Hey Paladins Reddit-

I know there has been a lot of frustration within the Paladins Community over the last couple weeks (cue “understatement of the year” memes).

I wanted to use this post to provide more insight into the genesis of the Cards Unbound System, what our goals for the system are, and how your feedback over the last few weeks has helped us evolve the system over this long  (and often painful) PTS cycle to hopefully better reach those goals and put Paladins in a place where we can have an amazing Season 2.

What ARE the goals of the Cards Unbound System?   

Heading into the new upcoming season of Paladins, we have been looking to address a few major concerns with the “Season 1” Card System that we have had for most of 2017:

FOR ESPORTS AND HIGHLY COMPETITIVE SIEGE PLAYERS:

• EQUALITY: The Season 1 system puts different players on different footings depending on what cards they earn.

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Have every competitive Ranked Siege player on even footing Day 1 so that skill reigns supreme in our main esports mode.
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: Every player gets every card immediately. The Bounded Mode equalizes every card at Level 4 for both  Ranked Siege Mode. Players can play unranked Classic Siege Mode to experience the Ranked Mode in a lower pressure environment.

• BALANCE:  At the highest level of play, the Season 1 system is difficult to balance. With so many cards, each with multiple levels, it’s an incredible challenge, especially as we try to evolve the game into a top esport.

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Improve our ability to balance the game  at very high-level competition.
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: With this system in place, the team can balance competitive Siege experience and esports around the “Level 4” version of the cards. We recognize that this will probably take a little while to get fully right (and the first release will almost certainly have some balance issues), but this gives us a decent starting place to build from.

• CUSTOMIZATION AND VARIATION: While the “multi-level” cards in the Season 1 system offer enormous customizability, in another way, they constrain customization as well.  A lot of good cards just “aren’t worth putting points into” given that the opportunity cost of doing so is not putting points into the handful of cards that really justify those points.

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Provide even greater customization and variation in deck building. I know that a lot of users find this point extremely counter-intuitive, but a lot of our testing suggests that having  “consistent level” cards can actually lead to GREATER customization and variation, by making more cards viable to use (and making it easier for the team to design and balance around that intent).
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: Make it easier for the design team to make EVERY CARD something that will be compelling to use.  Just like the balance items mentioned above, this will take some time to get exactly right, but this system gives us a better starting point and makes this goal more achievable.

• OTHER NOTES:

• Players will be able to play “Classic” mode both for RANKED SIEGE and UNRANKED SIEGE. This allows you to “practice” for Ranked in a casual queue that plays identically as the ranked queue. It also means that the early level player can be on equal footing from Day 1 in the unranked

FOR OTHER PLAYERS:

• PROGRESSION: For most “casual” players of Paladins, the card system in Season 1 did not provide a very meaningful progression and reward system. This has translated into limited engagement in the card system among a large set of the player population. It also has made players not feel they are rewarded enough for their time in the game. For many (most?) people, cards honestly just don’t feel that great to unlock in Season 1. Most people tend to unlock one deck that works “well enough”, or one that matches a top pro build, and then they are done and don’t think about it again.  Personally, I know that I have like 100 Radiant Chests unopened -- because I honestly just can’t be bothered to deal with unlocking more cards than I have already collected (even though I know that they could potentially improve my play) .

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Make receiving cards FUN AGAIN and give a nearly ENDLESS progression path in the game.  Ranking up cards and getting new levels is meant to be fun. We want everyone looking forward to what they are unlocking in their first win of the day chests and rewards.
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: With the “Unbound” cards, there is effectively an INFINITE progression system inside of the game inside of the unbound modes. Players constantly get new card levels to experiment and have fun with.  NOTE: A lot of this progression is meant to be felt not through buying chests direct for gold, but by earning chests for daily play, through daily chests and many other ways we will add in the future.
  

• DIVERSITY OF PLAY:  Because many casual players just settle on a single deck and never look at the cards again -- we have seen that this has limited the fun of the game for those players.

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Encourage players to try many different builds and to experiment with their champions.
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: Because you are randomly leveling up different cards to different levels, the Unbound mode encourages players to experiment with new builds -- using cards that they have just leveled up. For many, this is a fun and rewarding process that they would not take the time to do in the old system.

• EASE OF CONFIGURATION: To really exploit the Season 1 system, you needed to spend a lot of effort deck building. For a lot of people, this meta-game is extremely interesting and fun. For a lot of other people, it is a big hassle, especially on champions they don’t play enough.

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Offer players more default builds that they can try “out of the box” and level up those builds automatically as they progress.
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: Each champion comes with 3 default decks.  New decks are simpler to create and once created you get the fun of seeing them level up and progress in Unbound mode. .

• ENABLE MORE WAYS TO EXPERIENCE THE GAME: The game currently has a limited number of modes and ways to play.

• SEASON 2 GOAL: Offer more modes and ways to play!
• HOW THE SYSTEM INTENDS TO MEET THE GOAL: For one, the new Unbound modes can be a lot of great over-the-top fun and give you a new way to experience the game and also encourage you to be more experimental with trying new cards.  In addition, and perhaps more importantly, we have more up our sleeve to announce and rollout over the coming months to really enhance the Paladins experience and give you more ways to play. Hopefully we’ll be able to talk about some of these new modes at HRX in January.

Additional notes on the system:

• The extended PTS has helped ferret out a lot of bugs and super huge balance issues introduced by this new system. Hopefully we have found the biggest issues, but we recognize that there will be balance issues and other problems that we find after we go live.
• The queue system will look like the following:

• ARCADE MODES: Onlaught Unbound | Payload Unbound | Testmaps | More TBA Soon.
• SIEGE: Siege Unbound | Siege Classic | Siege Ranked
• Custom Matches
• Training

• OB64 is currently on track to go live early next week. The servers will need to be down for longer than normal while the update goes live, as it’s obviously a big patch and we have to update a lot of player data around it. Thanks so much for your patience.
• I love the fact that people are so passionate about our games. And I 100% understand and am very sympathetic to how that passion can translate to anger at times. If you have non-constructive negative or hateful things to say about the game or OB64 -- I encourage you to please direct them to my Twitter @schisam and not to our employees. It’s their job to deal with constructive feedback and to help grow our community. But it’s my job to tank the hate. I am happy to listen to it and will read it.