EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

January 31, 2014

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• Power Hour Weekend! Power Hour will be enabled from the time of the update until Sunday at 23:59 EST
• New mission chain available: A New World (Tutorial). This is designed to introduce new players to the world of Delta V, but experienced players can also go through the mission chain if you wish. =)
• Holiday Hank and Valestra removed from Frysteland. Edgar Boothe now primary merchant in Frysteland
• Yeti training missions have been removed. Yeti Serum still available to upgrade Yetis.
• "Tea and Titan" mission removed in preparation for a prize.
• Reverted all holiday screens to their default look
• Achievements are now sorted based on progress and rarity
• Currency information added to the One Stop Shop, Homes, and Achievements
• The Big Game and Olympic Games achievements will now be the same achievement awarded each year going forward. Previous yearly achievements will NOT be removed.
• All seasonal home items are now permanently available in game
• Pressing the up arrow in chat will bring up your last message
• Default chat log to off during 1v1 NPC battles
• Outlaw and Outlaw II renamed to Outlaw P and E for clarity

BALANCE CHANGES:

• Bug: Energy Parasite now correctly uses your primary weapon's damage type
• Bug: Blood Commander now correctly uses 60% of Strength as lifesteal instead of 40%
• Bug: Frenzy description now correctly says 10% defense ignore instead of 15%
• Matching changes:
  • Level 40 players will now more heavily prioritize matches against other level 40 players
  • Level 40 players will no longer match with players less than level 38 Bugged, not working just yet.
  • Level 1-5 players will now try harder to match with players closer to their own level
  • Same-alignment matches are allowed sooner than before

BUGS FIXED:

• Resistance description was missing in Stats page
• Clicking disabled Gun / Aux actions in battle could cause an error

Tags: RabbleFroth Patch Notes

January 30, 2014

Get ready to finally experience EpicDuel's new tutorial system! After much testing and polish, we're finally confident that it's ready for prime-time! Give it a try by testing the "A New World" mission chain and letting us know what you think!

You didn't think that was ALL we'd be releasing, though, did you?

Heartbreaker

As is the seasonal custom, we will be stocking the Alydroid in Alydriah's Spire in Fortune City with a host of Valentine's rares, including last year's promo items: Azraels' bazookas and sidearms! These items will include the cores so if you missed the promo last year, now's your chance to unleash the awesome power of Azrael! 

Maintenance

The server hamter were upgrade to super-server hamsters...possibly hampster ferrets early this morning. Ideally, this would have happened without much notice, but for reasons beyond our control (and some within our control) the EpicDuel servers were down much long than intended. We should have done a better job preparing you in advance for this outage, and we apologize for that oversight. However, we will do our best to make it up to you with a couple exciting additions this release!

Power Weekend!

To try to make up for the lost dueling time, this weekend, we'll be offering Power Hour all weekend long! Double XP and double Credits! Just log in and play and become a Legend faster than ever! Titan is also making some changes to how Power Hour works to give us more flexibility to do day-long or weekend-long Power Hour events more easily in the future!

Prize Code!

We haven't done one in awhile, so this weekend, we'll be offering new prize code items! Follow our Twitter pages to stay updated with the latest developments on these codes and their availability!

Secret Package Revealed!

That's right! After nearly a year, we'll finally be unwrapping that mysterious Secret Package earned from the Tea and Titan mission. When we go live, the mission item will automatically be converted to the item so you won't need to do anything to unwrap the package! I hope you think the prize was worth the wait!

As of the release Friday, we will be removing the Tea and Titan mission, in addition to the Yeti Trainer missions. Going forward the only way to train up a Baby Yeti or Dark Yeti to an Omega Yeti will be with the Growth Serums purchasable from the yeti trainers in Frysteland.

Matchmaking

Rabblefroth is adjusting the matching engine to enable tighter matching for those at the level cap. It should be MUCH harder for a level 40 to match against a level 35. Also, alignment matching will be loosened for faster matching.

The Big Game

In the Achievement shop under the seasonal tab, you can find the Big Game Achievement! Celebrate the excitement of America's most watched sporting event (or most popular commercial viewing and chip eating event if you're me) with this capstone Big Game Achievement. Do you have all of them?

Tags: Nightwraith

January 24, 2014

As you may have noticed, this week's release is a wee bit behind. We've been working all this week and most of the week prior to develop a new tutorial to welcome new players to the worlds of Delta V in style! This requires a lot of custom programming and loads of new artwork to make the experience streamlined and exciting. When finished, it will be leagues ahead of what we have now: randomly placing a new character in the midst of Central Station without the foggiest clue of what to do!

Since the success of this new feature is so crucial to maintaining new players, we're devoting the weekend to refining this feature to release early next week. We don't want to risk releasing the tutorial Friday evening, only to find that new players coming in over the weekend are getting stuck, frustrated, and logging out forever!

In the meantime, check out this brief rundown of what we have so far. It may not be thrilling for you veteran players, but it is interesting to think about from a game design standpoint: how to introduce EpicDuel to a new player without overwhelming them with options! 

Soft Landing

Welcome to the Feldspar Flats! This region near Central Station was mark for heavy construction before the war against Baelius. Now, it's littered with the ruins of abandoned scaffolding and rogue construction robots. Miraculously, life still flourishes in this region, as the volcanic soil is quite nourishing for plant life.

Your first task will be to move around the screen. This may seem overly-simplistic for veterans, but you might be surprised by how many players first attempt to use the keyboard for movement!

Ok, you've overcome that challenge. Feeling good! Ready for a mission?

AI Trainers (relatives of the M4tr1x AI) will offer simple missions, introducing players to missions as an important means for collecting credits, experience, and items. They will also serve as an introduction to some quick battles against Renegade Junkers. Apparently, years of neglect and dust storms have corrupted their programming and made them openly hostile to new arrivals.

Collect Robot Parts to help the AI Trainers reset their programming!

Be sure to disarm them! You'll need all the help you can get to face the enemies ahead!

After completing this mission chain, new players should have a weapon for each slot (primary, sidearm, auxiliary). This will guarantee that new players emerge from the tutorial more battle-ready than before.

Whoa! This fellah means business!

Learn about Physical/Energy Damage and Defense/Resistance by defeating a series of Boss Junkers.

These Junkers are bosses in name only. They can be handled easily with the right equipment.

That doesn't mean they're harmless, though.

Gather their Corrupted Chips and return them to your trainer for your reward!

I think I see the problem: It was set to MURDER!

Your journey isn't over yet! We've moved the alignment selection from the character creation process to the tutorial. Representative NPCs will plead their case and request your pledge of support. If you accept, you will be offered a new mission to complete an automatch battle.  

After you complete the battle (win or lose, all you need to do is complete the battle), turn in the mission, and the gate to Central Station will rise, allowing you to join the rest of the experience EpicDuel community!

Don't forget your "One Small Step" achievement! 

Legro Inmortuorum Poster

And now a word from HeroMart!

HeroMart is proud to offer an Art Nouveau (French for New Art) inspired poster of Dage and his undead legion! This new 24” x 36” high quality poster by Diozz featuring Dage and his undead army will be a great way to make your room feel more alive! Or rather undead.

Order the poster soon, because I don't think anything this awesome is going to stay on HeroMart's shelves for long! Did I mention it also includes a mysterious new blade, Dage's Desolation, in EpicDuel? 

Tags: Nightwraith Tutorial HeroMart Dage Diozz

January 17, 2014

NEW CHANGES / FEATURES 

• Revontheus NPC added to Valestra’s Arcade
• 36 New items now for sale at Revontheus
• Nulgath Bike moved to Revontheus from Caden
• 5 new Winter rares added to Hank in Frysteland
• NPC changes
  • NPCs now grant experience at all levels. NPCs lower than your level grant less experience.
  • NPC wins are now tracked if the fight granted experience and Credits
  • Several NPCs have had their levels changed to fill level gaps
• Losses
  • We feel that publicly showing losses and win percentages can discourage players from battling or trying new builds. We’ve also opted to not track NPC losses since we want NPCs to be a very low-stress environment where you can freely experiment without feeling obligated to win every time.
  • Losses are no longer shown when viewing another player’s stat page
  • Win percentage is no longer shown on win-based leaderboards
  • Losses against NPCs are never displayed to encourage build testing

BUGFIXES

• Zeuszooka seems a tad bit of space from back. With petite armors more visible

BALANCE

• Static Grenade 
  • Static Grenade is currently draining a bit too much energy at once. The energy gain effect felt about right, so we increased the percentage to keep it about even.
  • Lowered base energy drain to 95-220 from 100-250
  • Energy gain increased to 35% from 30%
• Toxic Grenade
  • Toxic Grenade was a little too spammable in the case of the opponent cleansing the poison, so we’re increasing the cooldown; we also want the initial damage to feel meaningful so we increased the damage there.
  • Increase initial damage to 85% from 70%
  • Increase cooldown to 2 from 1
• Venom Strike
  • Poison damage increased by 10 at all levels
• Assimilation
  • Lowered base energy drain to 70-150 from 70-170
• Battery Backup
  • Lowered base energy gain to 190-325 from 200-350
• Plasma Bolt
  • Tech Mages are outperforming the other classes at every level; we want to bring them more in line across the board by lowering the damage on their main spell.
  • Lowered damage by 15 at all levels
• Blood Commander
  • Blood Commander feels a bit lackluster in general, so we’re giving it a bit of a boost, especially to the amount of lifesteal.
  • Increased Strength by 2 at all levels
  • Increase lifesteal percent to 60% of Strength gain from 40%
• Intimidate
  • Intimidate is another skill that feels a bit underpowered, so we’re giving it a lowered Energy cost and nudging up the effect.
  • Lowered Energy cost to 95-230 from 100-280
  • Increased Strength debuff by 2 at all levels
• Hybrid Armor
  • Increased buff by 10% at all levels
• Field Commander
  • Along with Blood Commander, we felt this skill needed to be a bit stronger to justify its use.
  • Increased Strength gain by 5 at all levels
• Blood Shield
  • Blood Shield has long been a skill that is hard to justify using in most cases. A flat Health cost at all levels keeps the cost reasonable, and we’ve increased the effect to make it more useful in general.
  • Change to flat health cost
  • Increase base Resistance gain to 50-150 from 40-130
  • Now improves by +1 every 4 Support
• Frenzy
  • Frenzy wasn’t quite granting enough Health to feel as satisfying as we wanted, and Tactical Mercenaries were lacking in tools to ignore a target’s defense.
  • Added 10% defense ignore
  • Removed Club requirement
• Fireball
  • Blood Mages are currently underperforming at most levels, this should give them a general boost in power.
  • Increased damage by 10 at all levels
• Smoke Screen
  • We wanted to pull some of the free high level power from Smoke Screen given how well Bounty Hunters scale with this skill.
  • Slowed stat scaling to +1 every 5 Tech from every 4 Tech

Tags: Nightwraith

January 10, 2014

Welcome to 2014, EpicDuelists! After a small patch last week, we're ready with our first major update of the new year -- Legendary Points. Players who reached the level cap and beyond have the opportunity to earn Legendary Points to invest in small stat bonuses. For this release, we will be introducing 6 new stat categories:

This menu is accessible from your stats page. We've designed the system in a way that will allow us to add more stat categories in which to invest in the future. As you can see, these categories must be unlocked before they can be invested in. Points can be redistributed later in a system similar to retraining. These bonuses will give veteran players an edge, but not so much as to become completely imbalanced.

Styles from Beyond

Revontheus delivered yet another batch of awesome Asgardian styles for EpicDuel, along with a spooky moose skull!

We've made a small change to the female styles released previously. Style 87 will become the "Loki helm" style to match the equivalent male styles, while the current style 87 will become 92. 

Epic Hoarders

The Epic Hoarder achievement promised to those for maxing our their inventories will be awarded this update.

It's not quite as good as having your own reality show, but probably a lot less stressful. At least your EpicDuel items don't attract wild animals (yet)!

Next Week Planning

We've got some big additions and improvements planned for January so here's a sneak-peak of what's coming up:

Revontheus

The Epic Artist Revontheus will finally make his EpicDuel debut, and he's not arriving empty-handed! 

Stop by his location for some out-of-this world items and to formally welcome him to the game!

Tutorial Town

Next week we'll also be focusing on EpicDuel's early game experience. This new tutorial will guide new players through the somewhat overwhelming systems of EpicDuel in an imformative, fully-interactive tuturial.

In this new zone, players will learn battle basics like how to initiate a duel, the difference between energy and physical damage, and how to switch different weapon types.

If you already know the ropes, you can opt out of the tutorial and join the community in Central Station, but there will be an achievement for completing this mode!

Tags: Titan

January 03, 2014

NEW CHANGES/FEATURES:

• Omega Badge renamed to Survivor and given original style to prevent confusion between this badge and the Omega Phase achievement.

BUGS FIXED:

• Awarded missing class token achievements
• Fixed Color Blast not working on Black Abyss Spider
• Fixed a bug that could cause the flag interface to open on its own
• The Olympic Games 2012 achievement is now corerectly labeled Rare instead of Seasonal
• Removed shop option from Rabblefroth as he had no items for sale
• Blood Hawk E now correctly deals energy damage
• Multi-target skills (Artillery Strike, Multi-Shot, Plasma Rain) incorrectly cost too much Energy
• Energy Parasite was still capped to 150 Energy, instead of 1500
• Bank Bot inventory count didn’t show up until an item was deposited or withdrawn
• Several missions mentioned higher item requirements than what the mission actually needed

Tags: RabbleFroth Patch Notes