The MultiVersus Open Beta is here, and with it comes the addition of LeBron James as a playable character, a new event, and the next set of patch notes, which address several bugs and unbalanced aspects that plagued the game in Early Access.
As basically any Early Access player, who wasn’t just saying “get good” would tell you, the game was largely dominated by Taz players—especially in two-on-two matchmaking.
This high usage rate was at least partially due to the power, utility, and lack of punishment for overuse given to his Side Special, the Taz-nado. Players could simply spam the move, facing very little consequence in doing so while pressuring opponents to react accordingly.
In one-on-one matches, this wasn’t an issue for players once they learned the mechanics and could minimize the effectiveness of Taz players spamming it, but in two-on-two games it was a big problem because you also had to take into account what the second player was going to do while the spincycle was going.
This move has now been heavily adjusted with decreased spin duration, knockback, and multi-hits, with Player First Games noting that additional changes will be made to the move—including a transition to full cooldown—in a future update.
Along with Taz’s nerfs, Batman’s Batarang was adjusted with slightly longer cooldown periods, Iron Giant’s moveset had several bugs fixed, and Seven Universe can’t infinite a player using his Ait Neutral. Here are the full version 0.1 patch notes.
MultiVersus Open Beta version 0.1 patch notes
New content
- LeBron James added as playable character
- New “Free Character Rotation” (July 26 to Aug. 8)
- Finn
- Garnet
- Superman
- Reindog
- Open Beta Warp event (July 26 to Aug. 8)
- For a LIMITED TIME Gold earned from matches has increased by 25 percent as an Open Beta Welcome Event!
Character adjustments
Batman
- Air/Ground Neutral Attack: Cooldown on Batarang increased from 13 seconds to 14 seconds. Pick up of Batarang returns 11.55 seconds up from 11.05. This means that the minimum time between Batarang throws is 2.45 seconds up from 1.95 seconds.
- Batman’s Batarang pick-up cooldown created very small windows where the Batarang wasn’t in play. This change should make it so opponents of Batman have a larger window between Batarang attacks to gain advantage.
- Bug Fix: Air/Ground Side Special: Fixed a bug where Grapple would sometimes shoot you off the map.
Bugs Bunny
- Air Up Attack: Startup window increased by two frames, active window decreased by two frames
- The hitbox made it so that Bugs Bunny hit nearly all around himself. This should make the up air a bit more reasonable to deal with.
Iron Giant
- Bug Fix: Air Down Attack: can no longer combo into itself
- Bug Fix: Air/Ground Down Special: can no longer repeatedly hit and lock opponents in place forever
- Bug Fix: Air Up Attack: Can no longer repeatedly hit opponents
Steven Universe
- Air Neutral Attack: Knocks opponents up and away to prevent an infinite attack caused by alternating Air Down Attack and Air Neutral Attack.
Taz
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that was preventing Taz from doing any aerial attacks once he reached his air special limit.
- Air/Ground Side Special:
- “If you have been following early access, Taz’s Tornado has been dominating his character kit and presenting a non-obvious knowledge check for newer players. By reducing its effectiveness we hope to improve his gameplay health and loop and bring the game to a healthier state for newer players.”
- A decrease to the tornado’s duration and the additional duration gained by passing an ally.
- Removing one of the multi-hits of the tornado.
- Decreasing the hit pause of all the hits in the tornado.
- Reduced knockback from the final hit in the tornado from 1375 to 1275.
- “Right now, our plan is to transition the Tornado to a cooldown move in an upcoming patch. The tornado is Taz’s signature move so we want to keep it as one of his most powerful attacks, with the cooldown forcing more intentional use of it. These nerfs will reduce Taz’s strength, especially at higher levels of play, so expect some buffs to the other moves in his kit in the near future. Thank you for your patience and we will continue to evaluate Taz’s gameplay health.”
Velma
- Weight: reduced from 70 to 63
- It was an oversight on our part that Velma is one of the heaviest characters in the game. This change should bring her more in-line with where we originally envisioned her.
