Production Update — November 2022

Hello Champs!

Even though the World Cup time means a slower period in our game, behind the scenes we are cooking up a storm. So here’s another production update from the team to let you know what’s up!

In this production update you’ll find:

• What to expect in December in the Garen and Gnar updates and the upcoming Economy update
• The marketplace improvements we’re planning in the Hecarim update coming early January
• Basketball Alpha & Beta deployment plans
• BNB Chain deployment plans
• Recap of our discussion with the OGs!

Let’s get cracking 🔥

December in Ultimate Champions

The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty exciting because we have three upcoming updates: Garen, Gnar and the much expected Economy update.

Garen

First up we have the Garen update bringing a lot of improvements to the player onboarding:

• Brand new draft UI / UX — Players can now draft their team directly on a Pitch view
• Revamped tutorial steps — shorter and clearer
• Updated price calculations for the initial common cards
• Auto-draft (possibility to fill all your position with one click based on our suggestions)
• Automatically registering drafted teams for the upcoming gameweek in Leagues

The goal of all this is to help new players kickstart their journey in the best possible way 💫

Gnar

Immediately after that, the Gnar update will introduce:

• the new header navigation which will set the tone for the rest of the platform improvements that we have planned (including basketball when the time comes)

• the new Mobile friendly team builders for leagues and tournaments to help all our existing managers build their teams on their phones.

The new features are being tested as we speak so stay tuned for the news on the exact release date!

Economy update

We have mentioned previously that we want to do a serious overhaul of the game economy and reward structures and we meant it!

You can expect the changes to be deployed starting Gameweek 49 (16/12).

This update will include:

• First version of tiered rewards! 🏆- we’ll start simple with a Star Tier for the top positions of the tournaments.
• Rarity bonus changes — we plan to increase the gap for the bonuses of each rarity on top of the bonuses between rarity and condition.
• Reworked MGC offers & Leagues rewards — we want to improve the sustainability and reliability of the F2P rewards.
• Final tournament reward changes

Future Updates

January seems to be right around the corner and we have many things in store for when we come back from Christmas break with the Hecarim update. 🎄

Hecarim: Marketplace improvements

One of those things is the updated design for the marketplace, collection and card page. The new versions will be mobile-friendly, basketball-ready and will try to solve some usability issues that have been pointed out.

On top of that we will include some much requested new features:

• Improved filters UX
• Possibility to list cards even if they are registered in a team (and vice-versa)
• Marketplace listings will expire after 48 hours
• Sorting cards by best value (a function of price and average score including the bonuses)

WIP UI

Basketball Alpha & Beta! 🏀🏀

We will roll out the Euroleague Basketball Alpha at the end of January. Then the Basketball Beta including all gameplay features will follow shortly mid-February!

More details about Basketball in January: we will reveal our scoring system, Cards and first tournament plans! We’re also planning a little reward for our UC Football players🤫

Binance partnership

January will be the month where we finalize the switch to BNB chain as part of our partnership with Binance. After the release date, all new cards will be minted on the BNB chain, while the old ones will stay on Polygon. Two systems should coexist smoothly and as managers you will not feel any difference in the game.

We want to wish a very warm welcome to all our new managers that arrived through the announcement of our partnership and thank everyone who stuck by us through all our ups and downs.

OG Questions & Answers!

On Monday 14th we had a great time chatting with a group of OG members. We covered a bunch of the most frequently asked topics and questions. Here is a condensed summary.

Q: The community was informed in the last production update, that the team would be improving the MP & giving it attention. What steps can UC take or are they already taking, to improve the liquidity in the MP?

A: The Market Place has been a priority for sometime now!

We have already implemented changes within the MP, which has improved stability, and we are currently working on additional improvements for the Hecarim update. (See sections above for more details)

Q: How does UC determine, when to drop regular packs?

A: The Pack Drops are continuously being monitored!

Having Packs as our only source for “New Athletes” has been challenging. In June and July we sold almost no packs, and in August, September and October we observed a much higher demand, and therefore decided to raise the supplies, and most of these were purchased. The demand has since eased in October and picked up again mid-November.

When it comes to the nature, and supply of the packs we have multiple metrics that we use internally to determine our plans:

• Project KPI’s — (active users, marketplace volume, clubs supply, etc)
• Financial Objectives — (based on our monthly / yearly objectives)
• Marketing Opportunities — (activations with the club socials for example)
• Community Sentiment — (the sentiment of our overall community)

Based on the above factors, we take an educated decision on the Pack’s nature and supply. Sometimes we hit the right chord, sometimes we sell too much or not enough — we’re still in a learning phase about our model.

Q: When will tiered rewards be implemented? Is there a possibility that the Athlete Rewards can be reduced for the various Tournaments/Divisions?

Tiered rewards (a simple version of it) and Rewards in general will be adjusted for Gameweek 49! (See details in the above sections).

Q: There are concerns, and constant issues with the Blockchain and Polygon network — what are your next steps?

‘Blockchain’ related issues can have different causes — they can sometimes be due to a mistake on our side, sometimes it’s our blockchain provider that has problems or sometimes it’s actually Polygon.

One next step we took recently is to rely on multiple blockchain providers, instead of only one (Alchemy) — to make sure we have some backup solution to rely upon.

Q: How does Ultimate Champions determine “Active Users”?

Similarly to other online products, we define “active users” as players that interacted in any kind of way with the game during a specific period. We either look at our Daily Active Users (DAU), Weekly Active Users (WAU) or Monthly Active Users (MAU).

To have a more precise definition of “active users”, we also look at what we define as a “Critical Action”. Typically in Ultimate Champions a critical action would be purchasing a card, buying a pack or registering for a Gameweek.

Q: What is UCs thoughts to the SoRare & Premier League news?

We have always admired and respected SoRare’s progress in this space, they inspired us a lot. We do believe that there are enough sports fans for two fantasy games powered by NFTs. SoRare is doing great moves to bring a mainstream audience towards web3 and we believe that the Premier League News will bring another wave of users which will be beneficial for UC as well. Ultimate Champions has signed a multiple year long partnership with Arsenal, so there should be no concerns in this regard. (Go Gunners!)

We as the UC TEAM thoroughly enjoy conversing, and listening to your ideas, sentiments and constructive criticism. We are all learning together within this project, and the strides that have been made since our Alpha in March have been steady. We are not perfect, but we always strive for perfection and we appreciate your support on this journey with us.

Thank you OGs and Champs! We are just getting started! 🚀