supplies to redeem 1 of 2 sets, exclusive vehicles, and other grand rewards.
Improved the selection between UC and AG: It is now only necessary to choose this once per season, and you can change your mind at any time. Adjusted the pace at which currency is returned to players via rank rewards to increase the amount given at lower ranks.

New Cheer Park Theme:

Runic Power Theme (January 12 to March 7)
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Runes have appeared in Cheer Park, bringing a magical power with them. Players can sense rune energy once per day in Cheer Park to collect free rewards from a rune.
After claiming the reward, players can use the power of the Runes to search for and match with other players. Players can then become Rune friends for the day. You can only become Rune friends for one day and can rematch with another player once per day.
Players can complete specified Rune missions with their Rune friend in Cheer Park to collect great rewards.
When this theme is available, a pier leading to Cheer Park Island will appear. There you'll find a giant bunny doll waiting for you.
Players can project Valentine's Day notes in the air for all to see! The projection will have the sender and receivers' names on it.

Dream Team Theme (Feb 9 to Mar 7)
Subscription Festival (January 13 to January 27)

Subscribe to Prime (or Prime Plus) and RP Prime (or RP Prime Plus) at the same time to get exclusive discounts from the BP Shop and RP Redemption Store, daily login gifts, exclusive BP redemption items, and other great perks. During the event, many subscription packs will be sold at a discount for a limited time. Players who subscribe for the first time will even get an additional 20% discount.

Idea: Online Borderland

Would be really cool if someone were to make a simulation of Alice in Borderland games as an online game.
Overworld: Players have a visa that acts as their score as well as matchmaking rating. Leaderboards for highest visa numbers exist to add to competitiveness.
Visas decrease by one each real-time day. If a player loses a game and/or dies in-game, their visa score goes back to 0.
Players don’t know what games they’ll enter until the game starts. Lobbies will not state player limits (to prevent players from meta-gaming by predicting games based on player numbers), but registration will close without warning when a player limit is reached. Players can enter games in groups, but if the group size exceed the player limit only part of the group will end up joining.
Game ideas do not have to be based on the original manga, although the numbers and types will have similar significances. Visa days are assigned similar to manga, although the number of days may sometimes change depending on specific game conditions (see game ideas later)
Games should last between 10 to 30 minutes. Face card games are only available to top 10% scores players and give varying visa days, aka Face Players.
Clubs: Cooperation games.
Spades: Reflex and APM (action per minute) type games. Tests quick thinking and reflexes, sometimes rhythm.
Diamonds: Mental games. Note that instead of having certain puzzles as games such as the 3-light switch puzzle (which gets boring after you solve the puzzle), pit players against each other, or have puzzles that have a randomized element in it so that replays are fresh every time.
Hearts: ULTIMATE BETRAYAL.
Note: since face card games are playable only by the top 10%, and will be rare, spectators are allowed, at the cost of 1 visa day.
Game ideas: (feel free to add more in the comments!)
Artist Supreme (2 clubs): Player Limit: 3
Basically Pictionary. One player draws a picture and the others have to guess, within 5 minutes. Writing words (detected by word recognition technology) results in instant death. Multiple guesses/drawings are permitted.
3 rounds are conducted, with alternating players.
Labyrinth (5 spades): Player limit: 4
Similar to Dota 2’s Aghanigm’s Labyrinth maze puzzles. Navigate through a labyrinth with traps without dying. Players at different parts of the maze may open doors or trigger traps to aid or hinder other players.
Janken Surprise (6 diamonds): Player limit: 2
Basic Rock Paper Scissors game. However, one player has to announce what action they intend to put out (rock/papescissors), followed by 1 minute of silent thinking (maximum), then the Rock Paper Scissors is chosen. Note that the announced choice may not be the actual chosen action.
Best of 5 is played. Draws result in a repeat of the round. Player that announces their action is alternated between levels. Optional feature: to add flavour, fixed texts that taunts/commends the opponent can be be used after each round. (Possibly used to mess with psychology of opponent)
Tug of War (6 spades): Player limit: 8 or 10
Players are put into two different teams in a game of virtual tug of war. To pull on the “rope” players have to press the correct keyboard keys that appear on the screen (which are randomised). Pressing a wrong key causes a “stumble”, where you don’t get “pull” prompts for a precious few seconds. A team wins when the “rope” is “pulled” across a border.
Showdown (7 spades): Player limit: two players
Third person shooter mode. Two players have pistols with infinite ammo. They walk a certain distance away from each other with the camera facing away from each other. After a 3/2/1/Go signal, the players turn to each other and try to shoot each other down. Winner is the one left standing.
Death by Majority (9 hearts): Player limit: none
A yes/no question is given, e.g. “Do you like apples?”. Players are given a few minutes to discuss and decide before individually choosing the answer. The players who choose the majority answer die and lose the game. The process repeats. Multiple rounds are conducted until at most 3 players are left standing.
Voice/text chat is encouraged/allowed.
Note: If all players choose the same answer, all players lose the game. A draw repeats in a repeat of the round, with a different question.
Battle Royale (10 spades): Player limit: 10 (soft limit, can start if queue is too long)
3rd person shooter, battle royale style, similar to PUBG/Fortnite. Single pistol with infinite ammo, and one grenade (unused grenades can be looted from dead players). Last three standing players clear the game.
Salem’s Witch Hunt (10 hearts): Player limit: 6
1 witches and 5 humans.
Rotate between day and night phase. First day: voice/text chat is encouraged/allowed. Players can choose a home to stay at night, their own, or another player’s.
Night phase: Players move to the house which they have chosen during the day to stay with during the night. A maximum of 2 players can stay in a house together at night. If more than 2 players choose to stay at the same house, a random few are “kicked out” and forced to stay at their own home. Players in the same house can talk together. The witch has the choice to 1) kill a player in the same house, or 2) sneak out to another house and kill a player in that house, or 3) do nothing. If the witch sneaks to another house, they’ll be informed of the number and identity of occupants of the house choosing whether to kill or return home and do nothing for the rest of the night. Players in the same house will be informed the witch’s identity if a witch among them sneaks out of the house, or if a witch enters the house and kills one of the players.
Day phase: Dead players are revealed to the town, as well as whose house they were killed in. Players then proceed to discuss for a period of time before using majority vote to decide who to lynch as the witch.
The process repeats.
Witches’ goal: Kill all human players. Human’s goal: Lynch all witches.
Note: Witches know each other at the start of the game. They have a separate chat that they can use to communicate with each other at night.
Players who are considered “dead” do not instantly lose the game, but instead win if their faction wins.
Borderlanders’ Dilemma (Jack hearts): Player limit: none. Face players only
Players are given two choices: Cheat or Cooperate.
If all players choose cooperate, all players win the game with 10 visa days. If there is a mix of both choices, players that choose cheat get 30 visa days. The other players die and lose. If all players choose cheat, players still clear the game, but they all lose enough visa days to get kicked off the top 10% charts.
Voice/text chat is encouraged/allowed. For players with different languages, a text option is provided where players can announce which choice they intend to pick (this may not be the actual choice that they pick)
King of Clubs (All for one): Player limit 1. Face players only
The King of Clubs player in a 8-10 Clubs game with other players. It is announced to all participating players that the lobby now has a King of Clubs participating in the game, with significant game changing rules: the lobby either clears the game together with double the rewards, or the entire lobby fails. Specific games may have slightly different rules for balancing reasons.
King of the Hill (King of Hearts): Player limit: 1. Face players only
The King of Hearts plays in a 8-10 Hearts game with other players. It is announced to all participating players that the lobby now has a King of Hearts participating in the game, with significant game changing rules: if the King of Hearts clears the game, all other players will die and the King of Hearts will obtain their remaining visas. If the King of Hearts dies, the game continues as usual. The King of Hearts will obtain certain privileges in specific games. King of the Hill games may not involve other face players.
Death by Majority (KotH version) the King’a identity is announced. The King’s vote is “invisible” and is not included when counting the number of votes in a yes/no category. However, he cannot listen to the voice/text chat among other players.
Salem’s Witch Hunt (KotH version): the identity of the King is unknown to all players. All player names are randomised. The King will always start off as a witch.
The idea is to have the King games be solo player games where the player enters a random high card public lobby of the same type, and changes certain rules of the game. So there is a wildcard factor that may add some excitement from time to time. King games are supposed to also be very rare, for balancing reasons, because it affects the entire lobby.
Thoughts? Ideas? Comments?
Side note: are there any game-maker hobbyist who might actually consider making this a project?

Graphics Quality Ranking of games available for the Xbox Series S

\Will be updating this post as I go through more of the Game Pass catalogue. But please, note it's only my opinion and you might see it differently. Video links are provided if you click on the titles for you to judge them yourselves.*
Just thought I would share my ranking of the graphics quality of the Xbox Series S games:
Poor: Low res textures made it so ugly, it's unplayable!

~~Ark Survival~~ ~~- this game looks really ugly on the Xbox Series S.~~ Looks better after the update
Final Fantasy IX - glitchy cut scenes and low res background graphics made this unplayeable
~~Jedi Fallen Order~~ ~~- AAA game that seriously needs an update soon. Longer gameplay~~ ~~here~~. **Just updated with higher res & fps!
Hyperscape: free to play game, running at 60fps but with low res textures. In danger of becoming irrelevant if they don't keep up with the rest offering 120fps or higher resolutions!
Monster Hunter World - please give us higher res textures, but it's running at 60fps.
Outer Worlds - what were they thinking? This needs an update ASAP! Very disappointing considering this is a game MS advertised to show the low load times.
Outer Wilds - great game let down by poor res graphics
PUBG: poor graphics but runs at 60fps
Recore - this requires a remastered version
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard - arguably the best horror game but let down by low res graphics
~~Warhammer Vermintide 2:~~ ~~low res textures are very noticeable~~. Has been updated with higher res textures.

OK: Playable but low res textures are noticeable but acceptable

Anthem: playable but 720p textures are too obvious. There's time to save this game, longer gameplay here.
Ark Survival: better after the update
Batman Arkham Knight - good game and can look OK sometimes but the low res textures need an upgrade. Runs at 30fps.
Battlefield 4: very enjoyable if you haven't played it. Runs at 60fps.
Bleeding Edge: 60fps but let down by low res textures
Burnout Paradise Remastered: Good gameplay and nice songs but textures are really low quality
Control - gameplay is so good I can forgive the 720p textures
Darksiders III: low res textures hurt my eyes
Dead by Daylight: supposedly X/S optimised but it looks bad.
Descenders: fun game with low res textures
Dirt 4: looks OK, low res can be quite obvious
Dishonored 2: low res textures :(
The Division: 30fps and low res textures but they look OK though
~~Doom Eternal:~~ lower res textures before the recent update
Elder Scrolls Online: needs Skyrim mods here
Dead by Daylight - low res textures unfortunately
Final Fantasy XV- low res textures and 30fps
F1 2019: they are OK but there's something missing
Kingdom Hears Final Mix: good rendering of the characters but not everything else
Gears of War 4: starting to feel dated
Greedfall: bad AA but it's OK overall
MARVEL vs CAPCOM Infinite: incredible character lineup but low res textures :(
Mass Effect Andromeda: really poor low res textures
Middle Earth: Shadow of War - very enjoyable game but you can notice the low res textures.
MotoGP 20: doesn't look very good I'm afraid.
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - really good and interesting story but why the low res
Need for Speed- good lighting but low res textures are too obvious
Need for Speed Heat - similar to NFS
Nier Automata: jagged edges are too visible
PES 2020: always in FIFA's shadow and it shows
Quantum Break: Still looks good, film grain distracts you a little from the low res textures
Remnant from the Ashes: interesting game but low res textures
Rocket League: could do with a higher res texture pack
Shadow Warrior 2: lots of cursing, game can look really good but low res textures are noticeable
State of Decay Year One: low res textures noticeable sometimes but otherwise still good enough to play
State of Decay 2: ok for some parts but other parts really let down by low res textures
Soul Calibur VI: low res textures but effects look very good
Sunset Overdrive: 30fps and low res textures for a classic
TEKKEN 7: low res textures but perfectly playable
The Turing Test: low res textures but good puzzle game
World War Z: lower res textures but still looks good. Zombies will keep you too busy to notice anyway.
Mortal Kombat X: superseded by XI but still looks good IMHO
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice: suffering from low res textures
Wolfenstein Youngblood: could do with a texture resolution upgrade but it's fun

Good: Not updated for Xbox Series S but still looks good or designed for Series S/X but forgot about the S.

Ace Combat 7 Skies Unknown: very satisfying missile kills & gorgeous skies
Age of Wonders Planetfall: abit blurry due to lower res textures but good enough to be played on the big screen (sorry for the oversaturated video capture)
Assetto Corsa: could do with higher res textures but cars look good.
A Plague Tale Innocence: HDR is great on this title
Alien Isolation: this looks great on a big screen with Dolby Atmos enabled, running at 30fps
Assassin's Creed Odyssey: last-gen but still looks good. Running at a capped 30fps.
Battlefield Hardline: looks really good, HDR really shined. They should probably relaunch this title and not use the Battlefield title.
Black Desert: MMORPG, needs a target locking button but looks good on 1080p/60fps
Call of the Sea: low res textures on Series S, PC version looks alot better than this!
Code Vein: runs at 60fps!
Darksiders Genesis - still very enjoyable even on 4k
Deliver Us the Moon: looks good, it's always nice to fly to space
~~Destiny 2~~: ~~I hope they can bump the textures up further but it looks OK.~~
Doom Eternal: recent texture upgrade to 1080p/60fps really improved the game
Dragon Age Inquisition: looks very good
Dragon Quest XI: good JRPG but low res textures are noticeable
Fallout 76: looks good but seem to be missing something from earlier series. Runs at 30fps, I thought this was optimised for Series S?
Farming Simulator 17: looks good for a farming simulator.
FIFA20: looks great
Forza Motorsport 7: not getting as much attention as Horizon 4
Gears of War Ultimate Edition: remastered quite recently and looks really good, but locked at 30fps
Halo 5: under-rated single player campaign
Halo Master Chief Collection: I would say Halo Reach 3/4 still look good, Halo CE & 2 is OK but Halo ODST is horrendous!
The Hunter Call of the Wild: textures are quite low res, everything a little blurry so hard to spot the animals but good enough to play and enjoy a little. Runs at 30fps
Jedi Fallen Order - With next-gen update, it now has higher res textures and smoother gameplay at 60fps.
Killer Instinct: probably the best looking fighting game I've seen so far on the Xbox Series S
Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game: more enjoyable than I thought
Madden NFL 20: looks good, same engine as FIFA20 i guess.
Man of Medan: very good horrothriller game. Graphics looks top-notch!
Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain - still looks good after so many years and at 60fps too!
Mudrunner: looks good but at some point, the text becomes illegible sometimes
Naruto to Boruto Shinobi Striker: lower res graphics can be noticeable sometimes
Need for Speed Payback: best looking out of all the NFS series
No Man's Sky: the filesize always surprises me for such an endless world. 45-50fps on quality mode and 60fps on performance mode.
Pathologic 2: dark game and it's so difficult
Planetfall: good looking turn-based strategy game
RAGE 2: looks good but only at 30fps
The Raven Remastered: very nicely done
Red Dead Online: RDR2 but no story mode. Still running the Xbox One S version so 30fps and low res textures.
Ryse: Son of Rome - the graphics still look great here
Screamride: it's quite fun and looks good too!
Sekiro Shadows Die Twice: Low res textures are not very noticeable due to the art style
Skyrim: Install all the graphics mods to look better and UnlockFPS to get 60fps.
Sniper Elite 4: looks good with HDR but it's 30fps only
Star Wars Battlefront 2: drops down to 900p but still looks and plays well
Subnautica: looks good, runs at 30fps.
Super Lucky's Tale: suitable for young ones
The Surge 2 : not bad but at 30fps only
Thief: still looks good in this time and age!
Titanfall: still looks good! If you play Apex Legends, you can see alot of similarities here.
Titanfall 2: under-rated single player campaign and multiplayer is so good!
Train Sim World 2020: feels like a training video for train drivers but it looks good
Unruly Heroes: another hidden gem
UFC3: Looks great!
Warframe: looks and plays really well
Warhammer Vermintide II: just updated with higher res textures
Wasteland 3: tactical game but cutscenes are still low res
Watch Dogs: this oldie is still a goodie
We Happy Few: reminds me of Bioshock with less action.
Witcher 3: still gorgeous with HDR
Yakuza Kiwami - Yakuzas still looking good :)
Yakuza Kiwami 2 - more action but similar engine to the previous ones
Yakuza Zero: similar to Kiwami

Excellent: Punching above its weight or designed for Xbox Series S in mind.

Apex Legends: 60fps + HDR, looks really good for a free game.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Looks really good at 30FPS on Quality mode. If you don't mind lower resolutions, you can select Performance mode which will boost it to 60FPS.
Battlefield I: still looks good considering its age. Runs well at 60fps! Multiplayer also at 60fps.
Battlefield V: could do with higher res textures and ray tracing :) But runs well at 60fps.
Battlefront II: looks good and runs at 60fps. Multiplayer is still fun too.
Borderlands 3: developers just updated to enable 1440p/60fps
Call of Duty: Warzone - 1080p/120fps and still looks good upscaled! 90-120fps confirmed.
Call of Duty: Cold War - single player campaign is awesome. That scene with the hueys going into sunset is so pretty! Multiplayer at 60fps.
Cyberpunk 2077: I know the bugs can be quite disappointing but if you just consider the graphics quality, it is amazingly good for the Series S (even better than X performance mode) but runs at quite a stable 30fps.
Destiny 2: improved graphics and 60fps now after recent update
FIFA21: seriously not much of a visual improvement over FIFA20 if you play the classic mode. Most of the differences come in the cut scenes and rendering of players.
Forza Horizon 4: best looking racer so far
Gears of War 5: best looking TPS so far, really optimised for Series S
Gears Tactics
Grounded: this game looks amazing!
Fortnite: now running at 1080p/120fps
Haven: gives you the option of Better Visual/Performance
Immortals Fenyx Rising: quality mode at 30fps and performance mode at 60fps. If you've just played AC Odyssey, give this game a break and come back later.
Ori (both)
PHOGS! Zelda BotW style graphics in a puzzle game. 2 player mode is really fun!
Rainbow Six Siege: still so good after this many years. Can run up to 120fps at 1080p if you select "Prioritize Performance" in video settings. 60fps at Quality mode.
Rocket Arena: looks good and really fun to play + it's free to play if you're on EA Play/Game Pass!
Rogue Company: another free to play game that offers quality (60fps) or performance (120fps) mode.
STAR WARS Squadron: wow, this did not disappoint at all! Gameplay footage in a TIE Fighter here. Even runs at 60fps!
Tetris Effect Connected: it's not your ordinary Tetris, awesome HDR
Watch Dogs Legion: Could do with a little bump on the textures resolution (dynamic 1080p) but the ray tracing in some areas really shine

Excellent Xbox 360 Back Catalogue Games: with Auto HDR and upgraded textures, some of these games have been transformed by the Xbox Series S!

Alice Madness Returns: This game is really good, textures are abit low res but they look good overall
Alan Wake: gameplay still very good, worth replaying now with HDR
Battlefield 3: Arguably the best campaign in the BF series, could do with a remastered version
Brutal Legends: This rocks!
Dante's Inferno: This is like Xbox's God of War and it still looks good now
Day of the Tentacle: classic game that has been remastered. You can still choose the classic graphics
Dead Space: this needs a remastered version but the gameplay is good if you haven't played it yet
Dead Space 2: more of the good stuff, running at 30fps
Dead Space 3: I think graphics look better on 1 & 2 but HDR here is amazing though
Fable Anniversary: one of the best RPGs even now! Really looking forward to the new one.
Kameo: classic Xbox 360 title that still looks good even now!
Mass Effect: cutscenes are low FPS but gameplay is at 30fps, still looks great to this day
Mass Effect 2: the game that got me hooked on the series, running with HDR at 30fps.
Mass Effect 3: still good but I think ME2 looked better, runs at HDR with 30fps.
Ninja Gaiden: wow, I wished I knew this game earlier
Shadows of the Damned: doesn't look too dated
Skate 3: graphics don't look dated at all and spend some time watching the intro video
SSX: this requires a remastered version

OK Back Catalogue Games: those that look quite dated but worth playing to relive memories

Crysis: haven't tried the remastered version but you can see why they needed one.
Crysis 2: graphics have not improved much and for some reason Auto HDR did not work but would have really enhanced this game. Also running at 30fps
Perfect Dark: classic game that introduced alot of new features to the gaming world
Full Spectrum Warrior: this game has the longest tutorial ever!

Indie Games on the Big Screen: these games do appear on mobile apps but they really are quite different on the big screen! You should try them out!

Carrion: be the monster!
Katana Zero: cool but frustrating game to play
Lonely Mountains: Downhill - it's harder than you think and looks really good!
Morkredd: single player is mind boggling
Sea of Solitude: wow, this game is beautiful (HDR makes it look awesome!)
Touryst: funny indie game

PUBG MOBILE Dev Log - February 2021

PUBG Global Invitational.S | What, Where, When? – Event Overview

23[F4M] Friends and hopefully relationship...?

Autochess: Market Status and Design Analysis [effort post]

It really helps me if you check the original article & more similar at https://jb-dev.net/ !!!
https://preview.redd.it/336cy55x9pg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=c89b35c152f61892f277a28203e61f192a86d260
In January 2019, Drodo Studio’s Dota Auto Chess mod became insanely popular. Many companies (including household names like Valve, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard) rushed to release their own versions.
It seemed like the beginning of something big like MOBA or Battle Royale. But it has been more than a year now and the hype seems to have vanished completely. As quickly as it rose, it went away…
This is the first on a series of articles where we will analyze the autochess genre. Here we will be exploring the genre’s history, its current market situation and its audience. And also, what are the core design issues that autochess suffers and that no one has been able to solve yet.
u/JB: For this article I’m teaming up with my mate Victor Freso, one of my most talented folks at Pixel Noire Games, who helped me review all the games.
We also had feedback of ~300 highly engaged players from the different autochess reddit communities, which participated in an online poll whose results are available here. They’re especially thanked at the end of the article.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

This wasn’t the first time that a mod got the spotlight and ended up becoming the foundation of a genre. It happened in several major, industry-defining cases before (some of which are Team Shooters, MOBAs, Battle Royale…). But on some of these cases events unfolded differently. So we identify 3 distinctive eras related to the evolution of the industry:

1st Era (2000s): Assimilation

The company whose original software had been modded (or had a close enough game, like Valve) moved quickly to absorb the successful mods and turn them into even more successful products.
Since at that point creating a major game release was very complex (required an expensive development, publishing deals and an infrastructure to distribute the product), the deal was profitable for both sides. But it meant the dissolution of the identity of the original creator team, which became embedded in the bigger company culture.
Team Fortress (1999) was originally a Quake mod. And Counter-Strike (2000) started out as a fan-made mod on the Half Life engine. Both games (and creators) were quickly absorbed by Valve.
2nd Era (2010s): Integration
By this time, the previous era model still was going on… but the gaming industry had significatively grown a lot and it was also possible for smaller or even new companies to lure the original developers, and use the mod as a proof for commercial success in order to secure funding and develop it as a full title.
The main characteristic of this era is that the original developers were able to keep a bigger share of control and relevance, rather than being integrated as just another gear on a bigger machine, because the companies they joined built their own identity around that key product.
This was the case of Riot Games: They were able to raise enough money for the creation of their company through family and angel investors, and then hire some of the original creators of DOTA, and then created League of Legends.

![img](1vsle6y3apg61 " Defense of the Ancients (DotA), the foundational title for the MOBA genre, appeared in 2003 as a fan-made custom scenario of Warcraft 3. Foreseeing commercial potential on a full game based on the concept, Riot games and Valve both battled for the Dota IP and the original developers, eventually releasing rival titles League of Legends and Dota2. Interestingly, Blizzard (owners of Warcraft 3) tried to replicate the success without the mod creators in Heroes of the Storm (2015), which hasn’t been as successful as the other two. ")
A similar case happened with battle royale, which also started in 2013 as a successful DayZ mod created by the modder nicknamed PlayerUnknown. Later, it was transformed into a full product through the acquisition of the developer by a korean company (which would later be renamed as the PUBG Corporation, again showing how the company grew around the game rather than assimilating it).
Interestingly, this genre already hints what would happen with Auto Chess, since Fortnite wasn’t involved in any way with the original creators. They just copied the concept. Fortnite was a product stuck in a kind of development hell (had been 6 years in the works). As the game was getting close to the release, the developers became impressed by PUBG’s success, so they created a quick Battle Royale spin-off which became insanely popular and eventually ate the rest of the game.
![img](3b6l2rx6apg61 " Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (2017), foundational title of the modern battle royale genre, is the successor of PlayerUnknown’s DayZ: Battle Royale, a popular mod for DayZ (which on itself is a mod of ArmA3, making it a mod of a mod lol). The success of PUBG inspired Fortnite (a title on the later stages of a troubled development at the time) to spin towards that genre, becoming PUBG‘s main competitor. ")

3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation

In all the cases presented previously, the newborn genre ended up in the release of one or two titles which accumulated most of the business. But this hasn’t been the case here.
In Autochess, the newborn genre has been quickly fragmented into a big list of competitors. Some are standalone games (like DOTA Underlords or Autochess: Origins), but there’s also several service-model games which released their autochess mode as well (like Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds or TeamFight Tactics, which at the end of the day is a side-game mode of League of Legends).
This creates an interesting precedent, which I believe will define future cases where an innovative new game concept appears: The hot idea will be cloned very fast because today the main bottleneck in the industry is having an innovative design that generates player interest and engagement.
By 2020, it’s way easier to create and distribute a game, there are way more developers hungry for a hit than ever before, and a lot of service-model games with short development cycles always looking for something juicy for their next update… so new ideas becoming red oceans fast will be the norm.
For sure, this won’t affect the ability of small developers and modders to innovate, but it will affect their ability to leverage that to become successful on an independant level, before they get cloned.
Dota Auto Chess, was a Dota 2 mod which obtained massive popularity. After a failed acquisition from Valve (owners of Dota), the mod developers (Drodo Studios) went to create the mobile standalone Auto Chess: Origins, while still maintaining the PC version linked to Valve. Meanwhile, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft and many other companies developed and released their own autobattlers at a record time, downgrading the genre creators to just another competitor.
And ultimately, they haven’t fixed the core issues of the original game, which separates it from a true hyper-successful product like MOBA.

MARKET STATUS

Because of the rain of clones, it’s hard to map all the autochess games on the market. It doesn’t help that some of them are available in both PC and Mobile (playable in PC, Mac, Android and iOS), and also they’re exclusive to different PC stores (Dota Underlords is only on Steam, TFT is on Riot’s LoL launcher, and Autochess Origins is only at the Epic Store…).
And if that wasn’t enough, the Auto Chess mod in DOTA2 is still very active and has no signs that it’s going to be dying soon. It’s still being regularly updated, and presumably still profitable: Some months ago they added a battle pass system, with its revenue shared between Valve and Drodo.
https://preview.redd.it/081hvwjdapg61.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af2ba4751130a95b422ca1b7fd8c346029ab74
What’s interesting is that none of the contenders has been able to become massively successful in terms of monetization, at least not in terms comparable to even a second or third tier MOBA. And while there are definitively different tiers of following among these titles (led by Riot Games’ TeamFight Tactics), it seems that none of them has been able to gather under its banner a significant amount of players, mobile downloads or Twitch Views…
Sources: AppAnnie (mobile metrics), TwitchMetrics (twitch)
So ultimately, we’re dividing the autochess market into 3 categories: Squires, Would-be Kings and Peasants.

Squires: Rather than standalone games, these are side-modes of already successful products. Under this category we would list the Battlegrounds mode in Hearthstone, or League of Legends’ TFT, and maybe even the original DOTA Autochess mod. While for sure they’ll have their own dedicated audience that only plays those modes, for most players it’s just a nice and fresh activity integrated within a broader game experience. The squires are the ones that have achieved the biggest success among the autochess genre because they don’t suffer as much backlash from the lack of gameplay depth inherent to the genre, which is harmful for the long term retention: Even if the mode eventually becomes a bit shallow, players have many other things to play, and thus are retained. As a consequence, these games can still monetize significatively by selling renewals of their Battle Passes every new season. Not enough to make them successful on the degree that was expected… but at least it’s something. Other than bringing an additional source of revenue, these modes were useful to their core games: They generated player interest by providing innovative gameplay. Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds was an amazing addition to the CCG genre, and made a lot of people come back to the game to discover the new mode and reengage.

The gameplay of TeamFight Tactics (slow tempo, no team coordination, decreased attention requirement…) makes it a nice relief mode to play between LOL matches, which is its purpose in the foreseeable future. If there ever was an intention to make it a standalone game, it vanished together with the player interest on autochess…

Would-be Kings: These are the other two top dogs of the category. They were supposed to rule… but that looking at the numbers they don’t really seem to have ever lifted off. Under this category we would list Auto Chess: Origins and DOTA Underlords. The problem is that their standalone approach means that they suffer the most of the design issues of the genre that we’ve presented in the last section of this article (i.e. flat complexity, lack of mastery depth, lack of progression and rotative meta…). That means that they lost a lot of population over time, and therefore their Battle Pass renewal isn’t as effective at generating revenue : (

DOTA Underlords is an extremely polished product in terms of graphics, character design and UX, and yet another proof that Valve devs really know how to do great games. Too bad they aren’t as good at releasing third installments...

Peasants: Here we would list the myriad of other autochess follower titles that entered the battlefield, each achieving a different degree of success. While some may actually be profitable, what we can be sure about is that none of them has reached any significant numbers or anything close to the reach that brought industry attention.

THE AUDIENCE

We are of the belief that you can’t talk about a game and not talk about who plays it, and that players say more about a game than analyzing all its features and mechanics. So with this in mind we collected answers from ~300 autochess players (check the raw data here). After examining their responses, we’ve identified 3 main player profiles (the comments on each profile are literal):
https://preview.redd.it/zdh1jripapg61.png?width=934&format=png&auto=webp&s=162eb3f8b98024c0a69eb889ca26e7463fdd776c

Patricks, gamers looking for a competitive-but-idle experience that doesn’t require full attention and it’s easily reconcilable with their functional adult life.
Grizzlies, competitive players that struggle with fast paced games that demand a high actions per minute ratio and quick reflexes (like MOBAs or competitive shooters).
Warmasters, highly competitive players that enjoy more the area of strategy (setting up goals and planning how to achieve them) rather than tactics (skillful execution of actions and micromanagement).

What these profiles have in common, other than being hardcore gamers and having a big interest in competitive games, is the fact that they enjoy the lack of micromanagement, and the demand of reflexes and dexterity of autochess.
This is quite interesting, considering that the genre foundation is so close to MOBAs, which are extremely demanding on those aspects. Overall it seems that they belong to audiences below the MOBA umbrella which are currently being alienated by the bulk of ‘younger and dexterity focused’ players.
And when it comes to platforms, it seems that even though the barrier between the classic gaming platforms and mobile is progressively disappearing, the genre is still mainly focused on PC: Out of the ~300 players that answered, 50% said that they play exclusively on PC, 25% played primarily on Mobile, and the remaining 25% played in both.
https://preview.redd.it/1frwgvrtapg61.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=3602c6a760664333236a2fddbc189fbab3ee3fc1
Players said that they enjoy the focus of the game in planification, as opposed to the focus on execution and performance of MOBAs. And when asked about their main points of frustration, they pointed out 2 main topics: 1.- The strong luck factor that has a strong impact on making you win or lose regardless on how well you played. 2.- The fact that the game eventually becomes shallow and repetitive, fueled by the fact updates were unexciting and not rotating the meta.
Surprised by the fact that players mention randomness as a factor of both enjoyment and frustration? Don’t be! Competitive players tend to have a love-and-hate relationship with luck, because they tend to consider that external factors outside of skills (money spent, better draw…) stole their well deserved victory.
And it’s even more frustrating in autochess, because there’s a strong snowball effect: Players that obtain a big advantage early on in the game become hard to catch later on. Which means that a few bad or good draws early on can decide the rest of the match.
There hasn’t been a single feature more criticised in Magic: The Gathering than the randomness of drawing mana. And yet, luck it’s part of what makes MTG stand out compared to other CCGs: For experienced players, it introduces uncertainty and the need to take risks and gamble, like they’d do in poker. And for rookies, it allows beating someone that has better skills and has a better deck, if Lady Luck is on their side. Won’t happen often, but it will feel awesome when it does. Like a friend likes to say: The best feeling in MTG is to draw a mana when you really need it. And the worst? To draw it when you didn’t.
This goes to say that in autochess, perhaps the power of luck needs to be reviewed, but it would be a bad decision to completely remove luck from the equation.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

In this awesome DoF article, Giovanni Ducati already pointed out the two main problems that the games in this genre need to solve to achieve real success: Bad long term retention and low monetization.
To these issues we would add a third one, which is bad marketability: Contrary to their big brothers League of Legends and DOTA2, these games haven’t been able to achieve high organic downloads (at least not to be able to generate significant revenue through soft monetization mechanics). What’s even worse is that all these games, their themes and target audience are quite close to RPG and Strategy, which are genres with some of the highest CPIs on the market. So they need top-of-the-class retention and monetization to get a high enough LTV to scale up.
But why do these games fail at keeping players entertained for a long time? And why don’t they monetize enough? Here’s what we think:

Flat Complexity & Progression

You have some games out there which have a strong entry barrier due to being quite complicated to grasp. But for those that can deal with the numbers and stats, the depth will keep them entertained for months and years. This is the case in most RPGs and 4X strategy games. And then you have hypercasual games, which are simple and plug and play. So they generate a great early engagement, but are too shallow to keep users hooked for a long time.
As a genre, Autochess games are in the middle ground: they have a high entry barrier, but also lack the complexity to keep players engaged for a long time…
As a general rule, games with long retention tend to follow Bushnell’s Law of being easy to learn and difficult to master. They achieve that by having what we call an unfolding experience: They appear simpler at the beginning (not necessarily easy), but require thousands of hours of practice to master.
An example of this are games that level lock most of the game complexity, so the player understands and masters only a set starter mechanics. And then, progressively unlock new modes and demand more specialized builds and gameplay, repeating the cycle several times to keep the game always interesting while attempting to avoid being overwhelming.
In World of Warcraft, character depth is huge. But this complexity is unfolded progressively, forcing the player to spend time mastering each skill and activity as they level up, before moving further.
Another approach to the same idea are competitive games focused on mechanical ability, dexterity or micromanagement. Like CS:GO or Rocket League. They may unlock all the mechanics from the beginning, but a newbie player will only be able to focus and manage some of them, and then progressively discover and master the rest in an organic way.
Rocket League hides its complexity by matchmaking early players with others of a similar skill. This makes beginner players viable even if they grasp only the basic mechanics. But, as they climb further, they’ll face rivals that take those basic skills for granted and the player will need to master more challenging techniques to keep up.
League of Legends and Overwatch are actually a combination of both: The game first introduces the player to a small selection of heroes which progressively gets expanded, while at the same time having an insane mastery depth that requires a high APM and reflexes, team coordination and thousands of hours of practice.
Contrary to any of those examples, Autochess games throw everything at you from the beginning: Character Skills, Synergies, Unit Upgrade, Gold Management, Items… It’s a lot to swallow. And there’s not even enough time to read what each thing does before the timer runs out. This creates a complex, overwhelming first impression that drives many players out.
But that’s quantity, not depth. Once you’ve gone through that traumatic starting phase, you’ve grasped all the mechanics and you know which team builds are dominating on the meta, it’s just a matter of making it happen by taking the right decisions and adapting to a few key draws.
Eventually, unless luck is really against you, your skills won’t be challenged and you won’t have new mechanics to master. At that point, winning will be based more on the knowledge of the content database and luck rather than your planning and strategic ability. And that’s boring.
So ultimately, these games are hard to grasp for a newbie, but also lack the ability to keep players interested for a very long time since they eventually run out of new features and mechanics to discover and master.

Unexciting Updates, Lack of Collection

On top of that, autochess games seem to have a hard time adding content which reawakens player interest and makes churned ones come back.
The DAU trend that we expect on a long term retention game: A decreasing trend of players until reaching a stagnation stage. At that point, a big update (or new season) is required to attract and reengage users back with new content. This is the model we would see on Fortnite or Hearthstone, but it’s not what we see in most autochesses.
On this topic, perhaps the one that has put the most effort is Riot’s TFT. Each season update, the game releases a new series of heroes, synergies, items and rebalances, as well as a big bunch of cosmetics. This generates a short lived boost on revenue (due primarily to players buying the pass) and downloads, but ultimately nothing that really moves the needle in a relevant way.
‘Why seasonal updates don’t work?‘, you may be asking. Part of the reason is that TFT, as well as every major contender do not include elements of content progression or collection. Instead, they all stick to the roguelike approach of the original mod: Players have access to the same set of units, and build their inventory exclusively during the match.
While at first this seems a good idea, since it keeps the game fair in a similar way to MOBAs, it’s oblivious to the fact that new units do not offer the same amount of gameplay depth as in League of Legends. In LoL, a new unit means weeks or even months of practice until mastering timing, range and usage of the skills, how they interact with every other champion, etc… In comparison, in TFT the new content can be fully explored in just a bunch of matches, both because the new content doesn’t offer that much depth to start with and because it’s available from the moment the player gets the update.
By lacking content progression and collection, autochesses miss the opportunity to create long term objectives after an update, more innovative mechanics and less repetitiveness. As a consequence, they have it really hard to hype players on updates.

Big ‘Snowball Effect’

In game design, the snowball effect refers to the situation where obtaining an advantage or dominance generates further conditions that almost invariably means winning the match. As you can guess, on competitive games this effect can generate a bad experience, especially when the divergence starts early on: The player that obtained the early advantage will keep on increasing the advantage and curbstomp the rest.
For example, this can happen on a Civilization game if a player gets ahead of the rest acquiring key resource territories, and uses them to achieve a greater progress in tech and income at a faster pace than the rest. Or in League of Legends if a team scores a bunch of early kills and levels up, becoming more able at scoring even more kills…
In this match of Age of Empires 2, the red player (Aztecs) managed to decimate the blue player (Turks) military units early on. Since without an army it was impossible for the blue player to secure enough resources to perform a comeback, for the next 2 hours the blue player was in a pointless, hopeless match. Kudos for not abandoning, though!
Autochess games suffer greatly from this effect, due to the following reasons:

Resources lead to victories, victories lead to resources As you know, in autochess each player builds a team based on successive battles. Better battle performance will grant more gold, which is the resource used to buy units, perform shop rolls, etc… Similar to the cases we’ve already explained, this means that players that achieve early dominance will be able to to obtain more gold, use it to get better units and get more victories and gold, therefore increasing their team power faster than the rest. ‘But players can be lucky or unlucky, generating a factor that compensates for the advantage of having more resources early on‘, you may be considering. Unfortunately, this is a flawed logic, because of 2 main reasons: (1) Having more resources means more adaptability: The dominant players will be able to leverage on them to re-adapt their team, therefore outperforming the rest on a randomness-driven scenario. (2) Resources allow to buy more rolls, which diminishes the deviation generated by each individual roll.

![img](4kbmxiqhbpg61 " TeamFight Tactics attempts to decrease the snowball effect by introducing Carousels: rounds where all players pick a character from a list, and where the players that are losing (i.e. have less health) get to choose first. While this decreases the issue, it doesn’t really solve it… It just makes that smart players aim to lose on purpose at the beginning so they can get the better pick and generate the snowball slightly later on. ")

Luck factor. The previous point goes into maintaining and increasing dominance once it has been achieved early on, but another source of frustration is that luck is a huge factor in achieving early dominance. This means that your strategic skills and smarts can be completely invalidated by a couple of bad rolls at the beginning of the match. And there’s nothing that competitive players hate more than having their match stolen by factors outside the pure clash of abilities.

As an antithesis, Poker also has resource management, and luck factor determines the victory (on a specific round). But unlike Autochess, resources can’t override luck, and early victories don’t affect the later chance of winning.

Excessive Match Length

Compared to PC, on mobile is much harder to keep the player focused for a long period of time on a single session. And having a very long minimum session kind of goes against the premise of being able to play anywhere which is a primary strength of mobile as a gaming platform. This is a problem for autochess games since a single match can last for 30-45 minutes of synchronous, nonstop gameplay.
![img](4ed79ecnbpg61 " The knockout mode in Dota Underlords aims to make the game more accessible by skipping the slow beginning of the match (you start with a pre-setup army), and by simplifying the health and fusion systems. This shortens the matches to ~15 minutes, which is still too long for mobile, but better than 30. The problem is that it also increases the snowball effect, since the match has less turns to allow comebacks, and makes any mistake (or a bad roll) way more punishing. ")
‘Isn’t the solution just make the match shorter?’, you’re probably wondering. Unfortunately, there are several reasons that make this more challenging to the core design than what it seems:

Because in autochess the player builds its team from scratch, at the beginning of each match there are several turns to setup team foundations. Removing these early decisions severely decreases the teambuilding possibilities, decreasing overall depth.
Also, each setup phase between clashes requires a minimum time to think and perform the actions. In the last turns of a match, the game can become quite demanding on thinking and input speed.
Matches require a minimum amount of turns to compensate the weight of a single lucky/unlucky roll over the chances to win. Because the possible units for teambuilding appear on random rolls, the less turns there are the more luck factor the game will suffer, and as a consequence the less important the player’s strategic skills will be.
And if there are few turns, there are also less chances for comebacks. Because it means that players will have less setup phases to adapt and catch a player that has obtained an early advantage.
Finally, since the match involves 8 players, it requires a minimum of turns so that they all can fight between each other… Nevertheless, I don’t consider this a critical issue because Dota has been able to change this specific point on the knockout mode without sacrificing too much in terms of depth.

Soft Approach to Monetization

PC/Console approach to free-to-play is generally soft (i.e. primarily based on cosmetics, avoid pay-to-win…), while mobile tends to be quite hardcore in comparison. The softness of PC monetization is even more core to companies such as Valve and especially Riot Games, to which the “no monetization bs” is part of the brand values. This would be very hard to change without harming their reputation.
Same as in most autochess games, in TeamFight Tactics the players can only pay for different cosmetics and for a Battle Pass. Without the massively huge and engaged audience of League of Legends, this monetization approach isn’t able to generate meaningful revenue.
This is not exclusively because we mobile-first devs are a ruthless wallstreet folk which will use every dirty trick in the book to get a bit extra money… but also because mobile games are locked in competition for paid installs. This requires us to get as much revenue as possible from users, as fast as possible, in order to reinvest into players to keep on growing or avoid withering.
The business model of League of Legends or Fortnite is based on their extreme popularity: They already have massive amounts of highly engaged active users, so their strategy is to keep them playing and have a monetization system that, while doesn’t make as much money from the players as it could do on the short term, generates a decent amount of revenue over a longer period of time.
Games that have this soft f2p approach have it very hard to reach enough ARPPU to make paid users profitable, given the insanely high mobile CPIs. This may not be an issue to big IPs and games that are able to bring many organic players (Fortnite, League of Legends…), but it is a big issue for those that can’t attract such a big number of players due to their organic appeal.
Due to its core characteristics (strategic, number-based, complex…), Autochess is unlikely to be a massive appeal product, and therefore won’t fit into the cosmetics model. It’s a game that will have a smaller audience of highly engaged players, and therefore will require a more aggressive monetization to reach similar results.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The history of the autochess genre serves as an example of the risks of design endogamy: The devsphere rushed to clone Auto Chess, and before a year all the major contenders were in the board. But that speed came at a cost: None of these projects has brought the concept much further than its original conception, and in doing so they haven’t solved any of the core issues.
https://preview.redd.it/iw82bogsbpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a197aa1fcb9ace73d6795103d20a4101ce7ddb5
The folks at Riot games developed the TeamFight Tactics in less than 5 months. This allowed them to release while the hype was still at its peak… but it also meant it added just a couple of improvements, and it’s otherwise very similar to the original Auto Chess mod.
After seeing all these projects fail to meet the big expectations that were placed on them, the question is if perhaps the best approach was to avoid rushing, and instead tackle the genre with a title that is not a clone, but rather a more groomed, accessible and innovative successor of the original idea.
In our next article on this series will make an attempt to see how such a game could be, rethinking the spirit and fresh design ideas of autochess to solve the issues mentioned above. (May take a while though, I want to focus on smaller articles for a couple of months…)
Meanwhile, if you want to read more about this genre, we suggest you these awesome articles from the folks at DoF: Why Auto-Chess can’t monetize – and how to fix that and How Riot can turn TFT into a billion dollar game

Special Thanks to…

These articles wouldn’t have been possible with the collaboration of ~300 members of the reddit communities of the different auto chess games who provided us with feedback and data. You folks have been incredible solving all our doubts. One thing that this genre has is some of the most awesome players around.
So big kudos for Brxm1, Erfinder Steve, Xinth, Zofia the Fierce, STRK1911, LontongSinga22, bezacho, hete, NeroVingian, marling2305, NOVA9INE , asidcabeJ, Eidallor, Rhai, Lozarian, bwdm, Toxic, Ruala, Papa Shango, MrMkay, Dread0, L7, kilmerluiz, Amikals, Sworith, Tankull, B., hete, Bour, Denzel, DeCeddy, Diaa, hamoudaxp, Benjamin “ManiaK” Depinois, Katunopolis, DanTheMan, MikelKDAplayer, 0nid, Tobocto, Tiny Rick, phuwin, Alcibiades, triceps, d20diceman, shadebedlam, stinky binky, Tutu, Myuura, suds, Kapo, Hearthstoned, Engagex, Pietrovosky, Daydreamer, Doctor Heckle, Ignis, ShawnE, NastierNate, LeCJ, Nene Thomas, Chris, trinitus_minibus, Nah, Kaubenjunge1337, Mudhutter, Asurakap, Nicky V, shinsplintshurts, bobknows27, Willem (Larry David Official on Steam), Jonathan, Dinomit24, Monstertaco, GangGreen69, Veshral Amadeus Salieri (…lol!), Kuscomem, Cmacu, Pioplu, Dilemily, qulhuae, Ilmo, MarvMind, facu1ty, crayzieap, Saint Expedite, Lobbyse, Lukino , tomes, Blitzy24, Mcmooserton, magicmerl, i4got2putsumpantzon, radicalminusone, Pipoxo, Kharambit, Bricklebrah, Rbagderp, Merforga, Superzuhong, Mo2gon, MoS.Tetu, MeBigBwainy, Zokus, CoyoteSandstorm, Stehnis, Noctis, Fkdn, Ray, Fairs1912, Fairs1912, Krakowski, HolyKrapp, Damadud, Pentium, Mach, Mudak, CaptSteffo, jwsw1990, Omaivapanda, Inquisitor Binks, Jack, yggdranix, GoodLuckM8, Centy, Prabuddha (aka Walla), dtan, Philosokitteh, Doms, ZEDD, Calloween, Synsane, Kaluma, GordonTremeshko , Djouni, DOGE, haveitall, ANIM4SSO, Task Manager, Submersed, BAKE, Viniv, La Tortuga Zorroberto, BixLe, Rafabeen, Blzane, bdlck666, FatCockNinja86, R.U.Sty, Yopsif, blesk, Quaest0r, FanOfTaylor, StaunchDruid, Rushkoski and everyone else that took some minutes to help us out on the article.

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Autochess: Market Status and Design Analysis [effort post]

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1st Era (2000s): Assimilation

3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation

MARKET STATUS

THE AUDIENCE

DESIGN CHALLENGES

Flat Complexity & Progression

Unexciting Updates, Lack of Collection

Big ‘Snowball Effect’

Excessive Match Length

Soft Approach to Monetization

FINAL THOUGHTS

Special Thanks to…

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