EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

July 25, 2013

Sorry for the wait, but starting tomorrow, Juggernauts will be able to participate in Dread War and earn influence. This is not because we hate Juggernauts -- if anything, they represent the hardest of the hardcore EpicDuelists, able to take down two foes singlehandedly! No, this was because of a boring technical reason. Since Juggernauts could only start battle from the Slayer and Influence is only earned by fighting on a War Objective screen, Juggernauts were locked by location on a non-Objective screen. We plan to remedy this by adding a Juggernaut button to the main interface, right next to 1v1 and 2v2. This should also give the feature some much-needed exposure. I'm sure many new duelists don't even know it exists!

Starting tomorrow, instead of battling from Slayer, Juggernauts (anyone owning Slayer's Silver or Gold Skull Cards) will be able to engage a Juggernaut battle from any screen! Sound good to you? I thought so!

Are you ready for Juggernauts?

Alignment matching

Rabblefroth is hard at work refining the Legion vs. Exile matchmaking system to heavily prioritize alignment when choosing opponents and allies for Duels. We understand that many are concerned that this change could make matches painfully slow to find and we are aware of this. Hopefully, with enough variables at our disposal we can easily fine-tune the system if matches are too slow or imbalanced.

As I'm writing this, Rabblefroth is still building and testing this feature. It is of the utmost importance that it be tested thoroughly so I'm not sure yet if it will go live tomorrow. Be sure to follow our Twitter feeds for the latest updates!

More Dynamic Objective Screens

To make the war feel more tactile, we've updated over 60 screens (including battle backgrounds) to show Legion or Exile content depending on the alignment controlling the War Objective. This gives us a tremendous amount of control for each screen -- we can even change the active content such as NPCs!

Administrator 11 just got busted!

Influence Tracking

I've seen a lot of questions on Twitter and in the forums about the specific numbers for each achievement level for the regional war achievements. Your questions can now be answered in our handy new influence tracker, accessible from the Delta V world map.

Just click this button!

From this new interface you will be able to see your current level of regional achievement as well as how many more points you need to achieve the next level!

I've got a long way to go!

We like this new system so much, that we are making it the start of a long-awaited revamp to the Achievement system.

Capture the Spirit!

In addition to the regional war achievements, we are introducing another evolving achievement: the War Objective Capture achievement! This achievement is awarded to players who participate in the capture of a War Objective up to an hour before the Objective is officially captured. Do you have enough conquering spirit to reach the highest level?

Claim the world!

Meet the AE Team this weekend

Direct from Artix's Design Note post!

Want to meet the team and talk about video games? The Metrocon Convention in taking place this weekend at the convention center in Tampa, FL. The Artix Entertainment team & I will be running a panel on Saturday. They gave us a 2-hour time slot. Hahaha, boy are they going to be sorry. Maybe we can have the staff fight to the death for your amusement. Or maybe we will make a game. Or maybe we can... hmmm, we will think of something. We hope you will come join us!

Artix Entertainment Panel at Metrocon this weekend

• This Saturday, July 27th @ 11am
• Panel Room 22-23
• Official Metrocon Website

I hope to see you there!

Tags: Nightwraith War Factions Alignments Matchmaking Juggernaut Influence Achievements