EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

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