Cantina Royale 2.0 Beta Announcement

The moment you’ve all been eagerly awaiting has arrived: the long-awaited 2.0 Beta is finally at our doorstep. In this article, we aim to share the ins and outs of this beta phase, offering you a glimpse into what lies ahead and, equally important, what won’t be included in this launch. We’re very excited to finally see the community interact with this new version so let’s jump right into it.

Beta Details

First things first, let’s talk about how players will get access to this beta program. Due to having a live game in parallel and the fact that we want users to be free to experiment and explore during the beta, you’ll be able to access the beta simply with a guest account. This will allow you to experience Cantina Royale 2.0 exactly as a new user would and this is a key element of this launch as we’re starting to activate our user acquisition channels.

Due to the beta being accessible with a guest account only, players will not be able to import their existing NFT characters and will have to experience the game exactly as a new user would, with the new free character classes.

The beta will also be divided into two separate stages, one for the early game where players can experience progression from scratch and a separate beta shortly after the first one where players can interact with the endgame. More details about their timeline later below.

So what are we actually looking to explore during the beta release?

With this first beta release, we’re focusing on key elements related to gameplay, balance and new user experience. These are all important to get right as we start onboarding new users and setting a baseline for our retention metrics.

Here’s what we are looking to test:

• Core gameplay
• FTUE (First Time User Experience) funnel
• Balance of weapons, skills, perks
• Tracking and BI
• Stability & Performance

Here’s what we are not going to test during beta:

• Monetization
• Economy and progression balance

Last but definitely not least, we’re going to look out for any reported issues and bugs that players might experience and to fix them between the beta periods and the launch.

IMPORTANT: The beta version will provide no CRT earnings and all progress, resources and upgrades earned during beta will be lost.

How can players share feedback with the team during beta?

We will provide players with a simple bug & feedback form once we’re close to the launch, a separate announcement for this link will be published and will also be pinned on the relevant social channels.

CR 2.0 Character Level changes

During our playtest sessions we kept encountering a problem that required our attention and that is related to the level 100s the game currently provides. With the new weapon system where they are much more important in the players progression, it was very difficult to balance a system where characters can reach level 100 while at the same time having a separate weapon progression system. This also posed some challenges when it came to matchmaking players, think of the example of a level 70 NFT who decides to try out a new level 1 weapon. That player will have high stats for their character and deal low amounts of damage due to their new weapon.

Another disadvantage of the 100 available levels is the fact that players don’t really feel a power increase each time they level-up. It’s really not satisfying to upgrade a character and not really feel any difference when playing it, having a lower number of levels means each upgrade will be meaningful and impactful for your gameplay.

After numerous design and testing sessions, we decided to go with a lower level cap, more specifically level 20. This change also means it makes it easier for players to understand how powerful their teammates and enemies are.

Before we go into the details of the max level changes, we want to emphasize that relative power between NFTs will remain unchanged. In other words, if you take a level 75 and a level 50 character, the intent is to retain the difference in power and earning potential after they are converted to level 15 and 10 respectively. Reaching max level on a character does not change with the new system, it’s more about the frequency of how often you need to upgrade and the impact of that upgrade.

With this new system, players will unlock the Talent System upon reaching Level 7 and receive 5 talent points with each level up from that point onward, up to a maximum of 70 talent points at level 20.

Overflow XP

Any amount of overflow xp will be transformed into character tokens, taking into account the percentage of the character progress bar. This means that experience points accumulated will not disappear during the conversion, even if the character has accumulated more exp than it needs for a certain level.

So to sum-up this topic, players will not have progression removed, the new level 20 max for characters is designed for better balancing, matchmaking and a more impactful progression experience.

Timeline

Due to the now famous limitation we have on Play Store, where we can’t decide when a build goes live once we apply it for review, we’ll share the dates related to when we plan to submit the apps on App Store and Play Store.

Stage 1 — Early Game

We will submit the apps on Friday 14th of July and if everything goes well, past experience means we’ll most likely go live the following day on Saturday. This beta stage will be live for 2 days upon which the beta will go offline and we’ll focus on fixing the most important bugs/issues should they occur.

Stage 2 — Late Game

Setting an exact date for the 2nd stage is difficult due to the fact that we want to be able to react to player feedback and bug reports before proceeding. Still, we expect the 2nd stage to go live a week later after the end of Stage 1. We will keep the community updated during the beta.

The Stage 2 of the beta will provide players with higher level characters from the get go in order to experience the gameplay with fully upgraded characters.

Cantina Royale 2.0 Live Release

Once both beta stages are concluded, the team will focus on fixing or adjusting the game based on the data we are gathering during beta as well as the feedback we receive from the community. Depending on how smooth everything goes, we expect the live release to follow in the following 2 weeks after the beta ends.

I hope you are as excited as we are to experience Cantina Royale 2.0 as we are to launch it and see how it plays in your hands.

Thank you all,

The Cantina Royale Development Team