Developer Team Notes #7

Hey there, Smashers!
PK Lee, producer of SMASH LEGENDS here.

In the last update, we stated that Dominion is coming back to Quick Match and Competitive Match.
In this developer note, we are going to share our thoughts on this decision and the current review of Team Touchdown.

The issue with Team Touchdown being the new main mode was that it did not satisfy the needs of Smashers who have been enjoying that game since launch, and we had difficulties trying to quickly improve the problems that arose with this mode. Therefore, our plan now is keeping Team Touchdown to help newcomers understand the game better while changing Competitive Match to Dominion. In addition, all the balance changes will be supposed to be focused on Dominion since it is the mode for Competitive Match from now on.

As we shared in our last developer notes, we have had Team Touchdown as our main mode of SMASH LEGENDS for the past 3 months. During this time, the development team was able to confirm that Team Touchdown was working as intended, but also found issues that needed to be addressed.

What Worked as Intended:

• Having 2 lanes made it easier for players to understand what was going on compared to the other 3vs3 modes. Thus, it made the learning curve easier as players could learn why they got hit and how to react to it in the future.
• The overall gameplay became deeper as players had to be more strategic in assessing the situation and reacting to changes rather than relying only on being good in fights.
• Legends’ strengths and weaknesses were clearly defined, making counter picks more meaningful.

What Did Not Work as Intended:

• The game time became longer, creating fatigue. Also, as the game moved to its end phases, the sense of urgency was lacking. As a result, it worsened the replayability of SMASH LEGENDS.
  When Escort mode was first introduced, your team won by either reaching more checkpoints than your opponent, or moving the escort target further than your opponent in overtime. When Team Touchdown was being developed, we focused on wanting the game to end without having overtime, thus resulting in the current form of the mode we have today. However, this decision ultimately made playing one match a burden on the players.
• Stress about respawn time was also high. To be able to have a clear winner for each match, we decided to increase the maximum revival time to 15 seconds, but this only made players feel helpless as they could not do anything during this time.

In order to really make Team Touchdown the main mode for SMASH LEGENDS, we came to the conclusion that we needed time to address all of these issues.
We hope you look forward to a new-and-improved Team Touchdown that will be released later.

Lastly, we want to thank all of our players for enjoying SMASH LEGENDS, and we will do our best to give you all the best experience possible.

Thank you.