EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

December 19, 2013

Become Legendary

Prepare for the most exciting evolution of EpicDuel since Omega! In addition to an impressive new Varium bundle, we're unlocking level 40! But what happens after you reach 40? Level 40 will allow all players to achieve Legendary status! This means you will continue to earn experience toward Legendary ranks, all the way up to 100!

Each Rank will allow you to unlock points to invest in new stat categories. This part of Legendary mode is still in development and will be fully-released after the new year. This is partially because we want to make sure enough players have reached level 40 before turning it on, partially time constraints, and partially because of the next major chage to EpicDuel described below!

10x the Balance!

Well, maybe 10 times the balance is a bit of an exaggeration, but this release, we're increasing key stats like health, energy, damage, and defense by a multiple of 10. This means that every point of stat investment will have a significant impact on your overall combat effectiveness. It also means that all the EpicDuel Maximum Damage videos are going to be posting some huge numbers!

In addition to looking impressive, multiplying the stats also gives us finer control for balancing skills. We're making all the adjustments we can before we go live, but we're also hoping that all the battling over the holidays up to level 40 will give us good information on further tweaks.

Blood Hawk Battlegear Mega-Bundle

This release, we're unveiling the new Blood Hawk Battlegear Mega-Bundle! For the price of one 10k Varium package, you'll be getting 2 Blood Hawk Battlegear Mutating Weapons, 2 Blood Hawk Slayer Swords, 2 Blood Hawk Bots, and, of course, 10,000 Varium.

These weapons will be available in the one-stop Varium shop for a limited time. For those who would rather purchase the items piecemeal, Frysteland Valestra will be stocked with the Blood Hawk items in-game.

These awesome items will come with some killer cores! Check them out:

Hawk Guardian

This Active Core comes equipped to all the primary Blood Hawk weapons. When your health is critical, summon a wild Blood Hawk to come to your aid and deliver a devastating claw attack to your opponent!

Blood Hawk Claw

This Blood Hawk Bot skill allows you to summon the spirit of the mysterious Frysteland Blood Hawk to deliver a nasty attack with razor-sharp talons.

Armor Annihilator

As a Blood Hawk, use your metallic claws to temporarily disintegrate your opponent's armor!

Kawkaw!

Mega Mutations!

This Winter, we decided to have a little fun with our new vehicle selection. Indead of riding a bike, you can actually become one of the creatures below! These designs are fully color-customizeable with entertaining travel animation!

Are you Yeti? How Yeti are you? This year you can be an actual Baby Yeti!

Soar above it all as a Blood Hawk!

Dino Hawks are the ancient precursors to the Blood Hawks. They can't fly, but their strong hind legs allow them to move quickly across the snowy landscape.

The final bike is a more conventional vehicle, concepted by G00ny and Smackey El Frog and vectorized by Charfade! It's powerful treads will allow you to tear through the frozen tundra with ease!

Artix Arcade Bonanza!

Ever wished you could take your favorite items from another AE game and use them in EpicDuel? After this release, you'll have your chance as we unveil new Arcade games for AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, DragonFable, MechQuest, HeroSmash, and OverSoul. By collaborating with the other teams, we've amassed a mighty hoard of legendary weapons! 

New Arcade games also mean more Achievements and more leaderboards to dominate.  With 6 Arcade prize pools respresenting the biggest AE games, you'll have plenty of reasons to farm Arcade Tokens over the Holidays!

Stylin'!

Thanks to the help of Revontheus, we've been able to introduce 30 new Asgardian styles! Alter your looks to resemble a notorious trickster god or a mighty Asgardian warrior. 

What more crazy styles will Revontheus create? I have a feeling they have something to do with a moose...

Into the New Year

This Legendary release will be our last major release of 2013, but that doesn't mean we're slacking! We already have big plans for 2014, including a tutorial system to welcome and teach new players as well as features to keep the game fresh and exciting for veterans. All the tools we've added to EpicDuel over the years, especially this year, have really streamlined our processes and made delivering feature and content-packed releases easier than ever. We have very high hopes for the future of EpicDuel, and we hope you'll join us in making 2014 Legendary!

Happy Juloffenblotten and Frostval from all of your friends at Artix Entertainment! Duel On!

Tags: Nightwraith Legends Legendary balance Arcade styles Stats Frysteland Winter Holiday Level 40 upgrade Blood Hawk

December 18, 2012

Omega is almost here! Can you feeeeeel it? We've been working tirelessly to bring you the highly anticipated Omega update and everything is really coming together. As I type this, Titan and Rabblefroth are working furiously along with our equally hard-working testers to troubleshoot the newly reconstructed battle engine. The statting system is looking really promising, and allows for extraordinary flexibility with your gear loadout.

Be sure to view our development on The Official EpicDuel Youtube Channel:

Pricing Reshuffle

One new feature you may notice in Omega is that many items have credit OR Varium options, both to purchase and to upgrade. In order to emphasize credits as an effort currency and Varium as a convenience currency, some credit prices will be increasing. However, this is balanced by the fact that you can still upgrade your existing weapons for a credit fee that would be less than purchasing and unlocking a new set of level-cap gear. Also, with unlimited NPC battles, farming for credits will be a much less painful endeavor.

Mission Guide

Hi there, EpicDuelists - there's a ton of new missions for your playing pleasure. Alydriah has returned to Frysteland and her capture of the Krampus Shaman Aldhagrimm has forced the Krampus and sympathetic Legion forces in Frysteland to join together to drive her out. The main story quest starts with Commander Edgar Boothe (Legion)

and King Alaric (Exile).

Players should report to them to complete the mission “A Frosty Reception” for a Legion Token or Exile Token. This token is your ticket into a class-specific chain. Exiles will turn the Exile Token in to Raymus if they're Bounty Hunters or Cyber Hunters, the Krampus Technician if they're Tech Mages or Blood Mages, and Hank if they're Mercenaries or Tactical Mercenaries. Legion Bounty Hunters and Cyber Hunters should visit Valestra, Tech Mages and Blood Mages should visit Talia, and Mercenaries and Tactical Mercenaries should visit Negawraith to turn in their tokens. For those who want the well-rounded story experience by changing class, Alaric and Boothe have two additional missions that award this token! These all culminate in a single turn-in mission on Rabblefroth, with the same reward for both Legion and Exiles that will conclude part one of this Frysteland saga.

This means that, should you complete this chain 3 times, you'll have extra Misc. items, but fortunately they don't take up space in your inventory.

In addition, there are missions that allow you to train up your Baby Yetis and/or Dark Yetis by giving them a Yeti Growth Serum.

Hulnas the Beast Tamer can train your Baby Yetis into Warrior Yetis, and Ylwa the Beast Rider can train your Warrior Yetis into Omega Yetis. Would you rather have a Dark Baby Yeti? The Arctic Trainer can train your Dark Yetis into Dark Warrior Yetis, and the hard-as-ice Captain Murdoc can train your Dark Warrior Yetis into Dark Omega Yetis. Both can be “convinced” to give you some Omega Yeti Serum as well, if you don't want to go through all the trouble of training them.

I'm very excited about the Omega update! For the first time, there are missions requiring you to turn in multiple disparate objects; that is, turning in different kinds of objects. So, if Hank had a mission asking you to help him out with a mirepoix, you would be required to turn in 2 onions, 1 carrot, and 1 celery in the same mission!

Plus, there's a secret mission. What is it? If I told you that, it wouldn't be a secret! /mysterious

Tags: Omega Cinderella Update NPCs Skills Stats Testing Credits Varium

December 06, 2012

Now 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