TT2 DevLog #13: Happy Friday the 13th!

You’ve made it to the end of the week! And even if it’s Friday the 13th (and DevLog #13), we hope you’re feeling lucky, tappy and geared up for this weekend’s tournament. 👻

With the release of v.2.1.0, we understand that there were some pretty big changes which may not have been anticipated by many players. We apologize for this, as there wasn’t as much awareness to prepare our players for this update as we had thought. Although we have been writing that the tweaks would be made for a more polished and balanced game (even after the big v.2.0 update), we understand that this may not have been communicated particularly clearly. That being said, we want to emphasize that balancing will continue, to ensure that all the new features that have been recently implemented work with how the game was intended to be played.

We have been reading and noting a lot of the feedback that has been made on the subreddit as well as our discord channel this week, and will be taking constructive suggestions into consideration. If you want the details of what went into this update, read the full patch notes (and we hope you don’t get spooked)! Following up to v.2.1.0 and all that’s been buzzing online, we also wanted to make some clarification on the reasoning behind some of the changes made:

The Tournament Algorithm & Cheaters

Before we get into the tournament feedback on the new algorithm, we want to touch upon where the changes are coming from: The intention of tournaments in the first place was to create an arena in which players remain competitive with each other in each prize bracket. Tournaments are a feature to give players a platform for interaction; a source of competition; and reason & motivation to grind further and get some in-game prizes. As stated in a previous DevLog months ago, the motivation behind the changes (whether it be the changes in the tournaments, active skills etc.) was to bring back active gameplay into Tap Titans, which included gameplay in the tournaments.

The new tournament (max potential) algorithm is working well, and we will continue to polish it as needed. We are working on tournament cheaters as a priority issue at the moment and this should be finalized as soon as possible. We have been taking note of players that have been reported through this subreddit and the support desk & discord, reviewing and taking action accordingly. There are still some issues with cheater detection, but we wanted to distinguish that this is not relative to the tournament sorting algorithm. If you do suspect someone to be cheating, please send us a support ticket with your in-game support code, and the name of the player you suspect.

Lastly, in regards to the issue with resetting skill trees in tournaments: Players are now able to gain additional stages during tournaments by swapping their skill tree back and forth from one build to another, using this as a strategy to obtain first place. We are addressing and making the changes required in a future update, as it was not our intention to create a tournament system where players were essentially required to reset their skill tree multiple times to reach first place.

Skills

As stated previously, the whole revamp in v.2.0 was to to bring back active gameplay, even just as an option, and structure the game to a state where there are options instead of one singular meta build. We wanted to remove the Intimidating Presence -based skill tree and rebalance to create a game with various options to use and explore. With the new skill tree, brings decisions and choice, in which players will now need to decide on their own how they want to play. Although some players are claiming that there are still just a handful of ‘best’ builds, this is still an improvement from before (i.e. IP build) and what we initially wanted – to provide options and not one clear overpowering build.

Furthermore, in relation to the new builds and tournaments, we want to emphasize again that the goal and motive for big v.2.0 was also to reintroduce active gameplay. As we put forward the new skill tree and its various build options, players are all now given the choice to decide how they want to play and experience the game. Moreover with the new tournament algorithm structures it in a way that not everyone will be in the top ten – as a competition should be. Tournaments were designed to be competitive and those who are able to build such a skill tree that works for their personal approaches to the game, their priorities, and their game goals, would have a competitive advantage.

Modelling from the idea that we wanted to bring more content into the game by providing different build options (which also emphasizes active gameplay), we realized that some changes had to be made to the new skill tree after v.2.0. Even with the extensive beta testing for the skill tree, we did find that there were skills like Tactical Insight (TI) that were very powerful, causing an imbalance in the game and actually going against our original motives. With this week’s update, we levelled TI to be more comparable with other skills, all the while keeping its high power for a few specific builds (i.e. Warlord). The dev. team and beta testers did our best to review the quality of each skills and ensure they are balanced, but it did not translate over as we thought it would, and we are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused over the past couple weeks.

To help players have a better idea of what builds may work for them, we created the stats panel, which will definitely be improved and refined over time. We do welcome any feedback or ideas that may help improve this panel, as well as any suggestions you may have about the game overall. Even with a big influx of new threads and ideas from our online platforms, we do try our best to read each post and take into consideration!

What to Expect

Artifacts (V.2.2)

• Artifact scaling will be improved in v2.2, which will make prestiging more worthwhile again for high level players.
• New artifacts!
• Book of Shadows will be guaranteed by the 40th artifact unlock as we continue to add new artifacts to the game.
• Improved artifact scaling will be accompanied by another stage cap increase to 7k.
• Stats panel improvements: based on your feedback we will be improving our new stats panel to make it more functional and helpful in determining the best skill tree builds.

Bug Fixes (v2.1.1): We expect to have this update out by the middle of next week.

• Heroic Might not increasing Tap damage during War Cry.
• Equipped equipment can be locked and unlocked.
• Tournament IDs publicly displayed to better help us diagnose tournament issues.
• Equipment / Pet swapping not setting bonuses correctly.
• Make it Rain / Clan Crate gold buff fix (the amounts were unintentionally lowered in v2.1).
• Dimensional Shift visual and bonus fixes (wasn’t stacking properly with Heavenly Strike).
• Pet: Heart of Midas better visual indicator on the gold amount dropped.
• Perk cooldown and multiple use bug fixes (Doom was getting stuck on the screen).
• Heavenly Strike + Deadly Strike combining for too much damage.
• Rounded Buy Max upgrades will snap to Hero Skills and Hero Improvement bonus levels (previously it rounded to buying every 100 levels above hero level 100).

Beyond v2.3+:

• Equipment improvements and new functionality: you can look forward to a new equipment rarity with the introduction of “equipment class sets” that both aesthetically and functionally work towards a specific style of gameplay. These equipment class sets will provide bonuses that enhance various skill tree class builds. We are also working on a few other improvements to the equipment system as a whole.
• Additional skill tree upgrades: We will continue to fill out the remaining skill tree upgrade slots as we finalize new and exciting upgrades. We will also be giving out a free skill tree reset each time we add a new skill to the skill tree.
• Increased Low Power Mode optimizations: We are currently working on an expanded Power Options panel to allow for better customization for hiding and showing animations, as well as increased performance on lower devices and increased battery life across all devices.

Bugs We’re Still Looking Into…

Special Bundle

• There have been several reports that the special bundles have not been displaying for many players. Whether it be it appears, then disappears; or appears and you receive an “internet connection” error, we have taken note of this and are investigating.

iPhone 6 Crashing

• We have taken note that there are device-specific crashes with the iPhone 6, especially during Fairy Ads and Clan Quests. This is an issue with older devices that don’t have enough free RAM to run our game, and our options on improving the situation are somewhat limited. Although this isn’t something we can immediately fix, we are looking to various options to resolve the issue.

FAQ from the Twitch Stream

These are the answers to the frequently asked questions on our Twitch stream. If you want your question answered, please post on this thread and we’ll answer live – as well as post the answers in the next DevLog!

Why did we move Manni Mana?

The reason we moved Manni Mana is because we wanted to move Midas Ultimate to be a Tier 2 skill. Since active skills are available to everyone very early in the game, we wanted to make their skill tree upgrades more easily accessible to encourage better build diversity. When it came time to decide which skill tree upgrade we should swap Midas Ultimate with, Manni Mana was the only upgrade that really made sense to be Tier 4. With Limit Break at Tier 1 and Mana Siphon at Tier 3, most players weren’t using Manni Mana so it wasn’t having much benefit at this skill tree position anyway. By making Manni Mana a Tier 4 skill, we were able to make it more powerful than it was as a Tier 2 skill. Additionally, we will be adding new functionality to Manni Mana in a future update to make it stand out more from the other mana regeneration skill upgrades!

Why are we adding so many stages so quickly?

It took us a while to get our foundation ready to allow for higher stages (this is why the stage cap was limited to 3500 and later 4000 so long [Soon™])… but now that we can increase the cap we plan on regularly doing so. At this point we plan on opening up the stage cap to 8k by December; each stage cap increase will generally be accompanied by some new mechanic/feature/update made to the game. For example, we are adding new Artifacts to the game as well as making Artifacts more powerful in our next update (v2.2), and with this increase in power we will be increasing the stage cap to 7k.

What are Tournament / Titan Points?

Tournament points (formerly called Titan Points) are simply an indicator of tournament participation and how well you performed.

Can I join beta?

Beta-testing is now closed. Should we re-open for a new beta program, we will be contacting active and engaged players on our online communities like this subreddit first. Depending on vacancy, we will then be opening up the beta for more players by posting a thread here.

PS: We really appreciate all the interest that has been shown for beta-testing!

Are you going to do giveaways?

Yes! At almost every stream we will be giving a few randomly selected players an in-game prize. All you need to do is watch and be following us on Twitch.

We will also be holding special subscriber-only giveaways in the future. We’re still in the works of planning these giveaways, but rest-assured they are coming! Subscribers will also be provided with an avatar to recognize you as part of our TT2 Twitch family!