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EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

Behind the scenes information about EpicDuel's development and releases, a real-time PVP MMO that you can play online in your web browser.
Nightwraith

March 07, 2014

Onward to War

New War

War is approaching. A better war. A faster war. A war that more fully captures to epic clash of Legion and Exile forces. Though this new war was not quite ready to be unveiled today, we're still hard at work and hope to have a finished feature ready to go early next week. This Design Note post will reveal some new and exciting elements from the new war system.

Server Stability

Before we get into the meat of the post, I'll briefly mention the absense of Legion and Doom from the server select. Today we did a small update to patch some exploits and improve server security. Due to recent erratic behavior, Legion and Doom were taken offline. We do not yet know if we will bring them back, but we do know that those servers were old and underperforming. Epic and Exile (we should probably change their names now, huh?) will soon be upgraded to faster, more modern servers to improve performance, making additional servers unnecessary for the time being.

 

Onward to WAR!

With the new war system, we wanted to emphasize accessibility. The current war has a lot of moving parts and can be quite difficult to grasp for a novice just learning the basics of dueling. Under the new system, the active war will be represented by a global war bar. This war bar provides general information about the conflict and quick-jump buttons to the main objectives.

New Map

When the war is over, the prize button will become active for the winning alignment! We'll get to that a bit later...

Some war objectives may be familiar with a few key changes -- you'll notice the Control Array now has a shield over it. It's up to the alignment on offense to bring down the shield and capture the Array, while the defenders must stop the aggressors at all costs!

Main Objective

To defend or attack, Legion and Exile warriors will receive PvP war drops. Defenders will receive Dread Bombs while the attackers will receive Dread Shells. These drops can be used at objectives to gain influence for yourself, your Faction, and your alignment. This is also the primary mechanism for driving the war. To discourage hoarding, you will only be able to hold a maximum of 10 of each type of war drop in your inventory. If you choose not to participate in the war, you will be able to sell the drops with no sellback.

War Drops

War drops can be used at war objectives, which will be scattered throughout the active region.

War Objective

Clicking a war objective brings up a menu to use your war drops. You can use your drops for free, or upgrade them to a more powerful form for Varium. The more powerful drops can also drop from PvP battles, but at a much lower rate.

Shell Display

Bomb Display

The objectives will show realtime destruction as they are used and abused by warring alignments. Small notifications will appear to broadcast your feats of valor for all to see!

Blowing Stuff UP

Each objective has a different attribute -- providing interesting tactical decisions for either side of the conflict. 

Broken Turret

Defend your objectives or see them burnt to the ground! When the war ends, the winning alignment, along with the most victorious player and Faction will be displayed prominently throughout the region!

 

Cores

With the changes to the war system, we'll be consolidating the existing regional influence-buffing cores into a sole War Commander core. This new limited-charge core will give 10 guaranteed war drops for battle victories.

War Commander

This core will be available from prominent Legion and Exile NPCs in active war regions.

 

More Cheevos!

Since some are already very close to attaining the 10th tier of certain regional war achievements, we've decided to bump up the difficulty with 2 more tiers for each region. We're even planning a super-special acheivement for reaching tier 12 on ALL regions, including Frysteland and the Infernal Mines (coming soon)!

War Hero Cheevo

During the war, you'll also have a change to earn the prestigious War Hero achievement by earning the most influence in a single day! 

 

Big Prizes!

Winng a war is an incredible task, so the victors should receive equally incredible rewards! Never-before-seen weapons, armors, vehicles and amazing currency bonuses await those who triumph!

Treasure Chest

If you're the picky type, you'll have a list of 6 items to choose from when claiming your reward. The prizes will rotate between war events so the list will be ever-changing and always interesting!

Expect an early release next week while we iron out the last of the bugs and polish the remaining features of our new war system! Thank you for your patience! We're confident the feature will be worth the wait!

 

Springtime Gear!

Last but not least, remember to check out the seasonal rare Springtime gear, available at Naomi and Xraal! 

Springtime

Grab this awesome gear before it disappears back into the database aether for another year!

Tags: Titan spring War Factions Weapons


Nightwraith

April 08, 2011

Egg-celent, Egg-ceptional, Egg-puns, etc...

Eggzooka Egg-stacy!

To celebrate the beginning of the Spring season, we are introducing the Eggzookas.  These ferocious, wabbit-face auxiliaries are capable of dealing intense damage and feature amazing stat bonuses. 

Epic Eggzookas

But how will you acquire these beauties?  Both the energy and physical Eggzookas will be avaible with purchase of the 10,000 Varium package or in-game from Titan and Nightwraith.  Get them before they're gone!

Level Up!  Again!

Numbers will once again go up as we raise the level cap to 33!  It may seem far away, but all the level 32 have been clamoring for this for ages.  It's not an easy journey, but once you get there, it's totally worth it!

Level Up!

To make life easier for those eager to reach the level cap and get the most out of the new Eggzookas, we've introduced a few features to make the leveling process less of a grind. 

Epic Power Hour!

Starting at 10:00PM ET and 10:00AM ET, players will receive DOUBLE XP from all victories for an hour!  This also means that players using XP Boost will receive QUADRUPLE XP!  This puts level 33 easily within reach.

Epic Power Hour!

Level Ranges and Encumberance:

To keep the latest and greatest weapons from being out of the range of hardworking players, we have introduced a level range requirement to weapons.  You will now be able to equip a weapon as early as 4 levels prior to the highest requirement, as long as you meet the stat requirements.  However, there is a catch...

Level Range

We have introduced a restriction to this feature called Encumberance.  You may equip a weapon before you meet the highest level requirement, BUT you will take one point of damage reduction for each level you are below the highest requirement.

The weapon is too heavy!

Actuall, this block of text explains it better:

Encumberance Explained

This new feature applies to Primary, Sidearm, and Auxiliary weapon types.  Armor, Robot, Bike, and Booster are unaffected. 

Focus Change

Since raising the level cap makes it easier to pour more and more points into one attribute, throwing off balance, we have removed the Focus damage bonus and rewrote the calculations for increasing stat effectiveness.  This means after a certain point, it becomes increasingly difficult to gain more damage and defense.  This will prevent one-sided builds that favor loading up on one stat for an almost guranteed victory.  This change is largely experimental and it can be adjusted as it's been through some more thorough battle testing.

Please note that while the player damage bonus from Focus is removed, Focus will still directly affect Bot damage.

Tags: Titan Nightwraith spring bunny egg Easter Bazooka focus balance

 

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