Asphalt 9 Dev Chat (October 2021 - Electric Season)

The October 2021 Dev Chat was the 11th Dev-Chat and was done on October 29, 2021. It was centered in talking about the Electric Season, Plans for the next update and future plans for next year.
==Full #Dev-Chat-Answer==
Chris718:
Welcome everyone to the devchat for this season. We have changed the pacing of these devchats up a bit as we found while doing it monthly was fun it did not really give us enough time to make changes and have them appear in the game. As such from now going forward we are going to try and do these once every update (roughly round the middle) so that we can talk a bit about the update as well as plans for next updates (since by the mid point we have more concrete ideas of what will make it).
Before I get into the rest of the devchat let me just talk about the Vanda event quickly so we can clear out those comments for now.
This event is targeted at end game veteran players primarily as they will on average have the better cars, it doesn't mean others can't take part or don't have a chance of winning it will mean you just need to be an even better driver. It's a new event and we are testing it and based upon how many people play it and comments we will kill it or modify it for future iterations
Now on to the actual chat
===This Update===
So right now we are just past the half way through the electric season and I hope you have all had a chance to try out some of the new cars and are enjoying the season
On top of the normal special events this season we had something new which was bringing a non “real” car into the game with the Lego Technic GP and TLE. Hopefully you all had a chance to take this car for a spin. While unfortunately we can’t keep this car in the game (and believe me the entire team wanted to keep it) hopefully it was a bit of fun and something different to drive with a lego car.
We know the game has become stale for many players (I'll talk a bit more about this later) so things like the Lego event help break it up
As we move into the 2nd half of the season we are launching (well launched about an hour ago) a brand new event the “True Legends Dendrobium” which has as a prize the chance to win all the BP and Import parts needed to max out this car, however to win it you will need to prove that you are a the best of the best. As I mentioned above this event won't necessarily be everyone's cup of tea
so don't feel like your forced to participate
We also have the next unleashed key hunt launching with the AT96 and our Halloween events in multiplayer which has a bunch of new “scary” emoji’s for you to unlock.
As we move into November we have 2 big events coming up a Burst of Speed and a Special Event has a new balancing structure (it is more open for all players). 
And of course last but not least as December starts we begin the countdown to Christmas and the end of the year.
===New Stuff in the Game & the Future===
So one of the most common comments I saw in the feedback and something that as a team we are aware of is that the game this year did not deliver very much in the way of new or exciting content
To be perfectly honest as a team overall we are not happy about how little we have managed to get done. This year has not been a great year due to unforeseen resource reductions (we were down almost 50% at times) and we weren’t able to get all the things we wanted (well let’s be honest we didn’t get 90% of the things) to add to game done instead we have played around with what we have to try and create more variety. Some of which has worked, some of which was pretty meh and some of which was actively disliked.
Now having said this we have a number of learnings from this year that we will be taking into next year (what we do but also how much we do in a season) and critically we have and are continuing to ramp up the team so as to not run into this position again (obligatory plug if you are looking for a job go to the gameloft job board and check out the open positions we are looking for all sorts of roles).
====Next Update====
So what about next update (I’ll talk a bit more about next year's plans as well)
Well we have a few things that hopefully everyone will enjoy: 
The new level Buenos Aires will launch and it is looking and playing awesome, it is very different from the Auckland track we had earlier this year as it is a city race that mixes both narrower streets with nice wide boulevards so lots of opportunities for great races. As we polish and bug fix Buenos Aires we have also started on the next track which we are looking to launch in the 1st half of next year. The new track is an outdoor environment track and as we get closer to the launch I’ll share more information, right now it is a rough layout and we are testing various new game elements in it.
Next update we have the return of the Drive Syndicate, the 4th chapter of this event continues the story from past events and will introduce some new characters and cars. Additionally as part of celebrating this event we will be launching a set of new decals themed around the drive syndicate characters for you to unlock.
We keep looking at our Multiplayer and ways to make it more interesting and challenging and in the next update we are going to be running a couple new formats: The first one will be a class based league, all cars in the event (which will be for 1 week) irrespective of league will come from the same pool. So no more S class vs. A class everyone will have the same options. The second one we will be testing is similar except we will have a limited filter of cars with 1 car as a free trial so if you don’t have any of the cars you can still try it out.
Both of these are tests we are trying as we are looking at creating a “pro-league” format for MP which will be a series of events tying to an overall leaderboard.
Additionally and potentially of greater interest for everyone, we are working on an entirely new gameplay mode in MP for early next year. The aim of this new mode is to change how you drive and make choices in MP and we think the mode should be a ton of fun and change up the race experience.
Other things we have coming next update is the return of a SE for a car (the reward) that has not been used in 2 years. This will be supported by an EP so those who don’t have the car will have a chance to get it and if you do have it you can try to max it out and get import parts for it.
Also we will have a brand new layout for the career mode (note we are testing to make sure this works and if it doesn’t we will revert it). This new layout is the 1st stage of changes to career to introduce a new chapter and help new players onboard and catch up quicker. It involves not just a new layout but changes to unlocks and seasons in each chapter (Don’t worry if you have already done it you won’t need to redo anything).
And over the next year we are going to add new seasons in the new chapter, adjust early balance and update onboarding flow for new players.
====Next Year====
So what about other new things coming next year?
I'll talk about some other things and answer a couple questions as part of this
Firstly and fairly majorly as many of you might remember we wanted to launch club wars this year (new mode, new currency and new rewards), due to lack of resources this has been pushed to next year. Currently we are working hard to have it out early next year.
Additional stuff coming next year (fingers crossed and this is not an exhaustive list).
Updates to the store both the layout as well as content. This will include things such as GL changes (increase from 18 and new packs), revisit on refresh timers etc. This will be done over several updates next year.
New car filtering option in the garage and pre-race to make it easier for you to sort your cars and find the one you want.
And with regards to this, I'm not sure how many of you are aware of the Asphalt Board survey that has been sent out (and a new one will be soon), we often asks about community features in this and from what is voted on we try and get some of them done. This includes things like the car filtering, option to not have ghost in GP, mission requirements being visible in a race, Private Lobbies from ESL being open to everyone, etc.
=====Question about Next Year=====
Some other bits and pieces I've seen questions on about next year:
*Decals -> Yes we are looking to bring back old decals as well as create more new ones (The DS ones for Xmas look great) and in addition to this we are also adding in new Emoji's and expanding the variety of body kits you can get.
*Old events coming back -> While we most likely will not have an old event back with 100% the same balance we are bringing the cars back as the focus. Xmas has a very popular one coming back that has not been the focus of a SE for 2 years
*What about the Batistta -> I guarantee it will be back before the end of the year.
*Control scheme changes -> one of the community features that could be voted on was bringing a different control scheme into the game so it is in the backlog and really depends on how many people vote for it on it's priority.
*Touch drive or manual only events -> This is something we are discussing on how to do as well as where we would apply it. There are pro's and con's either way so we want to make sure if we do this we do it the right way
What about new SE types etc
For the team new gameplay modes are a big thing for next year as we know that unless the event feels really different it will get boring and we need more gameplay options. So as I've mentioned we are working on 1 for MP and additionally we are looking at: 
*2 new modes, 1 solo and 1 that is cooperative and I’ll give more info on these as we get closer to launching them.
*2 new DS formats, 1 being a small mini format that will be shorter in duration and require less investment from you to complete and a totally new one which will allow you to race with police cars (something many people have been requesting).
On top of this there are lots of other improvements for the game that we want to do and will chip away at: 
*new mission types
*stability and performance improvements
*look at the game physics again (we just hired a coder who has a bunch of experience in this area so this should help) and a bunch of other things
====Aditional Questions====
To answer some additional questions:
Q Are we thinking of bringing in manual acceleration?
Well we added in for windows/xbox. We may look at it for ios/Android if there is enough requests, currently it really only makes sense to enable it for mobile devices who also use a controller as adding an extra button on the screen in touchdrive or manual would make it harder to play and add clutter.
Q Daily login calendar, will we add one? 
We have a high level design for a daily calendar but at this point in time it will not make it into next years plans as we have other lower level onboarding improvements we want to do first.
Q Most races set in Australia
When we were deciding on which track to do earlier this year I pushed for Albert Park, sadly they didn't listen to this brilliant idea and we decided to go with Auckland But don't give up hope there is so much amazing scenery in Australia I'm sure we will eventually get a track there
Q Switch roadmap
Short answer on switch is they are behind for 2 reasons 1 porting features and 2 and more importantly Nintendo approval process takes much much longer so it reduces how many updates they can do in a year and controls the pace.
Q do changes to MP also mean changes to rewards 
Yes, in the long term as we test out the formats and see if people play them or not it will give us more options on how the rewards work.
Q Change car hunts to be less grindy. 
So I don't have any sort of concrete answer on this, what I can say is we had a meeting today in fact to talk about the schedule of events, how many we have and how it feels like a job to try and take part in all of them. Coming out of this we are looking at a list of event operation changes we want to do for next year to mitigate this feeling. So not sure what changes will occur but changes are coming in the new year.
Q Hint for the DS4 car
It has 4 wheels, looks really modern and is very fast.
Q Seasons focused around 1 brand 
Yes we have more brand focused seasons coming up
Q Plans for inventory rework 
At this point in time nothing specific however as we bring in CW and new features we will probably have to revisit the inventory and how it works
Q Bring back dark garage theme 
Their is no plan at the moment to change the garage theme, however something that will want to try and tackle next year and it will take all of the year to work out so you probably won't see any changes is a revamp of our overall UI style.
Q Are we confident on physics rework 
To be honest touching physics scares the crap out of both the designers and the coders. It can be a simple change or a horrible one. Any change we do will be small and incremental as we need to test it as much as humanely possible since changes in physics can have all sort of unforseen effects
Ah question about Xbox release, a perfect setup I can't resist
Xbox One of the big things that did happen this year is the launch of the game on Xbox.
The work to get the Xbox version launched was pretty significant for the team, not just the porting and getting it running but we also updated controls and UI navigation
We know the launch was not ideal for some players and have a team dedicated to fixing bugs and improving performance for Xbox (there have been a couple hotfixes already) and will keep working on improving the experience. The next update has quite a number of performance improvements and should improve the overall experience.
so hopefully for those playing on Xbox it will keep improving for you
I've also seen a few comments asking for split screen for Xbox, this is something the team working on the Xbox version are implementing and are targeting to Launch early next year.
Q What about cross-platform 
I'd love to get cross platform to some degree working (e.g. ios vs android), we are doing investigations as to the work involved and how long this would take. Much of the changes need to be done on the servers to migrate player data to allow cross play so it is not something that will happen quickly. Hopefully I'll be able to have more info next year on how/when etc this might happen.
Q Why does China have it's own version. 
They have their own version as it has different licensing and regulatory restrictions. We are looking at sharing some elements (they take stuff from us at the moment) and bringing them into the world wide version as we can.
Q DS4 balance 
Yes it will be easier than DS3 I guess is the easy answer
Q Avatars in the game 
This is something we have looked at, it probably won't happen next year but you never know it depends on how other things go
Q Can LP exclusive events be killed 
Probably no, these are popular with LP owners and it is a benefit of getting the LP
Q Use of emoji's in chat 
Yes this is something we have had on our backlog for ages but sadly is not a high priority
Q Motorcycles in A9 
Not in the forseable future.
Q event packs and class pack updates 
Yes these will get revisited as part of store changes next year, they do get changes incrementally through out a year
Q More info on PL 
See way way above it is something that if you vote on in the survey can be pushed higher on the priority list I should mention we have a separate group of people working on the community features so we can do more next year.
Q Paywall in DS4 
The paywall is reduced is the best way I guess to explain why it will be easier
Q Rerun of old GP cars like the Jesko 
While we won't necessarily re-run these events again we are bringing these older cars back.
Q can we confirm Buneos Aires is straight 
As with all our tracks none of them are 100% straight, Buenos Aires has some narrow segments, a couple cool curves and a bunch of nice straights so like any track it is a mix. A track with just straights is a boring race so even with Auckland we had some nice straights but we also break it up
Ok last question to answer
Q What is the DS4 car
Well the car is....... Nah not going to tell you as we are out of time and you will have to find out in just over a month 
thank you everyone for attending and have a good weekend. 
Clauwudia:
I will tell them! The car is.. 
I got you
Category:Asphalt 9 Dev Chats