Happy Friday Stumblers,

We’ve heard your many questions about Abilities, and we’re here to help! Chris, our Design Director who worked on the feature, is back with answers to clarify any doubts you might have! Let's go!

- Are abilities here to stay? How long will the ability update last?

• Yes abilities are here to stay. We are closely monitoring the performance of abilities, how they are used, and how they interact in the game at different progression stages and will be doing regular balance updates for both specific abilities behaviours as well as globally in their use. Additionally, we will be adding new abilities in the future. The goal is to allow more people to gain abilities and to have each ability feel like it has an area it excels at so that people want to collect more and use different ones in different types of game modes and levels.

- Will you balance / nerf the abilities? Will you do this before adding new abilities?

• Right now we are monitoring the initial launch and we are focused on updating the balance of abilities. We will continue to do this in all future seasons. We are also looking at adding new abilities to introduce new play opportunities and will be launching them when they are ready.

- How are you approaching the balance of new abilities? Is it data driven only or will community feedback be considered?

• We take a multi-source approach to balancing of abilities. We look at the data from the game as to which abilities people use and upgrade, also we run various simulations in our internal tool to help balance an ability. Additionally we are always looking at the community feedback and factoring that in as part of our overall balance approach.

- What will you do to keep the Abilities and Ranked Meta fresh & fun?

• This is a twofold answer. First, for ranked, we will be looking at updating map pools and changing up rewards each season to keep the experience fresh. Second, we are looking at additional changes, such as format structures. For abilities we will continually look at the balance of abilities as well as introduce new abilities which have specific purposes in the game to help keep the meta fresh.

- Will you bring back how taunts used to work on spikes in Block dash? If no, can you do the same exact thing with an Ability?

• We do not plan to bring back the momentum cancel effect from taunts as we found that this was being used as an exploit to avoid a game challenge rather than helping players develop skill. To compensate from this we have added this property to specific abilities (and may add to others) so now you need to have the ability, upgrade it and time your action to avoid the obstacle and not just mash a single button.

- Why are specific abilities only available in the Shop for purchase?

• Some abilities will be initially only launched in the shop, these abilities are available for those who want to get them as an early access. Over time shop abilities will be rotated into the main pool and become available to unlock with Ability Keys.

- Will all new stumble passes no longer have a "Special Emote" as before?

• The current plan is to not add any abilities directly into the stumble pass instead we have replaced this with Ability keys as this acts as a primary source for the keys for everyone allowing them to unlock the ability they want (and save up)

- Will console get abilities?

• Console is currently several versions behind mobile, they will get abilities at some point.

- How do I earn more Ability Keys & Tokens?

• Ability keys can be earned by completing the Battle Pass. If you complete the Battle Pass each season you will get ability keys and can either spend them immediately or save up for a higher rarity Ability. Ability tokens come from the Battle Pass but also will appear as rewards in Ranked, Daily wheel and other sources. By returning regularly and playing all areas of the game you can maximize your ability to get more Ability Tokens

- Will there ever be a Ranked mode that has abilities disabled?

• This is something that is under discussion, for now we want to see how things play out as the new system has just launched and many players are still getting and upgrading their Abilities. We will be monitoring the use and behaviour in ranked and this will factor into both our balance and long term decisions.

- Will you add a "try it before you buy it" feature for abilities?

• Great suggestion, this is not something we have currently on our roadmap but can look into it

- The most disliked effect is Magnetism. Will you nerf or remove it?

• We are looking at this right now and we will be rebalancing it to some extent. Whether it is removed entirely is not decided as yet.

- Can you add the option to hide the Emote/Taunts UI button completely?

• If you mean can we hide the Icon on the side of the screen this is something we can look at adding to settings.

- Can you add the option to choose your current ability level if it is maxed? Some abilities like Punch are worse off when maxed out because the knockback is too strong and you cannot body push the opponent.

• This is not something we are looking at doing rather this sort of feedback we will take into account as part of our balancing.

- Will you be able to downgrade an ability if you no longer want it maxed?

• For now we are not working on this, as the feature evolves and we get more data from players we may look at introducing a method to reset the progression.

- Will there be a way to reset abilities and receive some Keys / Tokens back?

• Per previous comment this is not something we are planning right now but is something we are open to looking into in the future once we have more data and have seen the feature evolve. Most likely it will just be a progression reset and not an unlock reset as we do want to make sure unlocking an ability is something people do tactically

- Will there be any more updates regarding abilities?

• Yes we will be continually updating abilities both the balance of existing and adding new ones.

- Can we use weaker versions of ability’s in customs?

• Right now this is not something we have planned to support

We hope this clarifies the new abilities and features! Please continue to share your feedback so we can keep improving.

Thank you, and have a great day!