Monday, June 18, 2018

Minion Master's Monday - Weekend Warriors & balance changes on the horizon

Minion Masters!

We sure hope you had an amazing weekend. A weekend full of progress with the new Battle Pass and also with entertaining hours on Twitch. Not only did our dedicated streamers the best, but we also had 2 tournaments in a row last Saturday, and last Sunday.


King Puff Cup 21


King Puff Cup 21 happened last Saturday and even if we all needed to wait 2 weeks longer due to a former delay, it was definitely worth it. We saw intense battles, gameplay on the highest level and even the new legendary skin Infested Settsu was being used. How Jamez28 managed to get that skin just 2 days after Update 68 hit is another story, though. Best to ask him yourself ;)

The group stage has been played with the Swiss format for 5 rounds, all matches were Best-of-3 with 2 bans on both sides. And it didn't take a long time until the first surprises happened: DovahNation was able to beat Zgriptor 2-0, while RushSecond lost his first match-up to TerraReveene. Do legendary skins affect winrates? Well, not in the case of Jamez28, who had no luck in his first round against Memfisto.

The rest of the group stage happened more or less as expected. After 5 rounds of intense battles and close wins, we had our Top 8 advancing to the single elimination final stage:
  1. Memfisto
  2. Videogamer77
  3. TerraReveene
  4. RushSecond
  5. Zgriptor
  6. GReYWolF93
  7. DovahNation
  8. Nuclear Goo
The final stage was played with Best-of-5 matches and one ban on both sides. Memfisto, who was advancing from the group stage as the only unbeaten player, and NuclearGoo had the first match-up. After 5 games, Memfisto managed to advance to the semi-finals, whereas the tournament ended for Nuclear Goo. RushSecond managed to beat Zgriptor in the second match-up of the semi-finals, Videogamer77 and TerraReveene were able to win their match-ups, also.

The semi-finals followed and brought really huge match-ups. The first semi-final was between Memfisto and RushSecond. After a close series (2-3 in favor of RushSecond), we're pretty sure Inception eSports was very happy to see one of their players advancing to the finals. In the second semi-finals between Videogamer77 and TerraReveene, we saw a 3-1 in Videogamer77's favor. To give you a perspective: the result was 3-1, but the final game took Videogamer77 over 10 minutes to close out. Would he be able to do it again? Winning his second King Puff Cup tournament this season? However the finals would have ended, Inception eSports would have been the winner as both finalists are playing under their banner.

In the end, the short answer is yes. Videogamer77 beat RushSecond 3-1 and left no doubt that he is one of the best players. To see how the finals played out, as well as the rest of the tournament, check out the VOD. For those who don't want to see the amazing group stage match-ups, the live broadcast of the final stage began at around 03:19:10 and the finals at around 06:36:00.

Congratulations to Videogamer77 and all the other winners! Special thanks to all participants and viewers, but also to the King Puff Cup crew for presenting yet another amazing tournament!

By the way, the next King Puff Cup has already been announced to happen on Saturday, June 30th at 13:00 UTC! You can find all the information, rules and the sign-up link right here!


Casual 2vs2 tournament presented by Cockeyed Gaming


Yesterday, Cockeyed Gaming gave their debut as tournament organizers in Minion Masters, as they hosted a casual 2vs2 tournament. Other than the King Puff Cup tournaments, which are coming with a $350 prize pool, this tournament granted participants in-game prizes only. Might sound less convincing than real money, but the prizes were totally worth it.

Let alone the Top 3 winning a total of 200 Power Tokens, 3.600 Rubies, and 30.000 Gold, plus the beautiful Dynasty Milloween skin for the winners. For the participation alone everyone was rewarded with 3 Power Tokens & 1.500 Gold. Viewers were able to win in giveaways throughout the stream and 3 streamers, who decided to stream the tournament also, were rewarded with the Sunken Temple Arena.

Cockeyed Gaming had a blast on Sunday, so had we! Congratulations to all the winners and a special thanks to Cockeyed Gaming for their effort and support, as well as to all the other streamers supporting that event. We hope to see a second tournament soon! For all of you that didn't make it to the live stream, here's your VOD!


Balance changes and improvements with Update 69


While we're coming to an end with today's blog post, we don't want to let you start the new week without talking briefly about Update 69, which is currently scheduled for Wednesday, June 20th. Please note that the following is subject to change at any point and we will go into more detail about the changes tomorrow at 20:00 UTC live on Twitch when Tengs & Erythais are streaming for you again!

We currently plan to at least change stats for the following units:
  • Scott, the sensitive Savage
  • Infiltration
  • AtG Drone x8
Scotty will receive a buff to his health pool. Infiltration and the AtG Drone x8 will receive buffs. A higher unit count for Infiltration and more health for the AtG Drone are what the balance team plans at this moment.

We decided against a change to the Drone Walker due to internal testings.

We also hope that we can present a change to the Demon Warrior, already. However - and to manage expectations - we cannot by any means guarantee that balance changes to the Demon Warrior will make it into Update 69. Our CEO BaboonLord is personally involved in the balancing process, as he was also the one announcing a change for the Demon Warrior live on stream. We cannot give you any additional information on that subject just yet.

We also plan additional improvements to the new features introduced with Update 68 and of course bug fixes.

---

That's all for today, Masters! Have a nice start to the week & we see you tomorrow on Twitch, as well as on the flying arenas throughout the week.

Cheers from BetaDwarf