EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

November 07, 2013

Prepare to party! This week, celebrate the birthday of EpicDuel's resident artist/assassin: Nightwraith. New missions, new weapons, and revamped skills await for your celebratory needs! As if that weren't enough reason to celebrate: the winners of the Creative Carving Contest will be announced in-game at Elon Musk!

Back to Party Business

Visit me at my usual haunt in the Wasteland to investigate my stash of weapons and armors! Do you have your OneX6 Keys? No? We've got you covered -- you can either buy one directly or win one by completing a new mission. Be warned: I've been buffed to level 36 so I'm not the pushover I used to be!

The classic birthday missions are also returning, with a few new additions in case you've already completed the old ones. Complete them all for huge rewards!

Suggestion Shop

In addition to hunting bounties and weaving baskets, I (Nightwraith) am EpicDuel's lead artist, but I don't mind sharing the spotlight with aspiring artists. That's why we're combining my birthday celebration with the introduction of a new round of suggestion shop weapons, created from ideas submitted from our creative EpicDuel community!

It's been way too long since we've done a shop like this so we're really going all out. We hope to have over 12 new weapons culled from the best of the best suggestions. Charfade and I are working as hard as possible to deliver more, but this is a thoroughly packed release. The weapons are still in progress so check back for a full list of items and their associated artist after we go live. If your suggestion was not selected, that does not mean it was terrible or we hate you -- it just means it may have to wait for the next suggestion shop. Hopefully it won't take a full year to do another one! I wouldn't be surprised if more items enter the game next week!

Arcadia

It wouldn't be a proper birthday without a new Arcade Game! 

Horrifying! Give it a spin and be the first to claim the grand prize! As with other games, Nightwraith's Nightmare will introduce it's own new evolving achievment and leaderboard!

Cheevo Counter

Speaking of achievements -- we now have tracking for many of the daily achievements like the 1v1 and 2v2 automatch daily winners. Players who win the daily achievements multiple times will increment their number on the appropriate achievement.  

Active Update

To address balance this update, we will be tweaking a few energy numbers from last week's update, but we also have a far grander change in store: Converting all passive skills into active ones.

That means Blood Lust, Reroute, Deadly Aim, Shadow Arts, Adrenaline, and all the Armor skills will be converted into active skills. Blood Lust and Reroute will become Mark of Blood and Battery Backup respectively. The purpose of this change is to add strategy to battle. Currently, passives grant HUGE benefits with little sacrifice, especially for level cap players. Active skills require more sacrifice in terms of energy cost and turn cost. To compensate for these sacrifices, the effects of the skills will be modified. This change will affect all classes so we're really interested to see what new strategies emerge from this change. 

Adrenaline

• Adrenaline

  • Replaced with Adrenaline Rush. Adrenaline Rush instantly grants the target a percentage of their maximum Rage.

Hybrid Armor, Mineral Armor, and Plasma Armor

• Hybrid Armor

  • Hybrid Armor now increases the target’s Defense and Resistance by a percentage of their base Defense and Resistance (the portion from your Dexterity and Technology) for 4 turns.

• Mineral Armor

  • Mineral Armor now increases the target’s Defense by a percentage of their base Defense for 4 turns.

• Plasma Armor

  • Plasma Armor now increases the target’s Resistance by a percentage of their base Resistance for 4 turns.

     

Reroute

• Reroute

  • Replaced with Battery Backup. Battery Backup grants the target an immediate boost to Energy, and doesn’t cost the user anything to cast.

Deadly Aim

• Deadly Aim

  • Deadly Aim was replaced by two new skills: Fire Scythe for Tech Mages, and Energy Parasite for Blood Mages

  • Fire Scythe deals physical damage to the target, ignoring a percentage of their Defense.

  • Energy Parasite applies a debuff that steals a percentage of the target’s current Energy for 3 turns, granting 1.5x the amount stolen back to the caster.

Blood Lust

• Bloodlust

  • Replaced with Mark of Blood. Mark of Blood leaves a mark on the target for 3 turns, granting lifesteal to anyone that attacks the marked target.

Shadow Arts

• Shadow Arts

  • Shadow Arts now casts the target in shadow and reduces all damage they take by a percentage for 3 turns.

Contest Announcement

When this update goes live, be sure to visit Elon Musk for a list of the winning entries! The effort so far has been stellar with such short notice. We are currently in the process of judging entries and narrowing down the list of finalists!

Tags: Titan Nightwraith Suggestion Shop Elon Musk contest Arcade Missions balance Skills Weapons Birthday