Production update-July 2022

Hey Champs! There has been a lot of talk about new things to come in Ultimate Champions lately so we wanted to give you a more comprehensive update on our plans.

Introducing our next update: Alistar

We do games for a living, so it’s no wonder we name our releases after our favorite game characters. Let us introduce you to Alistar — the next important update that will be released this week and will bring you lots of small things that will make your life easier and the gameplay more enjoyable.

Formations

From now on you will be able to pick your desired team formation when building your team. The team formation options available in game modes can vary from one gameweek to another, the idea is to make it fun, challenging and fresh every week!

Athlete profile

We also made some changes to the athlete profile page! Minutes played, team positions in their respective leagues and match dates are now easier to read at first glance.

Search feature

If you ever want to find specific athletes or other managers, the new search feature will be at your disposal. Just start typing in the box and we will give you our best suggestions.

League game mode updates

We’ll be adding two new public leagues on top of the Global League: “England” and “France”. That’s where the majority of our players are from at the moment! We’re looking forward to hear the community suggestions for the next public leagues we could add to the game.

In addition to that, settings to manage your private leagues will now be available(change the name/picture, invite/remove league members and delete the whole league).

Under the hood

On top of the new and fun features that we mentioned, we are continuously fixing bugs and improving our back office tools to make the game experience smoother for you.

Our next priority will be to improve the marketplace and other live issues we faced recently in order to be fully ready for the new season!

Game roadmap: what’s next?

Let’s talk a bit about what’s to come in the near future, with the start of the new season and some exciting new things that we have already teased you with.

Season Bonus Replacement

The “Season” bonus for cards of the current and previous season will be completely REMOVED.

The purpose of the Season bonus was to reward players for having the newest cards, but we have some problems with how this works for players:

• A card bought later in the season gives the bonus for less time therefore offering less value
• As we work towards having leagues from all over the world, knowing which cards are in season becomes more complex

Because of this, we will be replacing Season Bonus with Card Condition.

Card Condition

When an NFT (Epic or higher Card) is opened from a pack it will be in “MINT CONDITION” — It is pristine and still has that new card smell.

After a period of time the condition will change.

Conditions

• MINT — 0–3 months, 15% Performance Bonus
• GREAT — 3–12 months, 10% Performance Bonus
• GOOD — 12–24 months, 5% Performance Bonus
• Standard — after 24 months cards will no longer have a bonus.

The idea here is to give a similar feeling to the season bonus, but give every card the bonus for an equal time. No matter when in the season the card is opened.

Card Condition in card details (test visual)

• Common cards will start in standard condition. This means they will be weaker than previously, but will stay equally good forever so you don’t need to collect them every season.
• Genesis cards will now have a permanent “Mint Condition” bonus, in place of their permanent “Season” bonus. (5% buff)

Tournaments

Tournaments are an upcoming game mode in which every gameweek Managers can enter a team of Athletes that fit a certain restriction in each Tournament. Each Tournament will also be split into multiple divisions, with higher divisions offering bigger rewards, but requiring higher rarity cards to enter. Each Ultimate Card can only be registered in 1 Tournament at a time.

After each Gameweek, Managers in the top leaderboard positions in each Division of each Tournament will receive rewards.

Here is a sneak peak at some of the Tournament Restrictions we are planning to run most gameweeks:

• “Global” — No restrictions, players can build a team with any athletes
• “23 and under” — Athletes who are 23 years old or younger on the start date of the current Ultimate Champions season
• “Underdogs” — Athletes from a team that is currently placed in the lower half of their League (E.g. Liga 1 teams in League position 8–16 out of 16)
• “Mint Condition” — Only cards that are in a certain condition bonus (Good, Great, or Mint)

Additional Tournaments can appear depending on the gameweek, for example “English Teams” if there are many exciting English matches happening that gameweek. We expect 3–5 tournaments to be running per gameweek.

Here is a sneak peak at the approximate Divisions we are planning to use for Tournaments (available Divisions may change per Tournament):

Beginner

• Requires 2 Epics in the team
• Maximum 6 Epics, 0 Mythic, 0 Unique
• Approximate rewards: Common/Epic/MGC (top 200)

Epic

• Requires 8 Epics in the team
• Maximum 4 Mythics, 0 Unique
• Approximate rewards: Common/Epic/Mythic/Champ (top 50)

Mythic

• Requires 4 Mythic in the team
• Maximum 2 Uniques
• MINIMUM Epic cards can be entered (no commons)
• Approximate rewards: Epic/Mythic/Champ (top 10)

Unique

• Requires 1 Unique in the team
• Only available in “GLOBAL” tournaments to start, due to high requirement
• MINIMUM Epic cards can be entered (no commons)
• Approximate rewards: Mythic/Champ (top 3)

Some Tournaments may allow Managers to register a team in multiple different Divisions, with the number of entries decided per Tournament. The max will most commonly be 1 or 2 entries.

Tournaments are planned for release during August, around the same time as the UC 22/23 season.

League Changes

There will be big changes coming to Leagues in the new season! (The current standard gamemode)

Because they were previously the only gamemode, Leagues were the main place to receive rewards. Now that Tournaments will offer significant rewards, the focus of Leagues will be more casual.

1. A balanced and fun social experience for ALL managers, where you can compare your football knowledge against your friends and the community with no restrictions
2. An opportunity for new players to earn a basic set of Ultimate Cards (Common and Epic), allowing them to enter tournaments

To achieve these goals, the following changes will be released with Tournaments:

• No card Modifiers or Bonuses will take effect in Leagues! This means no rarity bonus, season bonus, special edition bonus, or anything. All players have an equal chance to show their skill on the leaderboard!
• Rewards will be simplified. MGC and Common cards will still be up for grabs, with a chance of an epic on a good week. But you will have to head into Tournaments to earn higher rarity Ultimate Cards and Champ!
• You can use any card from your collection in Leagues, even if they are already registered in a Tournament.

New Season Card Releases

As we enter the new season, part of the excitement is around NEW CARDS!!! But how will the new season work?

1. UC Seasons end on July 31st, and new seasons will begin a few weeks later in August (exact date TBD).
2. AFTER the new season starts, teams will start to receive their new season editions over time.
   > Not all at once! You can expect to see our existing teams get their new editions with new art and fresh transfers over the ~2 months following the new season. Usually alongside a pack drop.
3. The new season will be listed on the card (“2022–23”), however because the season performance bonus has been removed this is only for information. Recently opened cards from the previous season will receive the same score until their Condition degrades!
4. Cards from the previous season will continue to be distributed in packs until the new editions for a team have been released. Once a team has a new edition, the previous edition for the entire team will no longer be distributed. (If a team is not resigned for a season, their cards will no longer be distributed once the new season starts)

Mobile UI

Improving how responsive our in-game interface is on mobile is a key production effort for the new season in order to onboard new players.

While we won’t have every screen responsive in one go, we aim to have the onboarding fully mobile friendly.

A little sneak peek with our draft and filters

Token launch

We will release our premium token (the famous $CHAMP) on exchanges during the last week of July in an update called Bard.

Withdrawals and deposits will become available simultaneously during this update — as well as other minor improvements.

We strongly encourage you to complete the KYC process soon because we’re planning a special airdrop for the first bunch of users who have completed it! (See “Identity Check” in your account settings)

That’s it, Champs! As always, thank you for your feedback, patience and passion.