ROCKET ARENA 3.0 UPDATE NOTES

January 20th 2021

The 3.0.0 update brings with it a new Rocket Championship Tour Competitor in Gant, tuning/balance updates, AI improvements, and lots of new features such as Emotes and Totem Companions!

New Competitor

Gant joins the Rocket Championship Tour!

As Crater’s resident superhero, the Golden Gryphon, Gant is a unique Competitor in Rocket Arena who has two unique Forms with completely different abilities and attributes. Over the course of the battle, Gant transforms between his Normal and Hero Forms automatically based upon his unique resource, the Hero Gauge.

In his Normal form, Gant rapidly fires Talon Rockets at opponents, filling his Hero Gauge with each hit. When the fighting gets too intense, he can use his Guard ability to shield himself and gain the advantage on his opponents, reducing his damage taken and gaining Hero Gauge when hit. Gant’s powerful Leap helps him close the distance, helping him to finish off opponents by reloading his weapon and granting him a damage boost, or allowing him to gain Hero Gauge by jumping into the fray with his Guard ability. Additionally, Gant gains Hero Gauge passively over time while in Normal Form.

When Gant’s Hero Gauge is filled, he automatically transforms into his Hero Form, the legendary Golden Gryphon! While in Hero Form, Gant trades his Talon Rockets for Gryphon Gauntlets, allowing him to hurl mighty gusts of wind at his opponents and all evil doers alike. As a proper superhero, Gant can use his Flying Charge to bolt across the sky faster than a speeding rocket. He can also use Flying Charge to get up close and personal with his opponents in order to use his Whirlwind ability, turning Gant into a powerful spinning vortex, pulling opponents in and constantly damaging them. Additionally, Gant takes reduced damage while in Hero Form, gains increased mobility, and players can make him descend slowly by holding the Jump input while in air. Finally, while in Hero Form, the Hero Gauge depletes over time, and when it runs out, Gant will automatically transform back into Normal Form.

Gant’s Abilities

• Form Switching and Hero Gauge
  • Gant has two unique forms: Normal Form and Hero Form.
  • Over the course of the battle, Gant will automatically transform between his Normal and Hero Form based on his unique resource, the Hero Gauge.
  • While in Normal Form:
    • Hero Gauge is passively generated over time, and Gant’s Primary and Secondary both grant Hero Gauge when dealing or receiving damage, respectively.
    • When the Hero Gauge is filled, Gant automatically transforms into Hero Form, resetting his Ability and Dodge cooldowns and removing Megablast Danger.
  • While in Hero Form:
    • The Hero Gauge depletes over time.
    • When the Hero Gauge is empty, Gant automatically transforms into Normal Form, resetting his Ability cooldowns.
• Normal Form
  • Talon Rockets (Primary)
    • Accurate, fast-moving, rapid fire rockets. Hits fill Hero Gauge.
  • Guard (Secondary)
    • Brace for attacks and take reduced damage. Being hit fills Hero Gauge.
  • Leap (Special)
    • Leap forward with a brief speed and damage boost. Reloads Primary when activated.
• Hero Form (Golden Gryphon)
  • Normal to Hero Transformation
    • Gant’s Ability and Dodge cooldowns are reset and Megablast Danger is removed.
  • Gryphon Gauntlets (Primary)
    • Punch the air creating powerful blasts of wind.
  • Whirlwind (Secondary)
    • Become a spinning vortex, damaging nearby opponents.
  • Flying Charge (Special)
    • Blast through the sky with tremendous speed. Hold to fly farther.
  • Hero’s Cape (Jump)
    • Gant jumps higher in Hero Form. Hold the jump input to descend slowly.
  • Passive
    • Gant takes reduced damage and has increased mobility while in Hero Form.

Emotes

Chat Emotes

Express your thoughts or highlight a great play using the in-game Chat Emotes to make your hero play an animation, even while moving!

• Press the chat button in the lower-left of the screen at any time to make the hero animate right in the middle of the action.
• To start, all characters have four default animations that are automatically equipped.
• In-Game Emotes never get in the way of making an epic play! Players can emote at any point without worry, as it can be interrupted by their actions or by getting hit by an opponent.

Ready Emotes

After players select their Hero in the Pre-Game menu, they will be able to use the chat buttons in the bottom left of the screen to perform Ready Emote animations and show off their style to their teammates.

• There are four Ready Emote slots available for players to customize.
• Players will have a default Ready Emote equipped to start for all heroes.
• Mix and match Ready Emotes to create fun combinations.

Victory Poses

Players can show off their own style of celebration during the Post-Game Victory sequence. All heroes have a default Victory Pose to start for when they’re on the winning team.

• When the winning team is shown after a match, the heroes will strike a Victory Pose automatically.
• Player’s can equip new Victory poses to show their style.
• Each hero has one Victory Pose customization slot that can be modified.

How to Equip Expressions

To equip available expressions; enter the Competitor’s tab in the Front End UI and select a hero to customize. Located next to the Outfits, Artifacts, and Progress buttons, there is a new button that says ‘Expressions’. Each Rocket Championship Tour Competitor has three different Expression categories that can be customized.

• Chat Emotes have four slots available. There are four Chat Emote animations equipped to each hero by default and all of them can be rearranged or replaced with new emotes as they’re acquired.
• Ready Emote has four slots available. As Ready emotes are unlocked they can be equipped into any slot, rearranged, or replaced as new Ready emotes are acquired.
• Victory Pose has one slot available. There is a default animation equipped in each Expression category to start.

Totem Companions

Totem Companions have been added as a new Totem customization option! Players can equip Totem Companions to their Totems and show them off in the Pre-Game and Post-Game screens! Companions each have a unique intro animation and come to a rest atop your Totem! Additional Companions can be acquired through the Blast Pass or through direct purchase.

Competitor Balance and Tuning

We’ve got a few balance changes to a couple of Competitors that we felt needed some immediate attention after our 2.3 update, as well as a pretty large bug fix that was pointed out by our community. In truth, we did a fairly large rebalance last update, and we wanted to see how things played out with our changes before making any knee jerk reactions. Plus, with the holiday season, our time to get larger changes into 3.0 was limited. The good news is that we have several Competitor changes lined up for our next update (3.1) that we hope will shake up the meta and shift the ol’ tier lists around, so please try to sit tight for a bit. As an aside, thank you to everyone who participated in the Rocket Arena Tournament last month, it was great to see some really high level play and definitely helped us figure out the direction we want to go in for 3.1 (congrats to team Child’s Play!).

General

• Fixed issues where several Competitor’s Primary enemy AoE radius was much larger than intended
• Item use is now disabled while Dodging

Amphora

Our resident deep sea diver was hit a little too hard in the last update, so we bumped up her Torpedoes a bit.

• Charge Torpedo (Primary)
  • Uncharged
    • Increased projectile collision radius from 120 to 130
  • Fully Charged
    • Increased damage from 35 to 40

Leef

The input blocking on Leef’s Primary was causing some frustration, so we’ve reduced it.

• Charged Beam (Fully Charged Primary)
  • Reduced input blocking after reaching maximum charge from 0.65s to 0.475s

Mysteen

Mysteen can soak up a lot of damage in several ways, which can make her a pretty tough KO. So, we gave players a little more time to be able to do damage to her. Skilled players could also keep her in the air for a very long time, which we aren’t getting rid of, but we are bringing her slightly more down to earth.

• Mirror Shield (Secondary)
  • Increased cooldown from 4s to 5s
• Phantasm (Special)
  • Reduced damage immunity upon initial activation from 0.7s to 0.55s
• Levitation (Jump)
  • Reduced maximum duration from 2.5s to 2s

Bots and AI

Bots can now Dodge, Leef and Mysteen have joined the bot ranks, Extreme Bot nerfs, and improved navigation headline the AI improvements for this update.

New Competitor Bots!

• Leef and Mysteen Bots can now appear as teammates or opponents

General

• All Bots now have the ability to Dodge incoming projectiles
• Bots will now equip cosmetic skins, megablast trails, and return trails

Extreme Bots

• Increased Blast Meter regen delay from 2.25s to 4s
• Passive damage reduction will now be removed while in Megablast Danger

Navigation Improvements

• We’ve performed passes on several maps to improve bot navigation and movement

Artifacts

We’ve added three new Artifacts this Season and adjusted a few to change up the meta (looking at you Coldsnap Locket).

New Artifacts!

Forever Snowman (Slot 1)

• Briefly become Invulnerable for (1 / 1.25 / 1.5)s when entering Megablast Danger; Blast Meter regen delay increased by 1.5s

Championship Trophy (Slot 2)

• Rocket Jumps have more directional control and increase movement speed by (15 / 17.5 / 20)% for 2s

Dark Matter (Slot 3)

• Using an Item increases your damage and impulse dealt by 5%, reduces damage and impulse taken by 5%, and increases your speed by 20% for (4 / 4.5 / 5)s

Current Artifact Tuning

• Frozen Bubble (Slot 1)
  • Increased from (1 / 1.25 / 1.5)s to (1.5 / 1.75 / 2)s
• Jaaqua Amulet (Slot 1)
  • Increased from (15 / 17.5 / 20)% to (20 / 22.5 / 25)%
• Coldsnap Locket (Slot 2)
  • Reduced from (50 / 75 / 100)% to (30 / 40 / 50)%
• Crystal Crown (Slot 3)
  • Reduced from (30 / 35 / 40)% to (20 / 25 / 30)%

Game Modes and Maps

Map and Mode Selection

• We’ve improved our mode selection logic to better allow us to increase or decrease a mode’s probability in a playlist
• We’ve added more modes to several maps they weren’t on previously for more variety in the playlist

Bug Fixes

Competitors

• Flux
  • Black Hole Cat (Secondary)
    • Fixed an issue that could cause the projectile absorption effect to remain active if two Black Hole Cats merged together
    • Explosion AoE now properly impulses the Rocketball
    • Charging SFX will now end if Flux’s Secondary Ability is cancelled

Items

• Speed Boost
  • Fixed an issue where the item’s field of view increase would stack when using multiple Speed Boost items.

Maps

• General
  • Fixed multiple areas where competitors could get stuck inside of geometry while using movement abilities

As always, we value your feedback and if you’d like to leave us some now, or in the future, hit us up on the Rocket Arena Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch Streams, DMs, etc. - we read as much as we can!

Thanks for being part of our community and we’ll see you in Crater! #LETSROCKET

The team at FSG