The updates for Sunday Rivals continue to flow in, after the all-new Headhunter game mode was added last month. If you haven’t been following along, here’s a brief description of the mode.
Lead your favorite team through a 4 game, single-elimination tournament while racking up points using a fantasy football-style scoring system. As you battle increasingly challenging opponents towards victory, your stats are tracked and saved, along with 8 additional scoring bonuses tuned for maximum performance! After the game, check to see if the fruits of your hard fought victory are good enough to be enshrined in the record books and celebrated for years to come.
With that said, developer 26k has recently released a new update, which adds full 3D crowds, endzone text for all of your favorite teams, player spotlight celebrations, more passing buttons and much more.
Fans pack the stadium to check out all the changes coming in the next Sunday Rivals update! pic.twitter.com/VuEXnE2EH0
— Sunday Rivals (@sundayrivals) October 5, 2020
Check out the patch notes for the latest update below.
Presentation
- Added full stadium crowd
- Updated sideline art and player positions
- Endzones show either the city or name of the home team (whichever is shorter)
- Added a new player celebration sequence with custom cameras, animations, and player stats
- All players on the field react to the celebrations
- Updated ball art
- Added in-stadium scoreboards
- Improved lighting, material response, and post processing effects
HeadHunter
- Whichever team has a higher OVR rank is the home team now
- Gameplay
- Player 1 can play as the away team in an exhibition game
- Passes tipped by the defense are harder for receivers to catch
- Decreased aiming error for AI kickers
UI
- Pass previews show player names
- Added option to switch between xbox, ps4, and keyboard on screen buttons
- Stats screens list player uniform numbers
- Added an information feed to the title screen
Stats
- Punt yardage is tracked correctly now
- Punts resulting in TD’s are tracked correctly now
- Punts landing inside the 20 are tracked correctly now
- Less conflicting stat reporting
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where scoring a touchdown on 4th down and then failing the 2pt conversion gave the scoring team the ball back on the ensuing kickoff
- Fixed an issue where the wrong animation was being played during a block after an interception
- Fixed an issue where any player who touched the ball during a kickoff/punt received credit for a kick return
Just in case you missed it, we posted our Q&A with the Ryan Kamins, the creator behind Sunday Rivals here, it’s a fun read, so make sure to check it out.
Could we see a multi-season franchise mode later down the road?
Kamins: I hope so. I know that’s an incredibly desirable feature for a lot of players out there. I worry about saying yes when I’m not really sure what it would entail and whether or not I could build the type of experience people want. When I think about franchise mode, it feels like a separate simulation game built on top of an existing football game, so I imagine there’s a fair amount of work involved in making that both a reality and a compelling experience people actually want to invest time into. I’m not interested in building something for the sake of a bullet point — I don’t think that’s fair to players. When Early Access is complete, I’m going to spend some time planning where the game is going post-v1.0 and franchise will definitely be part of that discussion.
