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Patch notes · published by the developer

CARDED: Groups to Glory — Update 1.3.1 Available Now

On Steam

Update 1.3.1 Available Now

Update 1.3.1 is now live for CARDED: Groups to Glory.

This update focuses on performance, save reliability, progression integrity and making longer tournament runs significantly smoother behind the scenes.

Update 1.3.1 improves squad responsiveness, reduces unnecessary saving and repeated processing, strengthens recovery across Match, Training and Press systems, fixes several duplicate-application issues and corrects an important group-stage progression inconsistency.

Performance Improvements

A major focus of Update 1.3.1 has been reducing unnecessary work throughout a run.

Several systems that previously performed repeated calculations, rebuilt interface elements or wrote profile data more often than necessary have been streamlined.

Squad and Pitch Responsiveness

Squad refreshes have been substantially improved.

Previously, many refreshes destroyed and recreated the entire set of PlayerCards even when the same squad remained on the pitch.

PlayerCards can now be reused and refreshed from the latest authoritative player data instead.

This improves responsiveness across:

  • formation changes
  • Tactic changes
  • Training Card assignment
  • bulk Training Card actions
  • run loading
  • screen transitions
  • general squad refreshes

Player information, Fitness, Form, Attributes, portraits, Training Card effects and pitch positioning continue to update normally.

The change is focused entirely on reducing unnecessary reconstruction rather than changing the appearance or behaviour of the squad screen.

Training Card Save Improvements

Training Card profile updates are now grouped into one durable profile commit per logical assignment operation.

This applies to:

  • individual assignments
  • Cycle
  • Apply All
  • Balance
  • Random
  • partially completed bulk operations

Previously, a single Training Card could trigger several separate profile writes for lifetime assignment, usage, player upgrades and best-score tracking.

Large bulk operations could therefore create a significant amount of unnecessary profile-save activity.

These updates are now committed together while preserving the same lifetime statistics and recovery guarantees.

Best Score Save Optimisation

Best-score tracking no longer writes the profile when the submitted score does not exceed the existing record.

The score is still checked normally, but an unchanged result now avoids an unnecessary profile save.

Tournament Processing Improvements

Several tournament systems now avoid repeated calculations where the result would be unchanged.

Provisional tournament awards are now refreshed once after relevant batches of AI fixtures rather than rebuilding after every individual result.

Frequently used authored data also now uses indexed lookups for systems including:

  • Coaches
  • historical fixtures
  • venues
  • bracket matches
  • tournament metadata

The authoritative data and fallback behaviour remain unchanged.

Current-Run Save Improvements

Longer tournament runs can accumulate a large amount of match, player, Form, statistics and tournament-history data.

Update 1.3.1 includes a major optimisation pass on current-run saving.

Smaller Current-Run Saves

Current-run saves now use compact JSON formatting.

This reduces unnecessary whitespace in the save file without removing any gameplay data or changing the save schema.

Existing v1.3 saves using the previous formatted JSON remain fully load-compatible.

Faster Save Validation

The current-run save pipeline has also been streamlined while preserving its durability protections.

Redundant validation work has been removed from the successful save path.

The game still:

  • validates the source data
  • checks JSON compatibility
  • writes and flushes a temporary file
  • rereads and validates the actual temporary file
  • validates the previous save before rotating backups
  • promotes the new save atomically
  • verifies the promoted file contains the intended content
  • retains backup recovery behaviour

Several expensive validation steps that were processing the same already-validated data more than once have been replaced with cheaper equivalent checks.

The result is substantially improved late-run save performance without weakening the existing recovery process.

Match Reliability Improvements

Match resolution has received additional protection against duplicate callbacks, interrupted transitions and partial saves.

Each player Match now uses a stable transaction identity tied to the run and fixture.

Once the authoritative result has been committed, recovery can continue from that stored result rather than recalculating the fixture.

This prevents interrupted Match flow from:

  • rerolling the scoreline
  • applying Match consequences twice
  • duplicating profile statistics
  • repeating rewards or progression effects
  • creating conflicting Match history

The committed Match result remains the authoritative outcome.

Match lifetime statistics also use persistent duplicate protection so failed profile writes can be retried safely without counting the same fixture twice.

Training Reliability Improvements

Training sessions now preserve more of their transaction state across saving and loading.

A Training session records a stable occurrence identity together with the generated results needed to resume safely.

This includes:

  • selected Training session
  • Coach effects
  • recovery changes
  • Identity effects
  • Style changes
  • generated Training Cards
  • Development bonus Coach Pack results
  • follow-up state

Interrupted Training can therefore continue from the already-generated outcome rather than rerunning randomisation or applying the same effects again.

Regular Press Reliability Improvements

Regular Press answers now use stronger occurrence and transaction protection.

The game validates the authoritative offered answer before applying its effects and prevents stale or duplicate callbacks from processing the same question twice.

Press transaction state now protects:

  • resources and Score
  • Fan reactions
  • Coach effects
  • Team Identity effects
  • player and squad changes
  • Training Card rewards
  • Coach Pack rewards
  • profile statistics
  • cooldown history
  • follow-up routing

Reloading during Press no longer allows the same committed answer to apply its effects multiple times.

Training Card Profile Protection

The new Training Card batching system also includes cross-file recovery protection.

Each logical Training Card operation creates a persistent profile-sync obligation before the profile update is attempted.

The profile then records a stable committed-operation identity.

This means interrupted saves can recover without:

  • double-counting Training Cards assigned
  • double-counting Training Cards used
  • repeating player Attribute upgrade statistics
  • losing completed lifetime statistics

If the profile save fails, the pending operation remains available for retry.

If the profile update was already completed before an interruption, the committed identity prevents it from being applied again.

Terminal Profile Improvements

Run-end profile persistence has received additional protection.

Terminal career progression now distinguishes between:

  • effects applied in memory
  • profile successfully saved
  • profile commit confirmed
  • profile save requiring retry

A failed profile write no longer causes the game to treat the terminal transaction as permanently complete.

The save can instead be retried without recalculating or duplicating the underlying terminal rewards.

This protects systems including:

  • Career XP
  • profile statistics
  • discoveries
  • unlock progression
  • difficulty progression
  • run completion records

Group Stage Progression Fix

Fixed an inconsistency where some group-stage progression paths could treat three points as sufficient for knockout qualification.

CARDED’s group-stage qualification target is 4 points.

The four-point requirement is now applied consistently across:

  • qualification decisions
  • group-stage progression
  • knockout bracket inclusion
  • post-match routing
  • save recovery

RunState now remains the single authority for determining whether the player has qualified from the group.

Affected legacy v1.3 saves containing contradictory progression state are reconciled conservatively while preserving the visible points already earned.

Save and Recovery Improvements

Update 1.3.1 continues the reliability work introduced in previous updates.

Improved recovery handling now covers:

  • committed Match results
  • post-Match consequences
  • Match profile statistics
  • Training session transactions
  • Training Card profile updates
  • Regular Press answers
  • Press follow-ups
  • terminal profile commits
  • group-stage qualification state

The general recovery principle remains the same:

Once an authoritative result has been committed, the game should recover from that result rather than rerolling, recalculating or applying the same effect twice.

Existing v1.3 profiles and current runs remain supported.

Interface and Release Improvements

Several smaller release and interface improvements are also included.

  • Improved squad refresh performance during formation and Training Card changes
  • Reduced unnecessary PlayerCard reconstruction
  • Updated the displayed game version to v1.3.1
  • Updated the official CARDED Discord invite
  • Removed unnecessary release-build diagnostic console output
  • Cleaned several development warnings
  • Updated Windows release metadata to v1.3.1

The official Discord can still be accessed directly from the main menu.

Community Feedback

Thank you to everyone who has continued to report issues and share feedback.

A few recent community reports have been particularly helpful in identifying areas that need attention.

Discord Link

The official Discord link available through the main menu was no longer working correctly.

Thank you to the community members who pointed this out.

The in-game Discord buttons have now been updated to use the current official invite link, so both the main-menu DISCORD button and the developer-note JOIN THE DISCORD button should once again take players to the correct community server.

If you notice another broken link, bug or strange piece of behaviour, please keep reporting it. Even small reports can help identify issues that would otherwise be easy to miss.

UI Readability

We have also seen and heard feedback around UI readability, particularly around the amount of information presented on some screens and how easily that information can be understood at a glance.

This is something we are actively looking at.

CARDED has grown significantly since its original release, and some interfaces are now presenting far more information than they were originally designed to handle.

Rather than making rushed visual changes as part of a reliability-focused patch, we want to improve readability carefully without removing useful information or making important tournament data harder to access.

Future updates will continue looking at areas such as:

  • information hierarchy
  • spacing and screen density
  • text readability
  • important information standing out more clearly
  • reducing unnecessary visual clutter
  • making larger data-heavy screens easier to scan

Update 1.3.1 is primarily focused on the technical foundation underneath the game, but UI presentation and readability remain an important area we intend to continue improving.

Thank you to everyone who has raised this feedback constructively.

Additional Fixes

  • Fixed group-stage progression potentially accepting a three-point finish as qualified
  • Fixed duplicate Match callbacks potentially repeating consequences
  • Fixed duplicate Match callbacks potentially repeating lifetime statistics
  • Fixed interrupted Match recovery potentially recalculating an already-committed result
  • Fixed interrupted Training potentially rerunning generated rewards
  • Fixed interrupted Training potentially reapplying Coach or Identity effects
  • Fixed interrupted Training potentially rerolling Style changes or bonus Coach Packs
  • Fixed duplicate Regular Press callbacks potentially applying the same answer effects twice
  • Fixed stale Press callbacks potentially committing invalid answer state
  • Fixed Training Card profile statistics being vulnerable to double-counting around cross-file save failures
  • Fixed Training Card profile statistics potentially being lost after a completed assignment if the profile save failed
  • Fixed terminal profile transactions being treated as complete before the profile write was confirmed
  • Fixed unnecessary profile saves when best-score values remained unchanged
  • Reduced repeated provisional-award rebuilding during AI tournament simulation
  • Reduced redundant squad refreshes during startup, reload and bulk Training Card operations
  • Improved current-run save size
  • Improved current-run save performance during larger tournament states
  • Improved backup and promoted-save verification
  • Improved JSON compatibility validation performance
  • Improved lookup performance across frequently used tournament reference data

Compatibility

Update 1.3.1 does not intentionally rebalance teams, match formulas, rewards, odds or tournament difficulty.

The focus of this update is reliability, performance and ensuring that existing systems behave consistently across longer runs, interruptions and reloads.

Existing v1.3 profiles and current-run saves remain supported.

Looking Ahead

Update 1.3.1 is primarily a foundation update.

A large amount of the work in this release is designed to make the tournament simulation more reliable, responsive and easier to build upon in future updates.

The underlying tournament now has stronger authority over Match results, player statistics, progression, recovery and persistent run history.

This gives future updates a much stronger base for expanding how CARDED interprets and presents the story of each tournament.

Thank you to everyone who has played, tested, reported issues and shared feedback.

Reports around broken links, UI readability, progression behaviour and save reliability have all helped shape the work going into CARDED.

Update 1.3.1 is focused on making every run smoother and more dependable from the opening fixtures through qualification, the group stage, the knockout rounds and the final tournament result.

There is still plenty more planned, including continued work on how CARDED presents information and tells the story of each tournament.

Community feedback will continue to shape those improvements.

— William
Spartanwilly Studios

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