The club level cap has been increased from 30 to 100 to provide plenty of room for growth through new league divisions.

Go grab some more trophies!

League Progression Update

We’ve changed the league progression to create more challenge in higher division levels.

Previously each division level contained a range of 6 Club Levels, e.g. Levels 1-6 in Div 1, and Levels 7-12 in Division Level 2, and so on. This has changed so that every 2nd division level the range of levels increases by 1.

So we’ll have Club Levels 13-19 (7 levels) in Division Level 3, CL20-26 (7 levels) in Division Level 4, and L27-34 (8 levels) in Division Level 5 and so on. This means all current level 30 clubs will find themselves in the middle of Division Level 5 and will need to battle their way to promote. See the wiki for more.

Clubs can now also promote by winning the league.

Training Intensity Multiplier

On the training screen, managers may now increase the number of sessions that will be applied in a given day’s training. The normal daily training session is free for everyone while any extra sessions cost tokens. Extra sessions after the 2nd provide diminishing returns.

Training Matches

Clubs can now enter into a special type of instant friendly called a Training Match. This requires a small number of tokens which can be acquired from sponsors or other in-game rewards.

Training matches provide 10% of either a forwards or backs training session (depending on each player’s position) to all players who get onto the field including bench players who come on to replace an injury.

New Card Rarities

All existing cards in the game are now known as commons and foils. The new card tiers are uncommon, rare, epic, and of course, legendary. But be warned, these cards can be difficult to obtain.

Read more on the wiki.

Overpowered? Maybe…

There are several new categories but the most exciting is our new legendary player match cards which honour some legends of the game.

Take the Lomu card, which gives a holder a guaranteed try if they get the ball in the opposition half , or Pocock with the ability to turnover any ruck they attend!

There are cards which provide extra training, accelerate academy development, heal players instantly, or even heal your entire squad! See them all on the wiki.

These may break the game. You decide, and let us know what you think in Discord. Genuinely though… we may have overdone it.

New Academy Slot

If you’re coming back to the game after a hiatus—or maybe you’re returning from your ban handed out by World Rugby after a world cup final—and you need to add some new blood into your team fast, we’ve got you covered!

You can now play extra cards when developing new youth players and there are some powerful new cards called “Academy Fast Track” to help you get players through the academy even faster.

Please report any issues to ⁠the #bugs channel in Discord and we’ll sort’em right out!

Unfortunately, it’s become so commonplace. So, at Blackout Games we wanted to make sure that free playing and paying users were on the same playing field, and were able to compete fairly.

It’s for this reason that we’ve created and fine-tuned the ‘Pay-For-Variety’ (PFV) Business Model. A model that ensures all users have a premium and high-quality experience with Blackout Rugby, while also guaranteeing that we can pay the bills, and continue to work on the game we love. ‘Pay-For-Variety’ may not be the most profitable approach we could take, but we’re confident it provides a premium experience to both paying and free playing users.

It is important to note, that ‘Pay-For-Variety’ and ‘Pay-To-Win’ aren’t mutually exclusive business models. Instead, ‘Pay-For-Variety’ is our best attempt to minimize the influences of ‘Pay-To-Win’, to ensure users cannot simply pay real money and win all their games. We’ve worked hard to ensure that everyone will have a quality experience regardless of their ability to pay, while also ensuring we’re able to pay the bills.

So how does it work? Well, the key is in the name. Providing variety to a paying customer, without upsetting the equilibrium of game balance. It all relates to providing value to users outside of an unfair advantage. Our first objective was ensuring that in-game purchases weren’t at the expense of our free-playing users. But instead, providing paying-users additional benefits and features.

Tokens, our in-game currency if you will, are accessible to paying users and free-playing users respectively, through various rewards and sponsorships. They allow players to increase the variety of options they have when making the managerial decisions they have to make in the course of running their club. Even without spending money, free users are guaranteed to receive tokens regularly as a part of their regular Blackout Rugby routine. They can customize the method in which they receive tokens too, through seasonal sponsors, which again, are accessible to all users equally.

Tokens are primarily used for customization and additional features, including more cards, another club, or joining a Union, just to name a few. It’s this method that we provide a breadth of content, without sacrificing a fair and balanced game.

Because of Blackout Rugby’s large degree of depth and customization, any user can still become a master of the game’s systems and compete at the top level without spending a cent. Since Tokens aren’t an exclusive currency (and all players receive regular Token drops), free playing managers can still spend tokens in similar ways to paying users, though will have to be more circumspect with how they spend them, as they will be more scarce. As an example, both premium and free playing managers can buy additional decks of cards to train their players.

Though through buying them the free playing manager may not have access to other features that require tokens as a result, such as building a medical deck, developing club buildings, the ability to auto-bid in the market, and so on. On the flip side, however, users who purchase additional cards don’t automatically benefit from a better team, but rather more variety in strategy and options at their disposal. So the ‘pay-for-variety model’ gives paying managers a greater range of options when shaping their team and players but does not provide additional capabilities that the free playing user does not have access to. There is no buying of advantages that make the premium club a more powerful club than a free-paying club, just spending tokens allows a manager a wider variety of choices at any one moment in how they want to shape their club.

As an additional layer of ensuring the equality of the playing field, card playing is regulated through ‘slots’ and ‘club energy’. Let’s begin with Slots.

Card Slots put a positive limitation into the mix, as training, matches and the like can only benefit from a small number of cards. First with one slot, and then up to three as a club’s technology evolves. So, while a paying user might have more options at their disposal for an upcoming fixture, they’re still subject to the same limits as all other managers. For example, a manager might want to focus for a while on boosting the kicking training their backs are receiving rather than focusing on other skills, or perhaps they want to direct the tactical preparation for a match on scrum power rather than on some other tactical aspect.

A manager who buys decks has a wider variety of cards they can play, and so more choices over how to shape their team and players, but whether a manager pays or not, they can still always play cards into the slots they own. So, they are provided with more flexibility, rather than an outright advantage. This means that matches are still built on game knowledge and skill. So, the better player will still win, whether they pay real money or not.

In addition to Card Slots, card playing is also dictated by Club Energy. Every card has a cost associated with it, and the better cards typically costing a larger amount of Club Energy. This pool of energy is replenished each day, meaning players have only so much energy to spend during the day and have to make decisions about which cards they play and where to play them, whether they spend real money or not.

This is a mechanic that cannot be purchased or upgraded using real money, only through advancing the user’s club. It’s a system we’ve designed intentionally to keep the playing field fair and to ensure that free-playing users are never at an unfair disadvantage.

This provides an insight into the ‘Pay-For-Variety’ model, but there’s far more to it in-game, that you’ll be able to experience yourself. The easy route, in all this, would be to introduce premium systems that provide an in-game advantage, at the detriment of the large majority of users. But that’s not our style, nor is sacrificing the experience of many for the sake of a small few. In an industry that is so heavily monetized in so many ways, our PFV model is something we’re proud to stand by, as we believe every user should have a ‘premium’ experience, not just those who pay real money. It may be impossible to completely remove the influences of ‘Pay-To-Win’, but we’ve worked hard to minimize any unfair advantage and ensuring all users are able to enjoy the game, regardless of how much they spend. And at the same time, we want to ensure that those who choose to support us are rightfully rewarded, by providing great value and variety.

It’s a system we’re continuing to tweak and improve as the game grows, and is a discussion we’re interested in having with our community. So, if you have any questions for our team, let us know through a comment here, on steam, or through our Discord server. We’re happy to have an open dialogue, to produce the best version of Blackout Rugby possible.

This post is going to explain how tactics work in the new game, how game plans are created and what goes into them.

Game Plans

A manager creates game plans for his team, which are the blue-prints for how his team is going to play. A manager can create multiple game plans and save them, then for each match they play they will assign one of these game plans to that match, or if unassigned, their current default game plan will be used.

A game plan contains a powerful number of tactical options which the manager will have to decide on. These are split into general tactical options and zonal tactical options. General tactical options cover things like how the team sets up for kick-offs or how often they go for drop goals.  Zonal tactical options cover things like how you want your team to attack with the ball, the defensive system you want to employ, how strongly you want to commit players to the breakdown and so on. We will go through each in turn, so you can get a good idea about the tactical levers and dials you have at your disposal which will enable you to shape how your team plays in ways that were never possible before.

General Tactics

General tactics are tactical options that come into play regardless of where the ball currently is, or cover specific tactical situations. The first of these general tactical options is how you want to kick-off. Do you want to kick deep, or short, or into the middle ground? Do you want to kick towards your forwards (the standard orthodox kick-off), away from them, or down the middle? You need to decide this, but are not stuck with just the one choice. For each type of kick-off you set a %, which will determine the chances your team will take that kind of kick when they kick-off. The second of the general tactical options is closely connected – how do you want to set up your team to receive a kick-off. You have two options here – standard or balanced. Standard has the majority of your forwards on one side of the field facing the opposition forwards. Balanced has you spreading your forwards across the width of the field, in order to be more prepared for an unorthodox kick-off.

Aside from the kick-off options, you have to decide how often you would like your team to try for drop goals when they are in a position to have a go – this can be set to High, Medium, Low or None, with high being trying to drop a goal frequently and working down from there.

The final general tactic option is to do with bonus points. Bonus points affect league games, and are earned by scoring at least three more tries than your opponent in a match or by losing a match by seven points or less. There are three bonus point options you can choose, and you can select all, some or none of them. The first option is ‘Go for try bonus points at all costs’, the second option is ‘If losing, go for a losing bonus point at all costs’, whilst the third option is ‘prevent any opposition bonus points at all costs’. What each of these options does is alter some aspects of your team’s decision making when playing. The actual effects are hidden within the match engine, but most of it is fairly obvious e.g. if you have chosen ‘Go for try bonus points at all costs’ then when faced with a penalty that you could kick at goal in the late stages of the match, you have no chance of taking the kick, and instead will tap and go, or kick for a lineout, or take the scrum, as your team’s main goal is to score tries. Once the tries have been achieved, then your team would go back to normal decision making.

So those are the four general tactical options you get to set for each game plan you create. Now we need to move on to zonal tactics, which is where you really get to shape how your team plays on the field.

Zonal Tactics

First off, an explanation of what zonal tactics actually means. For purposes of tactics, the rugby pitch is divided up into four zones: within your team’s own 22, from your 22 to the half-way line, into the opposition half up to his 22, and finally the opposition’s 22. For each of these zones you get to set the tactics you will use when the ball is in that zone, hence the name zonal tactics.

There are plenty of tactical options that can be tweaked to your desire, so the easiest thing is to go through them one by one and give a brief description of what each one does.

Attack Patterns

This is probably the key tactical option you will set for your team as it determines how your team will attack when it has the ball. An attack pattern is made up of a set of attack plays. You can create as many attack patterns as you like, but you can only use a single attack pattern within each zone. When you start off in the game you will have some attack patterns already created for you, but you are free to design your own and use them instead if you wish.

An attack pattern is made up of a varying number of attack plays. There are four general types of attack play:

• Pick & Go: Primarily the forwards attacking near to the ruck with minimal or no passing at all, especially involving the front five, though can include the scrum-half sniping or the backrow as well.
• Drive: Again primarily the forwards attacking, but can be a back, especially if the drive attacks further out from the ruck towards the midfield. Usually no more than one or two passes involved before running it up to the line.
• Expansive: Primarily a passing attack through the hands of the backs, but can involve forwards as well if they are out in the line.
• Creative: This covers a wide range of different attacks, from complicated moves involving decoy runners and miss passes, to wingers coming off their wing and appearing as an extra man on the other side, to clever little grubber kicks and chips over the defence. These types of attacks are harder to get right, but can be very effective when everything goes to plan.

As well as there being four main types of attack, there are also four areas where these attacks can target:

• Around the Corner: These attacks target the fringes of the ruck, an area normally defended by the opposition’s front five forwards, primarily the props.
• Close: These attacks target an area from the fringes of a ruck to roughly where the opposition fly-half stands. This area is normally defended by the forwards spreading out from the fringes of the ruck.
• Midfield: These attacks target an area from the fly-half to the inside shoulder of the outside center. Normally will be defended by the backs that inhabit those positions, but forwards can turn up here as well, normally a backrow.
• Wide: These attacks target an area from the outside center to the sideline, and are normally defended by the backs – the outside center and wing. Like a midfield attack, an occasional forward might be out there who has yet to get back into position, or occasionally a backrow forward might be defending wide out.

Putting this all together we get the following seven types of attack play:

• Pick & Go: Around the Corner
• Pick & Go: Close
• Drive: Close
• Drive: Midfield
• Expansive: Midfield
• Expansive: Wide
• Creative

As can be seen from the above, Creative attack plays don’t target specific areas. Instead they seek to target areas where the defence seems weak. When a creative attack occurs the targeted area will normally be determined by one of the half-backs, with their composure and awareness playing a role in their ability to spot a weakness. When a creative attack pays off it can often lead to an improved chance to line-break, but a creative attack that goes wrong can often lead to the attacking side itself coming under pressure.

When creating an attack pattern the manager adds these individual attack types into the pattern, and then sets what % of the time each will be used (which is called a weighted attack pattern). Alternatively the user can set the attack pattern to be an ordered attack pattern, where each attack play is done in a specific order set by the manager.

Getting Results

So how does all this help the manager to beat his opposition? The key here is to figure out where your team is stronger than the opposition. If you think your front five is better than theirs then attacking around the fringes of the ruck or slightly further out may be a good tactic (i.e. Around the Corner and Close attacks). If you think your pack as a whole is stronger, then think about adding a higher % of Driving plays that attack further out into their midfield, as these primarily utilize your forwards as ball carriers. If you think you have an edge out wide in the backs, then play more Expansive and attack those wide channels and down the sideline. If you think their midfield defence is weak, then play more expansive midfield attacks and driving midfield attacks. If you have a great pair of half-backs who are composed under pressure and have a good awareness, then perhaps upping the % of Creative attacks might be a good idea, especially if you have an excellent line  breaking fullback that can enter the line and cut through.

There is no right or wrong attack pattern. It is just a matter of finding ones that you think work best for your team. The game will have some default patterns to help you along – at the moment these consist of an attack pattern that primarily uses attack plays built around the forwards, one based upon having a balanced attack pattern between the backs and the forwards, and a third which primarily attacks through the backs. You can use those, tweak them around, or just go out and build your own ones.

Part 2 will go into the other zonal tactics, and cover such things such as penalty options, ruck commitment, and lineout options.

Attributes and Skills

First off, it is important to understand the difference between a player’s attributes and a player’s skills. A player’s attributes cover their physical and mental make-up. Skills, on the other hand, govern how technically proficient the player is in different technical aspects of the game. When a player tries to accomplish something on the field of play, it will be a combination of the relevant attributes and technical skills that shape how effective the player will be. Attributes and technical skills are trained in different ways, which will be made clear as we begin to cover the different systems.

We will have a look at attributes first – what they cover and how you train them. After that we will turn to what technical skills a player is rated for and how these are trained.

Attributes

Attributes cover both physical and mental aspects of a player, not directly attached to any one sport. The Physical attributes of a player obviously include their height and weight, but also cover their Strength, Power, Speed, Acceleration, Agility, Coordination, and Endurance.  The mental attributes cover a player’s Aggression, Leadership and Composure.

Most of these are pretty self-explanatory but some may be a bit more puzzling than others, for example the difference between Speed and Acceleration, or Strength and Power. So a brief run-down of what these attributes represent seems useful at this point:

• Speed
  Helps in finishing line-breaks and catching opponent’s line-breaks. A player has higher speed without the ball than with it. Also helps with distance made over time in general play, i.e. how fast they can return to position.
• Acceleration
  Helps in making line breaks, as well as defending them. Helps with directional changes e.g. when on defence and a ball is chipped through the defensive line. Also helps in general play with getting up to speed to meet an attack or get in to position.
• Agility
  Helps in beating defenders, getting up off ground quickly, lineout jumping, competing for high balls, and quickly moving the ball from ground to pass, catch to pass, and catch to kick.
• Strength
  How strong a player is. Helps in team-to-team contact – scrums, mauls, etc.
• Power
  How fast a player can use their strength. Helps in player-to-player contact – tackles and breaking tackles.
• Coordination
  Helps in actions with the ball – passing, catching, kicking and throwing.
• Endurance
  Governs how slowly all other physical and mental attributes deteriorate during a match. Also has an affect on chance of injury. Low endurance = higher chance of injury.
• Weight
  Helps with strength and power positively, and endurance and acceleration negatively. Can be adjusted up and down through nutrition.
• Height
  Helps with lineout jumping and competing for high ball. Affects speed positively & agility negatively. Cannot be adjusted (bar through surgery!!).
• Aggression
  A scale between low aggression/high discipline, and high aggression/low discipline. High aggression helps with rucking and tackling, but increases the risk of ruck penalties and dangerous tackles. Aggression can be influenced only through rare playing cards.
• Leadership
  Helps with captaincy, and gives a general bonus to defence. Leadership is improved through match experience, being given leadership responsibility, and can also be boosted through rare playing cards – these cards represent things like leadership courses.
• Composure
  Helps with performance under pressure. As pressure grows, coordination, passing, catching, kicking, etc. will be negatively affected by lesser amounts if composure is high. Composure grows through playing matches and through high pressure phases of play.

Training Attributes

Now we know what the attributes cover, it is time to have a look at how they are trained.

Mental attributes cannot be trained directly – they are improved in ways we mentioned above. Weight can also be raised and lowered through nutritional plans, but only by so much either way from their natural weight. That leaves the physical attributes – the real training of attributes, focusing on the seven core physical attributes: Speed, Acceleration, Agility, Strength, Power, Coordination and Endurance.

Every player has a natural average for these physical attributes, and this average will vary between players – some players are naturally faster than others, some stronger and so on. These averages improve as the player ages towards physical maturity and then decline as the aging process starts to kick in.

As in real life, it is impossible to train all physical attributes to the maximum all at the same time – if a player concentrates their training time on certain physical attributes, then the ones taking second place will suffer in comparison. This is represented in the game through the attribute training system.

Each player has seven training slots within a daily session that are used to train one physical attribute per slot. Each slot represents a period of training time, and the manager fills each one with whichever physical attribute they want. A manager can choose to have each slot have a different attribute assigned to it, or could choose to have multiple slots assigned to the same attribute.  If a physical attribute has one slot assigned to it, then the attribute will stay at its average, or start drifting back to average if the attribute has risen or fallen from that average previously. If an attribute has multiple slots assigned to it then the attribute will start to rise above its average, and if an attribute has no slots assigned to it, then it will start to sink down below the average. There is a cap on how high above, or how low below, the average an attribute can go. The more slots assigned to an attribute, the faster it will rise towards this cap.

So there are managerial choices the manager will have to make when it comes to training the physical attributes of their players. Many players will function perfectly on a default all round set-up, keeping to their average, but some players may want to specialise their training regime a bit, to raise some attribute(s) above their average, but there will be a cost. An example – a prop may well want to maximise their strength and increase it above their average level. However, for each additional slot assigned to strength the manager will have to lay another attribute aside, having no slot assigned to it. In this example, the manager assigns three slots to training to strength. This means that two attributes will not be able to have a slot assigned to them. In this case the manager decides the prop can do without assigning a slot to speed and acceleration. As a result the prop will see his strength rise above their average towards the maximum cap, while speed and acceleration will begin to drift below average until they hit the minimum cap.

A quick note on micro-managing attribute training. While the above sounds like you will be having to continually monitoring every player’s development and setting up different regimes for every player, there are tools to make all this simpler if the manager doesn’t want to indulge in this level of micro-management.  Training sessions can be set up where the various slots are assigned to attributes; multiple daily sessions can be planned to create a regimes, and then multiple players can be assigned to these regimes, allowing multiple players to all be trained in the same way – a manager just sets up the regime how they want it and assign the players to that regime. A manager can have multiple regimes at the same time for different groups of players, and there is a default all-rounder regime pre-set up with every attribute assigned a single slot.

Technical Skills

Time now to turn to the technical skills that players are rated in. As well as having physical and mental attributes, all players are rated for all the technical rugby skills the game uses.  There are twelve technical skills in the game and, while most are self-explanatory, a quick run through them all would probably be helpful:

• Rucking
  Rucking skill covers protecting the ball in a ruck when your side takes the ball into. It helps generate good, quick ball for the attacking side and combats the opposition’s attempts to steal the ball.
• Counter Rucking
  Really the reverse of Rucking. This skill is used by the defending team in a ruck situation and is used to slow down the attacking ball and increases the chances of stealing the ball and achieving a turnover.
• Maul
  This skill covers both attacking with the maul and in defending against it.
• Scrum
  This skill determines how effective the player is in the technical aspects of the scrum. While the scrum skill is important for all forwards taking part in a scrum, in some positions the contributions are greater, for example, the props and locks.
• Lineout Jumping
  As it says, this skill covers jumping for the ball in the lineout, both in trying to win your own ball in the lineout and in trying to steal or disrupt the opposition ball.
• Lineout Throwing
  A skill specifically for hookers, though all players will have a rating. This covers throwing the ball into the lineout. The higher the skill, the greater the chance your jumpers will be able to twin the ball.
• Passing
  Again, pretty self-explanatory – governs how good the player is in passing the ball. A key skill for a scrum-half, but all backs need to be good at it, and forwards as well if you can manage it.
• Catching
  Catching covers two areas. The first is catching passes aimed at the player. The second is the ability to catch high balls kicked to the player.
• Kicking
  This skill covers both place kicking and kicking out of hand.
• Line Breaking
  While running with the ball, linebreaking involves equal parts spotting gaps to run through, and breaking through the defence once at the line.
• Tackling
  This skill deals with tackling an opponent with the ball. A key defensive skill.
• Awareness
  Awareness covers spotting gaps in the defence from a leadership perspective, and distributing the ball appropriately to exploit any developing holes over a series of phases. It is an important skill for scrum half and fly half positions.

Unlike attributes, skills are not affected by age. A player may lose their physical capabilities but they don’t lose their technical skill abilities. Each player begins the game with a baseline rating in each skill, which represents their natural talents in those skills. This baseline rating determines the maximum skill the player can ever achieve in that particular skill through training.  So time now to move onto how skills are trained, which means discussing training regimes and training sessions.

Training regimes and sessions

Similar to training physical attributes, training players in technical skills is accomplished by assigning them to training regimes. The main difference being how the sessions themselves function. A club can have a number of regimes operating at any one time, and all players will be assigned to one regime or another if they want to receive any training. Each regime lasts a number of days, with a number of different durations available to the manager, dependent on the training tech advances the club has made. Each day in the regime is slot, and each training slot can have a single training session assigned to it. For example, a three day training regime will last three days and so has three training slots, one for each day. Each of these slots will be filled with a training session chosen by the manager.

Once a manager has created a training regime they then determine which training session will be run in each daily slot. A manager will have access to a variety of training sessions to choose from, the exact amount depending on the training tech advancements the manager has invested in. These sessions vary from general sessions covering all forward or all back skills, through positional sessions concentrating on skills relevant to the chosen position, to specialist sessions that concentrate on a very small number of skills.  The fewer the skills a session covers, the greater the training benefits to those specific skills.

Once a manager has set up a number of regimes and assigned the training sessions to them, the manager must then assign players to those regimes. Multiple players can be assigned to the same regime, or a manager can set-up a regime and only assign a single player to it – it is totally up to the manager.

An example may help explain the training process in actions. A manager wants to give a selection of their forwards some training in the skills especially important to forwards, with an emphasis on improving the scrum skill. To accomplish this the manager creates a three day training regime. This regime, therefore, has three training slots for the manager to fill with training sessions.  The manager decides to have the training slot on day one being filled with a ‘General Forwards’ session, which will train all the skills that forwards find useful.  For the session slot on day two of the regime the manager assigns a ‘Prop’ positional session – while it is called a prop session, the skills the session covers (like Scrum and maul and so on) are useful to all forwards, not just to props. While some skills useful to forwards won’t be covered, as the session covers fewer skills, the more intense training in the skills that are covered will bring greater benefits. For the final session on day three of the regime the manager decides to assign a specialist session that focuses on the Scrum skill. This specialist session covers even less skills than the Prop session on day two, but the gains from that session will be greater in the skills that are covered. With the regime now set up the manager assigns which players in their squad they want to take part in that regime, and then the training regime will run automatically every day, one session a day.  The regime the manager has created will coach the players involved in a variety of skills relevant to forwards, but the biggest gains will be on skills important to props, especially the scrum skill.

As is hopefully clear, there are is a wide variety of different training options open to the manager when it comes to training the skills of their players, and a wide variety of ways players can be trained – a manager could decide to simplify it all and just put all their forwards into regimes that run ‘General forward’ sessions and their backs into the back equivalent. This would not be bad, and the manager would be creating a squad full of good all-round players, suited to playing as a forward or as a back. A manager, however, who wants to shape a player’s training for a specific position can do so easily, limited only by their ability to organise and set-up the training regimes.

Conclusion

So there you have it, a quick overview of the anatomy of a player and how a manager goes about training them. There are other aspects not covered here, from how youth players are recruited and trained, to the tech options that become available over time through infrastructure investment.  There are just a couple more things, however, we will mention quickly before we sign off. The first is star players, and the second is how training fits in with the card system.

Star players

Some players are born to be stars. In the game such players are rare, but every club will have a smattering of them. Such players improve and mature quickly and can reach heights in their main skills that your average player won’t. Managers will know which players are stars or not, and will obviously cherish and nurture them carefully. However, star players also recognise their own potential and will demand contracts that reflect it, so produce greater financial demands and therefore limitations on the club than other players.

Card play

As mentioned in a previous blog post, there are training cards. Every training session that a club runs can have a training card played on to it. Cards played in this way give a small training bonus to the skill mentioned on the card, regardless of whether that skill is being taught in that session or not. However, some skills in training sessions are termed key skills, and if the skill on the card matches the key skill on the session then a training synergy bonus is gained, which is a slight increase in the effectiveness of the card.

An example will hopefully make this easier to understand. Suppose a manager plays a ‘Passing’ training card onto a training session that does not teach passing. All players in that session will get a small passing training bonus i.e. their passing skill will improve slightly. However, if the session the card was played on has the passing skill as one of its key skills, then a synergy bonus would be gained and all players in that session would get a slightly larger bonus to the passing training.

So these cards are like the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The actual training sessions determine the level of training various skills receive, while any cards played onto those sessions just add a training bonus to specific skills.

This is a quick blog post to give an overview of how the season is structured in the new game and what competitions clubs will be able to partake in. We realize that blog posts have been few and far between recently, which is our fault but things have been busy preparing the game for going into beta. A few of you have suggested that some smaller blog posts posted more often would be a good thing, so this is the first of them. As such this post will give an overview of the season but won’t go into the minutiae of each competition’s inner workings.

Season length

Each season in the new game will last 28 days. While the longer seasons In BR Classic have their own slow poetry to them, the new game needs to be faster. Twenty-eight days a season is fairly common in these types of games these days and, while we experimented with various other lengths, in the end we felt that was the sweet spot.  A key factor in the decision making was that we needed to move away from one league game a week towards users being able to play matches ever day – in modern life everything moves faster, including BR seasons!

Season structure

During a season a club will be playing in multiple competitions and this may involve multiple matches a day. All clubs will take part in a divisional league system, a cup competition, as well as a ladder competition. Clubs that do well in their league can earn qualification for Champions League competitions, and periodically there will be other official competitions run which teams can qualify for as well.

In addition to this, users will be able to create their own competitions through forming Unions together and then these Unions running competitions. Having said that, Unions are not going to be part of the initial game launch, but will be brought in later. Nearer the time we will explain how Unions are going to function and the benefits they can bring their members.

Lastly, before getting into descriptions of each of the official competitions, a quick word on international matches. There will be International teams and various competitions in the game but, like Unions, these will not be part of the opening launch. This aspect of the game will be added to the game as soon as we can. We know how some users of BR Classic find the international side of the game to be very interesting and rewarding, and also realise how the preparation of national teams can help foster community spirit, so the international side of the game is a priority for us, but it is not going to make the initial launch.

Leagues and divisions

Each league consists of 12 teams who play each other home and away over the course of the season. League matches happen every day, but teams will have 1 bye a week. There are play-offs at the end of the season, with a semi-final and final taking place on Friday and Saturday of week 4. The top four teams promote and the bottom two relegate. In addition the top three clubs qualify for a champion’s league competition the following season.

Unlike BR Classic all clubs play in the same divisional structure. There are a finite number of divisions in the game, but no set amount of leagues at each divisional level – the amount of leagues will depend on the number of clubs that are currently in that division. The knock-on effect of this is that just about every league will be made up of user controlled clubs and so very few bots will be needed.

Prize money and tokens are awarded for finishing positions, with the league champion obviously receiving the most.

Cup competition

Every season all clubs are entered into a cup competition.  Unlike BR Classic, these cup competitions are divisional, so Clubs will be competing in the cup against other teams in their division. At the moment the plan is for each cup competition to start with 128 teams, so including the final there will be seven rounds.  This will mean that each division will have multiple cup competitions operating at the same time. Like the league there will also be a Cup Winners Competition that the winners of each club get to qualify for.

Also like the league, clubs will be rewarded with prize money and tokens for doing well in the cup.

Ladder Competition

Every club is also placed into the global ladder, so every club regardless of division can compete against every other club. Every day a club can challenge or be challenged by other teams on the ladder. If a club wins a challenge against a club higher up on the ladder then the club leapfrogs that club challenged. There are rules about how far up the ladder a club can challenge, and the nearer to the top of the ladder, the more restrictive these become. There are also limits to how often a club can challenge or be challenged. The ladder system places focus on you primarily as a challenger. When you are challenged on the other hand, the impact to you is minimal, and you can in fact ignore this aspect should you wish to.

Unlike the league and cup, the rewards from the ladder competition come from winning matches, though ladder position will have a bearing. Every ladder match won will give you a club prize box. Each prize box will contain random goodies, with small chances of winning something extra special that cannot be found elsewhere.

Wrap up

Like we said at the beginning of the post, this is a short post just to give an overview of the season structure in the new game and not a deep delve into the inner workings of the whole system. We hope that this has wetted your appetite and plan in the future to reveal more without such long gaps in between. The beta testing is not far off and I imagine many of you may well be interested in taking part, so keep an eye open for future posts in that regard.

Before getting started and to avoid confusion, the card system that is described below is an addition to the standard mechanisms currently in BR, like training, match tactics and so on.  These systems themselves have been upgraded and improved, but they will be explored in subsequent posts. This post will just say a little about the card system that sits on top of all the other systems.

Decks

Every building, from the Academy building through to the Training building, including the Stadium itself, will be providing the user with a free deck every day – one deck per building. A deck is a number of randomly generated cards relevant to the building that provides the deck. The quality of the cards in a deck, and the quantity of cards within each deck, are determined by the tech advances the manager has invested in while developing these buildings.

Cards

The cards a user receives enables them to boost or benefit their club in various areas of the game, relevant to the type of card, and so help shape the destiny of their club. There are different types of cards, from academy and contract cards, through to training and tactical cards, and more in between. In a later blog post we will go into more detail about the different categories, but for now it is enough to know that there are a number of such categories within the game.

In addition, each card has a specific focus. Within a category of cards there are a variety of focuses possible – a training card might have a focus of Passing or a focus of Tackling, for example, or a tactics card might have a focus of Scrum or of Lineout.  A card provides a bonus of some sort in the area of the card’s focus – a training card with a Passing focus, for example, would boost the training of the passing skill when played onto a training session, whilst a training card with a focus of Kicking would boost the benefits of kicking training within the session.

The free decks a user receives every day will always supply enough cards to play in every available slot that day. If a user wants more cards than their free decks supply them with, to add more choice of which card to play in each slot, then additional decks can be purchased by spending tokens.

In addition, played cards can provide synergy bonuses. These are additional bonuses if the card is played into a slot where the focus is a direct match to a specific area the slot covers. Sounds complicated, but actually it is rather simple. Hopefully an example will make it clearer. Suppose a training card is played into the slot attached to a training session aimed at prop forwards.  This session will be training a variety of skills needed by props, but some of those skills will be designated as key skills. If the card’s focus matches one of these key skills then that skill gets a small additional bonus, called a synergy bonus.  We haven’t covered slots yet, so time to explain what a slot is.

Slots

Cards are played into slots. Normally each area will have one slot available for a card to be played into it, but with tech advances it is possible to add a second, or even a third slot in some cases. For example, each training session has one slot available (or two with the right tech advance).  A match might have one slot available for a tactic card, but with tech advances might eventually have up to three slots per match.

A user strategically plays the cards they want into all the slots they want to, which will normally be all of them. An important thing to remember here is that a user receives, for free, enough cards to be able to fill every slot available that day. A non-paying user and a paying user have the same amount of slots available, and each has enough cards to be able to fill all the slots and gain the card’s benefit.

Tokens

Tokens are used to purchase various things within the game. When the game first launches tokens will be limited to purchasing items like additional decks, premium stadiums, or things that we would prefer didn’t happen very often, like changes to a club’s timezone or name. Eventually we will add the ability to spend tokens on more things like uniform upgrades and other types of stadium and grounds customisations.

Community

Running the original Blackout Rugby has shown us how passionate the BR community is and how much people care about the game and want the best for it. We want to respect and honour that and so our token system is not designed to milk every cent out of our users. While tokens will enable users to purchase useful things, like additional decks, the system is designed so that the game provides sufficient free daily tokens to perform crucial tasks, and on top of that extra tokens are provided through various rewards and prizes.

Whilst a user can purchase tokens with real money, the aim is to make it possible for the dedicated manager to earn enough tokens that they do not feel the lack. More casual managers may well feel the need to purchase tokens, though the system has actually been designed to enable a user to play and compete even if the user never collected any tokens at all. In addition, the BRU (Blackout Rugby Union) will also gift cards from time to time, such as a card that might allow the changing of a club name or a time zone for free, or supply additional free decks, special cards, and other goodies.

We have been listening to the views of the community expressed in the original game,  and those views have helped shape the whole design process. One of the major concerns has been about Pay-to-Win in the new game, and the design has taken those concerns to heart. We want to ensure that those who don’t want to invest real money can still compete with those that do.  This brings us neatly onto the topic of Pay-to-Win and Pay-for-Variety.

Pay-to-Win (PTW) and Pay-for-Variety (PFV)

Before diving into the detail of PTW and PFV, it is important to explain the financial philosophy that underpins the company’s business model for the new game.

One of the key questions faced in the game design was how to balance the need for the game to create income, with that of the ugly monster, Pay-To-Win (PTW). BR Classic (our name for the original Blackout Rugby) avoided PTW by limiting the benefits of paying to a slightly easier user experience, through the use of premium membership. While that model did remove PTW, it did not provide the income returns that the game and business really needed. It was enough to keep the game running, provided that the whole development was a one-man show, but that was about it. In addition, for the new version it was important to us that all users have the best experience the game can offer, so having premium only features did not seem the right avenue to pursue in the new game. We will still have auto-renewing subscriptions which generate tokens for those who prefer subscriptions to the burden of manual micro-transactions, but these subscriptions just provide a supply of additional tokens, plus perhaps some other goodies, and not a premium experience, as all users will be receiving a premium experience!

The new version, therefore, will not use the premium membership financial model. Not only does the development of the new game require a dedicated team of full-time professional programmers and artists to create, but the business model itself is different. Our aim is to make Blackout Games a premier brand in the field of on-line sports management, so it is necessary to create an economic model for the game that can help the growth of the company, both for the current game and future projects.

In addition, we did not want to have banner ads showing up in permanent places. The only advertising we will permit in the game will be where it adds to the realism of the experience in a non-intrusive way, such as branding for your sponsors, jerseys, stadiums and the potential for optional video ads before matches and at half time to advertise a match sponsor, which will reward the viewer with tokens. While we do not have any real world sponsors to use for in-game branding yet, this is on our roadmap for review once we have a viable user-base.

Anyway, enough of all that. It is now time to look at the game system, PTW and our model of Pay-for-Variety (PFV). We have already talked about decks, cards and slots. The important thing to grasp about the whole system is that every day a user receives, for free, all the cards they need to play into every available slot they have, and the amount of cards scale up as more slots become available. So without having to spend any tokens whatsoever the user is able to accomplish everything they need to do. There is no necessity to purchase additional decks to gain more cards, nor will a paying user be able to do more than a non-paying user. The slots available are determined by building tech advances and these are never bought through tokens, but through spending the club’s money on building upgrades, and it’s worth noting that a user cannot spend tokens to get more money for their club.

So if a user has all the cards they need to play into every slot, why would a user ever want to purchase additional decks, either with tokens they have earned for free or tokens they have bought?  The answer lies in the focuses that cards have. Every card in a deck has a focus, determined randomly. This focus determines what type of benefit the card will bring to the slot where it is played. For example, a training card with a Passing focus played into a slot attached to a specific training session will boost the passing training in that session – the session will train up all the skills that are part and parcel of it, but an extra bonus is given to passing. All cards give the same level of bonus (the quality of every card is equal), just the focus of the bonus changes from card to card.

Given all that, while all cards have equal quality, a user may want to play a card with a specific focus into a specific slot. If a user’s free decks that day have not supplied a card with that specific focus, the user will either have to play an alternative card or source the card wanted from a deck they have bought with tokens. For example, suppose a user is running a training session for some backs, which is training tackling and passing, amongst other skills. The user wants to boost the gains from the tackling training, so wants to play a training card with a Tackling focus into the slot attached to that session. Unfortunately, the user does not have a card with that focus. They have a training card with a Passing focus available instead. The user has a choice – they can play the Passing card and receive a boost to the passing training, or they can try and source a Tackling focus card by buying a training deck with tokens.  If the user chooses to play the Passing card they have not lost out on the size of the bonus they receive, as the size of the bonus would be the same for both a Passing and a Tackling focus. Instead what they have missed out on is the bonus being applied to tackling, as the bonus has gone to passing instead.

The only caveat to what has been explained above are synergy bonuses. As explained earlier, if a card’s focus matches a key thing covered by the slot, then there is a small synergy bonus applied to that thing. Using the training example from above, suppose the tackling skill in that training session was actually a key skill for that session. If the user did acquire a training card with a Tackling focus and played it, that card would give the additional synergy bonus. In that situation, the Tackling focus card does give a small additional bonus over the Passing focus card, so the gains from both cards would not be equal. While synergy bonuses are obviously beneficial, there can be times where playing a different card without the synergy bonus is something that the user would prefer to do. It all depends on what furthers the user’s goals the most.

This is what we have coined the Pay-for-Variety (PFV) system – by paying tokens a user widens the available choice of cards they can play into a slot, and so increases their ability to fine-tune their options. Hence the user is paying for variety in their available cards. A non-paying user is still receiving exactly the same level of bonuses, as every slot is filled with a card, and all cards give the same quality of bonus, bar the odd synergy bonus, just the range of card focuses they can choose to play is narrower, so they have less options.

Does this eliminate PTW?

The answer depends on how you look at it. A paying user is not receiving cards of a greater quality, nor are they playing a greater quantity of cards than the non-paying user. So on that level there is no PTW in the system. However, a user with a greater variety of cards to play can specialise more easily, and make greater gains in an area they have the luxury of choosing. Looking at it through the prism of player training, a paying user may be able to train his prop more intensively in the scrum skill (they will be able to gather and play more Scrum focus cards on training session the prop partakes in, and maybe acquire some synergy bonuses along the way), but it will come at a cost of being less intensively trained elsewhere. The non-paying user will have to be better at playing his cards, be more aware of the options they have and the most efficient way of getting the best out of the cards they have. In addition, it is worth remembering that non-paying users can still gain tokens for free and so can still buy additional decks without having to pay real money for them. They can still have a wider choice and variety of cards to play than those they receive daily, but they will have to be more circumspect in how they distribute their tokens, prioritise their needs and plan ahead. The bottom line is that a non-paying user will have to work harder than a user who pays, but then the non-paying user is playing the game for free, whereas the paying user is helping to support the company and keep the game going.

Is there some PTW there, after all that? Perhaps, but minimised to the greatest extent we know how to do, given the financial realities of the industry we are in. We sit within an industry where mobile games are heavily monetised and PTW is the norm, not the exception. We think that our PFV model is a great system and meets the demands of both the game community and the business stakeholders. We could have decided to run with a straightforward PTW model, as most, if not all, of the major players in our niche have, but we didn’t want that, and after much head scratching and long hours, we came up with the PVF design. We realise that there will always be some that are not going to be satisfied, but we are proud of the system we have created, and we hope the BR community will like it too.

An un-proven model

On a final note before signing off for now, I need to point out that our PFV system is an un-proven model and our investors have voiced concerns about its ability to generate a viable income per user (IPU). We believe that PVF will work in this regard, but the proof of the pudding will come when we do our beta testing.  As such, as developers, we have to reserve the right to add further monetisation features that have proved successful in other games in the industry if necessity forces us to do so. We do believe in the system we have created, but walking an untrodden path is always a bit of gamble and a little scary to boot. We hope it will not be necessary to add more aggressive monetisation features into the game and are proceeding on the assumption we won’t be, but only time will tell. We felt it was important to be honest about this with the BR community who has stuck with us for so long. As wise baseball folk seem to have a tendency to say, “if you build it, they will come”. Fingers crossed they are right!

Platforms

Contrary to the original version of Blackout Rugby (BR Classic) which runs natively in the browser, the new Blackout Rugby will be available as a desktop app for Windows & Mac, as well as a mobile app for iOS and Android. We will also be available on the web and in facebook gameroom; however these versions may not be available at the first launch on the major platforms. “When is the game launching?” I hear you ask. The current release date is set for Q2 of 2018, though as software development goes, we’re unable to rule out further delays.

Structure

We’ve taken a lot of time and effort to carefully construct as simple a menu system as possible to help you get around the game with ease and not be too overwhelmed by a large menu with too many places to go. We’ve kept the main menu to just 7 major buttons:

1. Grounds
2. Squad
3. Club
4. Market
5. Competitions
6. Clubrooms
7. Unions

Some major sections provide sub-sections within them, but there is no second level of the menu to clutter things up. Besides this, there the supplementary buttons for Search, Settings, and Account.

Generally when opening the game, you’ll be taken straight to your Club Grounds. Much of the game will revolve around your grounds as each building provides resources, provisions, and current limitations for the major parts of your club such as training, youth, club office, and medical.

Major features

We’ve done our best to build what we believe will be the foundation of some of the world’s very best sports manager games.

Here are some of the major features:

• 3D grounds with upgradeable buildings and tech upgrade trees.

• Pick your stadium design – all clubs will start out with the same stadium stands during the “Grounds Era”, but once you reach the “Stadium Era”, you’ll be able to pick from various stadium architectures, with more coming in the future.
• Amenities building – a special building providing a limited number of real-estate “plots” where you can place your chosen amenities. These can only be swapped-out once per season, forcing you to make trade-off decisions about which amenities are most important to you in the season ahead.

• Collectible Cards – an exciting way to strategise and provide bonuses to various areas of the game such as grounds, training, player contracts, and matches.
• 3D match experience with real-time tactics updates.

• 

  3D players with unique physiques, facial features and hair styles. On paper they have newly designed physical attributes, technical skills, and a brand new system to avoid players who end up the same with maxed skills, even within the standard, star, and superstar player categories.

• Powerful control over your team tactics in the brand new game-plan.
• Completely redesigned training system with customisable regimes and daily sessions.
• In-app forums and chat via the Clubrooms.
• Transfer market for buying and selling players.
• Global Level Cap (GLC) – at any point in time there will be a global level cap (applicable to your club level) as set by the BRU (Blackout Rugby Union), clubs cannot progress beyond this cap for an indefinite amount of time until the next feature release in which we will sometimes increase the global level cap. More on this in a later blog post.

Major roadmap features due to release after launch:

• Unions where you can come together with friends for competitions and other benefits.
• International Scene with elections to vote in a national manager for your country, international competitions, and even the BlackoutRugby World Cup!
• More locations for your grounds.

Notable minor features:

• Ability to have your club in any timezone, regardless of the country where your club resides.
• Day night cycle, and weather effects in your grounds and matches.
• Achievement Campaigns – linked goals to achieve, providing valuable rewards with each goal, and a big reward at the end of each campaign to give you more ways than one to get the satisfaction of completing challenging tasks.

Unions

The new Blackout Rugby is a game of many unions.

It all starts at the top with the Blackout Rugby Union (BRU) – that’s us! We provide the major international competitions such as the Global League, the Ladder, and eventually the international competitions as well. When interacting with us (the developers) in the game, we will always appear as the B.R.U.

Then there’s the National Rugby Unions for each country in the game such as the New Zealand Rugby Union, or the England Rugby Union. These are the bodies which provide national competitions such as the Cup.

Lastly, as part of our roadmap, we will be releasing User Unions more commonly referred to as simply “Unions“. These will provide a building which can be upgraded providing various rewards and bonuses, a chatroom for member Clubs and their managers, and the ability to run internal competitions between member clubs, as well as inter-union competitions.

Levels

The new Blackout Rugby is also a game of many levels.

Various entities in the game will have a level attached. This includes: clubs, players, skills, attributes, buildings, unions and playing cards. We will go into more details on these in a later blog post.

Countries

We’re going to add two more countries where your club can reside, starting with the same 34 countries that currently exist inside BR Classic.

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. Belgium
4. Brazil
5. Canada
6. Chile
7. Croatia
8. Czech Republic
9. England
10. France
11. Georgia
12. Germany
13. Hong Kong
14. Ireland
15. Italy
16. Ivory Coast
17. Japan
18. Kenya
19. Namibia
20. Netherlands
21. New Zealand
22. Pacific Islands
23. Poland
24. Portugal
25. Romania
26. Russia
27. Scotland
28. South Africa
29. South Korea
30. Spain
31. United States
32. Uruguay
33. Wales
34. Zimbabwe
35. ?
36. ?

Looking at the top rugby playing nations in the world in order of number of registered RL players, the candidates are:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Competitions

While there will be more competitions into which you can optionally enter your club, here is a summary of the major ones:

• Global League – the primary competition in the game which is compulsory for all clubs. You will start at division level 1 in a league of 12 clubs, and will battle your way to the top.
• National Cup – a standard knock-out competition, with the only difference from BR Classic being that each country will run multiple Cup competitions based on club level, and the number of clubs in the country (given we have a powerful marketing budget this time along with a much more marketable game; we are expecting many more clubs in attendance).
• Ladder Challenge – a standard ladder competition in which one club challenges another club who is higher in the ladder. And if that club wins, they can jump above the higher club. There is a global ladder, but it can also be filtered by country or region as well.

We’ll provide more depth on these competitions in a later blog post.

Wrapping it up

Well I hope this has provided a lot of new information for you and been an exciting read!

I know I’m excited, and I credit my amazing team for the work they’re doing to make it all a reality. I would like to give special mention to Adam (aka Iorwerth), our lead game designer who has dreamt up most of the core design of the game. You will be seeing some blog posts directly from him in the near future.

Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to the most, and what you most want to hear more about next.