EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

January 04, 2012

An Epic New Year!

Welcome back, EpicDuelists. I hope you all had a great holiday and had a great time ringing in the New Year of 2012! The staff is back in the office, and are all grateful for the time spent with friends and family during this holiday season. Now that we’re refreshed, we’re ready to begin the Final Phase of the Frysteland War!

Frysteland Final Phase

EpicDuel’s first war is approaching the final stretch, and your allies will need everyone pulling together to assure victory! I know you guys have all been working diligently- as of the writing of these design notes, over 15,000 unique characters have competed in the Frysteland War! There have been real-life wars with fewer participants! You guys have all done a magnificent job, so regardless of which side prevails, you all deserve to be commended for your efforts!

However, the war is not quite over. To bring that final push, we’ll be releasing the long-promised missions, along with the War Bosses, Commander Edgar Boothe fighting for the Legion, and King Alaric fighting for the Krampus! Could this final phase turn the tide? Only one way to find out!

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King Alaric the Technologically Inept is a fair and just warrior-king. Known as the Child-King, Alaric rose to power during the Uprising at the age of 15, following his father Callan the Decent’s death during the Haze of Iwona. Under the tutelage of his great-aunt Aldhagrimm the Erudite, he’s grown to follow in the footsteps of his grandmother, the great King Andra the Merciful, who was murdered by Baelius.

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We’re coming down to the wire here, people! If you’re Exile, don’t let those yetis down! If you are Legion, do not disappoint your leader!

There, I fixed it!

We’ve received a few complaints about blue stars not showing up on character pages, and we’ll be fixing that as soon as possible! We’ll also be fixing the issues of duplicate achievements, and war achievements not updating correctly.

Balance Update!

The following is a brief rundown of the balance changes that will be implemented in the next release.  We're still in the process of testing them, so this list is subject to change!

• TLM - Replace Maul with Stun Grenade
  • Keeps stun skill; removes easy, low cost damage skill
• TLM - Replace Hybrid Armor with Mineral Armor (New skill - passively gives physical defense)
  • Reduces inherent tankiness of TLM
• TLM - Replace Technician with Blood Shield
  • Reduces ability to be more tanky + increase damage output + heal
• CH - Replace Technician with Plasma Armor (passively gives energy resistance)
  • Gives them a reliable passive with better defensive options
• Bunker Buster/Plasma Canno
  • Weaker at lower levels, stronger scaling for high levels
• BM - Replace Technician with Energy Shield
  • Gives BM higher energy resistance
• Artillery Strike - Remove stat requirement
  • Bring it in line with other multis
• Improve Fireball & Plasma bolt
  • Slightly weaker early levels, scales much better mid-high levels
• Slightly reduce passive Armor skills’ defense/resistance
  • Evens out scaling per skill level, make it slightly less powerful

A Winner is You!

Congratulations to all of you who entered the First Ever EpicDuel Holiday House Decorating Contest! The following characters’ houses have been judged by the staff and testing team (the judges are: Charfade, Practel, Ashari, Illuminator, Lycus, and ME!) Using a super-secret method that we are not allowed to discuss under penalty of noogie, the following in-game characters have been selected for the sweet prize of an achievement and home item!

In no particular order:

Elf Priest Jzaanu for “EpicRestaurante A la Duel”

Smackie El Frog for “Smackie goes BOOM!”

Buffy A. Summers for “Home For the Holidays”

Invicticus for “Santa’s Humble Abode”

Sparticus for “My ED FAMILY and HANDS ACROSS ED PROJECT”

VIX for “VIX’s BOMB for Christmas!”

ManThong for “Happy Holidays Legionnaires!!”

G00NY for “In Excess”

Sergei Petrovich for “Seasons Greetings”

Mokta 3 for “The Hope and Joys of Christmas”

Dr Jekyll for “Only One Shovel!”

BadWitch for “Is the season to be jolly :)”

Santa ClawZz for “A house full of wishes!”

AVA for “Happy Holidays”

Appleeno for “Christmas Morning”

African Warrior for “All Welcomed”

Basicball for “Basically Basicballs Barrens Base”

Battle Elf for “December 24th!”

Captain Notorious for “Santa Claus Apartment”

Azht3b.Bethza for “StreetWorrion Street for Eve”

Prizes will be visible on the next Server restart! If you see your name up here but did not receive your prizes, please let us know!

Tags: Cinderella Frysteland balance Bugs New Year contest Legion exile War

December 15, 2011

Hi EpicDuelists, I know that these DNs are a little later than usual, but that's because you already know most of what's coming from last Friday's DNs. However, this post should help fill in the blanks and inform you on some exciting new additions! Let’s get right down to it, shall we?

Wow, Alydriah certainly has a beautify new coat. Hey, is that made out of..AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! T_T

War Ranks

Last time, Nightwraith introduced the mechanisms by which you’ll be able to crush your opponents’ side with munitions either purchased from an Armory Bot or dropped from Yetis and Krampuses during battle. When you join the war, you’ll start out as a Frysteland War Grunt, but you’ll be able to rise through the ranks to become a Frysteland War General!

You’ll be able to earn a variety of achievements, including the elusive Frysteland War Hero badge (renamed from Most Wanted), or the Bombadier achievement!

You can check out your personal contribution at any time by visiting your alignment's War Hero board.  This will give you your own personal score so you can see how you stack up against your friends! This time more than ever, the fate of Frysteland and Delta V hang in the balance!

New Characters

You’ll be seeing some new faces in Frysteland this week, many of them being Krampuses.

Aldhagrimm the Erudite, the Krampus Shaman, is your go-to for information about the War. Ahldagrimm is the oldest member of the Krampus tribe at 80 years of age. As a young woman, she was known as Ahldagrimm the Know-It-All, but following the death of her sister, she seemingly aged 20 years in one night. Ahldagrimm has lived through the rise of Baelius, the Uprising and subsequent Exile, and has buried 3 Kings- her father, sister, and nephew- along with temporarily leading the Krampus people with her brother-in-law Tryggvi the Woeful. She will assist you if you seek Wisdom and Knowledge, but if you seek only death and destruction, well, she has friends on the other side...

Ylwa the Demon Rider: The Beasts corrupted by the Outsiders are still Beasts, according to Ylwa. But it takes a very special breed of BeastRider to bond with a corrupted yeti, and Ylwa is that kind of BeastRider. Since that horrid woman started doing... whatever she did... to the Beasts, they’ve been harder to train, more horrible, more like beasts. But Ylwa is never one to back down from a challenge, and she Rides a Beast the Outsiders call a “Frost Demon”, but Ylwa knows the Beast’s name is Maia, and she holds some sway over the other Hazards.

Fenris the Vicious: Fenris is the large, violent, wolf-like Krampus Champion. He has slain countless enemies, and his name is feared among the Arctic Guards, as well as among the Flatlanders- the name the Krampus have given Snork’s people.

Everybody look under your seat...

As a special present for all of our players, everybody is getting 10 FREE inventory spaces! You get inventory! And you get inventory! Everybody gets 10 inventory spaces!

We will still be working on ways to conserve inventory space, don’t worry. But this might tide players over for a little while.  For those who just can't wait to stockpile rares, we're raising the inventory cap to 120 items!

Fairy Tales

The smallest insects on record are the tiny, delicate fairyflies, with some species even smaller than a single-celled Paramecium. These tiny little insects are parasitic wasps, who lay their eggs in the eggs of other insects, and have very unique nervous systems with neurons lacking nuclei to accommodate for their small size. They earn their nickname from their distinctive wings, which are fringed with tiny delicate hairs called setae. 

Tags: Cinderella Legion exile Factions War Achievements Yeti Krampus