Fight Night Champion Blog: Team Up in the All-New Online Gyms Game Mode

[Steve_OS]

Team Up in the All-New Online Gyms

Hello, my name is Mike Mahar I'm a Producer on Fight Night Champion. I'd like to a few seconds to speak to you about one of our new online features: ONLINE GYMS.

Online Gyms is a brand new feature to FNC which allows users to group together with their friends and others online and customize their game play experience in Season and Tournament play. For those of you familiar with the Clubs and Leagues features from other EA SPORTS titles, Online Gyms will have some familiar features for you along with some brand new ones as well.

When you enter the Online HUB in FNC if you don't already belong to a Gym you can search for Friends Gyms, Search for Gyms accepting new members or create your own gym. Online Gyms uses your same boxer(s) and weight class as Online World Championship. So, if you don't already have a Created Boxer you'll need to create one to participate in Online Gyms.

Creating and Customizing a Gym

Creating your own Gym automatically makes you a Gym Owner and GM. As an owner you alone have the ability to assign GM status to other members.

You also have the ability to customize the following options:

• Gym name, nick name, and location
  
• Gym logo
  
• Whether your gym is public or private

…and much more

Once you've created your gym you can begin the process of creating Seasons and/or Tournament within your Gym.

Gym Seasons

Once you've created a gym...and other people have joined it you can start a season. It's important to note that you can only have one season active at a time and everyone participating in the season will require a Created Boxer in the specified weight class.

You can choose to start a season in any of the three online weight classes: Lightweight, Middleweight, or Heavyweight.

As mentioned above, Online Gyms uses the same Created Boxers as Online World Championships...and will provide you with another way to earn XP for these characters besides fighting in OWC.

Seasons consist of each Gym Member fighting every other Gym Member a specified # of times. This # is set by a GM and can change from season to season. A Gym member’s season progress is tracked in a Season Leaderboard which keeps detailed stats from all of your Gym Season fights.

One of the big pluses to joining a Gym and starting a season is being able to customize the game play settings and rules of your season.

Some of the Customizable Gym Settings are:

• All gameplay sliders and settings
  
• Number of rounds
  
• Referee logic and rules

…and more

This way you and your friends can completely control the way the game plays to your liking. If you want to fight 15 round fights or increase the round length, it's all up to you.

Once you've completed a Season, those users who qualify move on to the single elimination Gym Tournament.

Gym Tournaments

Tournaments function much like the season in that they take the rules and game play settings as determined by the GM and apply them BUT Tournaments are single elimination seeded events.

Each user who qualifies for the tournament will be seeded in accordance to their rank at the end of the Gym Season.

PRO TIP: GM's can choose to manually seed each user if they feel some users are more deserving of higher seed. It's like your own private March Madness

Users then play off one another until a single user is left standing and is crowned the Gym Champ of the weight class the Tournament was held in.

PRO TIP: If you and your Gym mates only feel like hosting a Tournament, you can by using the Advance to Tournament option. A GM must choose to automatically or manually advance to a Tournament and presto...you don't have to play the Season if you don't feel like it.

Rivalry Challenges

As your Gym members use their Create Boxers in OWC they will earn Gym Rank Points and your Gym will be ranked on the World Wide Gym Leaderboard accordingly. Every two weeks or so (the final timing may change) we will host Rivalry Challenge events.

These events match your Gym up with a suitable Gym Rival based on the Gym Leaderboard rank. We'll let you know several days in advance of the event of who your Rival is via the Rivalry screen in your Gym. Once your Gym has been assigned a Rival, you’re ready to rumble.

The Rivalry Challenge period will usually be a 48 to 72 hour period over the course of a weekend in which we track the results of all fights between you and your Rival Gym. Win or lose, each boxer will earn Rivalry Points for their Gym in every fight.

Here are some ways you can earn points for your Gym:

• Wins
  
• KO Wins
  
• Damage inflicted
  
• Punch Accuracy
  
• Getting Up off the Canvas
  
• Knockdowns

…and more

At the end of the Rivalry Period (there will be a countdown timer in your Gym Rival screen indicating when that is) the Gym with most total points will win the Rivalry Challenge and earn Trophies, Records, Improve your World Gym Ranking, and of course get bragging rights.

Pro Tip: If you and your fellow Gym Members are only interested in fighting amongst yourselves and don't want to participate in Gym Rivalry Challenges, you can set this option to OFF in the Gym Settings screen. But honestly, why would you do that? Unless you’re scared?!

Gym Sparring

Lastly, if you just feel like getting some practice in and don't want to tarnish your record you can select to Spar against other Gym Members. Sparring sessions are simply practice sessions with nothing on the line. They're a good way for Gym Members to teach each other the nuances of the sweet science. Trust me when I say you'll want every member of your Gym on their game when the Gym Rivalry Challenges start.

Stay tuned for information about Gyms as we get closer to launch and don’t forget to join our Live Producer Chat this Thursday, February 3rd to chat with us on all things Online. We still haven't mentioned: Earning Boxer XP, Trophies, Gym Records, Gym Achievements and a ton of other cool stuff.

Thanks for reading!

-Mike

Source - Team Up in the All-New Online Gyms Game Mode (Fight Night Champion Blog)

[Vast]

Wow. Color me excited. An online boxing league? I'm in!

[JayBee74]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vast

Wow. Color me excited. An online boxing league? I'm in!

Sounds fantastic! Sliders too!

[NoTiCe_O]

I gotta get this game, sounds sick

[Roadlesstrvld4]

You think OS is going to have a gym?

[DaveDQ]

Sliders is a huge thing.

I didn't see though a spectator mode reference. I hope we can watch fights like in EA MMA.

[Hova57]

Pretty cool, we could have our own Super Six if we wanted.

[TDKing]

This sounds pretty nice BUT (there is always a Butt) It would have been much much better if you could have added CPU controlled boxers to your Gym. So you could of had say maybe 4 humans and maybe like 6 CPU boxers.