EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

November 29, 2018

Everyone from Fortune City to the Dread Plains is talking about the return of EpicDuel's Gifting Season! This year, celebrate 36 days to gifts with incredible prizes for the top 15 most generous gifters! When gifting begins after a short update, you can choose to power up with the Epic Supporter 2018 Varium package or the fearsome Omega Wolf Package!

This is also your last chance for the 35,000 Legendary Epic Supporter Varium pack and Ghoulish Gear packages as they're leaving after the update tomorrow!

Gifting

The 2018 season of gifting will go live as soon as we update EpicDuel servers Friday November 30th. We hope this is sooner in the day than later, but we don't want to have any emergency reboots for last minute fixes, kicking everyone out, so we won't launch until we're 100% ready. Gifting will last until the end January 4th, 2019. 

This year gifting cost has been reduced to 325 from 375.

Prize/Wish Addendum Concerning Founder Armor

Since the announcement of the prizes for this year's gifting event, there's been some controversy of the parameters of the Epic Wish. We mentioned that players can wish for "nearly any item" and some longtime players were upset that that could put Founder Armor on the menu for up to 15 players. At first we thought, "A wish is a wish," but the outcry from Founders has be notable. Obviously, with the community as tight as it is, it would not be a good idea to upset our most experienced players. As a compromise, we've decided to exclude Founder Armor from the potential wish items for all but the #1 gifter (#1 spot gets a wish and a custom item). This was a tough decision, but we had a feeling an issue like this might come up, hence the "nearly any" language. We're sorry if you were told in chat or on Twitter this would be a valid prize choice, but that was before the weight of this issue was brought to our attention. We hope this doesn't dampen your gifting cheer too much, as there are still hundreds of other items to choose from, as well as wish ideas that don't involve an item at all.

Since there was additional confusion, we'd also like to clarify that "nearly any item" means one item and doesn't include entire promotional packages. Mutating armors and weapons do count as one item, though.

Further Addendum: If you have the Founder Achievement, but not the Founder Armor, and you're in the top 15 of the gifting event, you may wish for Founder Armor.

Omega Wolf Pack

The gifting update will also see the introduction of the Omega Wolf Pack, which will come locked and loaded with 9 new items complete with cores!

• Omega Wolf Blaster P/E (sidearm)
• Omega Wolf Rifle P/E (auxiliary)
• Omega Wolf Fang P/E (sword)
• Omega Wolf Bloodletter/Souleater (mutating)
• Omega Wolf Rider (non-CC vehicle)

Cores

• Tactical Reload (Sidearm): Get a free reload of your sidearm, bypassing cooldown.
• Icy Overkill (Aux): Overload your auxiliary, ignoring 35% of target's defense. Is unusable for rest of battle.
• Wolf’s Fury (Primary): While low on health, unleash an unblockable attack with a 25% crit/stun chance and 100% energy conversion. Also does 26% attack damage to target’s energy.

Epic Supporter 2018

The 15,000 Varium package is back with a new twist of the achievement. Each time this package or the Omega Wolf Pack is purchased, the achievement will level up (up to 10)! 

Quality of Life

• /dnd command activates Do Not Disturb mode that blocks PMs, jumps, ally links, and sonar. Still shows green “online” light on buddy list so not completely invisible. Type it again to turn this mode off.
• /openallgifts receives all gifts currently in your mail.
• Since there will be a lot of congestion in gifting areas, the AFK timer now disconnects after 15 minutes of idle time. If you want those gifts, you'll have to be active!

Mission Changes

• Removed mission chains for Nightwraith. Congratulations to everyone who received Nightwraith's personal armor! The missions will return next year to give you all another chance to level and plan your strategy!
  • Party Business
  • OneX6 Retrieval
  • A Bold Bounty

Balance

• Cyber Hunter
  • Massacre: Improves with every 12 Tech instead of ever 8

Arcade

• Increased value of prize tiers -- resale should be higher as well. This is not a retroactive change.
  • Gold - 2000
  • Silver - 300
  • Bronze - 40

Maps

• Added extra-large gifting arenas to the right and left of Edgar Boothe. We tried making players even smaller, but it breaks character movement badly. It's hilarious to see, but probably too frustrating if you really want to focus on claiming your gifts. If people like this addition enough, we can add more to other regions of Delta V!
• Room cap increased to 150! Remember to turn down all the graphics to the lowest settings if you have an older PC unless you like slideshows!

Achievements

• 12 tiers of the Good Gifter 2018 Achievement
• 2 tiers of the Yeti for Winter 2018 Achievement
• 10 tiers of the Epic Supporter 2018 Achievement
• Achievement changes
  • Dage achievement value raised to 4000
  • Legendary Titan achievement value raised to 4000
  • Gamma achievement value raised to 4500
  • Collector achievements should be tagged as Ultra Rare
  • Archivist achievements should be tagged as General since it’s not rare at all
  • Archivist achievements all bumped in value by 500 since the tiers are harder to get

Wow! That's a truckload of content and we're just getting started! We'll be periodically updating gifting throughout December with new content and items to add to gifting pool so it'll only get better as the event goes on! Thank you all for making an update like this possible! Duel On and Gift On!

Tags: Titan