Dear STEEM community,

It's been a long time since the last app update of Super 8 Ball Club, but guess what? Silence is expected before the storm and that's what I've been planning. My emotions can't be expressed in words that how excited I am for this major update of Super 8 Ball Club. This was a journey full of difficulties but your love and the motivation you gave to me made it possible. Thank you for that!

In case if any of you missed the announcement post, here's an important snippet:

What is Super 8 Ball Club?

Super 8 Ball Club is an android game that I developed in c# and javascript with my friend. It is the first ever multiplayer-based pool game which allows you to earn STEEM for winning the matches and costs you nothing when you get beaten by your opponent. You know what's the great part? All the players will be Steemians playing with each other in multiplayer mode.

Super8BallClub's Official Website Google Play Store

So, ladies and gentlemen, let me announce:

Super 8 Ball Club - V2.0.0

There's a reason why I'm calling this the major update for Super 8 Ball Club. Many new features are added and many existing features are improved. One big news is also attached with this release which makes this a completely unique and major release.

The following is the table of content:

• Transparency
• Leaderboard
• Tournaments
• XP Points
• Fortune Wheel
• Stunning Table Designs
• Two Additional Difficulty Levels
• Blacklist System
• Rematch Feature Removal
• Match Rejection Penalty
• Limited Minimizing Rule
• In-game Rules Dialog
• Match Search Sound Changed
• In-game Verification Instructions
• Game Freeze - Bug Fix
• Profit Sharing Program - Quick Reminder
• The Profitability of Profit Sharing Program

Transparency:

One of the main concerns of investors/delegators and users is the transparency of any project like how it is being operated and what's happening behind the scenes. That's because transparency increases the trust and builds confidence among all the parties. Considering all these things, it became my main priority.

It was quite a challenge for this project because it's a game. But still, people may want to know how an individual player is playing with others and how the matches are ending. How many fouls does a player make and is it normal or not? OR it can be the players who want to show their expert shots to others.

Considering all those cases, we have introduced the transparency system by which you can now track every match's details and that too in complete shape. You will be able to track every shot of the player and see if a player did foul, played accurately, or even disconnected from the room. It will be handy for all the STEEM community to hunt abusers who just play one or two balls and leave the matches frequently (or any other type of abuse).

This is the example of my test match with test accounts: (DevTest vs PrinceWahaj, information in [bracket] is related to opponent and information without bracket is related to the winner of the match, in this case, DevTest. Every shot is separated by a comma with a few exceptions which will be explained in the winners' announcements.

[Opponent: Valid try], Valid Try, [Opponent NoType: 4], [Opponent Solid: 7], [Opponent Solid: 2], [Opponent Solid poted my Striped ball: 9], [Opponent: Valid try], Valid Try, [Opponent: PrinceWahaj failed to hit solid ball], I got the ball in hand, Valid Try, [Opponent Solid: 5], [Opponent: Valid try], Poted Striped: 15, Valid Try, [Opponent: PrinceWahaj failed to hit solid ball], I got the ball in hand, Poted Striped: 13, Poted Striped: 11, Striped poted opponent ball: 1, Valid Try, [Opponent: Valid try], Valid Try, [Opponent Solid: 3], [Opponent: Valid try], Valid Try, [Opponent Solid: 6], [Opponent Solid poted my Striped ball: 10], [Opponent: PrinceWahaj failed to hit 8 ball], I got the ball in hand, Poted Striped: 14, Poted Striped: 12, Valid Try, [Opponent: Cue ball didn't strike another ball], I got the ball in hand, No balls hit the ray after the first contact, [Opponent: No balls hit the ray after the first contact], I got the ball in hand, Winning shot.

Starting from 20th September, an excel sheet will be attached with the winners' announcement in which all the matches that qualified and even those which were canceled by the official team will be mentioned. The excel sheet will contain the following columns: Winner, Loser, XP, Shares Reward, Match Details. In every row, you will see the detail of every single match with all other relevant details. All of it will be stored on the STEEM blockchain.

Leaderboard:

The much-awaited feature, Leaderboard, is finally announced for the players with some special characteristics. You can only rank in the leaderboard if you successfully earn more total XP during the relevant period for each leaderboard. Each of them shows Top 20 players for the given period.

There are three different leaderboards:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly

Ranking in the Top 3 of any leaderboard at the time when it resets will earn you some exciting number of coins (mentioned in the game, see in the screenshot above).

Tournaments:

One of the major features of this release is the Tournament. The number of requests we received for this feature was sufficient for us to realize that tournaments will increase the retention of Steemians and will help them enjoy the game even more.

At the moment, the plans are to organize two different types of tournaments:

• Weekly Tournament
• Monthly Tournament (or Grand Tournament)

That's how it looks when you are assigned the players to compete in the tournament:
(screenshot below)

Qualify for the Weekly Tournament:

• You must make to the Top 16 list of the Weekly leaderboard at the time the leaderboard resets.
• Your matches must be played fairly and not for win exchanges.
• Players will be awarded fair points by the team and whoever comes on the top 16 of the list after that will qualify.
• An announcement will be posted from https://steemit.com/@super8ballclub every week to announce those who qualify for those tournaments, along with all the details of how and when they will be arranged.

Note: If it's found that those who ranked in Top 16 didn't play fairly, player below rank 16 may get the chance if his matches meet our fair-play criteria.

Qualify for the Monthly Tournament:

• You must make to the Top 16 list of the Monthly leaderboard at the time the leaderboard resets.
• Your matches must be played fairly and not for win exchanges.
• Players will be awarded fair points by the team and whoever comes on the top 16 of the list after that will qualify.
• An announcement will be posted from https://steemit.com/@super8ballclub every month to announce those who qualify for those tournaments, along with all the details of how and when they will be arranged.

Note: If it's found that those who ranked in Top 16 didn't play fairly, player below rank 16 may get the chance if his matches meet our fair-play criteria.

Increase your chances:

• Play fairly and don't abuse the system.
• Win as many matches as you can. XP points will only be rewarded to winners.
• Play big tables if you are confident with your skills to gain more XP points per ball.

XP Points:

Ranking in the leaderboard is only possible with XP points. Your number of coins or shares doesn't matter. Your XP and your winnings are what truly matters. Click on the information tab of the table button and you will see the rules for earning XP points.

The rules for earning XP points are the same for every table. Different tables offer different XP points per action. To help you understand more, we are copying the XP rules that we've implemented for Sheffield table.

Earn XP to rank in the Leaderboard:

• Score 6 XP by potting each ball of your assigned type.
• Balls poted in the break won't be counted.
• The XP will only increase after you choose your type and pot your own balls.
• Potting each ball of your opponent results in the penalty of -6 XP.
• It's must to win the game to keep your XP score. Losing the game will cancel your score for that particular match.
• Score as much XP as you can by potting your own balls and winning the game.
• You can check your total earned XP in the leaderboard section.

Fortune Wheel:

This is the feature that was requested ever since we released the first version of Super 8 Ball Club. Now you can earn an exciting amount of coins every 24 hours and test your luck by yourself. You can earn up to 10,000 coins every day just by spinning the fortune wheel!

See the screenshot below:

Stunning Table Designs:

Stunning graphics make the players want to play even more due to their pleasant effect, and we understand it quite well. To make you enjoy the game, even more, I've designed all the tables again and done my best to make them simple yet effective. Want to see them? Have a look:

Two Additional Difficulty Levels:

Playing the difficult tables is more fun and we have some great pool lovers such as @mafaldation and @iabuse who love to play in big tables and win the real challenges. And if you are one of such players, then it's a big news for you.

These additional difficulty levels will be ass-kicking and a real challenge for those who call themselves the champ.

The first new difficulty level is applied on Las Vegas and Jakarta:

And the second new difficulty level is applied to Toronto and Sheffield:

I know you're excited, but there's more to read :)

Blacklist System:

A month ago, we had to ban a dozen of accounts (players) because they were playing in a circle and abusing large tables which resulted in the low activity because they could easily play with each other in big tables on specific time and disappear like a ninja from the tables. It was their attempt to take the large chunk of reward from the reward pool.

But you know what happened next? Thanks to our manual verification process that we were able to find them at the very early stage and punished them with a permanent ban. The reason for making it a permanent ban was the continuous abuse even after the warnings and exploiting the bug to fraudulently earn additional coins (the bug is already fixed in this release).

Even though there are fewer chances to see such an abuse again because of the additional verification and transparency, we are still introducing the blacklist system in case we find anyone abusing the rules. By the virtue of Blacklist system, whoever makes to the list won't be able to earn prizes when playing with listed people.

For example, Player A is caught playing in a circle with Player B and C and ignored all the warnings given by the team. The team decides to put Player A, B, and C in the blacklist, now these people won't be able to earn shares or XP for playing with each other, but they can still earn shares and XP when playing with people other than listed ones.

Rematch Feature Removal:

It doesn't feel good to keep searching for opponents for hours. The truth is that the game is active enough but most of the players stay in the room for even an hour by playing rematches, thus making it difficult for others to find someone. Furthermore, it was noticed that rematch feature used to lead people to exchange wins with each other.

Now after the removal of rematch feature, we are reducing the possibility of win exchanges because a player will have to search again for an opponent and if there's any new player already searching for an opponent, he will be matched with him and thus countering the possibility of win exchanges and increasing the speed of finding an opponent for everyone.

If you are organically matched with the person with whom you played the last match, it won't harm you. The removal of rematch feature just means that there will be no "rematch" button.

Match Rejection Penalty:

It was reported by a lot of players that some people simply reject the match by keeping the app in the background if they don't find their desired opponents. It's against the design because the process of searching an opponent was meant to be organic to give everyone an equal chance of earning more.

Now with the implementation of penalty system for rejection, anyone who rejects a match will get his coins deducted according to the table fees, and the person with whom the match was rejected will get the refund of the table fees.

Limited Minimizing Rule:

Our complaint box is full of screenshots where the players keep the app in the background whenever their opponents are about to put the ball in the pocket. For some, it's their genuine issue that they may have to respond to their Whatsapp messages or do any other urgent thing in the background, but most of the people were misusing the reconnect feature and were trying to frustrate the opponents with the hope that they leave the room and take the loss.

Whenever you minimize the app in the background, the game shows "Waiting for your opponent" message to your opponent and waits 45 seconds for you to come back and if you don't, the game simply disconnects from your end and your opponent wins the match. But some people tried to misuse this feature.

After the implementation of the limited minimizing rule, you can no longer keep the app in the background more than 4 times. The 4th time during a single match is the max you can keep in the background. As soon as you do it for the 5th time in that match, you will lose and your opponent will win that match. Note that this rule only applies when the match with your opponent is live.

In-Game Rules Dialog:

It's important for people to know that following the rules will only help them stay in the system and abusing the rules can also result in a temporary or even a permanent ban, depending on the type of abuse. Therefore, the rules tab on every table's button is implemented for the easiness of players as a reminder. Those rules tab also include the information regarding XP points for each table. Different tables offer different XP points per ball.

See the screenshot below:

Match Search Sound Changed:

Some players complained that the sound during the process of searching an opponent is not pleasant and is actually annoying. Therefore, that sound is changed for good and now you can enjoy every moment of your stay in the game.

In-Game Verification Instructions:

In the previous versions, we used to show the message "Please Verify Your Account" with some limited details to those who were newly registered and didn't verify their accounts. After this major update, we expect a lot of general people to join Steemit because of Super 8 Ball Club and therefore, now we give the step-by-step verification instructions within the game.

Cut-off Time With In-game Clock:

Since the mass adoption is expected, it is better to mention the shares request cut-off time within the game. We noticed that most steemians easily get confused with timezone differences, so we also added an in-game clock where you can refresh new time with single click.

Game Freeze - Bug Fix:

It was reported that the game used to freeze in the rematch. It used to happen in a special case though which happens rarely but now it's fixed. Thanks to @nizam8089 and @mafaldation for helping us find the bug.

Profit Sharing Program - Quick reminder:

It's a short and quick reminder that Super 8 Ball Club offers the greatest profit sharing program (in other words, the sponsor program). You can participate only by delegating SP to @super8ballclub. Our sponsor program is the most profitable on the entire STEEM blockchain and we proved it in our post. The expected return ranges from 8% to 14% per annum (subject to the unexpected scenarios such as downvotes) and that's more than what any other project is offering (excluding voting bots).

The current delegators are:

• @tombstone - 25K SP
• @donkeypong - 5K SP
• @lukestokes - 2K SP
• @syedumair - 500 SP
• @princewahaj - 500 SP
• @jschindler - 25 SP
• @nonationnoborder - 25 SP
• @article61 - 25 SP

We are planning to run weekly reports to show every week the profit being delivered and accumulated. Since we are low in SP and follow the power-down procedure, it's only possible for us to unlock 1/13th of your accumulated rewards each week and we are doing it regularly since months, and have successfully delivered all of the accumulated rewards of @neworleans.

The Profitability of Super 8 Ball Club's Sponsor Program (Profit-Sharing Program):

@neworleans delegated 4180 SP for 8 days and received 7.7 STEEM for his delegation. His AVG return was "0.962 STEEM" per day * 365 days = 351.312 STEEM per annum which equivalents to 8.14% per annum. This is massive in terms of percentage as compared to what other projects are offering (again, we are excluding voting bots).

Delegate to @super8ballclub:

We know that there are people in this community who support the development projects selflessly. And after @lukestokes delegated SP to @super8ballclub, my belief became stronger that such people exist. There was no reward for delegation at that time but he did when we were in need of it. Thanks @lukestokes for that gesture. It is probably your support that motivated me to work actively on its development.

We are growing fast without any kind of hard marketing. Everything is organic at this point and we haven't pushed anything hard for now but still, the growth is steady. To date, we have 1,500 registered players. We request your delegations and support towards making this project a huge hit on STEEM blockchain. We are targeting more than 100 Million Gamers community. Help us bring the masses on STEEM blockchain with your delegations and get rewarded by our Sponsors program (profit currently ranges from 8% to 14% per annum).

You can delegate to us by using the links below.

500 SP, 1000 SP, 5000 SP, 25000 SP, 100000 SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.

However, if you want to delegate more, please edit "25000" to the amount of SP you want to delegate without any special character (i.e 500000 for 500K SP) from this link:

https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/delegateVestingShares?delegator=&delegatee=super8ballclub&vesting_shares=25000%20SP

Note: The minimum to delegate is 500 SP if you want to participate in our profit sharing program (sponsor program). However, you can delegate any small amount if you just want to support the project and know that we truly appreciate your support, no matter how big or small it may be.

Thank you for reading. We really appreciate that you spent your valuable time here. See you all in the game. Register today and qualify for the upcoming tournaments, it would be very exciting to meet all of you.