EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

December 24, 2013

Holiday Wishes From All of Us to You

Happy Holidays from your video game family here at Artix Entertainment! Even when you are not on our servers, you are still in our hearts. We have done so much together this year and made so many great memories... and we could not do it without you! 

Tags: Artix

December 24, 2013

NEW CHANGES / FEATURES 

• Maximum level has been increased to 40
• Experience curve has been smoothed out and total experience required to reach maximum level has been reduced
• New Legendary Mode
  • You may now gain experience beyond the level cap, granting Legendary ranks.
  • In a future release, Legendary ranks will grant you points to spend in new areas to further customize and strengthen your character
• New 10k Varium Pack Blood Hawk Battlegear Bundle
  • 2 Blood Hawk Slayer swords
  • 2 Blood Hawk Battlegear mutating weapons
  • 2 Blood Hawk bots
• Davarril, Elite Yeti and Black Abyss Spider have a chance to drop gems (Flawed, Normal, Imperfect) upon defeat
• Daily mission chain battle requirements reduced -- easier to earn an Arcade Token
• New icon-only display option for Achievements panel
• Numerous interface changes to the stats panel to improve clarity and readability
• Stats panel now shows the current player’s equipped gear
• 6 new Artix-themed Arcade games with new items from various AE games
• 30 Asgardian styles

BALANCE

• All Health, Energy, Damage, Defense, and Resistance values have been multiplied by 10 
  • This gives us much greater flexibility in future balance updates
  • Every stat point will now give noticeable improvements to your character
• Removed damage ranges from all skills that used them (examples: Bunker Buster, Supercharge)
• Static Grenade
  • Steals 30% of the energy drained, down from 50%
  • Energy drain now scales off Support instead of Technology
• Plasma Bolt
  • Energy cost increased to 150 from 130
  • Stat scaling lowered to 2.5 damage every 1 Tech, down from 2.85
• Berserker
  • Energy cost lowered to 240 from 270
• Adrenaline
  • Rage gain increased by 10% at all levels

BUGFIXES

• Fixed
  • 1. Click on your buddy list and select any buddy (does not have to be online)
  • 2. Click the home icon to view the buddy's homes. You must view the homes through the buddy list, and not by the home icon on the bottom of the screen
  • 3. Fortune City Efficiency is being sold to the left of your buddy's homes. Click the "Claim Home Free" button and a confirmation will show up saying "Are you sure you want to claim the Fortune City Efficiency for FREE?"
  • 4. Click "Claim Home" when this confirmation shows up and an error message appears: "unable to purchase home, please try again later!"
• Fixed Botanical Borg Attack skill name was missing
• Deposit button is visible while not banking
  • 1. Enter house
  • 2. Click on bank bot
  • 3. Click on "View Items"
  • 4. Exit bank bot but stay in house
  • 5. Click on inventory icon (bagpack)
  • 6. Instead of equipped items you see "Deposit Item" button
• Arcade and Ultra-Rare Achievements were sometimes not displaying properly
• Epic Stylist achievement could sometimes show the incorrect tier and progress
• Typos
• Wasteland War Points total showing incorrectly

Tags: Nightwraith

December 19, 2013

Become Legendary

Prepare for the most exciting evolution of EpicDuel since Omega! In addition to an impressive new Varium bundle, we're unlocking level 40! But what happens after you reach 40? Level 40 will allow all players to achieve Legendary status! This means you will continue to earn experience toward Legendary ranks, all the way up to 100!

Each Rank will allow you to unlock points to invest in new stat categories. This part of Legendary mode is still in development and will be fully-released after the new year. This is partially because we want to make sure enough players have reached level 40 before turning it on, partially time constraints, and partially because of the next major chage to EpicDuel described below!

10x the Balance!

Well, maybe 10 times the balance is a bit of an exaggeration, but this release, we're increasing key stats like health, energy, damage, and defense by a multiple of 10. This means that every point of stat investment will have a significant impact on your overall combat effectiveness. It also means that all the EpicDuel Maximum Damage videos are going to be posting some huge numbers!

In addition to looking impressive, multiplying the stats also gives us finer control for balancing skills. We're making all the adjustments we can before we go live, but we're also hoping that all the battling over the holidays up to level 40 will give us good information on further tweaks.

Blood Hawk Battlegear Mega-Bundle

This release, we're unveiling the new Blood Hawk Battlegear Mega-Bundle! For the price of one 10k Varium package, you'll be getting 2 Blood Hawk Battlegear Mutating Weapons, 2 Blood Hawk Slayer Swords, 2 Blood Hawk Bots, and, of course, 10,000 Varium.

These weapons will be available in the one-stop Varium shop for a limited time. For those who would rather purchase the items piecemeal, Frysteland Valestra will be stocked with the Blood Hawk items in-game.

These awesome items will come with some killer cores! Check them out:

Hawk Guardian

This Active Core comes equipped to all the primary Blood Hawk weapons. When your health is critical, summon a wild Blood Hawk to come to your aid and deliver a devastating claw attack to your opponent!

Blood Hawk Claw

This Blood Hawk Bot skill allows you to summon the spirit of the mysterious Frysteland Blood Hawk to deliver a nasty attack with razor-sharp talons.

Armor Annihilator

As a Blood Hawk, use your metallic claws to temporarily disintegrate your opponent's armor!

Kawkaw!

Mega Mutations!

This Winter, we decided to have a little fun with our new vehicle selection. Indead of riding a bike, you can actually become one of the creatures below! These designs are fully color-customizeable with entertaining travel animation!

Are you Yeti? How Yeti are you? This year you can be an actual Baby Yeti!

Soar above it all as a Blood Hawk!

Dino Hawks are the ancient precursors to the Blood Hawks. They can't fly, but their strong hind legs allow them to move quickly across the snowy landscape.

The final bike is a more conventional vehicle, concepted by G00ny and Smackey El Frog and vectorized by Charfade! It's powerful treads will allow you to tear through the frozen tundra with ease!

Artix Arcade Bonanza!

Ever wished you could take your favorite items from another AE game and use them in EpicDuel? After this release, you'll have your chance as we unveil new Arcade games for AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, DragonFable, MechQuest, HeroSmash, and OverSoul. By collaborating with the other teams, we've amassed a mighty hoard of legendary weapons! 

New Arcade games also mean more Achievements and more leaderboards to dominate.  With 6 Arcade prize pools respresenting the biggest AE games, you'll have plenty of reasons to farm Arcade Tokens over the Holidays!

Stylin'!

Thanks to the help of Revontheus, we've been able to introduce 30 new Asgardian styles! Alter your looks to resemble a notorious trickster god or a mighty Asgardian warrior. 

What more crazy styles will Revontheus create? I have a feeling they have something to do with a moose...

Into the New Year

This Legendary release will be our last major release of 2013, but that doesn't mean we're slacking! We already have big plans for 2014, including a tutorial system to welcome and teach new players as well as features to keep the game fresh and exciting for veterans. All the tools we've added to EpicDuel over the years, especially this year, have really streamlined our processes and made delivering feature and content-packed releases easier than ever. We have very high hopes for the future of EpicDuel, and we hope you'll join us in making 2014 Legendary!

Happy Juloffenblotten and Frostval from all of your friends at Artix Entertainment! Duel On!

Tags: Nightwraith Legends Legendary balance Arcade styles Stats Frysteland Winter Holiday Level 40 upgrade Blood Hawk

December 12, 2013

A cold wind is blowing through Frysteland...actually a cold wind is usually blowing through Frysteland, considering its climate and all. ANYWAY! We've got big, BIG plans for this upcoming release, and as I mentioned last week, this release is so big we'll need 2 weeks to build it. That means, unfortunately, no release Friday, but next week will be incredible!

Blood Hawk Battlegear Bundle

In the year since Alydriah was expelled form Frysteland by the Endless, the Krampus people have slowly begun to recover. In addition to the human toll Alydriah's cruelty took on the harsh Northern land, many indigenous species were devastated or wiped out by constant battling. One such species is the rare Blood Hawk. These creatures were used for centuries by the Krampus people for hunting and taming yetis. Thought extinct, they have returned in force to once again aid the Krampus people in keeping the cuddly but ferocious creatures in line.

Now you will have the opportunity to own the Blood Hawk and the Spectral Hawk (energy variant) along with a host of avian armaments!

The Blood Hawk Battlegear Bundle will be available for a limited time. With this package you will receive:

• 2 Blood Hawk Slayer swords
• 2 Blood Hawk Battlegear mutating weapons
• 2 Blood Hawk bots
• The swords and mutating items will come with a pre-installed Blood Hawk core!
• 10k Varium

We realize that the last package offered was not that long ago so we're offering the package items in-game as well. It's definitely a better value to get them all together in the bundle, of course, but if you've got a pile of Varium burning a hole in your pocket...you should probably seek medical attention immediately.

If those weapons weren't enough to intrigue you, we have some special surprises in store. Stay tuned for more details!

You're Epic, But Are You...LEGENDARY?

Next week, we're raising the level cap to...*drumroll* 40! Rabblefroth is hard at work smoothing the experience curve to make earning levels slightly less painful. But what happens after you reach 40 and max out all your gear? What then? Ponder the great mysteries of the universe? NO! 40 is just the beginning of a much longer journey as an EpicDuel Legend!

After a player becomes Legendary, you will continue to earn experience as Legendary experience. Your level will not increase, but you will instead earn Legendary Ranks! Each rank earned will unlock a Legendary point that can be placed in a broad array of stats. These stats will be more specialized than Dexterity or Technology which influence a range of battle attributes. We haven't finalized the list, but we will build as many as we can by next week. The beauty is we can always add more later, unlike the current, more rigid stat list.

Legendary players will be defined by a uniquely colored name, an icon in their interface, and several other minor aesthetic changes. We'll have more details as the systems are finalized and polished.

Achievement Overhaul Continued

Work on the Achievement Overhaul continues as we wrap up a few features we didn't get to last week, in addition to fixing some minor bugs.

You will also have the option to switch view modes. If you don't like the new, larger style, you can always switch back to a more classically styled view to see more achievements at once.

Titan is also working on a new overall progress bar to see how many Achievements you have total. How close are you to earning them all? If you're close, we're about to make getting them all a bit more difficult with the next feature.

AE Arcade Bonanza!

We're going all-out with the Arcade next week, offering several new games based on other AE games. Collect weapons, house items, and other intriguing baubles from MechQuest, HeroSmash, AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, and MORE! Each of these new games offers a new achievement and a new leaderboard to dominate!

To make it easier to acquire Arcade Tokens, we'll be softening the requirements for the daily missions. If you didn't already know, it's possible to earn Tokens from completing daily mission chains. Some can be a bit on the grindy side so we'll try to make it a more pleasurable experience to complete them.

Party Like They Do in Asgard

As if everything else mentioned above weren't enough...ED Artist Revontheus is crafting some slick Asgardian styles to spice up this release. What does Asgard have to do with Frysteland? Well, they're basically space vikings and vikings lived in cold climates sooooo...yeah.

Asgard!

Tags: Titan Winter Blood Hawk Weapons Items Armors Achievements Legendary Legends Frysteland Birds Varium Level upgrade Stat balance Gear Vehicles Cores Holiday Arcade

December 06, 2013

NEW CHANGES / FEATURES 

• New achievement Module
• Main interface console bar lowered to give more room for the map
• Main interface options shrunk to fit new Achievements btn
• Stats / skills Module has a much wider stance to provider more visible room for character
• Added 75+ new seasonal and Black Abyss home items
• Returned Winter Seasonal Rares
  • Visit Hank or Valestra in Frysteland for seasonal weapons
  • Return of seasonal home items
  • Frost Warrior Achievement
  • Winterized Screens / NPCs

• Removed Fall/Harvest Items
  • Removed Fall/Harvest Missions
    • Hallowarriors
    • Gourd Grinding
• Removed Nightwraith Items
  • Removed NW Missions
    • OneX6 Retrieval
    • Party Business
• World Domination achievement now tracks the number of times it has been awarded
• Tactical Map sellable for 250 credits
• Egg Sac sellable for 150 credits

BALANCE

• Energy stealing skills are now capped to the target’s current energy. This affects Static Smash and Static Grenade.
• Piston Punch
  • Will no longer consume your Rage or Critical as it does flat damage
• Poison Spores
  • Initial damage will no longer consume Rage or Critical as it does flat damage
  • Now deals 50% of bot damage each turn, down from 60%
  • Cooldown increased to 4 turns
• Static Grenade and Static Smash
  • Will no longer drain more energy than the target has.
  • Example: Target has 15 Energy left. Previously, Static Grenade would drain 30 Energy and grant 15. Now, it will drain 15 and grant 7.

BUGFIXES

• Fixed 0 HP display issue
• Fixed client-hanging bug when using Pyro Fly special or Concussive Shot core on a boss
• Fixed sizing inconsistency with achievements

Tags: RabbleFroth

December 05, 2013

Welcome back, Duelists! We hope you had a happy and safe Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, or last Thursday of November! Did you complete the Black Abyss Saga? If not, there's still time, but some big changes are coming this Friday to EpicDuel!

Achievement Overhaul

The central feature of this latest release is a complete overhaul of the Achievement system. Over time, EpicDuel has released over 300 achievements in multiple categories. Some are seasonal, some are rare, some can only be earned once while other accumulate. We will be consolidating them all into one interface, divided into categories:

General: Basic achiements like those earned through Mission completion.

War: Earned through events like the Frysteland War and the ongoing territorial control achiements.

Boss: Earned through defeating bosses like Titan, Nightwraith, and the Black Abyss Spider.

Arcade: Achievements earned through Arcade play.

Seasonal: Recurring achiements like Frost Warrior.

Badges: Purchaseable achiements.

Feats: Especially hard or impossible to earn achievements like Epic Artists and Alpha Tester.

From this interface, you will also be able to track your progress in collecting all of the available achievements. To make this feature easier to access, we've readded the Achievement button to the main HUD. Also, you can purchase Badge-style achievements from the main Achievement interface now, instead of seeking out a VendBot.

Winter Rares Return

Visit Hank and Valestra in Frysteland to browse a robust selection of returning seasonal rares!

These items will only be around for a limited time, so get them while you can!

Speaking of rares, a lot of current seasonal rares will be leaving this Friday, including all the Harvest and Nightwraith seasonal rares. Rabblefroth's Thanksgiving rares will remain a bit longer, but all the Harvest and Nightwraith missions will also be leaving until next year!

Balance 

This Friday we will also be pushing out a balance update to address energy stealing skills like Static Smash and Static Grenade. Energy stealing skills will be capped to the target’s current energy, thus obeying the laws of thermodynamics.

Preview

As I type this, Charfade is busily concepting new armors, vehicles, weapons, and bots for the upcoming winter release. It's going to be a super-sized mega release so we'll need two weeks to complete it!

Stay tuned for further updates!

Royal Wedding Royale

Tags: Nightwraith Frysteland Juloffenblotten Hank Valestra Achievements Winter Seasonal Rares Weapons previews Wedding Artix snow Frost