Khirt

Hello Skylords  We have BIG news. The HUGE update you've all been waiting for, is coming to the LIVE server this Sunday 9th August 2020. Currently all changes we've done in the past weeks were only available on the test server. We greatly appreciate all of your effort in regards to reporting bugs and other issues. Thanks to your help, we are able to give you all of the following new and improved features: - You no longer need to restart BattleForge if you enter the wrong password - Lots of other bug fixes - New Boosters - 12 player maps - 2v2 Ranked - A new system for earning BFP - A huge overhaul of the Auction House! We will be live on Twitch this upcoming Sunday on 9th August 2020 at 19:00 CEST before the patch comes out. Please note that we are still in the Open Stress Test, and this is not the release yet. However, there will be a very important announcement in regards to the release and reset you are waiting for. You will be able to find the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/skylordsreborn

 
 
This is the changelog for the live server for the end of this week  
General changes/features
- Added new daily reward and reserve system for gaining daily BFP.
- Added daily booster discount after playing for a certain amount of time.
- Added new faction boosters to the store.
- Added 2vs2 ranked matches. 
- Added 12player PvE matches. Keep in mind 12 player matches only reward gold.
- Added randomly generated maps to the ranked PvP maps pool.
- Added ability to click on cards in the marketplace in order to play them in the forge.
- Increased auction amount to 100 per player.
- Added option for 48 hour long auctions.
- Removed the starting 2.5h playtime quest completely.
- Decreased required amount of ranked pvp matches to reach 100% activity from 30 to 15 matches per month.
- Adjusted required ranks for purchasing upgrades: the required ranks are 1, 4 and 5 for upgrade 1, 2 and 3, and is the same for all rarities.
The required rank can either be your PvE rank, or your highest PvP rank.
- Added 'Suggested Decks' button in the lobby to view and select the decks you most recently used for a map.
- Added x16 and x32 speed for watching replays.
- Improved UI and feedback when trying to upload community maps. More improvements to this will be added at a later stage.
- Added /match chat.
- Removed logout button from the escape menu.
- Drastically improved performance of the upgrade tab.
- Improved responsiveness of the marketplace.
- Greatly improved responsiveness while using the leaderboards (may still lag a bit when opening it for the first time).
- Your own auctions in the "My auctions" tab in the marketplace now show the exact time left instead of Short/Medium/Long.
- Improved the interface used for creating auctions. You can now put up multiple auctions at once.
- When searching for auctions, your name on your own auctions will be displayed in bold in order to make them more recognizable.
- Bidding/Buyout fields will be greyed out for an auction if they are not usable or relevant.
- Added the amount of hours next to the different time options when trying to create an auction.
- Minor general improvements to the story book.
- Replaced the "Manual" button with a "Wiki" button in the news section.
- Added a `Patreon` button in the news section.
- Added small counter at the bottom of the `Auction Watchlist` window ingame that shows your current amount of auctions watchlisted.
- Added small ingame pop-up for new players asking if they would like to play the tutorial map.
- Added the ability to navigate the map selection screen (PvP and Community PvE) with your arrow keys.
- Hid the match loot dropdown whenever trying to create a 1 or 12 player match.
- Hid the loot type for rPVE matches in the game selection screen, as rPvE does not reward upgrades.
General fixes
- Fixed many group and match bugs. 
- Fixed many issues with disconnecting/getting stuck in the loading screen.
- You no longer need to restart BattleForge if you enter the wrong password.
- Fixed match running too fast/slow which resulted in stuttering or teleporting.
- Fixed trade button tooltip saying the player accepted the trade while he did not.
- Fixed german version of the 'promo from booster' notification message.
- Fixed replays of community maps not showing in the replays menu in certain cases.
- Fixed a minor issue with trying to upload PVP community maps.
- Fixed BFP desync when bidding more than the buyout on a card in the auction house.
- Fixed incorrect error feedback when setting the bid amount to less than 2 on a card for the auction house.
- Fixed selected map in the create a game window not always being remembered properly between opening and closing the window for PvP and Community maps.
- Fixed quests not properly refreshing in the UI after rerolling a quest.
- Fixed player buildings not being destroyed and units not being killed if a player disconnected or left without doing any action in the match.
- Fixed random (windows) error sounds while playing the game.
- Fixed show and request deck with the tutorial deck not working.
- Fixed gained ELO text overflow in postgame screen for 2vs2.
- Fixed the cause of the error message "A card of this type is already in your deck!".
- Fixed a disconnect which occurred upon answering a direct trade request.
- Fixed minor issues related to need/greed when all players had all upgrades being rewarded.
- Fixed some errors with ingame UI tutorial and updated relevant steps in the tutorial.
- Fixed error after using the filter option in the upgrades window after applying/removing an upgrade.
- Fixed UI overlapping and worldmap UI issues in 1600x1024 resolution.
- Fixed that you could copy a deck (using the view deck window) from another player while being ready.
- Fixed not being able to start games sometimes for players that are on public networks.
- Fixed maximum limit of 2000 quests completed for "Complete some quests" achievement.
- Fixed an issue in the mail from the auction house where it would sometimes say that you sold your card for 0 BFP.
- Properly handle case where the player has not opened a booster yet but tries to view his latest opened booster.
- Fixed issue where you could buy avatars for free.
Card changes
- Increased charge count of Santa Claus, Lord Cyrian, and Easter Egg to 4 so they are aligned with other promos.
- Improved card description of Juice Tank.
- Added missing ability "Siege" to Skycatcher card description.
- Added the range to Area Ice Shield card description.
- Added missing "Swift" ability to Colossus in card description.
- Added missing ability "Swift" to Bloodhorn description.
- Fixed wrong damage on card description of Northern Keep (Blue).
- Fixed wrong tooltip of Shadow Insect.
- Fixed ranged attack symbols not displayed for fire cards at higher resolutions.
- Various other minor additions, updates and fixes (like typo's).
Skylords Reborn Team
 

Lmao, next post: Weird resolution on 2 meters wide screen.

Shortly put, we endorse neither of those actions. There has been a lot of discussion going over this in the past, and we are of mind that smurfing heavily disrupts the ranked PvP scene and will, especially with an even smaller community that will rely heavily on newcomers, result in an insanely unfair PvP environment where matchmaking doesn't even matter anymore due to the sheer amount of artificially low-ranked pros dominating the entire game because they don't dare to face any opponents matched with when trying something new. This is not what ranked PvP is made for. Ranked PvP exists to test your PvP skills comparatively to people at the same level of you. Whether this is regardless of decks is debatable, but this is why unranked PvP exists, why there are Sparring Grounds. It's even in the term; Sparring Grounds. Sparring in boxing (and fighting) means that you're not landing your blows heavily so you can train. The same goes for the game; Sparring Grounds are for training your PvP skills without being judged harshly for it by the matchmaking system. This is, very briefly and shortly put, why we are against multiaccounting and it will result in bans. Smurfing destroys the purpose of the difference between ranked PvP and Sparring PvP, and your training needs are easily resolved by testing your new decks out in Sparring instead.

So, are you scared of losing your ELO because, skylords forbid, you are using a somewhat unconventional deck? Go to the Sparring Grounds. They are literally made for this exact purpose.

Just to play devil's advocate here . . . 
Back in the old days, it was impossible for me to try out a new deck in the sparring grounds against people at "my level." Even though I wasn't in the top 20, beginners could see my rank and would immediately kick me when I tried to join a game. For a while I was trying to learn pure frost (I literally had a deck level 20 without ice guardians) and I wanted to play around with people at a level where I could learn how to play the deck, but they would always get scared and kick me. Or if they did play me and they beat me, the would start chatting to me and telling me how I wasn't any good and I must have cheated to get my rank. Basically it was a pretty unpleasant experience and I could only spar against my higher-ranked friends, but of course they would destroy me if I tried to play a deck I fundamentally didn't understand and that didn't give me much opportunity to learn.
 
As @RadicalX said, in a small community, your name becomes well known very easily. As an important moderator, will you be able to have "peace" and just play the game, or will you be constantly barraged with messages and friend requests and invitations? The same will likely go for top ranked players and prominent forum members/streamers/youtubers.
 
I agree with RadicalX's solution: give each person 2-3 characters. In fact, the best solution would probably be to share all assets between those characters, so the only thing that changes is the name and ELO (this way you can't get extra bfp by multiaccounting). To get even fancier, perhaps those alternate accounts could not have an ELO at all and be prevented from entering ranked games--or if they did have ELO, the calculation of the opponent's score would be based on your highest character's ELO (this might lead to rating inflation though).
 
TL;DR: Playing sparring as a recognizable player is not as easy as it sounds. I recommend allowing multiple characters that all share bfp, cards, upgrades, and quests  but are banned from ranked, so that players can test things in sparring with anonymity. 
Or maybe you can just enable an "anonymous" mode, where your name and rank is hidden but you can't enter ranked. (but then @Anonymos will have problems )