Season 2

From Blaseball Wiki

(Redirected from Current Season)

This page is about the second season of the Coronation Era. For other uses, see Season 2 (disambiguation).

Season 2 was the second Season of the Coronation Era. The Regular Season began on January 23, 2023 and concluded on January 27, 2023, followed by the Postseason and Internet Series on January 28, 2023. The Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams defeated the Boston Flowers 3 wins to 1 to win the Internet Series, and recieved a Golden Record of 71-19 from the Commissioner.

Notable Events

Beginning

As the season began the Crew of Umpires appeared to deliver a brief message and reveal decrees to be voted on.

THE TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS IS COMING
THE REVIEW BEGINS NOW
MAKE YOUR APPEALS
NAME YOUR CREW CHIEF
AWAIT JUDGEMENT
THE RULES MUST BE ENFORCED
WAKE UP PLAY BALL!

Horizon Burps

During Horizon weather, players have a chance of falling out of the Black Hole (Black Hole) and can either become buried on The Field or fall on an active player. Players who have been landed on are replaced by the fallen player and move to the Shadows. Buried players are assigned to one of the teams, but are not visible on the team page and do not play.

Buried Players

Day Player Receiving Team
7 Joyner Rugrat Atlantis Georgias
9 Yams Sokol Dallas Steaks
10 Caleb Alvarado LA Unlimited Tacos
17 Marco Stink Dallas Steaks
41 Doc Anice Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams
54 Pedro Davids Seattle Garages
68 Cell Longarms Canada Moist Talkers
68 Millipede Aqualuft Yellowstone Magic
79 Leach Herman Mexico City Wild Wings
86 Irnee Bluesky Ohio Worms
93 Icarus Harrow San Francisco Lovers

Crashed Players

Day Player Fallen Player Hit Team
3 Ayanna Dumpington Mindy Kugel Kansas City Breath Mints
10 Erin Beanbag Donia Bailey LA Unlimited Tacos
40 Basilio Fig Mags Highlife Hawai'i Fridays

Crew of Umpires and Solar Eclipses

With the league under Official Review and the Forbidden Book reopened, four kinds of Solar Eclipse are in play, Blue, Red, Gold, and Silver. These appear to correspond to the four Umpires on the Crew of Umpires, which are able to cause different effects under the different Solar Eclipses.

Known actions so far:

Red Solar Eclipse (Mage Umpire)

Day Player Affected Effect Team
3 Vaquita Magno Ruled in Magno's favor, boosting their attributes Baltimore Crabs
4 Haruta Byrd Called Byrd's Alternate Hawai'i Fridays
23 Daniel Mendoza Called Mendoza's Alternate Boston Flowers
24 Ryuji Ngozi Called Ngozi's Alternate New York Millennials
42 Bonk Jokes Called Jokes's Alternate Broken Ridge Jazz Hands
53 Ralph Vincent Called Vincent's Alternate Chicago Firefighters
57 Jammy Decksetter Called Decksetter's Alternate Charleston Shoe Thieves
62 Neerie McCloud Called McCloud's Alternate Core Mechanics
64 Carter O'connor Ruled in O'connor's favor, boosting their attributes Mexico City Wild Wings
66 Vernon Shotwell Called Shotwell's Alternate Yellowstone Magic
67 Ralph Vincent Called Vincent's Alternate Chicago Firefighters
77 Edric Tosser Ruled in Tosser's favor, boosting their attributes Miami Dale
84 Niu Chen Called Chen's Alternate Core Mechanics
85 Elijah Valenzuela Called Valenzuela's Alternate Hawai'i Fridays
88 Sheri Friday Called Friday's Alternate Core Mechanics

Silver Solar Eclipse (Knight Umpire)

Day Player Affected Effect Team
6 Winnie Hess Hess parried a Knight Umpire's swear Ohio Worms
10 Badgerson Stromboli Stromboli parried a Knight Umpire's swear Ohio Worms
12 Letitia Diop A Knight swore at Diop, who then embarked on a Side Quest. Rocket Hadji clocked in. Mexico City Wild Wings
19 Agan Espinoza Ruled in Espinoza's favor, boosting their attributes Dallas Steaks
20 Yosh Carpenter Carpenter parried a Knight Umpire's swear Chicago Firefighters
35 Sevgi Gore A Knight swore at Gore, who then embarked on a Side Quest. Scratch Deleuze clocked in. Houston Spies
40 Muna Sichantha A Knight swore at Sichantha, who then embarked on a Side Quest. No players clocked in. San Francisco Lovers
50 Chambers Simmons A Knight swore at Simmons, who then embarked on a Side Quest. No players clocked in. Seattle Garages
58 Ajax Murphy Murphy parried a Knight Umpire's swear Ohio Worms
61 Tahini Poinsettia Poinsettia parried a Knight Umpire's swear Miami Dale
82 Flan Prince A Knight swore at Prince, who then embarked on a Side Quest. No players clocked in. Charleston Shoe Thieves
88 Tad Seeth Seeth parried a Knight Umpire's swear Canada Moist Talkers

Gold Solar Eclipse (Bard Umpire)

Day Player Affected Effect Team
10 Tiana Takahashi Takahashi dodged the Bard Umpire's curse Tokyo Lift
14 Anathema Elemefayo Elemefayo dodged the Bard Umpire's curse Hawai'i Fridays
19 Jenkins Good Ruled in Good's favor, boosting their attributes LA Unlimited Tacos
26 Jenkins Ingram Cursed Ingram with Can't Lose Boston Flowers
30 Tad Seeth Seeth dodged the Bard Umpire's curse Canada Moist Talkers
49 Winnie Hess Hess dodged the Bard Umpire's curse Ohio Worms
53 Özlem Suttner Cursed Suttner with Can't Lose Tokyo Lift
57 Stephanie Donaldson Donaldson dodged the Bard Umpire's curse Broken Ridge Jazz Hands
66 Sherbet Baek Ruled in Baek's favor, boosting their attributes San Francisco Lovers
81 Sigmund Castillo Cursed Castillo with Can't Lose Broken Ridge Jazz Hands
81 Faye Melange Ruled in Melange's favor, boosting their attributes Houston Spies

Blue Solar Eclipse (Rogue Umpire)

Day Player Affected Effect Team
17 Velasquez Alstott Rogue Umpire Incinerated Alstott. Replaced by Hana Wildebeest Hades Tigers
22 Chae DeShields Rogue Umpire Incinerated DeShields. Replaced by Juke Gnocchi Baltimore Crabs
23 Jana Beats Ruled in Beats's favor, boosting their attributes New York Millennials
23 Beef Knight Rogue Umpire Incinerated Knight. Replaced by Flan Prince Charleston Shoe Thieves
27 Ramiel Jang Rogue Umpire Incinerated Jang. Replaced by Muna Sichantha San Francisco Lovers
28 Baldwin Jones Rogue Umpire Incinerated Jones. Replaced by Baker Caster Mexico City Wild Wings
30 Soojin Gloom Rogue Umpire Incinerated Gloom. Replaced by Piper Legume LA Unlimited Tacos
41 Rivers Rosa Rogue Umpire Incinerated Rosa. Replaced by Mimosa Arslan Houston Spies
43 Inky Rutledge Rogue Umpire Incinerated Rutledge. Replaced by Duncan Phantom Yellowstone Magic
56 Khulan Sagaba Ruled in Sagaba's favor, boosting their attributes Canada Moist Talkers
56 Steals Mondegreen Rogue Umpire Incinerated Mondegreen. Replaced by Leandra Beech Hades Tigers
68 Mimosa Arslan Rogue Umpire Incinerated Arslan. Replaced by Hye Brighella Houston Spies
68 Ramirez Winters Rogue Umpire Incinerated Winters. Replaced by Avery Cascabel Baltimore Crabs
79 Leandra Beech Rogue Umpire Incinerated Beech. Replaced by Verity Gander Hades Tigers

Siesta

Following Day 65, Blaseball was put into a Siesta in order to resolve slowdown issues with the games, after Day 65 resulted in another set of multiple spillovers. This resulted in an announcement.

EMERGENCY ALERT
INTERNAL ERROR
EXCESSIVE CHANGE DETECTED
TIME DENSITY HIGH
NORMALIZATION INCOMING

A few minutes later games returned for Day 65 only to be put back on Siesta again after that to resolve stabillity issues.The Ticker was updated to reflect this and the website was changed to read "PLEASE WAIT" again. Around an hour later the site returned to games with Day 66. As a response to this the UBI for that day was given out 4 times.

Questing Results

As a result of their Knighted Modification, which was given during Solar Eclipse (Silver) Weather. Chambers Simmons "found a Heart and [felt] renewed", on Day 71. The result of this was an overall boost to their Attributes, which resulted in their batting reaching 5.5 stars.

On Day 91, Flan Prince "retreated from sounds of scuttling". This resulted in a decrease to their Attributes, that was less than Simmons increase.

Postseason Switch

After round 1 of the Postseason, the Yellowstone Magic and Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams swapped places in the Postseason. This resulted in the Yellowstone Magic playing in the Good Conference and the Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams playing in the Evil Conference. As a result of this the Sunbeams managed to become the Evil Conference winners despite being in the Good Conference. The reason for the switch was ascribed by Facts Machine (in a message) and the Commissioner (on twitter) as being due to "INTERNAL ERROR".

Ongoing Decrees

Following the Season 1 election, the following decree was in place for Season 2:

Standings

Good Conference Record Evil Conference Record
Awful Good Awful Evil
Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams 🌞* 71-19 Atlantis Georgias 🔱* 52-38
Charleston Shoe Thieves 👟* 59-31 Broken Ridge Jazz Hands 👐 49-41
Miami Dale 🚤 48-42 Dallas Steaks 🥩 41-49
Baltimore Crabs 🦀 45-45 Chicago Firefighters 🔥 41-49
Philly Pies 🥧 42-48 Core Mechanics 🛠️ 38-52
Hades Tigers 🐅 24-66 Houston Spies 🕵️ 27-63
Chaotic Good Chaotic Evil
Boston Flowers 🌹* 60-30 Yellowstone Magic ✨* 61-29
San Francisco Lovers 💋* 49-41 Mexico City Wild Wings 🍗* 59-31
Kansas City Breath Mints 🍬 48-42 Hawai'i Fridays 🏝️* 59-31
Canada Moist Talkers 🗣️ 37-53 Seattle Garages 🎸 43-47
LA Unlimited Tacos 🌮 34-56 Ohio Worms 🐌 34-56
New York Millennials 📱 26-64 Tokyo Lift 🏋️‍ 33-57

* Denotes teams that made it to the playoffs.


Postseason

Four teams from each Conference advance to the postseason, consisting of the four best performing teams in the Conference seeded by Wins..

Teams alternate home games with the higher seed hosting first. The Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and Internet Series are all best-of-five.

  Quarterfinals Semifinals Internet Series
                           
  1 Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams 3  
4 San Francisco Lovers 1  
  2 Boston Flowers 3  
Good Conference
  1 Yellowstone Magic* 2  
2 Boston Flowers 3
  3 Charleston Shoe Thieves 0  
    GC Boston Flowers 1
  EC Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams* 3
  1 Yellowstone Magic 3  
4 Atlantis Georgias 2  
  2 Hawai'i Fridays 1
Evil Conference
  1 Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams* 3  
2 Hawai'i Fridays 3
  3 Mexico City Wild Wings 0  

*Denotes teams sent to the opposite Semifinals bracket due to "INTERNAL ERROR".[2]

Election Ballot

Decrees

The Decree with the most community votes will go into effect. During this Season the Decree options were under the title of "Crew Chief" with the subtile of "Name a Crew Chief to Review and Enforce the Rules next Season."

Icon Name Effect
icon
 Bard Umpire Name the Bard Umpire as the Crew Chief to Review and Enforce the Rules next Season.
icon
 Knight Umpire Name the Knight Umpire as the Crew Chief to Review and Enforce the Rules next Season.
icon
 Mage Umpire Name the Mage Umpire as the Crew Chief to Review and Enforce the Rules next Season.
icon
 Rogue Umpire Name the Rogue Umpire as the Crew Chief to Review and Enforce the Rules next Season.

Blessings

Each Blessing will be awarded to a randomly selected team. Votes from a team's fans increase the likelihood of that team receiving a blessing. Each team can win at most one blessing.

Name Effect
Yeet Send your Team's worst Player into the Black Hole and receive a random Player back.
NEW Pitching Boost Your Team's Pitching is boosted by 1 Star.
Magnetic Fielder Boost the Magnet of the worst Defender on your Team by 3 Stars.
Wind Sprints Your Team's Defense and Running are boosted by 1 Star.
Mage Strike The Mage Umpire will Strike one of your Division Rivals.
Knight Strike The Knight Umpire will Strike one of your Division Rivals.
Dark Matter Steal 5 random Players from the Black Hole.
NEW Batting Boost Your Team's Batting is boosted by 1 Star.
Rogue Strike The Rogue Umpire will Strike one of your Division Rivals.
Ball Hawk Reposition your best Defender to Midfielder and increase their Reach by 3 Stars.
Learn to Defend Re-roll the Defense of your worst Defender.
Bard Strike The Bard Umpire will Strike one of your Division Rivals.
Strong Start Sort your Lineup by Batting Rating.
Telekinesis Boost the Control of a random Pitcher on your Team by 3 Stars.
Shadow Play Swap your worst Player out for someone in your Shadows.

Election Results

Decrees

  • Bard Umpire
    • THE BARD UMPIRE IS BOUND TO THE BOOK
    • APPEALS HEARD
    • JUDGEMENTS PENDING

Blessings

List of Blessings Results

  • Teamicon millennials.png
    Ball Hawk
    • Ren Hunter Repositions to Midfielder and gains 3 Stars of Reach!
    • Won with 4.2772%
  • Teamicon flowers.png
    Strong Start
  • Teamicon wild wings.png
    Shadow Play
    • Atma Blueberry is called up to replace Baker Caster.
    • Baker Caster retreats to the shadows...
    • Won with 24.5716%
    • Note: When this blessing originally fired, no player replaced Baker Caster and they briefly disappeared as a result.
  • Teamicon sunbeams.png
    Learn to Defend
  • Teamicon lovers.png
    Magnetic Fielder
    • Alvie Kesh gains 3 Stars of Magnet.
    • Won with 9.4639%
  • Teamicon shoe thieves.png
    Telekinesis
  • Teamicon moist talkers.png
    Wind Sprints
  • Teamicon magic.png
    NEW Pitching Boost
  • Teamicon tacos.png
    NEW Batting Boost

Takeover Messages

Prior to the reveal of the Election results, the Crew of four Umpires appeared to announce the new Crew Chief.

APPEALS HAVE BEEN HEARD
JUDGEMENT PASSED
A CREW CHIEF IS NAMED
THE BARD IS BOUND
THE BANDWAGON PLAYS ON
PLAY REMAINS UNDER REVIEW

Offseason

Siesta Announcement

On Friday, February 3rd, 2023, The Game Band would make their second Post on the website, announcing an Extended Siesta to prepare the site for Season 3.

An Update from The Game Band (2/3/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans,

We’ve spent the last year planning for the future, building and rebuilding the Sim, and figuring out how to run Blaseball in a way that’s sustainable for us as a team. Finally, after that long hiatus, Blaseball returned with a new Era. Rejoice!

…But that rejoicing quickly turned into some confusion and frustration. Put plainly, even with all the work we did, we still didn’t get Blaseball to where we wanted it to be for this launch.

Our hope was to be able to iterate and improve post-launch, but as we tried to do that, we realized it just wasn’t realistic for the amount that needed to be done. And it was negatively impacting your experience. We need to make improvements. We’ve heard your concerns about things like accessibility, missing features, site navigation and performance issues, and often found you saying the exact same things we were saying to each other.

In order to get the game where it needs to be, we’re pausing the Era for now. This is NOT going to be a repeat of our last Siesta — we are going to come back as soon as possible.

We’re really excited about the Era of Blaseball we have planned for you. What you’ve seen so far is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

We’ll be posting & emailing you weekly updates as we make these improvements.

Stay tuned.

The Game Band
Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

February 10, 2023 Update

On Friday, February 10th, 2023, The Game Band would post their first development update concerning the siesta. They announced some upcoming interface additions as well as a survey active at the time of original posting.

An Update from The Game Band (2/10/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans,

This week, the studio has been focusing on retrospectives: looking back to determine where things went great, where things went not-great, and generally doing a bunch of process updates to make sure we learn from our old mistakes. Not just with the relaunch, but also throughout the Era when we’re live again!

On top of the retrospectives, TGB’s dev team has been hard at work testing and building Blaseball interface updates like weather icons (they’re back!), bet indicators on live games, easier site navigation, universal game days, and more information you might want on past games in the ‘Schedule’ view. They’ve been going through known site issues compiled by QA and are working with designers on prioritizing fixes.

We would like to get some more feedback from you, yes you! We’ve put together a survey that will help us learn more about your experience and priorities, and we’re also beginning to organize user interviews.

See you next Friday with another update!

The Game Band
Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

February 17, 2023 Update

On Friday, February 17th, 2023, The Game Band would post another development update concerning the siesta, notably introducing patch notes.

An Update from The Game Band (2/17/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans,

Thank you so much for your survey responses! This week, as we’ve been working on the web and mobile Blaseball experiences, that feedback has already proved extremely helpful to us. So seriously, thank you. We’re busy going through all your thoughts to make sure we’re on the same page about what fixes we’re prioritizing.

According to you all, the three most important features for us to work on are: Site Navigation (38.5%), Post-game event surfacing (29.6%), and The Feed (29.1%). We've actually been testing Event Surfacing and a reworked Site Nav since the start of this Siesta, and a large majority of other issues, like the frustrating mobile experience and accessibility concerns, are already high priorities for us.

As we move forward and solidify our plans, our team is still working hard on bug fixes and improvements, so we’re going to start including Patch Notes whenever we can in this and future updates.

You’ll hear from us soon about user interviews.

See you next Friday!

The Game Band

Patch Notes 2/17/23

Web client

  • Fans now have the ability to reset a forgotten account password
  • Some behind the scenes work for [FAN-FAVORITE MECHANIC SPOILER]
  • Backend styling and efficiency updates

Sim / Backend

  • New tiebreaker logic
  • Reorganizing some election setup code
  • Setup for [SPOILER] mechanics & weather
  • API stability improvements
  • Fix bugged batting lineups due to player roster changes from weather effects

Mobile

  • Backend styling and efficiency updates
  • Betting & navigation improvements
  • Past game outcomes & weather results
  • Deep linking support
  • Fix login session persistence
  • Schedule improvements


Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

February 24, 2023 Announcement

On February 24, 2023, The Game Band posted another development update, this time concerning internal testing of social features and changes in internal processes.

An Update from The Game Band (2/24/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans!

This week has been a lot of testing and prioritizing. We’ve spoken in the past about how excited we are to show off what the design team has planned for this Era, and we’re testing a bunch of it to make sure it’s as functional in execution as it is cool in our brains. Continuing with this theme, our game designers are fleshing out and balancing Era mechanics. We look forward to showing you when the time comes!

We're also testing some Blaseball social features for further down the line: Community staged a company PVP (against ourselves) and asked TGB employees to cause as many problems as possible, in order to test our tools so far. It was very illustrative, and our team members are abundantly creative for making mayhem.

Everyone here, but especially our engineers, were so happy to see your responses to last week's patch notes! We are going to make sure to include them going forward whenever we have them.

Finally, those retrospective conversations we told you about have really come to fruition with big process changes internally, which translates to lots of positive improvements in the longer-term development of Blaseball.

Our path forward is looking a lot clearer, and we should have more concrete info for you very soon.

See you next Friday!

The Game Band
Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

March 3, 2023 Announcement

On March 3, 2023, The Game Band posted another development update, which revealed the return of the Idol Board.

An Update from The Game Band (3/3/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans,

In the last patch notes, we censored out a certain fan-favorite mechanic that's being worked on, and a bunch of you guessed what it is correctly anyways. Idols and Idol Boards are among the first features coming back! They'll be doing some new things, and the test builds are looking great.

We're continuing to work on things based on your feedback. This week, we've been increasing stability, addressing some concerns about font size and the legibility of team colors, continuing our interface update, and finishing up with scoping everything to make sure Blaseball is a more enjoyable experience when we're back.

See you next Friday with more updates!

The Game Band

PATCH NOTES:

Mobile

  • More work on deep linking support

Sim / Elections

  • Setup for future election outcomes
  • Future weekly mechanic setup
  • Idols board mechanics setup
  • Added future weather and mods
  • Fix for future weather effect crashing the sim
  • Fix for gamelogs history not being saved properly
  • [SPOILER] now results in Consequences
  • Distinguishing serial numbers added to [SPOILER]
  • Fix for [SPOILER] not adding players to the correct team

Site / API

  • Fix for certain election endpoints causing HTTP 500 errors
  • Database performance improvements for various operations on player attributes
  • Fix for site blackscreening under on teams that are [SPOILER]

Tooling

  • Fixes and improvements for season schedule setup scripts
  • Workflow improvements & efficiency updates

Other things worked on

  • UI/UX polish and navigation improvements
  • Font size testing


Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

March 10, 2023 Announcement

On March 10, 2023, The Game Band posted another development update, musing on icons for Modifications and updates to the mobile experience.

An Update from The Game Band (3/10/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans!

We’ve been heads down on finalizing our relaunch plans to ensure it happens as seamlessly as possible. It’s not a fun detail, but it is an essential one!

Much of our work lately would be considered spoilers, but we have been working on some exciting stuff we know Fans have asked about. In particular, we’ve been exploring what it would take to have custom modification icons for players. While we don’t know if it’s something we will be able to do (there are a lot of mods!), the initial exploration has been exciting. Readability on the site has been a topic of conversation as of late, mod icons are just one part of a larger conversation on UI, font, and images.

We’re already seeing a positive impact from those workflow changes we mentioned in previous updates, which means we should have a relaunch plan ready to show you soon, with a timeline for when we're aiming to come back. Our patch notes this week are mostly focused on mobile as we prepare to dive into further site improvements.

See you next Friday!

The Game Band

Patch Notes

Mobile

  • Made it possible to link to several pages, including Teams, Standings, and Tournaments via the cover CTAs
  • Updated button and tab styling
  • Cut off the overflowing corners on some rounded rectangles
  • Made cover CTA buttons use Team colors
  • Made settings button easier to select
  • Deep linking

Sim / Elections

  • [Future Weather construction noises]


Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

March 17, 2023 Announcement

On March 17, 2023, The Game Band posted another development update, this time focusing on larger site changes and shorter updates going forward.

An Update from The Game Band (3/17/23)
Hey Blaseball Fans!

We're pausing longer updates while we go heads down to focus on larger changes for relaunch. We'll continue updating patch notes when there’s significant work to report on.

What’s on the teams plate right now doesn't always break down into weekly chunks, so we will focus these updates on meaningful progress and big news moving forward. Posts will still go up on Fridays!

See you soon!

The Game Band

Patch Notes

Web client

  • Visual polish for schedule section headers, team colors, and font sizes for readability

Mobile

  • Visual polish for schedule headers and updated team colors
  • More work on deep linking support (teams, standings, & tournament pages)
  • Styling and usability improvements for tabs, buttons, and other UI components
  • Internal documentation cleanup
    Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

March 24, 2023 Announcement

On March 24, 2023, The Game Band posted another development update. This update, while short, mentions Peanuts.

An Update from The Game Band (3/24/23)
Hello everyone, it's weekly update time! As we mentioned last week, these updates are going to be a little lighter while we complete the background work necessary for relaunch. As promised though, here is an update!

A lot of work this week has been in the area of scoping the remaining projects needed for relaunch. This means we can efficiently assign people to the right tasks at the right time and make sure that we're all working towards the same goals.

We've also tracked down a designer in the wild to ask some questions about upcoming features. Here's what Joel had to say, and we encourage you to make of it what you will:

  • Peanuts
  • Ominous Whooshing
  • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
  • Guests
  • Normalization

See you next Friday!

The Game Band

Patch Notes

  • Web: Updated navigation sidebar & style polish
  • Web & mobile: Game widget styling & weather icon updates
  • Major writing & design progress on [redacted] seasons ([redacted], [redacted], and weather)
    Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

March 31, 2023 Announcement

On March 31, 2023, The Game Band posted another development update. This update discusses their development priorities in preparation for a Spring return.

An Update from The Game Band (3/31/23)
Note: if you have issues reading the site in its current state, we have copied the full text of this update to Medium for easier reading.

We’re coming back this Spring.

As part of the lead up to re-launch, we’re shifting how we do these updates to give you more substance.

In this update we’re including a breakdown of our current priorities for our return (some accomplished and some in-progress), and every 3 weeks we will be updating it with new focus, completed projects, and interesting tidbits. Patch notes will continue weekly on the site.

Much of this break has been fixes and updates based on Fan feedback, but we’ve also been dedicating time to updating our workflows and investing in a more nimble development style. Basically, we want to be in a place where this kind of break doesn’t need to happen again because we’ve spent the time building a more stable, easily updated game. We’ve also built in a ton of extra time to make sure everything is tested thoroughly before it hits your screens.

With that in mind, here’s what we’ve committed to for re-launch in Spring! This is not exhaustive, so if you don’t see something you’re looking forward to, don’t worry! It’s likely already on our list.

Quality of Life Fixes

These are small decisions that have a big impact for Fans but minimal impact on larger systems. This category is choices like improving font size and surfacing game days.

Readability

  • Increased font size
  • Weather icons
  • Team color contrast updates
  • Accessibility consulting for future site improvements
  • Consolidated icon displays across different parts of the site

Info Surfacing

  • Adding Game Days
  • Pitcher displayed for future games
  • Additional explanations and context around how to interact with Blaseball
  • Social links in footer of site
  • Weather Outcomes and post-game scores shown in Schedule after games complete

Heavier Lifts

These are systemic changes or larger visual improvements like making site navigation easier and schedule improvements.

Site Navigation

  • Updated sidebar navigation to minimize clicks + surface pages like Election and Schedule better
  • Team Page information updates (makes key info easier to find)
  • Player Page information updates (makes key info easier to find)

Schedule

  • Improved schedule display for understanding current events
  • Users can click on days in Season header for a preview of what will happen on upcoming days (what’s going on Thursday?)

Community Interaction

  • A new internal process for surfacing Fan feedback to the development team weekly
  • Designing Watch Party Roulette for the official Discord

Getting Ahead on Story

  • Building out & testing narrative, mechanics, Season features long before the Season goes live

Systems and Mechanics

This includes a ton of new systems, mechanics, and choices to make the Era as exciting as possible, including several new communal choices / elections for Fans to participate in.

  • Idols Board
  • [SPOILERS]- a new Idols Board mechanic
  • [SPOILER]- a pivotal Season-end Election
  • [SPOILER]- an Off-Season Team improvement Election
  • A new schedule that makes Seasons more manageable for you and for us.
  • A bunch of new systems that will let us run an entire Era of exciting Seasons, including some of the most commonly requested systems

Long Term Goals

Long-term goals include bigger projects like internal tools for a better Blaseball, story surfacing projects and internal tools. These are priorities for the future but may not be complete in time for our Spring return.

  • Story surfacing from emergent narrative- how can we easily surface and celebrate the stories the sim influences
  • Onboarding new users with official resources and easier to find information
  • Improved internal systems and tools for building Blaseball

Want to know more? Submit a question for the team to answer in regular updates alongside our Patch Notes and future communication. How frequently we answer questions will depend on how many we get, so ask away!
Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

April 14, 2023 Announcement

On April 14, 2023, The Game Band posted the following Q&A:

A Q&A from The Game Band 4/14/23
Note: if you have issues reading the site in its current state, we have copied the full text of this update to Medium for easier reading.

Welcome to your weekly update! We collected some questions from last week’s submissions and will be answering them periodically in the lead up to relaunch this Spring.

In terms of accessibility, the update mentioned "consulting". Can you elaborate on that? Are you consulting accessibility specialists?

Yes! We are consulting with an accessibility specialist about many aspects of the site, as well as our design and evaluation processes internally! While designing for accessibility is an ongoing process, we’re working on fixes with high impact first and then plan to build out a longer term plan that extends beyond launch.

How linear was the path to the current iteration of the sim? Do you encounter a lot of dead ends?

When asking our head of Engineering this question, he said, “Linear is a hard concept here. I see it more as an amorphous blue cloud that rotates slowly around the shared mind-space of every engineer and sometimes takes the form of a small, feral marmot that whispers its secrets in our ears as we sleep.”

We think that translates to, “It really depends on what part of the sim we’re working on. The rebuild was very intentional and based on how the old sim evolved. If we know what we want the sim to be able to accomplish, it’s just a matter of building a more stable, modular system. Any conflicts with the sim are more vibes-based and come from things like testing how often weather events occur. Even that is fewer dead ends and more ‘oh that didn’t feel as smooth as we’d like. Let’s turn the dial up.’”

What work was done during the nearly two-year siesta? If you were to re-write Blaseball from scratch again, what would you do the same and what would you do differently?

Here are the highlights:

Experimentation. The first two Eras allowed for a super fun, very rowdy few years that led to burnout of our team and Fans time and time again. It also meant most of our energy had to be spent keeping the game live instead of trying new things. Siesta gave us the time we needed to really explore what was possible. We spent countless hours exploring features like the Idols Board, new election systems, new Gods and mechanics, at least 4 different schedules, a ton of community and marketing approaches, ethical monetization, and ways to run Blaseball sustainably.

We rebuilt the simulation, which sounds simple when you put it like that, but was a huge undertaking with greater long-term benefits. With the previous version, any time we wanted to do something cool, have a new mod, introduce a new story— it had to be a custom solution for that instance. We couldn’t build Systems, we could only build moments. It’s the difference between decorating your house by nailing a photo to the wall vs. rebuilding your house to install missing plumbing. In the previous sim, introducing field positions was impossible because they would have just been a datapoint. Now the sim knows ‘where’ Players are, how their stats impact that position, and is able to systemically resolve play. The sim also knows ‘where’ the ball is! That was impossible before, and we can modify these things without having to shut down the whole site to change something. We’re still early in a Blaseball that demonstrates what the sim is truly capable of, but in short, it means Blaseball will be driven more by the Players and gameplay systems themselves, instead of just The Game Band and some dice rolls. We have plumbing now!

This also means more stability. Getting there meant re-writing a lot of code from deep in the Discipline and Expansion Era days. The trade off is that we can’t just plug in the old code for features like Shame, but we now have a foundation we’ve literally never had before.

We developed a mobile app experience for the game. Development for new platforms is never easy, especially when a number of factors outside of your control lead to reworking huge portions of development. All of that time re-evaluating and resetting led to improvements on initial features and a better user experience based on site feedback, so we’re hoping to get the app in your hands soon.

We worked out process issues coming from growing a remote work studio, and created & hired for multiple new departments to help support our team.

Fundraising We had to dedicate a significant amount of time to pitching and securing additional investment for the future of the company.

Future Design We designed the entirety of Era 3 (a few times!) and how it could lead into Era 4.

What would we do differently? Knowing what we know now, we’d have a much clearer direction from the start. Short Circuits, the Siesta, and even Fall Ball have been immensely valuable in getting a better understanding of what we want to make and what our Fans want. So a lot of the time spent experimenting wouldn’t need to happen and a lot of unknowns wouldn’t need to be run. We’d also make the font size bigger from the start and plan for a few more unforseen roadblocks in the development cycle.

I'm so interested in the process of developing a narrative for a game like this. What is the workflow like (possible topics: pitching ideas, narrowing down/fleshing out, and how you incorporate emergent gameplay)?

Our game designers offered two answers. Both are true.

Option 1:

  1. State a problem space, find something to solve
  2. Come up with 2 or 3 practical answers that don't end up panning out for various reasons
  3. Go silent for anywhere between 10 and 120 seconds
  4. Pierce the silence with "ok what IF" and then state the wildest idea you have
  5. ????
  6. Come out of a fugue state to see your feature in Blaseball

Option 2:

  • Our process is usually this: We come up with a narrative idea — a story we want to tell, a funny moment we’d like to create, or a theme we’d like to explore. Then we brainstorm how to tell that story with systems.
  • How do you do that? Well, break everything down to its essential elements (To tell a story about necromancy — what do you need? At the very least, a way to know a character is dead, and a way to bring them back). And then we make up rules for the sim and choices for the players that could create that narrative.
  • What you’re left with is not a particular story, but a possibility space — a whole variety of narrative that your rules could create. And then it’s up to you to constantly iterate on the rules you’ve laid out and choices you’ve offered in order to adjust that possibility space.
  • A good way to test this out without making a game wholesale is just to GM a tabletop game. Just do a one-shot! You don’t even need others — GM it for yourself, even! Just practice designing systems that lead to good stories.


Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

April 21, 2023 Announcement

On April 21, 2023, The Game Band returned with another update detailing their current priorities for the return.

An Update from The Game Band (4/21/23)
Note: if you have issues reading the site in its current state, we have copied the full text of this update to Medium for easier reading.

In this update we’re including a breakdown of our current priorities for our return (some accomplished and some in-progress), and every 3 weeks we will be updating it with new focus, completed projects, and interesting tidbits. Patch notes will continue weekly on the site.

Here are the new additions to what is coming when we relaunch! This is not exhaustive.

Election Page Improvements
The ever-present Elections are a page we're continually improving in terms of readability, convenience, and presentation.

  • Overhauled Elections user experience bringing active elections and election results together on the same page
  • Major improvements to Voting experience
  • Individual countdowns to election closing
  • More emphasis on major story moments
  • Introduced new Election mechanics

Mobile Web Update
Our upcoming iOS and Android apps will offer the best mobile Blaseball experience, but in the meantime, we want you to have an easier time using the site on mobile web, too.

  • Updating component layouts for mobile web
  • Converting sidebar menu to hamburger menu for small screen widths
  • Small UI fixes and adjustments

API Optimization
Significant changes and optimization of the API means performance improvements everywhere, but especially:

  • Schedule loading
  • Betting data
  • Player & Team info

Base Stealing!
Needs more testing before we're confident you'll be able to see in action during the next Season, but it's coming down the pipeline!

  • players
  • steal
  • bases
  • wow!!!

Want to know more? Submit a question for the team to answer in regular updates alongside our Patch Notes and future communication. How frequently we answer questions will depend on how many we get, so ask away!
Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

May 5, 2023 Announcement

On May 5, 2023, The Game Band returned with a Q&A about Blaseball development.

A Q&A from The Game Band (5/5/23)
Note: if you have issues reading the site in its current state, we have copied the full text of this update to Medium for easier reading.

This week we have a Q&A for you!

Will I be able to financially support blaseball and it's development? Absolutely adored the idea of the patreon and getting to submit names for players, really hope we get a system like that again.

Yes, eventually! We’re exploring ways for our audience to spend money on Blaseball without any of the obvious pay-to-win strategies, which will take some time and research. A lot of that work is driven by something our Community team said— “There are two things all Blaseball fans love: committing to the bit, and number go up.” So we’re thinking a lot about how to introduce optional fun, enrich the Blaseball experience for everyone, and, hopefully, shitpost a bit with the community.

When it comes to the name pool, we’ve done a lot of internal work on broadening representation in names from all over the world. We want to give that a chance to populate the current League, so we’re keeping names homegrown for now. But expect more fun things coming down the pipeline!

What improvements are being made to the development process, and is that going to affect Blaseball’s Season schedule?

One of our big goals this year is to successfully run Blaseball without long hiatuses and without crunch — it’s something that improves the quality of everything we make as developers, and it definitely improves your experience of Fans too.

In the last Q&A, we talked about our work on the game engine: rebuilding the foundations of the sim so that we can host more complicated interactions with less difficulty, which frees us up to plan ahead and prepare what’s next before we need it. That’s one improvement to development process that may not be very flashy, but absolutely pays off in unseen ways!

The improvements being made during this current development time include tightening up the pillars of the game and laying groundwork for longer-term improvements to core gameplay interactions. Which are things that are very hard to do when Blaseball is live because that’s we need to focus on launching, operating, and hotfixing all the exciting Season-to-Season content.

So the big question Fans probably have left is, what is happening to Blaseball’s Season schedule? That is a bigger design topic we’re eager to tackle in more detail in the future — we really want to take you through the How’s and the Why’s first — but what we can say for now is that we are guided by that big goal stated up top: more sustainable Blaseball with fewer unexpected stops and less time with no Blaseball at all!

What would you say are the biggest differences between developing the current era and developing the previous eras?

For this question, we went around to assorted departments that survived Discipline and Expansion to ask how things have changed.

Leadership shared that more than anything, our focus has shifted to making Blaseball something we can keep running. “This era is more of a reboot than a sequel. The previous two eras were not designed for longevity. Had we continued on our previous trajectory, it would have been extremely challenging for Blaseball to become a sustainable project for the company. We still have to prove that all our new work will pay off, but it’s an attempt to turn this game from a once-in-a-while burst of energy into a lasting endeavor.”

When asked for comment, Game Design said, “we've never had this much time to design Blaseball which is both an absolute blessing and a horrid curse.”

Engineering said the following:

  • Modularization, we are building the systems and the tools to make things reusable and therefor sustainable and easier to build
  • Observability, we have more insight into how the sim makes decisions, and that means we have more control over how we can tune it.
  • Stability, we are creating a more stable infrastructure. While this is always a constant struggle as our tech evolves, we are creating a more available system.
  • More power to the designers, we are trying to make choices that give game design flexibility!

In response to engineering’s answer, our producers said, and this is a direct quote, “modularization! big big bi gb ig big.”

On Community's end, we've worked to establish much clearer lines of communication from Fans to devs, in a way that results in action and discussion. We could pass on feedback in the past, but now we have a polished, efficient way to make sure what we know translates into meaningful changes to the game. We've also gotten much more efficient in how we moderate, which means we can focus more on fun projects for the audience and help design new mechanics with our community front of mind.

The team also noted that developing Blaseball now compared to 2020 when Covid was beginning has been a huge shift— in energy, in our Fan’s time, in how Blaseball fits into all of it. A lot has changed in three years. Beyond that, this is the first time we’ve truly had: a Marketing team, a QA team, a Product Design team, and an Art team, which changes the game completely, literally.

Will we be seeing more of the Blaseball Roundup? Because that helped me a lot in getting me people interested in Blaseball.

Great question. We also love the Blaseball Roundup. The short answer is: “Yes.” The long answer is: “Whats up everyone! Yes, you will see more of the Blaseball Roundup in the Coronation Era.”


Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

May 12, 2023 Announcement

On May 12, 2023, The Game Band returned with another Post about ongoing development progress.

An Update from The Game Band (5/12/23)
Note: if you have issues reading the site in its current state, we have copied the full text of this update to Medium for easier reading.

In this update we’re including a breakdown of some of our current priorities, and every 3 weeks we will be updating it with new focus, completed projects, and interesting tidbits. Patch notes will continue weekly on the site.

Content Progress
Straightforward enough — we're building Seasons and their content in entirety long before they go live. In past Eras, we were working with only about a week of lead time.

  • Locking in story beats
  • Building out mechanics, new Weathers, [SPOILER], and [SPOILER]
  • Testing all of it!

New Mechanics
We are building significantly new mechanics this Era that fold into the Blaseball that Fans are familiar with!

  • Our goal with these is to make the core game loop (Watch, Bet, Vote) feel more complete & exciting and emphasize the beloved parts of the game: ominous, exciting decisions made by fans, with absolutely zero consequences of course. It'll be fine!
  • Lots of research, testing, and revising for the best feel

Pitcher Weather
In the last update, we noted Pitchers can now be impacted by Weather. This was not a simple feat, and required a lot of essential reworking of the Sim.

  • Update every Weather
  • Update how the Schedule calculates odds & payouts and reacts to Pitcher changes
  • Update how Rotations work to respond to Pitcher changes

Internal Tools
Our goal to run Blaseball more seamlessly means giving our engineers freedom to focus on what's next and what needs to be fixed, as opposed to manual tasks like updating an Election.

  • Created an Election Builder: Can schedule, set type, and visually build an Election for the live game without Engineering lift
  • Created Blessing Builder: Can add Blessings to scheduled Elections also without Engineering
  • Exploring QA tools for more in-depth testing of Mods, Weathers, and Player interactions within the Sim

Want to know more? Submit a question for the team to answer in regular updates alongside our Patch Notes and future communication. Ask away!
Avatar thegameband.png @thegameband

Bugcatcher

Alongside the March 31, 2023 development announcement, a new user appeared in Messages, "bugcatcher". The Bugcatcher's first message is a patch note.

Patch Notes (3/31/23)
Patch Notes

  • Added backstage content authoring tools for game scheduling and postseason tournament setup
  • Bugcatcher is here.

    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned on April 7, 2023 with a new set of patch notes.

Patch Notes (4/7/23)
Web

  • Minor navigation & styling tweaks
  • Team page is one page now instead of tabbed
  • Fixed apostrophe name display errors for future game logs
  • Schedule page styling & navigation updates
  • Add UI for showing buried players on team rosters
  • Increase font sizes for messages

Sim / API

  • Implement [SPOILERS] weather
  • Add support for getting idol rank of players beyond the 20th top idol
  • Rewrite of schedule backend
  • Add support for player modifications that [SPOILERS]
  • Vexillology
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned on April 14, 2023 with a new set of patch notes.

Patch Notes (4/14/23)
Client

  • Fix idol display in user sidebar header
  • Improved direct-linking / refresh behavior for schedule page
  • New icons for betting and elections
  • Update team page styling

Sim / API

  • [construction noises] Better matchup schedule handling after team roster changes
  • Added debug monitoring for some live sim events
  • Team modifications for [SPOILER] seasons
  • Include additional game events in end-of-game summary
  • [idols board mechanics construction noises]
  • Fix game schedules taking a long time to load
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned on April 21, 2023 with a new set of patch notes.

Patch Notes (4/21/23)
Patch Notes

Web client

  • New UI elements & styling for Election mechanics
  • Updates to Schedule page UX / navigation
  • Update Team page header styling

Sim / Backstage

  • Clean up some internals of Player/Team modification system
  • Fixed a truly harrowing database query performance issue that was causing Player & Team info to take a long time to load
  • Implement [REDACTED] weather
  • Idols Board backend systems work and bugfixes
  • Streamlined and simplified retrieving Player stats for front end display
  • Resolved Player stats bug displaying wrong data
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned with new patch notes on April 28, 2023.

Patch Notes (4/28/23)
Backstage

  • Implemented more Player Modifications for [SPOILER] Season
  • Added content for future Election type

Web Client

  • Added countdown component to show how long Fans have until [SPOILER]
  • Made Player page API usage more efficient
  • Updated League header
  • Idols Board now includes [SPOILER]
  • Overhauled Elections page UI
  • New UI components, styling, and navigation improvements for various Idols Board page interactions

Sim / API

  • Improved plumbing to handle betting odds and game schedule adjustments due to roster changes
  • Fixed bugs with Players not being replaced correctly during Solar Eclipse Blue weather
  • Blorbo safety has been decreased: Pitchers can now be impacted by Weather.
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned with new patch notes on May 5, 2023.

Patch Notes (5/5/23)
Backstage

  • Added [SPOILER] Player mod for [SPOILER] Weather
  • Wrapped up content for [SPOILER] Season Election
  • Election processor logic now supports conditional branches

Web Client

  • Continuing overhaul of Elections page UI: new interactive components, updated styling, rewrote voting modal popup
  • Fixed an issue causing site usage metrics to be inaccurate
  • Updated site footer styling & icons

Sim / API

  • Surface [SPOILERS] in Idols Board data
  • Fixed bugs in Horizon Weather that resulted in players crash-landing on the pitcher's mound but deciding that they simply don't feel like pitching right now and picking up a bat instead
  • Made it easier to differentiate between Player and Team Modifications in sim logic
  • Players have been given richer internal lives. Flavor Attributes are returning.
  • Tweaked formula for calculating more accurate game betting odds
  • Sim testing framework cleanup
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned with new patch notes on May 12, 2023.

Patch Notes (5/12/23)
Sim / API

  • General cleanup of backend database infrastructure & content setup scripts
  • Better handling for descriptive names for Player Attributes

Web Client

  • Update site footer, include social media links
  • New navigation hamburger menu for mobile client
  • Show pitchers' star rating on Games from the Schedule page
  • Show history of [SPOILERS] on Idols page
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned with new patch notes on May 19, 2023.

Patch Notes (5/19/23)
Web Client

  • New responsive Play tab cover layout for mobile web support
  • New mobile web layout for Schedule header & Games list content
  • New mobile web layout for Messages tab
  • New mobile page footer
  • Fixed Schedule page crashing bug
  • New Team/Player modal popup view
  • Updated site analytics tagging

Backstage

  • Added [SPOILER] Player Modification
  • Additional Player/Team Modifications for [SPOILER] Season
  • Streamlined content data management process

Sim / API

  • Base theft is back, baybeeeeee
  • Started fixing issues with duplicate user accounts & interaction issues between accounts created via OAuth vs. regular email/password login
  • Fixed incorrect dodge rate for Weathers allowing too many jukes
  • Cleaned up some Modification effect checks in sim logic
  • Built ability to reschedule Pitcher matchups for Games after [SPOILER]
  • Provided Player Positions & Modifications in Team API endpoints
  • Fixed the API build breaking due to package dependency management issues
  • Fixed Solar Eclipse gold & silver not affecting Pitchers correctly
  • Fixed lerp function not lerping the way lerp should lerp
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher

The Bugcatcher returned with patch notes on May 26, 2023.

Patch Notes (5/26/23)
Web Client:

  • Made the Live Game page more responsive to different screen sizes
  • Prepared a window into the rich inner lives of Players. When Flavor Attributes return, they will be displayed on the Player page
  • Idols Board now displays [SPOILER] next to Players
  • Reduced frequency of random Internal error: Internal Server Error errors
  • Fixed assorted issues with the Idols page
  • Fixed assorted issues with the Elections page

Backstage:

  • [environmental construction noises for internal TGB testing]
  • [even smaller construction noises for internal TGB testing]
  • Marked [SPOILER] players as Unidolizable
  • Updated where game data is surfaced to a place where TGB can access it more easily
  • Added more fun effects for Elections for your favorite Players! :)

Sim/API:

  • Certain endpoints now return more Lines
  • Tweaked formula for calculating results of Knighted Player quests
  • Tweaked code that reschedules Pitcher matchups for Games after [SPOILER]
  • Instead of waiting until the top of the next hour, Teams that win a ostseason tournament are now immediately [SPOILER]
  • Moved [SPOILER] handling from the sim to the elections processor
  • [SPOILER] outcomes are now displayed at the end of Games
    Avatar bugcatcher.png @bugcatcher


  1. ↑ BLASEBALL COMMISSIONER ALTERNATE [@blaseball]. (23 January 2023). "Official Review. 1pm eastern, 10am pacific 🩸⚾️". (Tweet) - via Twitter
  2. ↑

    Fun Fact! Evil Conference Champions Season 2!
    Fun Fact!
    Due to INTERNAL ERROR, the Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams (Awful Good) were able to claim this Season's Evil Conference Championship.
    Avatar facts machine.png @facts_machine


👑  The Coronation Era  👑
Full Timeline
Fall Ball Overview   ·   1st Fall   ·   2nd Fall   ·   3rd Fall   ·   4th Fall   ·   5th Fall   ·   6th Fall   ·   7th Fall   ·   8th Fall   ·   9th Fall   ·   Final Fall
Season 1 Overview   ·   Charge Changes   ·   Bonus Burps   ·   The NEW Forbidden Book   ·   The Umpires   ·   Offseason
Season 2 Overview   ·   The Four Eclipses   ·   INTERNAL ERROR   ·   Postseason Switch   ·   Election   ·   Offseason
Siesta
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