EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

August 28, 2013

As we noted in previous DN posts, we have automated the seasonal rare restock process. This means that we can plan releases for seasonal content well in advance without even requiring a server restart. It also ensures that we won't miss any items. Since there are some items using this system in game, it seems appropriate to let you know when this ephemeral equipment will leave the game for another year.

All dates are Eastern Time (Lab Server Time) at 12:00AM. Don't know how to figure that out from your Time Zone? There's a website for that!

Titan's Gear

• Leaving September 1, 2013, 12:00 A.M. 

Dragon/Charbinger/Back-to-School Gear

• Leaving Leaving September 20, 2013, 12:00 A.M. 

Talk Like a Pirate Day

• Arriving @Big Tuna in the West Naval Yard September 1, 2013, 12:00 A.M.
• Leaving October 1, 2013 12:00 A.M. 

Tags: Nightwraith

August 27, 2013

Greetings, EpicDuelists! It’s that time of year again where many of the Artix Entertainment staff, admins, mods and our most adventurous players head off to Atlanta Georgia  for Dragon*Con this weekend. Which means EpicDuel will be releasing a mini-mid-week release today!

For those visiting Dragon*Con this year, the Artix Entertainment panel is this Saturday Aug 31st @2:30pm in the Hilton Atlanta hotel  room Grand Salon E. We are also on the Dragon*Con app,  under Events -> MMORPG.  EpicDuel’s very own “RabbleFroth” will be attending this year’s panel and hovering over the AE fan table. Be sure to say hi!

AE Panel at DragonCon
Title: Making Video Games with Artix Entertainment

When: Saturday, Aug 31st @ 2:30pm until 3:30pm
Where: Hilton Atlanta, Grand Salon E.

First time DragonCon attendee? Lucky for you, Cysero has posted a DragonCon survival guide on the AQW design notes!

For more information about Dragon*Con, please visit the official DragonCon website! 

Mini Mid Week Release!

Without time this week to work on a huge fun filled release, the EpicDuel team decided it was best to go on a mission bug hunt and make further improvements to the New Mission system. Titan is also making more changes to the player’s user experience by polishing up the new mission interface. You’ll notice minor changes in how you interact with NPC’s this week, this will hopefully streamline and reduce the number of clicks you need to do in order to access mission content.  These are small changes, but we really hope they improve your game play experience!

NPC Notifiers

Naomi has a question for you!  New to EpicDuel this week is the New Mission NPC Notify System. Now if a NPC has something for you to do, like a mission you’ve been putting off, that npc will let you know with a notify indicator above their head. The same indicator icon will be carried throughout the flow of finding and accepting any new missions. All the maps with NPC’s had to be updated to support this change.  Which you can imagine, took up most of the development time.

No new missions this week. More time is needed to fully develop and test any new missions. We also need more time to implement and fully test the Daily Mission features. Which are in the coming soon bucket!  The EpicDuel team returns from their mini hiatus on Sept 3^rd. So there is no release scheduled for this Friday. Will be back to full EpicDuel power next week!

Patch Notes - 1.5.29 

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• Further improvements to the New Mission System interface
• Add Mission notify system
  • Updated every screen to support new NPC missions notify system – Which now supports indicators above NPC heads.
  • NPC mission button flow polish, limiting the amount of clicks to access and accept missions.

Item Resale Correction

• Emeralds (Flawed = 50, Regular = 200, Perfect = 400)
• Ice Gems (Flawed = 50, Regular = 200, Perfect = 400)
• Infernal Gems (Flawed = 50, Regular = 200, Perfect = 400)

 Mission Bug Fixes 

• Naomi’s mission ‘Purify’, small spelling error fixed
• Fighting For Fabulous - NPC IDs were wrong. Database fix
• Coffee, Tea, or Battle - description says 5 wins, but the mission is asking for 10 wins. Should be 10. Adjusted text to be consistent
• Not a Good Reason - Reduced purchase to 1 Trident Blaster instead of 4. Your reward will net 1000 credits instead of a steep loss
• The Annoyance of Humanity - Incorrect NPC IDs. Fixed
• The Golden Gun Gals mission is resulting in a credit loss. The 4 Imperial Blasters required cost 3,000 credits, but the final reward can only be sold for 625 credits 
• The mission “Restock” to only require 2 Imperial Blasters and to reward the player with a 1000 credit profit if they sell the gun
• You Know My Choice - Yeti Hulks will now also drop Coffee
• Business Partners - was reported on forums that it wasn’t tracking wins. No issue found 

Tags: DragonCon Nightwraith RabbleFroth charfade staff mission Bugs

August 26, 2013

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• Mission Overhaul System!
  • New mission system interface 
  • Replaced old system with a mission check list guide
  • Grouped old missions together in a series of chains
  • Categorized permanent and event based missions (daily missions coming soon!)
  • 20 new missions have been added
• Season Timestamp on Items: Sets a schedule to automatically update seasonal items with start and end time without game restart. Gives players a larger heads-up before we add and remove gear from the various shops
• Seasonal Dragon weapons and Back-to-School weapons equipped to Slayer (available for a limited time)
• Reinforcements Reworked: Applies globally instead of at individual objectives, and changes based on rate of War Points instead of whoever is in the lead
• Continuing to monitor matching system with new tracking information

Tags: charfade

August 22, 2013

Dragon Returns

It's that time of year again! Time for Summer to slowly ease out into Fall. Time for students to go back to school. Time for...DRAGONS!

The classic Dragon and Back-to-School items will be returning to The Slayer, along with the Charbinger weapons and Harbinger Armor from last year's Dragon's Reckoning Saga! Some of these are limited quantities, so better move fast!

It's All About Timing

Rabblefroth's programming skills have allowed us to put seasonal items on a schedule. This means that items like the Heartbreaker weapons or the Independence Day gear will automatically stock in the shops without requiring a restart. This means we'll never have to worry about forgetting to add something as the list of seasonal content grows every year. This will also give players a larger heads-up before we add and remove gear from the various shops.

Mission Overhaul

Those of you who have been around awhile have probably noted the lack of missions lately. The existing system has a number of flaws that make adding missions cumbersome. For one, NPCs do not support more than 4 missions. With a small-ish cast of NPCs, this means if we want to add more, we have to move or remove missions. Another reason is that mission are hard to find. Aside from players who closely follow the Wiki and these Design Notes, most players would only stumble upon missions through luck. Even after finding a mission, there is still the matter of navigating the mission chain, which is often unclear. Because of those flaws and because so few players were able to experience the missions we were adding, we made a conscious choice to stop adding new missions until we could build a better system. 

Now, we finally have that system! From the Mission button at the bottom of the main interface, players can view a directory of all available missions! This will allow players to view different mission categories like Permanent, Seasonal, and Daily, view details about those missions, and jump to the NPC offering them. 

As a minor housekeeping task, we have grouped many existing missions into chains, altering them slightly to flow together naturally. We also filled several gaps in term terms of missions for low to mid-level players (1-20) so players getting familiar with the game will have more opportunities for credits!

Because this is new system with many changes and opportunities for critical bugs, we will not be offering Daily missions this release. If everything works with few or no bugs, however, we could see Daily missions very soon!

Finding Mission has never been easier! With a little time and effort, you'll be rolling in credits!

Tags: Nightwraith Missions Dragons Weapons

August 20, 2013

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• New Titan Cores available at Titan in Frysteland

• Bacon Breath - Unleashes the powerful scent of bacon on your target, dealing 114% weapon damage.
• Titan Chomp - Summon Titan to chomp your target for 114% weapon damage. 
• Bacon Rain - Rains down delicious bacon, dealing 114% weapon damage to the target.

• Added several new War Objectives to the world map
  • Barrens Shield Generator
  • Wasteland Missile Turret
  • Naval Yard Propaganda Tower has converted into a Shield Generator
  • Central Station Cannon
  • Central Station Shield Generator
  • Overlord Shield Generator
  • Bio Cannon
• Adjusted matchmaking to never allow 2v2 matches with a huge level disparity

BUGS FIXED:

• Fixed an issue with the Slayer’s main body asset.  The file included a legacy import call that caused it to fail to load.  This could hang the battle against the Slayer NPC in some instances.
• Fixed an issue where objective shops would automatically close when the objective updates every 15 seconds
• Fixed character page core Display issue
• Fixed graphical issue with Juggernaut button displaying during shutdown
• Updated graphical text with a few missions  tokens/credits
• Updated several outdated “Did you know” and chat messages

Tags: RabbleFroth

August 16, 2013

Shields Activated!

Defend your hard-fought War Objectives with Shield Generators! These critical structures allow you to reinforce the influence of other structures you own in a certain region. Like Turrets, Shield Generators can only be used on another structure within the same region. 

Like Turrets, Shield Generators have 3 levels of improvement depending on the amount of your Alignment's Influence.

New War Objectives!

Building upon the Turret release last week, we have added Turrets and Shield Generators to all contested regions. Here's a quick look at the new Objectives and their locations. Better hurry if you want a foothold in a heavily disputed region!

'

Wasteland Missile Turret

Barrens Shield Generator

Central Station Cannon

Central Station Shield Generator

Overlord Shield Generator

Bio Cannon

Naval Yard Shield Generator (formerly Propaganda Tower)

New Titan Cores!

Titan's birthday may be over, but he's not done giving just yet. Visit him in his frosty Frysteland lair to try three new Charge Cores!

Bacon Breath 

Unleashes the powerful scent of bacon on your target, dealing 114% weapon damage.

Titan Chomp

 Summon Titan to chomp your target for 114% weapon damage.

Bacon Rain

 Rains down delicious bacon, dealing 114% weapon damage to the target.

Matchmaking

Rabblefroth is also making some fine adjustments to the Alignment matching. It should allow for better quality matches, especially in 2v2.

Tags: Nightwraith Shields Factions War Objectives Turrets Cannons Destruction Cores Charged Titan Birthday

August 13, 2013

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• New Feature - War Objective Upgrade System – War  Cannons!
  • Players are now able to upgrade cannons to gain more war influence

• War cannon maps upgraded added to the following regions
  • Dread Plains
  • Barrens Outpost
  • West Naval Yard
  • Fortune City
  • Overlord Facility

• Return of Titan Gear, available on Titan in Frysteland \ Limited Quantity
  • Titan's Triumph - Sword ( Energy & Physical )
  • Titan's Terror -  Primary Mutating Weapon ( Energy & Physical )
  • Burger Bike
  • Birth of Titan Achievement – located in the achievement shops
  • Graphics improvement to VendBot

Tags: RabbleFroth

August 08, 2013

Covering Fire!

EpicDuel is finally rolling out the heavy artillery for the Dread War. Capture and upgrade turrets to fire upon opposition War Objectives within the various regions of Delta V. Turrets can be upgraded by filling the control bar. The more heavily an alignment dominates a turret, the further it will upgrade.

To fire a turret, simply click on it as you would an NPC. You can then select an option to fire the turret, select your target, then fire. The turret will fire in real time and those on the target screen will see the impact! Remember, you can only fire turrets that your alignment controls so it is imperative to capture and hold turrets to maintain a tactical advantage in any region in which they are present.

Titan's Triumph

Soon we will be celebrating the birthday of everyone's favorite Delta V demi-god: Titan. This mighty being uses technology so advanced, it is indistinguishable from magic. Some believe he created Delta V through sheer force of will. These people are quickly dismissed as fanatics, but there is no denying his awesome power.

Visit Titan in his Frysteland lair to collect new mutating weapons and a mighty new sword: Titan's Triumph. These will be limited in quantity so you had better be quick!

Hmmmm...seems a bit sketchy.

Also returning will be Titan's Burger Bike! 

Omnomnomnom.

The image speaks for itself.

Core Continuum

We are adding additional Active Cores to the roster of Charge Cores. Each use in battle will deplete a Core charge. We're hoping to have enough time to implement some completely new Charge Cores for your battling enjoyment. Could they be Titan-themed? Perhaps...

VendBot Upgrade

One of the oldest and most prolific NPCs in EpicDuel is the humble VendBot. These little guys have seen the evolution of EpicDuel from the earliest Alpha days to the modern Omega phase. In that time, they've traded their inventories of obsolete boosters to Cores. Their old technology can barely contain the demand so they've been refitted for extra capacity to provide you with the latest and greatest hardware upgrades, serving as a one-stop core shop.

Someone's been working out!

Miss the old design? Don't worry, the original will still be around in a few remote places of Delta V. 

Tags: War Nightwraith Titan Birthday Rares Bike Mutating Weapons Turrets Objectives Cores

August 02, 2013

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• 14% reduction in the size of the main game client
• Total of 18 new Dread War Hairstyles. Male, Female and Class versions of the Exile, Legion, Mysterious hairstyle sets.  
• Matchmaking changes
  
  • The system will now prioritize matches based on how long you have been waiting. While it will try to create Exile vs Legion matches as much as possible, after a time it will prioritize getting you into a fight over waiting for the ideal match. We’ll be monitoring the performance of the new system, and we will make adjustments as necessary.
• Cores
  
  • All cores are now inventory items. While little has changed functionally about how cores work, we feel this is a much clearer and universal system. All cores that were previously available directly are now for sale on all Vendbots. We'll be expanding on this even further in the future.
  • Cores have also been repriced slightly. Active cores have increased in price, while passive cores are now less expensive. This was done for two major reasons: 1) To make the value of each type of core more apparent, and 2) To more closely match the amount of work and effort it takes to produce active vs. passive cores.
    
    

Tags: RabbleFroth Patch Notes