Following community feedback from recent playtesting events, we have overhauled the power-up system and the ultimate system to make them more simple, clear and effective. Let's take a look:

Ultimate Abilities

The system for ultimate abilities had been simplified as follows:

Assignment

• BEFORE: The were randomly assigned to characters
• NOW: Each character has a specific ultimate

Triggering

• BEFORE: Play skillfully to fill your skill meter to level 1, 2 or 3 and then trigger
• NOW: You can use your character's ultimate once per match

Ability Types

• BEFORE: A mixture of ability types, from turning your opponent into an ice cube, to repelling tackles, to rebuilding or armouring bricks.
• NOW: Ultimates always enhance your shooting or tackling capability i.e. they apply a super power to your existing capabilities.

Below you can see an example of the new Ignite Scattershot ultimate assigned to the Ignite character:

Power Ups

Power-ups are spawned from smashed bricks and can be collected during gameplay. The system has been updated as follows:

Collection

• BEFORE: You could collect them by driving through them, or they could be collected by a loose ball, with the last player to have possession of the ball getting the power-up. This could sometimes be confusing as the frantic nature of the gameplay made it difficult to tell who has last touched the ball.
• NOW: You can collect them by driving through them, but a loose ball will collide with them and push them around the arena. This means you can flush a power-up out of the loop in Pinball Dream Park for example by firing the ball through it.

Power-Up Types

• BEFORE: We had one type of power-up which would randomly result in either bricks being rebuilt, armoured or shielded.
• NOW: We now have separate power-ups for brick rebuild, armour and shield so you can clearly see the result before collecting.

These changes create an elegantly balanced system where Ultimates, which are offensive/attacking in nature, are character based and can be triggered once per match, while power-ups, which are defensive in nature, can be collected during gameplay.