DH State of the Game December 2020
Welcome to the December 2020 State of the Game!
Right now things are running pretty well. Yes, we’ve had some bumps along the way. Like the rest of the world, Disney Heroes has had its ups and downs in 2020. But I hope you agree overall the game is moving in a good direction and you’re excited for 2021.
Since the last State of the Game post, some of the major changes we’ve made are:
- Updated rewards and resources so they scale with your team level or with the current maximum rank on the server
- A significant example is when we improved Guild War Box rewards to keep them engaging.
- Refreshed the Black Market and Mega Mart to make them more relevant to the game.
- Made improvements to Invasion that we hope will make it more fun to play, with more on the way!
- Refreshed the Friend System to make disks easier to obtain
- Simplified and improved the Mission System.
We continue to keep an eye on the hero power creep, and continue to refresh old favorites. We published a public roadmap to give you a look into some of the things that are in the works, and we’re working on final polish for an in-game survey tool that will let us ask you more targeted questions.
In 2020 we released 44 heroes so far, including Kim Possible! Way back in May 2019, Kim Possible was on her way into the 1.10 update. However, some issues came up with her skills and art and we had to go back to the drawing board. This happens with heroes sometimes and they get moved down the roadmap. But Kim was special to you. Many of you were very enthusiastic in asking about when she’d be ready and kept us pushing to get her in position to release. Finally, in October she was approved! I want to say a very special thank you to one of our game engineers who took personal time to set up Kim’s scavenger hunt. She really enjoys cyphers and was so happy to watch you work your way through the challenge.
Red Skills were first launched in September of 2019 and as of this month, we’ve completed the collection. Every hero in the game now has a red skill! It was a huge task to design, implement, and balance new skills for every single hero in the game. But it did allow us to refresh older heroes and expand their skill sets. We know it’s challenging to get enough red skill chips for all the heroes. The first step to addressing this was to scale red chip drops in Epic City Watch, which we implemented with the 2.5 release. We’ll continue to watch how much that helps and will make future adjustments as needed. We have a few other ideas the designers are considering that you may see later in 2021.
So, what’s next for Disney Heroes?
As you know from our Roadmap, we’re working on two big items: expanding the campaign and developing the next rank. The map is full, but the adventure is far from over! You’ll see the campaign expansion appear in January’s 2.6 update. The next rank after red is in the final stages of design and is scheduled for release in early March’s 2.7 update. The new rank is going to be different from Red and will introduce a new way for your heroes to make an impact in battle! We’ll have more details to share as we get closer to March. As always, we plan to continue quality of life improvements, starting with hero management and continuing with resource and reward scaling.
Heroes are the heart of our game and we have a great lineup planned for 2021. We’ll be both expanding existing IPs and adding new ones! In 2021 you can look forward to characters from Pixar, live action films, Disney Classics, TV shows, recent movies and more!
Well, 2020 has been quite a year. We know many of you, like us, have struggled with Covid-19, engaged in discussions of justice, and experienced an enormous amount of uncertainty this year. We’re honored that you’ve chosen to spend time with us this year. We hope you all found some joy in playing Disney Heroes in 2020. We here at PerBlue have certainly enjoyed making this game and look forward to another exciting (and hopefully safe, healthy, and less stressful) year.
