December 06, 2012 Omega MarathonNow it can be told: the official release date for Omega is December 14th early February! Of course, we can't confirm what time exactly, but we will do our absolute best to get this epic release to you in a stable, tested condition! To satisfy your curiousity on some of Omega's amazing features, enjoy this new Design Notes as we continue the Omega marathon!
Changes to NPCs
Today we wanted to go over some changes to how NPC fights will work in Omega. We want NPCs to fill the purposes of:
1) training or testing builds
2) gaining credits
3) furthering missions and the storyline
They currently fill some other purposes that we want to move away from, including padding battle records, faction farming, and leveling.
Some of the changes are as follows:
- NPC fights no longer count towards your battle record. We want the Leaderboards and your battle record to clearly reflect your PvP accomplishments instead of forcing players to farm NPCs to pad their win rates.
- You can now fight NPCs an unlimited number of times.
- NPCs will not give experience after level 5. This will allow new players to be eased into the battle system, but afterwards we want the focus to be on PvP. This also allows leveling players to get credits without continuing to level if they feel like they are falling behind.
- NPCs will no longer give Battle Tokens or Influence. Since you can fight them without limit, we don’t want factions or players to farm them for Tokens or Influence. Again, we want the focus here to be on PvP.
- NPCs will not give rewards if you lose. We don’t want people to purposely lose to NPCs over and over, so you will need to win to get Credits or other rewards.
- Brainwashing is removed since it is no longer necessary.
Enhancements
We know there are still many questions about what we’re doing with Enhancements, but we’re not quite ready to talk about this in-depth yet. We will say now that the new system will allow for much greater customization than before, and will involve equipping passive effects and active abilities to your weapons.
Additionally, we will be providing compensation for those that have enhanced weapons in the current system. We’ll provide more specifics soon.
Omega Obliteration!
We would like to kick off our new development phase with not one, but TWO promotional packages. These designs were inspired by devoted EpicDuel player and aspiring artist TrizzzCentrino! You can choose from the Omega Obliteror set, which features an energy sword plus a mutating weapon!
OR if physical damage is more your thing, you may select the Omega Onslaughter!
All of these weapons will offer 2 new weapon skills (one active, one passive) to give you an edge in Omega. We will explain what these skills are and what they do as soon as we finalize the details!
Speaking of promotions: Check out Heromart's Coming Soon page for details on the upcoming "Are You Yeti" shirt! This epic garment will come with not one, but TWO yetis for you to play with for the upcoming release!
The Frozen North
Alydriah has been up to no good in her captured territory. However, there is one bastion of hope in this shattered land:
Titan stands watch from his mountain lair in Frysteland. Many displaced Krampus have taken shelter at the foot of this mountain fortress, seeking some respite from constant harassment from Legion troops. Alydriah is smart enough to steer clear of this mysterious refuge, but not so fearful that she wouldn't taunt the gods of Delta V through more indirect means. What new cybernetic terrors has Alydriah created in during the Legion's occupation of this region? Would Alydriah burn Frysteland to the ground just to annoy Titan? How many cheeseburgers do you think Titan has hidden up there?
I guess you'll have to login to find out!
Easy on the Eyes
As we mentioned earlier, the early game experience is getting a drastic overhaul, starting with the login and class selection screens. We will also be refreshing the look of the base armors and styles to reflect this graphical overhaul. This might not be tremendously exciting to our veteran players, but it will make EpicDuel 1000% more appealing to new players, expanding the total number of active players, which means more opponents for you!
WHY NO UPDATE?!
With all the changes to the database structure and game code, we literally cannot release before it's ready. Also, preparing a weekly release would divert time away from development on Omega, and we cannot spare a second at this point!
On that note -- Code Sorcerer, away! Tags: Titan promotions Omega Frysteland Winter Obliterator Onslaughter Yeti HeroMart Shirt Enhancements Stats code TRizZzCENTRINO Update Holiday Seasons Epic Skills Weapons alydriah | 
