Shotbow

Happy Fall Shotbow! The spooky season of October was lively with great content, such as MineZ Spookfest, Annihilation Clan Wars, the return of Ghostcraft, and so much more! This edition of Dentril's New Moon we'll look at all the festivities of the past month, and take a look into the future of Shotbow as we move into November!


SMASH Updates
SMASH is back again with another great update! The Pretty Spooky Update dropped just this past week, with a nice gallery of changes! With maps added to the rotation, new items, and changes to the weight distribution of items, SMASH should feel fresh with this latest update!

We hope the usual bugfixes in addition with updates to the party and tip systems help keep SMASH lively! Keep an eye out for more work from BrendanLeeT, who helped make this update possible!

MineZ Updates
October and Spookfest is one of the biggest seasons for MineZ, and this year was no different! Featuring two headhunts and dozens of treat chests, MineZ was lively with lots of PvP, and tons of balance changes to boot. The highly requested buff to splash potions has finally landed on top of lots of bug fixes, dungeon tweaks, and so much more! To catch up on all the details, check out the MineZ Changelog and the Spookfest Announcement.

As Spookfest comes to a close and the regular MineZ map returns, keep an eye out for more updates moving forwards as we continue to enjoy some of these changes post-spookfest!

Ghostcraft Updates
All month long we've been enjoying the resurgence of an old favorite gamemode - Ghostcraft! The community and staff both came together to enjoy some nostalgic memories from the earlier days of Shotbow! It helmed a great month of spooky Halloween themed content, and we'll enjoy it for the duration it's around! We'll look forward to continuing to play a few games of Ghostcraft with you all!

Annihilation Updates
The next update to Annihilation is on the horizon, Serious Gallium! Though the update itself is yet to launch, the very recent announcement from our dedicated crew contains a community vote! An important part of the near update, a touch-up of the Scout class, needs some input from our beloved community. Check out the timetable for test matches so you can have your say in the coming update!

Statistics
Network in General

Discord updates:

• We've added a captcha bot to our Discord to increase security. New users that join our Discord can verify themselves using the /verify command inside the verify channel. This should hopefully cut down on the number of bots and the amount of spam we see throughout the discord.

Staff updates:

• McJeffr was promoted to Full Developer
• cathKitten was promoted to Full Developer
• MrJack was promoted to Film Crew Co-Lead
• JonnyDvE joined the Jr. Developer Team
• wmn joined the Jr. Developer Team
• BrendanLeeT joined the Jr. Developer Team
• 10chrisrulz joined the Build Team
• geopai joined the Build Team
• BayanNoodle joined the Build Team
• Rubesty joined the Build Team

Other statistics:

• 1,867 in-game reports were handled in the last month
• There were 938 players banned in the last month
• 46 ban appeals were resolved in the last month
• There were 114 support tickets resolved in the last month
• This month we achieved a peak playercount of 259 on October 2nd
• There were 16 Anni Clan Wars in the last month (Check out a few of our recent clan wars here, here, and here!)

Closing Words
There have been so many great events this past month, and seeing old and new players alike come together to enjoy Spookfest, Ghostcraft, and so much more has made for another great October season! I for one always look forward to the holiday seasons, and seeing the rest of the Network come together to share in those experiences has been wonderful. As we continue to trek into the holiday months, keep an eye out for continued updates to all your favorite gamemodes, as well as other changes to the Network as a whole(such as the new verification system to our discord - later bots!).

I've been your host, MrJack O' Lantern, and as always, we'll see you next month with more updates. Thanks for flying Shotbow!

日本語版, Español
Annihilation Update - Serious Gallium (2.14.0)

Hello!

We are excited to announce that the next update to Annihilation will be Serious Gallium. This update brings about a much needed change to a little-known class: Scout.

Unlimited Grapple!
We're removing Scout's Grapple cooldown! Scout will soon be able to zoom around the map, scouting out enemy advances and being the first to mid! As that change makes its permanent Speed effect redundant, we decided to remove that as well. However, all Scouts will be able to have temporary Speed effects again!

Community Vote:
However, Serious Gallium isn't complete! We need YOU to help us decide which penalty Scouts should receive.

We have collected opinions, crunched data and even created an admin tool to modify Scout's many values on the fly to help us reach the perfect combination of movement and PvP.

So, to get to the point, here's what YOU need to VOTE on:



Option A: Combat Tag
When a Scout hits or gets hit by an enemy player, they will incur a cooldown that prevents grappling for 5 seconds. This cooldown would reset for each hit; dealt or received.

Option B: Weakness
Every time a Scout pulls their grapple successfully they would receive a certain Weakness level for 5 seconds. The exact Weakness level would depend on the number of armour points of the Scout, which means that a Scout who wears full leather armour would get a lower Weakness level than a full diamond one. Obviously, Boss Buff armour negates more damage than unenchanted chain armour. Therefore, the Weakness level which would be applied when wearing at least one piece of Boss Buff armour would be calculated a bit differently. A few examples:

• A full leather Scout using an unenchanted golden sword to attack an unenchanted full iron player: 13 hits (instead of 10 hits).
• A full iron Scout using a Sharpness IV iron sword to attack an unenchanted full iron player: 8 hits (instead of 5 hits).
• A full iron Scout using a Sharpness IV iron sword to attack an enchanted full iron (Protection I on all 4 armour pieces) player: 9 hits (instead of 6 hits).

Option C: A & B Combined
Option C is a combination of both the Combat Tag and Weakness options, if this option wins, Scout will receive both penalties but with reduced times to keep it balanced.

How can I vote?
The vote will only be open during the test matches. We will be ensuring that only accounts which have played in the test match have voted.

Below is the timetable for the test matches:

US & Japanese friendly matches:

1. November 3rd at 3 AM GMT / 12 PM JST / November 2nd at 8 PM PDT
2. November 6th at 3 AM GMT / 12 PM JST / November 5th at 8 PM PDT
3. November 7th at 3 AM GMT / 12 PM JST / November 6th at 8 PM PDT

EU & Japanese friendly match:

1. November 3rd at 12 PM GMT / 9 PM JST / 5 AM PDT

US & EU friendly matches:

1. November 5th at 7 PM GMT / 12 PM PDT / November 6th at 4 AM JST
2. November 6th at 7 PM GMT / 12 PM PDT / November 7th at 4 AM JST
3. November 7th at 9 PM GMT / 1 PM PDT / November 8th 6 AM JST

Remember you must be there to vote!

We ask that you try and make multiple test games to really understand the implications of both options. We will not be holding test games for Option C!

It's that particularly spooky time of the year!

Normally our seasonal updates don't bring much to the table, besides a new lobby, map, or something of the sort; however this time around I'm excited to announce all the new changes and additions that made their way into this one!

Spooky Stuff!

Now it wouldn't be a true update if the lobby didn't change; this time around we opted to rework the original lobby to fit the Halloween theme rather than using last years' or crafting up a new one. This lobby has also been added to the map rotation in its entire glory throughout the course of Halloween, and for a short period after.

Map Changes

Speaking of maps, we also reintroduced these seasonal favorites to the map selection:

• Graveyard
• Haunted Mansion

That's not all though, like with the 4th of July celebration, maps such as Temple and Beatbox received small tweaks to fit the season. Many maps also will be locked in eternal darkness, in response to feedback from a few years back, this will not apply to all maps. Arena also received a new seasonal map variant: "Arena: Spooked".

As always, if you have any maps you'd like to see in-game, feel free to submit them on the forums!

Peek-A-Boom!

This year we also reintroduced the "Peek-a-Boom" item. For those who have forgotten, this item will split into 2 separate bombs a short period after it is thrown, and upon ignition will inflict targets with blindness and destroy a large area!

Item Changes

Not everything can be spooky and scary this time around though, we've got some big changes that'll be sticking around past the fall season!

New Items

We're introducing 3 brand new items to the mix this time around; each of which has a very different use than the majority of other items currently. What are they you may ask? Well;

• First Aid Kit - Restores 15% of overall HP every 2 seconds. Effects will stop upon moving
• Gilded Apple - Instantly recovers Stamina/XP Bar, allowing for another jump or Smash attack right after being used
• Elytra - Allows the user to glide for 2 seconds, the timer begins once it is used, regardless of flight time

We're very excited to see how players use these new items, and will be watchful of feedback in-game and on the Discord regarding balancing.

Weight Distribution Changes

For all of SMASH's runtime, once an item was introduced, its spawnrate was unchanged; today that changes. As players, we've noticed that particular items tend to spawn disproportionately more often. The biggest offenders of this were food and lower tier swords. In general, the spawn rates of those items has been reduced and slight increases have been made to lower tier explosives and recovery items. The full weight changes can be seen within the full patch notes for those who are interested.

Miscellaneous Updates

These changes don't mesh together in any one section very well, however they are worth mentioning in the announcement.

Party Changes

When the Arena Update first dropped, I noticed 30+ people on, but no games were running. Games were obviously being played, but they weren't visible. Now, party games will be visible in the matchmaking screen to all players, regardless of party status, however they obviously won't be joinable.
We are also looking into additional party features to allow for those who have purchased the Party Pass, if you have any suggestions, please shoot us a message on Discord or the Forums!

Tips!

Another dated feature of SMASH is the tips; gone are the gross green and sometimes yellow messages! Tips have been reworked to function and look similar to MineZ.

Bugs

Fixed the following:

• Players can no longer be damaged by cacti in order to mitigate knockback
• Removed "Change Me!" message upon entering/leaving matches
• Hearts now properly display according to lives remaining
• Quick Menu selector updated, now opens cosmetics

Closing

First off, a tremendous shoutout to the newest member of the SMASH Dev team: BrendanLeeT; this update would not have been nearly as large without his added help. His work just within the last week has been wonderful, and I'm personally very excited to work with him on future updates (nrkade).

As always, we have our eyes glued to our screens, including the Discord channel for any feedback or ideas! We'd like to host another large community event such as a tournament or map building contest this upcoming winter as well, so let us know what you guys would rather participate in!

~ As always, thanks so much for flying Shotbow ~
-The Smash Team