EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

February 08, 2012

Welcome to another week, my EpicDuel droogies! This week’s going to be a little short on content, but big on features that all players should find something to their liking!

Drip Drip Drop!

Starting on Friday, EpicDuel will feature PvP drops. Essentially, every PvP battle in EpicDuel will work like an arcade battle, and every time you defeat one of your friends (or a complete stranger), you’ll have a chance at adding something nice to your inventory. It could be a weapon, it could be a gem, it could be a useless tin can... it is a mystery! Who knows what your opponents could be hiding?

Inventory Clearance

We’re not implementing stackable items yet, unfortunately, but Mission Items like the Skull Card, or special items you get for missions will no longer count toward your inventory space. This should benefit players, especially low-level non-varium players who have had to find ways to clear out enough space for mission items. With gem drops, one could stockpile a little treasure with this update...

The Realtor

We’ll be making improvements to the Housing system in EpicDuel, starting with the presence of a Realtor. Due to the increase in the housing market since the Exiles started returning to Delta V, there is an increasing demand for Realtors, who are able to lead customers through the benefits and risks of purchasing real property. One man, known simply as Mr. Alexander (or “Raymus” as it says on his deskplate) has stepped up to the challenge. Visit his office to learn more!

Heartbreaker Continued

We’re not continuing the Heartbreaker Saga this week, but be prepared for new faces (maybe someone who the exiles can use to their advantage?) and more chances to use that infinite mission item inventory space!

Teh Fixed!

Here is a comprehensive list of some of the minor fixes and features in this update!

Bad Aftertaste

Some insects store the toxic chemicals from the food they eat in their body fat, which makes them poisonous.  Think about the Monarch Butterfly caterpillar, a Nymph butterfly that is the classic example of this system.  It eats milkweed and stores the iridoid compounds from the plant on its body fat which makes the caterpillar nasty and poisonous. Insects that sequester toxins from their diet, such as caterpillars in the family Nymphalidae do so as a protection from predators. However, this leaves them open to parasitic and viral infection.

:3^^^>

Tags: Cinderella drops PvP bug facts Heartbreaker balance Finderbot Fixes Raymus

July 21, 2011

*Pro-Tip*

EpicDuel's new URL will be http://epicduel.artix.com/play-now/  
Redirects should be working shortly, but you may want to update your Bookmarks as well!

High-Wire Balancing Act

Well, it appears that we all know that EpicDuel crashed this weekend. For those of you who are fans of EpicDuel on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, you already know that the crash was not just EpicDuel, but AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, MechQuest and DragonFable (essentially everybody but HeroSmash was affected by the crash). Titan ended up having to re-publish the entire game from a coffeeshop! I want to personally thank all of our players for bearing with us and waiting patiently while AE was essentially down.

The crash was related to load balancer, and fortunately we’ll be able to avoid this problem in the future since we’re moving the games to Artix subdomains! We’ve also been working on patching up some exploits and bugs, which is why we have been restarting the live game throughout the week. If you still see exploits being used, please give us as much detail as possible- knowing exactly what’s going on helps us find the problem so Titan can fix it! 

We will likely be restarting once again today (Thursday) to install more fixes, but the content and balance updateswill be released tomorrow.

Balance Updates

After taking the feedback from the most recent update, we are continuing to tweak balance among the new and old classes.  We have not settled on specifics yet, but it seems Cyber Hunters and Blood Mages are still comparatively underpowered and we will make changes to address that.  There are tons of suggestions for balance right now, some more drastic than others, but at this point we would rather approach balance with a scalpel than a sledgehammer.

*Update* Complications in the dev server have forced us to push the balance update to the next week since the changes weren't thoroughly tested.

NEW STUFF!

It's time again for another round of armors.  Shed your current battle-worn exterior and try something new!  Nightwraith’s been working on a few new armors for the non-varium crowd, including the new City Guard Armor, the Imperial Tech Mage and the Exile Soldier Armor! Visit Naomi in Central Station to check them out!

Special AQWorlds Musical Event Featuring ArcAttack!

We’re aiming for to release earlier on Friday because we’ll probably be playing AQW on Friday, July 22 at 6 PM EST! Rounding out the DoomWood Saga in AQW will be the musical stylings of ArcAttack, who have harnessed the power of lightning and are using it to create music... FOR SCIENCE! All of us nerds (science nerds and music nerds alike) over here at AE are super-excited about it, and we’re sure you’ll love it too!

Tags: Cinderella ArcAttack AQW Armors balance Fixes