Major Changes Coming to Paladins - Cards Unbound Removed, Standalone Battle Royale

HiRezChris is the new sheriff (executive producer) in town for Paladins and there are some big changes coming to the free to play stylish cartoony shooter. Firstly, the highly controversial Cards Unbound system will be removed from the game and will be replaced by a new deck building system that involves "way less grind". This move is particularly big because Cards Unbound actually made a lot of money for Paladins, but they chose to remove it to create a more balanced and fair experience. Hi Rez is hoping to have the new system out on the Public Test Server next week.

New System Details:

  • Legendary Cards will now be called Talents.
  • Talents will only have a single level.
  • Talents will be unlocked for free by earning XP and gaining Champion levels (for example; level 1,5,10,15).
  • All Champion Cards will now be free (No cost or grind).
  • Deck creation will return to a point system where players can distribute 15 points across the five cards they select for their loadout. Each Champion Card will have five ranks to choose from.
  • Talents will not have ranks, and are not included in the loadout point cap.
  • Talents and Decks will continue to be chosen at match start to allow players to tailor their playstyles based on their opponents.
  • New Talents will be added over time and give further varied playstyles.
  • Champion Mastery will no longer be capped at level 25. Instead, it will work similarly to Player Account leveling (which has no cap).
  • Card chests will be removed from the game.
  • We are evaluating the best options to compensate players for their previously earned cards, and hope to share details soon.

Paladins Battlegrounds Changes:

  • We are going to remove the alpha version of Battlegrounds from the core Paladins game, effective tomorrow.
  • Over the next few weeks we are going to make a number of aggressive changes to the mode that, based on internal testing, we think will make it considerably more engaging and fun. Our codename for these changes inside the Studio has been YOLO -- if that gives you any indication of what lies ahead. Hopefully, you will enjoy them as much as we have in initial testing.
  • When we re-release the mode, it will be in a separate game client under a different name. The mode will have the current map and some of the elements from Paladins as well as some significant changes -- but it will be re-launched as a NEW GAME. We expect it to be free to play, with monetization around skins and visuals.
  • We hope to start public testing of an early alpha mode of this new game as soon as we can (within weeks).

Read the full post by HiRezChris here.