OPEN GUARD v1.1

OPEN GUARD Update v1.1: Fighter Career

Update 1.1 is focused on making Fighter Career clearer, deeper and more dependable, alongside fixes and performance improvements that benefit the whole game.

Existing saves are supported.

Fighter Career is now in Beta

• Fighter Career has moved from Experimental to Beta.
• Added a new This Week recap to the Overview. It highlights proficiency and attribute gains, money changes, promotions, injuries, contract offers, goals, ranking movement and available belt assessments.
• Added clearer first-weeks guidance, navigation attention markers, offer countdowns, contract time remaining and a visible Career Milestones checklist.
• Added manual saving, settings access and safer quit confirmation within Fighter Career.
• You can now withdraw from an entered event before event week. Entry and travel costs are not refunded.

Training and Fighter Development

• Reworked the Training screen around four coach plans: Sharpen My A Game, Fix My Holes, Fight Prep and Balanced. Plans can still be fine-tuned manually.
• Training now shows session allocation, coach picks, known techniques, the next techniques to learn and projected weekly gains.
• Added a warning before advancing with multiple unused training sessions.
• Mental and technical attributes now grow through competition, with tougher and more competitive fights providing more experience. Good coaching also improves development.
• Added clearer physical attribute caps so it is easier to tell when a fighter has reached their current ceiling.
• Expanded the gym journey with drop-ins, paid memberships, belt assessments, gym interest, offers, signing and contract progression.
• Added training partners. Their strongest areas can improve related training, with the partnership strengthening over time.
• Injuries now have clearer status and recovery feedback and correctly affect training.

Fight Night and the Career Journey

• Expanded Career event control with Play, Watch and Sim routes.
• Added three interaction levels: Key Moments, Medium and Lots. Use Jump In when you want an extra decision, or switch to auto-pilot when you want the fight to flow.
• Improved played-bout decisions, including pin escapes, fatigue escalation, submission-chain handling and safeguards against stalled fights.
• Added corner advice and pre-fight game plans based on the opponent's style, form and submission threats.
• Added a Road to Worlds view for Gi and No-Gi qualification, including Continental, Worlds, Winter Worlds and the Apex invitational path.
• Expanded rivalries with heat, repeat-meeting context, head-to-head records, season recognition and gym-interest momentum after major wins.
• Added season reviews, career records, lifetime earnings, awards, age-curve feedback, retirement and a final legacy summary.

World and Rankings

• Added Fighter search and filters to the Career World screen. Search by fighter, gym or country and filter by belt, country and affiliation.
• Rankings now correctly include eligible gym fighters, free agents and the Career player without duplicate entries.
• Fighters with zero ranking points are no longer displayed as ranked.
• Ranking ties now use consistent OVR and name tie-breakers, preventing unstable ordering between screens.
• Improved event eligibility and field building, including proper Continental belt requirements.

Accessibility and UI

• The Text Size setting now applies throughout the live interface, including screens with custom font sizes, and can be changed repeatedly without sizes stacking incorrectly.
• Improved Fighter Career layouts for narrower windows and Large Text, especially Overview, Training and the fighter identity header.
• Improved long-name handling and kept important Career actions visible without unnecessary scrolling.
• Replaced the persistent experimental warning with a one-time, dismissible Beta notice.

Fixes and Performance

• Fixed neutral exchanges repeatedly giving the same fighter every takedown attempt. Initiative is now contested again after a failed standing exchange.
• Fixed Career contracts sometimes remaining active because of a stale or already completed event entry.
• Fixed several Career identity and fighter-ID collision cases across new careers and save reloads.
• Fixed Career-player retirement protection and several event result double-counting risks.
• Fixed save failures being presented as successful saves or successful save-and-quit actions.
• Improved separation between Main Game and Fighter Career when starting a new campaign.
• The Quick Simulation preference is now respected during world generation.
• Improved initial world-generation performance and reduced avoidable work during AI training.
• Improved free-agent population stability during long-running worlds.
• Updated Windows and macOS release metadata to version 1.1.

Thank you for playing OPEN GUARD. Fighter Career is still growing, so feedback on pacing, progression and anything that feels unclear is especially useful.