Introduction
Explorers! Patch 2.3 is upon us! This Patch brings us new Raid Bosses, lots of Creature Changes, some new Creatures, and some QoL changes. GamePress has all the information you will need written down in articles specifically talking about these subjects. You can find them using these links:
In this article, we will be talking about Quality of Life and what these changes mean to us!
Top Arena Matchmaking
All players in Arena 13 ("Beaches") can now be matched with one another. This means at 6,000+ trophies, you could fight someone who has eclipsed 7,000. Players at the lower end of Beaches can still be matched with players in Gyro, but it will prioritize available Beaches opponents.
It's hard to know how to feel about this. While they do not state their reasoning, one can only imagine that it's sometimes very difficult for those at the top to get a match. Ludia isn't a fan of players using AI to farm incubators, and their previous answer to that was the dreaded 2 minute timer. We wonder if this isn't a different idea to try to squash the frequency of facing AI while higher up. It also likely gets stale constantly facing AI or the same players. Unfortunately, this could be at the expense of someone with a less strong and beefy team.
This seems an opportunity to go back to the old trophy system, the one which rewarded players for beating someone higher and "punished" for losing to someone lower. This would then ease the pain of losing to someone much stronger or actually give you a most excellent reward those times you win.
Improved Geolocation
MAP
Short-Range Spawning
Also referred to as "proximity spawns", short-range spawns are those that you can see within 30 meters (98ish feet), the smaller blue circle radar. Anything outside of that is considered "long range", and the map will differentiate between the two and spawn different creatures.
Some of the new creatures, particularly the first wild Legendary, Parasurolophus Lux, will only be found in short-range. You will also have a higher probability of spawning rarer creatures in the short-range. Unfortunately, scent capsules spawns are not considered short-range, as they are drawing creatures out of the long-range to you. This means you will not be able to hang out at home on your giga scent and cross your fingers for ParaLux.
This feature seems designed to discourage stationary hunting. Moving our bodies for the health benefits is very important, but there is still much of the world in various states of lockdown due to Covid-19. We like this idea in concept, but now doesn't feel like the appropriate time to launch it.
Creature View Distance
The view distance will be adjusted to help Rare & Epic spawns stand out more.
Dynamic PVP Tips
We're all very familiar with the various tips the game gives us as we wait for a match. This is simply an update/overhaul of those assumingly to make them relevant to the current state of the game. For example, months after they changed the cup system to +/-30, there is still a tip about beating a tougher opponent rewarding more trophies.
Bug Fixes & Known Issues
Here’s a shocking number for you – 190! According to the notes, that is how many “pesky bugs” have been addressed for 2.3. We thought 162 was a lot going in to 2.2. Most notably:
- The Supply Drops no longer spin infinitely when a player has maxed out their daily limit.
- If a creature has been placed in a sanctuary before an update, you will no longer have an issue of accessing it or it being stuck in limbo.
- Android 11 players will now be able to open virtual keyboard.
- Trophy counts will now be accurate in Profile and friends list.
Hopefully, some other long standing issues such as COLLECT (for the free incubator) notification appearing constantly are included. We will just have to wait and see what the other 186 fixes are! We can tell you they are not the following, as the notes state they are still being investigated:
- Players receive Raid push notifications while online
- Raid invite push notifications are only localized in English
- All creatures appear too dark in the Radar map on certain iOS devices.
- Icons and buttons are all displayed on screen after a drone session or opening incubators
- Raid boss disappears if the player darts a creature within its radius
- Users cannot place creatures in Sanctuaries after using them in other contexts
- Expired DNA Donation Requests Remain in Alliance Chat
- Dynamic character sheet Status Effects and Attribute visuals update
Parting Words
The news of version 2.3 came as quickly as 2.2 did, and we look forward to these improvements to our general game experience. Join our Discord Server and let us know what you're darting and why! We hope to see you on there!