Hello everyone! Welcome to the first ever Arcanists dev diary, where we will be going over much of the content of our largest update in the game’s history: The Rated Seasons Update (v9.0), coming July 1st.

At the heart of this update is, as the name may suggest, rated seasons! Rated seasons involve restrictions on spellbooks and maps for approximately a four month cycle, as well as rotating battle pass rewards. The main goal of rated seasons is to rejuvenate the rated scene by diversifying spellbook use, as well as the maps that are played on. At the beginning of every season, “soft resets” will affect players’ rating. This means that you will lose a portion of your rating at the start of every season if your rating is on the higher end of the spectrum, as opposed to losing all of it. However, for the first season within this update, there will be a one-time hard reset on rating to start the rated seasons cycle with everyone being on a fresh slate.

Out of all the content of the update - seasonal spellbook rotations will be the greatest change to general gameplay. After Arcanists released on Steam, some of the most common feedback among players was that the diversity of spell usage was very low, and that a metagame which had been largely static over the course of many years reinforced this. Since many solutions were tested over the years with little to no improvement on this issue, we have decided to take a more bold approach that will hopefully address this once and for all.

At the start of every season, within rated, the spellbooks that players can use will be restricted. These spellbook restrictions will change after each season in order to shift the metagame and prevent staleness. For example, this means that for one season, you may be able to use flight, while in other seasons you might not be able to take that spell into your rated matches. Since some books have spells with a much higher usage rate than others, disabling some of these books will force players to be creative with their spellbook selection. This also is also intended to hopefully allow less experienced players to level the playing field against veterans by using creativity, because all players will have to discover what spellbooks work best at the start of each season. Now, some important things should be clarified:

• Seasonal spellbook rotations will NOT affect unrated games. Unrated games will maintain their customizability.

• Seasonal spellbook rotations will also NOT affect random spells games that are rated.

• Spellbooks will not be rotated indiscriminately - this means that there may be a spellbook that isn’t used in rated for multiple seasons in a row.

• Map rotations (see below) will also follow the above parameters.

Like spellbooks, the pool of maps available for players to play in rated matches will change each season. Over the past few years, Grassy Hills was the most played map across 1v1 high times and low times rated matches by a wide margin, which further reinforced the static metagame. Seasonal map rotations will encourage gameplay beyond grassy hills, bringing more life to the meta. Additionally, since seasonal spellbook rotations may render some maps as either exploitable or unenjoyable to play with particular spellbooks in mind, the rated queue will force a random map out of a small pool of around 3 or 4 specific maps per season. Once you find your opponent in the queue and your map has been selected at random, you will be able to pick your spellbook best suited for that map.

With each season, there will be a new battle pass, and all of its content will not affect gameplay. In our feedback survey, one of the biggest concerns of adding battle passes was the pricing, so let’s address that first. For the first season, the battle pass will be completely free. Additionally, within every battle pass, you can earn enough in-game currency (crystals) to be able to purchase the battle pass of the next season. There will be more details in regards to what the battle pass consists of and the ways to gain experience for it soon. But one thing that can be confirmed, is that there will be many cosmetic rewards!

Speaking of cosmetics, there will be a new cosmetic slot - pets! Like battle pass content, pets will not have any effect on gameplay. But they sure can complete an outfit. Some pets will be obtainable in the shop. There will also be book-themed pets which can be obtained randomly by playing standard or elemental rated games with at least 1 spell from the given spellbook. After each match, you get 1 roll to potentially obtain a random pet. If the roll is successful, the random pet will be chosen randomly, weighted by the spells you brought in your book. There’s no chance to get duplicate pets and the existing pets you have will not affect your chances.
Emotes are also a new cosmetic item unique to the shop for now that you can use to taunt your opponent. But unlike pets, you’re not tied to equipping one per outfit. Instead, you can access all your available emotes at any time in-game, by pressing “G” as the default hotkey. This will bring up a list of all the emotes you can use. 

A major complaint that players had about general gameplay was experiencing bad luck with getting a bad spawn on a map, and then getting sunk by their opponent on the first turn. To address this, we’ve added a system called Non-Telegraphed Position Selection to all rated matches by default. How it works: At the beginning of the match, you will have one side of the map where you are allowed to teleport, and your opponent will be able to teleport onto the other side. After you have both selected your position, you will teleport to those positions at the same time. Likewise, for team rated matches, each team can teleport to their designated side of the map. With this feature, players will be able to avoid being sunk turn 1, as well as some ugly random spawns.

For those who enjoy one of the most popular modes in the game, random spells, we have a new feature for you too! Similar to how players in standard rated games get to choose their spellbook at the beginning of the match, after the map has been decided at random, random spells players will also get a choice of three books to choose from at the beginning of the match, in order to reduce the chance of getting stuck with a bad book.

For unrated matches, we have a couple of new fun game modes for players to enjoy - Dynamic Spellbooks, and Mirror Mode.

Dynamic Spellbooks is a gamemode where players start with zero spells, and each turn, can pick one spell from the entire selection of spells in the game. Once you have chosen a spell, it will be a part of your spellbook for the rest of the game - so choose wisely! Mirror Mode on the other hand, is a gamemode where players all receive the same book. So if you think you’re the best at playing a particular spellbook - put your opponent up for a challenge to see if they can outplay you with your own book!

While we will be creating a new rated ladder (split) for team matches, which will encompass both standard and elemental teams, there is also a change to how team rated matches will be arranged. Another point of feedback that we are addressing is related to community toxicity. To be specific, we are addressing the issue of players being gatekept from being able to play rated team matches, due to lobby hosts having the ability to kick players from lobbies at will. This gatekeeping behavior especially targeted newer and less experienced players, hindering them from being able to integrate into the Arcanists community. Additionally, the aforementioned ability has also led to players picking and choosing their opponents carefully in order to exploit the rating system. This was possible due to Arcanists being unlike most other games in that rated team matches were arranged through the lobby system. Going forward, rated team lobbies will be replaced by a party-up queue system found in many other team games. To play a rated team match, you will need to first invite players to your party, and then the party host will be able to enter the queue with the settings they choose on behalf of their party. Given more recent updates such as broadcasting queue information such as - who is queuing, what settings they are queuing with, etc., as well as the options for the rated queue being greatly reduced to allow for easier matchmaking, we hope that this change will be more of a minor inconvenience to arranging rated team games instead of a major one.

Besides everything mentioned above, there are a few extra features being added in this update, as well. The controls menu has been reworked to be much more organized, for example. In addition to this, a new camera option will be available which follows spells, especially global-type spells such as volcanoes, a lot better.

Many of the major aspects of the update have been highlighted, but there are still other major features coming in the rated seasons update soon that are a work in progress.

One of the biggest works in progress is the general rated system rework. Some components of this such as the rated queue being reworked and simplified have been mentioned already. But besides that, for starters, the current rating splits will be changed. The new rating splits will be as follows:

• HTS (High Time Standard / 60 second turn timer, 1v1)

• LTS (Low Time Standard / 10 second turn timer, 1v1)

• RND (Random Spells, 1v1 or teams); this will also have a “casino” preset where matches will have a volcano armageddon starting turn 1

• TEAM (Standard or Elementals / 30 second turn timer, 2v2 and 3v3)

Additionally, rating as a number will be replaced with a more modern tier system. Rating will still be split among the four types above however, so while someone may be an apprentice in one of the rating types, they could be an arch mage in another.

The rating tiers will be as follows (in order of lowest to highest):

• Arcanist

• Initiate

• Apprentice

• Acolyte

• Mage

• High Mage

• Arch Mage

Finally, the last work in progress is a highly requested singleplayer feature - being able to play against bots! At the moment, they’re not very smart, but they can aim quite well sometimes. And that highlights some of the exciting content coming in the next update! We will be keeping a close eye on feedback and suggestions, as well as potential bug reports; our public Discord community is the best place to share these things. You can join it here:

https://www.discord.gg/arcanists

Special thanks to Inc and the Concept Team for helping write this up.

We hope you’re as excited for this update as we are!