We’re now less than two weeks away from the next big fighting game launch in Invincible VS, and some adjustments are being made from what people just experienced in it.
Following Invincible VS’s open beta last week, Executive Producer Mike Willette recently put together a recap going over what they learned from the test and what needs changing.
One issue many players ran into was a surprising amount of rage quits, so Quarter Up is looking at how to properly punish and deter that for the full release.
Right now, they’re working on implementing a cooldown penalty for those who have frequent disconnects on top of game and ranking point losses.
The team plans to release patch notes for what exactly is changing in terms of gameplay after the beta, but they have outlined what they’re focusing on.
That includes things like making moves that whiff or are blocked more punishable and reducing solo touch-of-death combos.
Willette also discussed some specific bug fixes and areas of focus for the launch of the game.
Everyone who participated in the Invincible VS beta will receive a special Omni-Man costume, and the top 20 ranked players shall have their names etched into the game’s final credits.
Quarter Up also recently released the interesting beta test stats that cover things like how many times Invincible himself lost and how many limbs were removed.
Invincible VS is scheduled to release on April 30 for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
You can find a breakdown of the changes coming to Invincible VS below or on the official website.
Notable Change Areas
All major changes since Beta will be in patch notes before launch, but for now we can confirm that the tuning is focused on these areas.
• Making big moves that whiff or are blocked more punishable
• Reducing the number of solo Touch-of-Death routes
• Resolving the dash macro input issues
• General gameplay balance—even for characters not playable in the Open Beta.
To make the above happen we’re looking to adjust Boost Meter cost for Heroic Strike, nixing tags after character death, damage scaling in various situations, as well as Dash and throw interactions. There’s also balance changes for a majority of our roster based on the Beta observations.
Ranked Feedback and Rage Quits
I’m going to breakdown what caused the storm of Rage Quits. Most of these are on us and you’ll see later how we are better discouraging and penalizing this in the future:
• Rank Data Bottleneck: On day one of the Beta, the backend for player rank data tracking was not uploading fast enough and players were not matchmaking according to their approximate skill level. This delay caused players to not get properly placed in their appropriate rank, and this meant higher skilled players were matching with lower skilled players too often. So even if everyone decided to stick around for their loss, this was not the intended matchmaking experience.
• Delayed LP Loss: As listed in our Known Issues post, there was a delay in how soon you would be able to see earned or lost League Points reflected in your profile. Even though this would update in about 5-10 minutes, it appeared as if there was no LP penalty for leaving a match early, which might have further encouraged people to disconnect because they assumed it negated the match.
• Lack of Disconnect Penalty: For those not deterred by the LP loss, there was no clear way to keep them from re-queuing and then rinse and repeat.
• Not Enough Modes for Casual Play: This Open Beta was an opportunity to stress test Ranked, one of the most important systems to get right. And although the Beta was a meaningful stress test for us, it left very little to do for those that wanted to demo at their own pace or were new to fighting games.
What are we doing to deal with this?
First, we fixed the backend delay for ranked player data and are better prepared for any bottleneck we might encounter on launch day.
Disconnecting during a Ranked match will still cost you LP and the match, and we’re looking at ways to keep frequent leavers out of the ranked queue. Quarter Up is currently implementing a cooldown penalty and targeting the first major post-launch patch. I don’t have an exact date to give you, but it’s at the top of our post-launch priority list.
If you’re reading this and were guilty of a rage quit or two during the beta…we get it. Ranked was the system we most needed to stress test, but we also know that meant players who wanted to explore at their own pace (or who are new to fighting games entirely) didn’t have a good way to do that.
Invincible VS is for everyone! We hope the availability of all single player and multiplayer modes on launch (Story, Arcade, local versus, Casual, Lobbies, Progression) will help you develop your skills and progress towards competing against players at your level in Ranked play. The next time you get caught in a match-ending move, you’ll feel confident enough to run the set or go back to the lab and come back better.
Bug Fixes
Again, we’re dropping a full set of patch notes before launch but here are some of the major issues we have fixed or will have ready by day one.
• Fixed ‘ghost’ players in matchmaking
• Fixed majority of issues that caused game crashes
• No more Omni-Man ult bug
• Improved HUD clarity for Wifi vs Wired players when Show Ping is enabled
Team Focus for Launch
Thanks one more time to everyone that played Invincible VS during the Open Beta. We’re excited by all the hype there was from just one weekend of play—that wasn’t even the full roster! With more time to lab, more players, our balance updates, and 8 additional characters coming April 30, we know the mix ups are going to be unreal.
Quarter Up is hammering away at more content for Invincible VS, making sure Universa and The Immortal are a must for your team. Oh, and there is still [redacted] and [redacted] to look forward to.
