In-Game Policy Updates
Before we kick off with Content news, we're going to take a quick segue into clarifying recent updates made to our Moderation routines.
The Moderators always investigate on, and action instances of players breaking our Community Code of Conduct. However, in listening to the community, we've accepted that in some cases, punishment towards repeat offenders has at times been far too lenient.
The vast majority of players who have been actioned by the Moderator team to date have not required any follow-up warnings; we've always maintained that simply by speaking with players, and re-highlighting our Code of Conduct is often all that's needed for resolving problems. In some cases, this may happen more than once - and as Moderators, we always moved forward with the mindset of more permanent actions being issued as a last resort.
While we're still keeping firmly to the idea that permanent actions such as bans should remain a last resort, we similarly needed to clarify what truly justified a "last resort"; with some players managing to rack up warnings on rule-break actions into the dozens, while still not being actioned; leading to the players being affected by an individual's actions feeling frustrated by a seeming lack of intervention on the Moderator's parts.
Starting around two weeks ago, the Moderators began consciously acting in a more proactive manner towards toxicity/abuse reports, and began applying harsher penalties towards players in cases which involved repeated instances of rule-breaking behaviour. Along with this, Moderation tooling has been improved in order to allow for better Mod Visibility while in-game.
As a note, we recognise that implementing these new policies resulted in a small minority of users creating alt accounts to ban-evade, along with posting hateful/abusive content in-game towards other players. We apologise for any players who were affected during this time, and can offer our assurances that the Moderators have subsequently actioned any accounts involved in this practice.
Following this, in taking steps to improve overall Moderator Visibility, Active In-Game Mods will now be identifiable via a unique player skin, and with a green (M) tag in Global Chat. Further to this, Moderators will be excluded from participation within any player-run ORGs, and will instead be listed as a member of a Moderator-only ORG.
Running an F2P All-Ages Game is difficult from a Moderation Standpoint, especially one which places such a heavy emphasis on player interaction. While previously we allowed for blurred lines in "acting as a mod" and "acting as a player", we're now taking the action of drawing firmer lines on these boundaries, and ensuring the role as a Moderator remains more visible, and more effective in helping the Community to remain healthy, and welcoming towards the expanded playerbase.
On to the Main Event.. The Pre-Mobile Patch!
Following months of this being by large and far the most popular requested feature, SoS is now focusing on developing, and launching a Mobile Port.
v1.8.2 serves as the basis for features which were highlighted as must-haves before moving towards a Mobile Port. While originally these features were intended to go live in-tandem as a content update with the Mobile Release, I'm instead opting to get these much-requested additions launched onto our current platforms immediately.
Note that with these features going live early, no content update should be expected to go live in-tandem with our initial Mobile launch, save for any potential bugfixes being required in the meantime.
Cosmetics Overhaul
During the original 10-week Development period for SoS, player cosmetics were mostly an after-thought. There were around 18 Skins in total, all of which were licensed assets that were essentially just shoehorned into the game.
Since then, while new Cosmetic Types were introduced in the form of Pets, and existing Cosmetic Types such as Lighting were greatly enhanced, Skins remained under the exact same system, save for fancier particle effects sellotaped on to a select few.
The largest concern around the untouched alpha-grade Skins system was that with the models simply being drag-and-dropped into place in their default state, they were essentially static containers for the default settings, and could not be changed. Changing a material on one skin would change it for several of them, and the backend was additionally not set up to send down anything besides a simple ID which denoted which unoptimized, default model & material to load in.
This system has now been fully overhauled. Alongside making it far easier for us to expand on the available in-game cosmetics in future, it now also allows for skin tone selections on a per-player/per-model basis (toggle is available within the skin browser, and compatible with all existing skins!), alongside allowing for greatly improved performance/quality on Web & Mobile platforms.
Additionally, all model portraits have been updated to reflect their newly updated formats.
Extended Events
In order to accommodate additional timezones, events will now run twice per day; once at 10am Server Time, with the following running at the usual 7pm timeslot. The in-game event notification messages have been updated to reflect these new timeslots.
Improved FTUE
While much improved since the "just figure it out" mantra of the Kongregate days, the FTUE/Tutorial Systems following the Steam launch still left a lot to be desired; with a lot of Streams/Videos of the game usually containing a bunch of overlapped text from ignored tutorials.
The Tutorials have now been re-jigged to guide new players through them, which should hopefully prevent against all the screen-clutter, and confusion that we tend to often saw stemming from this.
New Cosmetics, and Removed Cosmetics
A couple of skins unfortunately had to be removed due to compatibility problems with the new Cosmetics System. Going the way of the Dodo are; Vixen, Party Van Driver (M), and Party Van Driver (F).
Not to worry, however - taking their place are 14 new skins, targeting mid-game and late-game levels.
Performance Improvements
Last up to bat is another round of sweeping performance improvements, which will be most noticeable for WebGL players, and users running on Lower Quality settings.
Minor Daily Reward, Coin Infusions & Art Grant buffs
The Daily Reward for Coins, Coin Infusions, and Art Grants have been buffed up a bit to provide better value for mid, and late-game players.
The Road to Mobile
The above features bring us to par on where the game needed to be before we hit on for mobile. As noted on our Discord, Steam & Mobile will be cross-play compatible. Similar to our current WebGL platforms, SoS account linking IS planned for this; but for launch, we'll need to manually carry out these links via our Discord channels.
And, that's all she wrote. Myself, and the extended mod team are as always, available to field any questions or feedback on Discord. Until then, keep on keeping safe - and we'll keep on working towards getting this mobile port into your hands! ❤️