Asphalt 9 Dev Chat (July 2021 - Grab Bag)

The July 2021 Dev Chat was the 10th Dev-Chat and was done on July 30, 2021. It was centered in 3 specifics topics: The shop, upcoming MP Plans and upcoming plans for new players.
== Full #Dev-Chat-Answer ==
Chris718:
Good afternoon, Morning, Evening or some other time of the day everyone
Welcome to a very special Devchat, random fact this is the 1st devchat or the 2nd 1/2 of the year it is also the 1st devchat we have done on the same day the update has released, so while I hope your all excited to be checking out the latest stuff, thanks for coming along and listening (reading) to what I'm going to be blathering on about
So this chat is going to be a bit of a mix bag of topics, as when we asked for topics we didn't get any 1 clear winner so we decided to talk about a few different areas. additionally one of the reasons for this is it gives me a chance to tell you about future plans we have and some of the stuff the team is working on at the moment around this
Let me set a bit of the stage for you all as to what this time of year means for the team, aside from it being August shortly when many people will take holidays, we are hard at work on the next two updates (last 2 for the year), but also this is when we start looking at what we wanted to do this year and didn't get a chance to do and thus what do we want to do next year.
so some of the stuff I'm going to be covering today are: 
* Shop, what are we doing and answering some questions 
* Multiplayer (I'll type MP from now on as it's to long otherwise) 
* New player
Let's kick it off with the shop
==== The Shop ====
Over the next few updates we are looking at doing a number of things to and in the shop. The biggest and most obvious one will be a revamp of how the shop looks and works. now this isn't just a visual change for pure vanity but also to help support us to do internal changes for how it works.
We want to revamp the shop visuals so that we can segment out the sections better (so you can find what you want easier) and allow us to more easily add additional segments, specifically we are looking at putting in a "for you" section, this would be an area that is curated to you as a player so if you are GL5 you would see offers and packs that will help you at that stage but a GL17 player would see a different set
This ties into a question about the legend store
So the legend store is an area that allows you to catch up with different cars but is not intended to be the primary way by which you can get BP, if we put all the BP in the legend store some people would be happy and even more people would scream about the game being P2W (even more than usual )
having said that we do realize it hasn't had an update in a while as to the content and rotations and we will be looking at refreshing this so as to change up the cars
this will be something we will do incrementally as the game economy changes as new things come into the game and other new features we are working on get released.
I've also seen a few questions/comments about "Add BP of cars in the shop that are difficult to grind"
As a general rule this is not something we are likely to do on a large scale. Let me explain making a car difficult to grind varies with the car, how old it is, how many people have it and what events are currently running. Since if a car is available in a car hunt it might not be difficult to grind at the same time a car in a SE which could be considered difficult to grind we also make available through packs in the store for a period of time. So it’s not just a matter of putting in a specific BP. Instead this goes into the overall strategy of the game which has cars appearing in cycles giving players a chance to grind them for free or purchase packs when those packs are available. If we just put all BP in the store for purchase everyone who has money would just buy them then stop playing as they have nothing to work towards and people who don’t want to pay money would complain about P2W. So by having things primarily through events we keep it as fair as possible for all players since you can invest your time if you want or you can take a chance on purchasing packs at the time.
now something worth noting that is related to the point above
as part of the shop changes we are looking at introducing some new currencies in the game, specifically ones for Club wars when it launches as well as in MP. the reason for this is instead of giving you BP or GACHA directly we can instead give you currencies which you could then spend in the relevant section of the shop and get what you want more directly, also we are looking at putting in logic so that these sections are more contextual so that the things you can get are more applicable to your progress.
Very important part these currencies will be earned from playing the game not purchasable, so you will be able to grind to earn it
Another question that has come up is "Reduce the prize of EIP in the shop"
Short answer we are not looking changing the price of EIP in the shop instead what we have done is bring in more sources for them in the game so that everyone has a chance to get them and it is not dependent on you having to buy them
Someone just asked about increasing the number of items in the legend shop from 6 to 10.
yes this is something we will look at
another question around the legend shop was "Please add an option to buy 5 blueprints in the legend store for a discount from the individual prices (a bulk deal)"
Yup as part of the changes we will be adding this sort of thing to it
There were also a number of questions about "Add LO cars to the legend store. They are supposed to be “early access” yet the Taycan came out 16mo ago and can’t be accessed by f2p players"
We are slowly bringing cars that were legend pass exclusive into the game for all players via events. We want to do so via events as opposed to directly in the store since many f2p players didn’t buy the pass at the time are unlikely to buy if we put it in the store so by cycling it into events they have a chance to earn it for free. Having said that as we will look at all cars in the legend shop these will be included in the decisions
Just to clarify on the new currencies further as I see some comments about it just making it P2W
These will replace rewards you would normally earn so instead of you being given GACHA pack A which you might not like instead you will be given the currency that will allow you to choose from GACHA pack A, B,C etc
these currencies will not affect the currency rewards we give e.g. if we are giving you 10 tokens and 1000 SC and a GACHA pack it would change to be 10 tokens, 1000 SC + X new currency, so it will not be a nerf 
Oh also I'm using the word GACHA above as a generic catch all as we will have both GACHA (random) as well as specific BP. I'm not going to be to specific on exactly what everything will be as we are still working on it
We had some questions and I see some now about customization and getting decals, which is a perfect intro to an in between section (not quite shop and not quite MP)
So 1 of the questions was Decals on the Legend store that costs trade coins
Quick summary (and I'll go into a bit more detail in a minute), we have a plan we want to look at for decals that brings them into wider availability for all players. The idea is to try and have more of them come into the game as rewards from season pass, multiplayer events and other activities. We are looking at bringing back older decals as well as themed groups of new ones with the overall aim of giving more customization options to the players.
so yes we will bring them into the shop however we are also looking at making them and customization in general a bit more prominent
When we look at customization we look at not just how it is used for you as a solo player
but also how do you show off this customization, as with a nice dress or suit it's nice to put it on and wear it around the house but it's much better if you can take it out for a spin and show it off
we are looking at building up customization in a couple ways:
* Firstly updates to the game UI to make it easier to know when you have customization options available 
** -Naturally bringing in more options (decals, colours, emoji's etc)
* Secondly tweaking MP UI so that you can show off your choices betterThe MP changes will be around things like (not locked down yet so don't quote me long term) 
** changing the loading into MP so you see all the opponent cars and the decals 
** changing the intro/outro camera and timing to show more of the cars and let emoji's be used at that point in time
* Thirdly sources for getting these options 
** We will be trying to add more decals with each update (we add between 6 and 9 per update as now) 
** Bringing back older decals so if you missed out in the past you can get a crack at it again. 
** Creating groups of decals that you just "get" without having to have competed (e.g. in the free tier of the SP)
==== Multiplayer Plans ====
Let me move on to talk about some MP plans, specifically I'll talk MP world series events etc first, so currently we have a competition that runs from bronze -> legend league. we are looking at splitting these out into 2 different sets of competitions that run on 2 different timelines:
* The 1st set of competition (I'll call it MP fun for now) is aimed at newer players and player who want a relaxed MP experience. The rewards here will be targeted at new players and will be easier to get. Additionally the league would be something like bronze, silver, gold and ELO will be very light
* The 2nd set of competition which would run over a different period of time (e.g. 4 weeks instead of 2) and is more focused on those who are into PvP competition and have better garage of cars (e.g. gold, platinum and legend league). Rewards here will be "larger" but also harder to get as the ELO will be greater and we are looking at bringing in a rotating stable of cars you could choose from (there will always be a "free try 1" so even if you didn't have all the cars you would be able to play"
I've seen a few questions about rewards in MP specifically "MP rewards should be reworked; the cars you get from mp pack rewards can be unlocked easily from the legend store, please change them into more "exclusive rewards" for cars that can't be found in the legend store."
So this is something I've mentioned in the past MP1 is intended at the lower tiers to be a way for new players to catch up and unlock older cars, at the moment we are not planning to change the rewards (see above about new currency for when we will change)
as we want to keep the lower tiers of MP as a way for new players to get these cars and the higher tier rewards we can see from data are still useful for a large chunk of the player base.
I saw a number of questions were submitted around "Tweak MP knockdown system so it's more predictable without exaggerating how strong nitro is when it comes to performing them."
We want to tweak knockdown’s overall, we made an attempt on it last year and didn’t get it quite right so reverted it and haven’t had a chance since then to go back. Hopefully we can do so in the near future, it has been a matter of resources to allow us to crack open the physics engine and play around with it again.
We had some questions along the line of "120 secs tracks in Multiplayer is what we are looking forward in future and also welcome to the Jungle season is one of the best"
Glad you like the welcome to the jungle season. We have tried 120 second tracks in MP before and received complaints from many players as the races felt overly long which is why we tend to focus on the 90s tracks. Now having said that I would not discount that we might try a MP event with these longer tracks however it is unlikely that we would have them as part of a normal rotation.
As a side note in this update we have 2 different MP events 1 using short tracks focused on having pure fun and chaos (who doesn't like smashing a car up) and another that uses longer tracks but is focused on pure skill (e.g. ghost etc)
I saw a question about "MP2 should give BPs of featured free try car"
MP2 is a good source of EIP for players, the free try cars as a general rule of thumb have sources from other areas of the game (e.g. SE). MP2 is meant to be a way by which you can try out cars you might not normally get and grab som
There was a brief question about having a way to try MP in different tracks, we are actually working on a lobby system that would allow you to create a room to play with your friends (think club races but open)
Another question that was submitted "Lower the milestone requirements for mp2"
We actually did an in depth analysis about milestones for MP and Clubs to see how many were being reached. At this point in time we are not looking at lowering the milestone requirements for MP2. We can see from the data the distribution of players completion in these events and are happy with how it is at the moment.
==== Plans for New Users ====
Let me move on to the last section and talk about new users
So as I've mentioned in the past we know it can be hard for new users to catch up to players who have been playing for a while, to address this we are doing several things
Firstly we are running a test this update (so not all new users will see it) of offering a special car hunt just for new players at a set garage level
the car hunt has been rebalanced and is intended to make it easy for them to unlock and star up a new car, (don't worry it's an old car that the majority of people have so you are not missing out) based upon how this test goes we will be rolling out this system wider as it will allow us to trigger events, offers etc for players based upon various criteria (e.g. garage level, car progression etc) so we will be playing around with this to give players more opportunities to catch up
The other thing we are working on at the moment is re-organizing the career section so that it is a more linear experience early on and tweaking the rewards so that we can help you collect and unlock the cars you will find most useful as you move from solo play into career to TLE/SE and MP
Another thing we are changing for new players is we are working on redoing our entire onboarding (all the prompts, click throughs etc) this is a huge task which will take time but is something we are planning to do incrementally.
While it doesn't help you catch up it will hopefully help new players understand the game better
There is a question about the free pass car and packs are not as useful
This is actually a fallacy since the free pass car is a single car that they would need to progress on were as with the packs they are actually able to progress on multiple cars (many of which are more useful at that time for them)
Ok going to end the chat for this week
thanks everyone for attending and see you next time
Category:Asphalt 9 Dev Chats