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EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes
 | November 07, 2013 Shameless Self Indulgence
Prepare to party! This week, celebrate the birthday of EpicDuel's resident artist/assassin: Nightwraith. New missions, new weapons, and revamped skills await for your celebratory needs! As if that weren't enough reason to celebrate: the winners of the Creative Carving Contest will be announced in-game at Elon Musk!
Back to Party Business Visit me at my usual haunt in the Wasteland to investigate my stash of weapons and armors! Do you have your OneX6 Keys? No? We've got you covered -- you can either buy one directly or win one by completing a new mission. Be warned: I've been buffed to level 36 so I'm not the pushover I used to be!
The classic birthday missions are also returning, with a few new additions in case you've already completed the old ones. Complete them all for huge rewards!
Suggestion Shop In addition to hunting bounties and weaving baskets, I (Nightwraith) am EpicDuel's lead artist, but I don't mind sharing the spotlight with aspiring artists. That's why we're combining my birthday celebration with the introduction of a new round of suggestion shop weapons, created from ideas submitted from our creative EpicDuel community!
It's been way too long since we've done a shop like this so we're really going all out. We hope to have over 12 new weapons culled from the best of the best suggestions. Charfade and I are working as hard as possible to deliver more, but this is a thoroughly packed release. The weapons are still in progress so check back for a full list of items and their associated artist after we go live. If your suggestion was not selected, that does not mean it was terrible or we hate you -- it just means it may have to wait for the next suggestion shop. Hopefully it won't take a full year to do another one! I wouldn't be surprised if more items enter the game next week!
Arcadia It wouldn't be a proper birthday without a new Arcade Game!
Horrifying! Give it a spin and be the first to claim the grand prize! As with other games, Nightwraith's Nightmare will introduce it's own new evolving achievment and leaderboard!
Cheevo Counter Speaking of achievements -- we now have tracking for many of the daily achievements like the 1v1 and 2v2 automatch daily winners. Players who win the daily achievements multiple times will increment their number on the appropriate achievement.
Active Update To address balance this update, we will be tweaking a few energy numbers from last week's update, but we also have a far grander change in store: Converting all passive skills into active ones.
That means Blood Lust, Reroute, Deadly Aim, Shadow Arts, Adrenaline, and all the Armor skills will be converted into active skills. Blood Lust and Reroute will become Mark of Blood and Battery Backup respectively. The purpose of this change is to add strategy to battle. Currently, passives grant HUGE benefits with little sacrifice, especially for level cap players. Active skills require more sacrifice in terms of energy cost and turn cost. To compensate for these sacrifices, the effects of the skills will be modified. This change will affect all classes so we're really interested to see what new strategies emerge from this change.
Adrenaline
Hybrid Armor, Mineral Armor, and Plasma Armor
Reroute
Deadly Aim
Blood Lust
Shadow Arts
Contest Announcement
When this update goes live, be sure to visit Elon Musk for a list of the winning entries! The effort so far has been stellar with such short notice. We are currently in the process of judging entries and narrowing down the list of finalists! Tags: Titan Nightwraith Suggestion Shop Elon Musk contest Arcade Missions balance Skills Weapons Birthday |
 | February 01, 2012 Heartbreaker PreviewHey Fellas, Have You Heard the News? If you haven’t, that’s what the Design Notes are for! The Frysteland Arc is coming to a close- and I’ll thank all of you a billion times for making EpicDuel’s first in-game War a success! Now, though, we’re moving on to the next arc, the Heartbreaker Saga. This will be a month-long story arc, and arguably the darkest thing I have ever written for EpicDuel, so I’m excited. Are you excited?
Dream Maker This week marks the release of another Player Suggestion Shop. Once Nightwraith has them all drawn, I’ll post the names of all the players whose dreams have come true by having a design in EpicDuel. Nightwraith promised to draw until his hands are withered claws, so we should have a hefty amount of items for all classes. Remember, all players whose designs are implemented in game will receive their item (regardless of price, level, or item type), as well as the EpicArtist Achievement!
Epic Artists The results are in! The following is a list of contributors to this suggestion shop. This was one of the best batches yet so keep up the good work! Despair - VectosAE If your suggestion didn't make it in this time, take this as an opportunity to improve and submit new designs for future suggestions shops. It's also possible that we really liked your idea, but didn't have time to include it in this release. Eithery way, the next suggestion shop can't come soon enough! Lost and Found! Ever wonder what’s the best weapon for your level, or wonder where your opponent got that cool item? Just ask the Finderbot! The Finderbot is programmed with statistics on all of the items in EpicDuel, and he’s sorted them by level and type, with numerous filter options, so you’ll be able to find the gear you need much faster!
Preview Missions I’m still writing the first missions that will introduce the Heartbreaker Arc, but I can tell you that you’ll need to start out in Old Fortune City to receive your first orders from the Exile Soldier and Exile Leader. Watch my Twitter for more info about where to go for story missions this week!
Sweet Insect Facts Recently, honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies have been in decline worldwide. The odd syndrome (named Colony Collapse Disorder) causes the almost sudden disappearance of workers from the hive in a short amount of time- this is caused by the worker bees leaving the colony when they recognize that they are diseased. The current hypothesis for the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder is that it it is caused by several simultaneous plagues afflicting the bees, and with international bee commerce (eg. purchase of royal jelly from hives in China, import and export of hives across continents) the plague has a much higher rate of infection. A good candidate for a viral plague is the Deformed Wing Virus, which is spread by parasitic mites, Varroa destructor, who prey upon apian pupae. The pesticides used to control mite populations may increase sensitivity to DWV, but treated hives are less likely to succumb to Colony Collapse Disorder. Tags: Cinderella Finderbot Suggestion Shop Weapons Items Heartbreaker Missions |
| June 01, 2011 Player Suggestion ShopHi there, EpicDuelists! How was your weekend? The DNs are a little bit late this week due to the Memorial Day holiday.
Player Suggestion Shop Thank you to all the artists who submitted pieces to the Weapons/Items Suggestion thread in the BattleOn! Forums! We had a great time looking through all of your submitted artworks, and I want to remind you that we’ll be looking at Player Suggestions in the future as well. So, even if we didn’t pick your art this time around, don’t put those pencils down! Again, the artists whose submissions were chosen receive the item in their inventories as well as the EpicArtist achievement. For everybody else, you’ll be able to purchase these awesome items from Naomi Page in Central Station!
The contributors are, in no particular order: Marauder Boomstick: Order Congratulations! You earned your achievements and free weapons with your EPIC creativity!
Good-bye Gamma... We’re almost ready to phase out this era of EpicDuel. We don’t have a date set, but it should be coming sometime in the early summer! What’s coming during Delta? For one thing, the Gamma Gear (ie the Gamma Bike and Gamma Bot) will be going permanently rare, as will the Gamma achievement- so grab that cheevo while you still can! There are other evolutions coming during Delta...
Class Evolutions Not only is the game evolving, but so are you! We’re bringing new evolutions to our current classes in the form of three new classes, that will be available by using the Class Change feature!
Blood Mage: This fierce class is a brawler who’s not afraid to dish out the pain. The Blood Mage is more melee-focused than previous incarnations of the Mage, and not afraid to get their hands dirty...
Cyber Hunter: These bounty hunters started experimenting by infusing themselves with more technology, becoming a powerful amalgamation of flesh and metal...
War Master: Truly skilled warriors are able to learn from their opponents, and nowhere is this better exemplified than by the War Masters. Utilizing the brute strength, cunning, and technological prowess of their enemies, this player is truly the War Master...
Before we release these new classes, we will be conducting extensive testing to make sure they’re not overpowered, as balance is still (and always will be) a pertinent issue in a PvP game.
I’ll be able to give you more details as they become available to me. Thank you so much for being with us in our testing phase and joining us in the continued evolution of EpicDuel! Tags: Cinderella Suggestion Shop Gamma Delta classes evolution preview |
| May 25, 2011 Time for Pudding?Hey EpicDuelists! It’s that time of the week again! Time for pudding? No, silly, it’s time for the EpicDuel Design Notes! Although I could go for some pudding...
Website Improvements You may notice something different about the website (or not, depending on when the DNs go live). Nightwraith and Charfade have been hard at work making everything more attractive and functional. This is still the same EpicDuel you know and love (new look, same great taste...).
Mission Log! We promised it two weeks ago, but it proved to be a little more complex than initially anticipated. We’re implementing a new Mission Log. Now you’ll be able to see which NPC you should return to, your progress on the current mission, and the mission reward. In a future release (as soon as next week) you'll be able to view all of your completed missions. In this release, you’ll also be able to abandon a mission if you’re having trouble or decided not to complete the mission after all. Valery doesn’t need those guns THAT badly...
What do all those little buttons do? The green, circular button refreshes the mission status. This lets you know your current progress. The green arrow button allows you to jump to the NPC that gave you the mission at any time. This makes those pesky errand missions much less of a pain in the legs. The red slashy circle behind the exclaimation point allows you to cancel the mission from anywhere, at an time. You can also still cancel a mission my accepting another one (You can't take more than one mission at a time. I guess citizens of Delta V can't multitask!).
Mission Log! The Administrator 12 has a new mission for you in Fortune City. This is a tough one so grab your best gear and prepare to take on the Lawman himself!
Slash Commands You may notice that the mission log button has replaced the Actions button. This button was fine for a time, but the interface has become very conjested with all of our features. To compromise, we made it possible to access the various actions with slash commands. We've found it's actually much easier than picking out a button and provides more opportunities for super-secret actions in the future! /mysterious
Juggernaut Improvements Thank you for all of your concerns about the balancing for Juggernaut battles. While we’re holding off on adding a Juggernaut button to the bottom of the screen, we are changing up the balance to make it better for the Underdogs. We’re raising the Underdog range up 2 levels. Meaning that a level 33 Juggernaut will now be facing a team with the level range of 25-30. A quick way to know the levels your character could face in a Juggernaut battle is to take your level and subtract 3 and 8- that will give your Underdog level range!
Bug Smashing! We’ve fixed the "CHECK POINT FAIL 6" bug that was related to skill warmups. What on Delta V does that mean? Have you ever been in a battle, clicked a skill, and nothing happened? Annoying, huh? That's CHECK POINT FAIL 6. Another great fix is the elimination of the Admin Kick 100 and 101 errors. These were happening when players received the "Battle Failed to Start" error while battling from a house or Faction HQ. Admin Kick 115 still remains elusive. Let us know on the forums if you see it happen. We've also fixed the daily leaderboard bug that incorrectly displays win %.
Looking Forward... On a happier note, we’d anticipated a portion of this update that should make our players happy. However, the sheer volume is so large that we need a bit more time to draw all of them. “All of what?” you ask? Well, next week we’re setting up a new Player Suggestion Shop! Some of our lucky players will have their items featured in-game, and receive the Epic Artist achievement as well as their item! Thank you for your continued support, suggestions, and criticism! Tags: Bug Fixes mission log Juggernaut Suggestion Shop website Cinderella |
