PBE Double Up - Info & Adjustments from your feedback

Hey folks. We announced the double up changes in our Dev Drop and then article, and now launched on PBE, which is pretty exciting. Since then we’ve seen your feedback, and wanted to give an update on some adjustments we’re making, but also explain some of our product goals with the Double Up mode.

First and foremost, our primary goal for Double Up is to provide a fun way to play TFT with your friends, regardless of skill level. We want it to be a more fun, social experience for those who want to enjoy TFT with a friend, whether that’s intro-ing someone new to the game, queueing up with a long time player, throwing a TFT party, or anything in between. 

It should still feel like the core TFT experience (this isn’t Choncc’s Treasure), but when making tradeoffs around the design and systems, we leaned on what would feel good for a social player playing on voice comms with a friend. We don’t want to stop people from playing it competitively, and we are trying to make sure the top of the ladder can provide some of that competitive teamwork experience, but that comes secondary.

So let’s break down some of the more common feedback points and talk about what changes we’re making, if any.

"The mode has inflated too much and feels too crazy” - On first read, we agree. The cannon being active right away and with a 4 turn cooldown, as well as the free gift armories has inflated things a bit much. In addition, there was a gift armory that included a Spatula (it was rare, but not the point) which could inflate traits pretty dramatically as well. So we’re actually making 3 changes here.

  • Sharing a champ that is 2* or higher will now put the cannon on cooldown for 6 rounds instead of 4
  • Removed the Spatula from the Stage 3 Large Gift Armory
  • Cut the chances of the Large Value Gift Armories in half.

“I miss the 1 HP safety barrier” - When we removed this, we had originally felt that this was a feature that made the mode feel a bit too different that core TFT, and had some awkward situations where your team hit 2 HP and could sack entire rounds. That being said, some people really miss this now that it’s gone, and the change aversion was real here. Looking at it overall though, the gains here are neutral at best from a design standpoint, and having that clear “WE’RE IN DANGER” moment is good thing for the mode, so, we are reverting and adding that back in.

Now there are some things we’ve heard that we won’t be changing and I want to be upfront with those.

“I’m down a bench slot for the cannon, why not put it somewhere else?” - The cannon was our way of letting folks trade items, and have a nice clear UI indicator of how many turns before they can share again. We had to put that somewhere, and unfortunately, especially on mobile, there really isn’t a good spot to put it without taking up key space that set design often uses. In addition, the removal of one bench slot does help us combat inflation a bit by making it a bit harder to hold everything and guarantee 3-star hits. We realize it never feels good to lose something (the bench slot) you had before, but looking at the tradeoff here, we still feel this is a positive change for the mode.

“Reinforcement timers are too quick” - We didn’t change this and from what we can tell there are no bugs or issues with this, so we’re inclined to not make any changes here. That being said, we’ll continue to evaluate it. We think this is one of the core parts that makes double up unique and having clutch saves or crazy 4v4 free for alls is exciting. 

So there ya go. Hopefully these additional changes help make it even more fun, and this insight into our goals helps contextualize our decisions. We’ll continue to monitor things, and may make further changes after the first or second patch of the set, but likely this is what we’re going to launch with. Thanks, and have fun Double Up players! Take it easy :)