Hello Pilots!
As you are aware, we went through a significant change recently. We are here today to explain our plans. Sky Warriors was released about a year and a half ago, and 4.0 was our biggest update so far.
We worked hard to understand how you play to decide where to go from here. We received loads of messages from you after the release – yes, we read them all -, and want to use this opportunity to thank you for the feedback! It is awesome to see how passionate you are about Sky Warriors, and it makes us excited to think of what we have planned in the future!
We understand that increasing the prices is always a sensitive subject, but we believe it was necessary, and we are keeping both eyes open on your feedback. We also understand that some of our pilots were frustrated with the changes, so we will use this opportunity to pull the curtain back and share our thoughts and rationales behind the updates from version 4.0. So sit back, grab something to drink, and read on.
Tier 7 jets
Sky Warriors’ vision is being a place where all kinds of pilots meet, from those that know little about aircrafts and just want to fly, to hardcore fans that know the inner workings and flight stats of every jet in the world. We want to have planes for all our pilots, so we took off from the beaten path and experimented to find out what is fun!
For Tier 7, we picked some of the craziest prototypes out there and asked ourselves what if. What if in Sky Warriors those machines could really be explored by our pilots? What if some prototypes left the paper and blazed the skies? What if we could fly aircrafts that could have been? What if we had planes in Sky Warriors that our pilots couldn’t fly anywhere else?
Equipped with this mindset, we also raised the technical bar to create a rewarding flying experience, and we are proud of how smooth and fun it is to fly the 3 new jets! T6/Midnight Spectre was already a big improvement, and T7/Stellar Shadow brought planes that you never thought you’d fly. We hope you’ll enjoy flying the highly maneuverable Su-47 Berkut with its inverted wings, the strong F-15 STOL with its amazing canards, and the promising and aggressive Tejas Mk2! We know we had fun flying them around!
So far, we are surprised with how fast Tier 7 was adopted by our players: it had the highest adoption rate to date, getting the trophy previously held by Tier 5 in December 2021 and Tier 6 in August 2022. There are lots of jets that we believe you will want to fly with new Tiers in the future, so keep tuned!
Tiers rebalance
As you progress through your journey in Sky Warriors, you will find increasingly stronger aircrafts to fly. We want to make sure that every Tier of aircraft has powerful and viable jets for you to choose, and the previous design didn’t give you that choice: many players completely skipped Tier 4 and even Tier 5 altogether, and for a while we had skies filled with only F-14s.
In 4.0 we made the Tiers more relevant by increasing their power. We balanced each Tier to make their aircrafts equally strong, so you can pick the one you like more or the one that fits your play style the most. All our team took part in countless hours of playtesting to make sure everything is finely tuned, so enjoy!
Match Rewards
Another change we introduced was increasing the Gold from Match Rewards depending on the aircraft Tier you own. Upgrading planes gets more expensive as you move from one Tier to the next, so it makes sense for you to get more funds as well!
With those changes, getting a next Tier jet now should feel much better than before – and that’s exactly what we were aiming for!
Rank XP changes
After looking at the power changes and pilots’ progression, we felt that the past XP thresholds for each Rank wouldn’t work as well moving forward. Since unlocking new Tiers is directly linked to achieving new Ranks, some rebalance work was needed to make the Ranks more spaced apart – after all, if the next Tier got stronger, it makes sense for players to have more time to make their own aircrafts more powerful before facing advanced enemies. Another goal was to give players more time to save resources to Tier up as soon as they can and dominate the field!
We wanted to make this transition as smooth as possible, so we decided to leave XP unchanged and adjust the Ranks according to the new distribution*. As a result, some pilots ended up getting demoted, and the feedback we got was that this was tough for them and we apologize for that. We get that Ranks are important: we are sure Lieutenant Red Viper would be angry if we started calling her Sergeant Red Viper!
Now, we want to hear from you: should we readjust the Ranks and make them more similar to what they were before, or are you okay with the new progression? To be clear: we’d keep similar XP thresholds for unlocking new Tiers, but move the Rank names around in the XP progression.
Please fill this form -> Rank Readjustments
* We had only one exception: players that already had higher Tier jets gained some XP to ensure we kept a good matchmaking.
The future
Where to go from here? Sky Warriors is evolving, and where this journey will take us depends as much on us as it does on you. Pilots are the blood and soul of Sky Warriors, and we appreciate your support enormously so far. Thank you very much!
There are loads of planes to fly, loads of maps to conquer, and loads of battles to win. When we look at what is coming, it is hard not to get excited. We hope to keep on building a great game for everyone, and count on your support and feedback to navigate through these unknown skies.
If you wish to share your thoughts on it or on anything else, please join our channels and talk to us!
Thank you for playing Sky Warriors, and see you in the sky!