Beta Build 1.21 (21 Mar 2013)

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Jon, Mar 21, 2013.

  1. Jon

    Jon Blue Manchu Staff Member

    The lobby/MP room stuff should be a lot better with this build so that's worth checking out. We have early work on properly showing your win streak/bonus chests in the lobby. There's a lot more story content, a bunch of bug fixes, new skills and a new shop, as well as changes to the shop re-stocking frequency.

    Build notes follow:

    Multiplayer
    • Added mp win streak countdown timer.
    • Added countdown clock to ranked game matchmaker, showing max wait time.
    • Added "reset in" to ranked game reset time field.
    • Added "click to cancel" explanation on ranked game icon.
    • Fixed win streak feedback bugging out after mp battle loss.
    • Added browser alert (via Javascript) on entering a battle when game doesn't have focus.
    • Fixed crash on entering ranked match vs AI.
    • Remove the user from all battle/adventure rooms when they're having a new battle started for them.
    • Improve the MP lobby room list. Split active games from those waiting for opponents. Display the player names in the room lists.
    UI
    • Move done button to same place as pass button.
    • Fixed dark lines sometimes appearing near button borders
    Tutorial
    • Bypass greenfang battles when skipping tutorial.
    • Set once only flags on discard and unholy frenzy prompts.
    • Fixed MP prompts to do with new lobby.
    • Fixed duplicate shops in tutorial.
    • Fixed final tutorial adventure not unlocking when skipping tutorial.
    • Added a prompt about buying more pizza.
    Shops
    • Rare shop unlocks after tutorial.
    • Shops can restock daily or weekly.
    • Shops can stock items from any level with a minimum rarity.
    • Shop hover text shows restock rate.
    • Added the daily rare shop.
    • Large stock shops only restock weekly.
    Cards
    • TransferSelectedCardCommand allows for null selections (fixes forced loss when using Battlefield Training with no cards in hand).
    • Holy Presence now only removes enemy controlled attachments.
    • Implemented Healing Burst.
    • changed some card rarities to support new Class Skills plan
    • Allies component works properly with the include instigator parameter (fixes mass frenzy not affecting instigator).
    • Fixed superstitious crash when in hand on actor death.
    Card Art
    • Added card art for weak parry and thumbnails for blocks
    • Added card art for Icy, defender's and wounded block
    Treasure Shop
    • Fixed chests resetting after manual removal of all items.
    Misc Bugs
    • Fixed (hopefully) occasional crash on entering deckbuilder after closing the client mid-adventure-battle.
    Figures
    • Changed Rose Dragon to Yellow Dragon in adventures, scenarios, monsters and decks, added yellow dragon figure aer
    • Fixed Wisp Portraits
    • Fixed Human priest figure name for Chapel battle
    • Updated Armored wolf figure and added Chef portrait
    Story
    • Edited scenario briefs, debriefs and GM dialogue for Order of the Core, Garnet Demons Goblins in the Woods and Tree Forts
    • Added GM dialogue for Descent to the Core, Temple of Scales
    • Edited scenario briefs and debriefs Sinister Wood, Tomb of Tvericus
    • Added mom tutorial figure.
    • Edited scenario briefs and debriefs and GM dialogue for Return to Woodhome, Frozen Earth, Throne of Strench, Forest of Souls, Compass of Xorr, Lord Stafford's Treasure, Gladiator Arena Qualifier, Gladiator Arena Round One, Pools of Slime.
    • Changed scenario briefing and debriefings to second person for Diamonds, White Star, Woodhome and Return to Woodhome.
    • Edited and added Gary and Melvin dialogue for Diamonds, White Star and Woodhome. Some changes to Return to Woodhome but they're incomplete.
    • Removed Woodhome start prompt that got in the way of the tutorial.
    Items
    • Massive overhaul of Martial and Arcane Skills
    • Added divine thinker skill chits
    • Added chit art for command skill items
    • Ensured that all treasure hunt loot items are epic.
    • made Impaling Stab legal for Martial Skills
    • fixed Cleansing Morningstar item art.
    AI
    • AI can handle min/max required target squares (fixes crash when AI plays Wall of Fire).
    • Fixed Dimensional Traveller spelling in a couple of MP AI decks.
    Tavern
    • Fix an infinite error loop when renaming a character whose name is already not allowed.
    • Check character names when characters are recruited, and give them a default name if the new character has one that would be rejected.
    • Fix a bug where the client didn't have the correct character index for newly-recruited characters when more than one was recruited at a time.
    Internal Stuff
    • Remove tweens on all displayables when cleaning up.
    • Initial work on getting a spectator mode functioning.
    • Added the cleanItem command to clean up refs to deleted items.
    • Client store handles (ignores) invalid item IDs.
    • TreasureStoreManager handles invalid item IDs.
     
    Zalminen, Jayce and Pengw1n like this.
  2. Sir Knight

    Sir Knight Sir-ulean Dragon

    As usual, this is an impressive pile of work and I'm looking forward to the story content (not to mention the reduced crashes). This, however, got my attention:
    Oh ho ho! Anti-freeze (and anti-burn) strategy just got richer!

    Edit: Whoa, okay, some observations. First, almost all of my copies of All Out Attack are gone (which saddens me). But second, the next "caliber" of talents is now visible on some items! They seem to be silver triangles, and I have one (and a bronze talent) on my Dragonslayer Sword. Pity this means I can't equip it during beta anymore.
     
  3. Phaselock

    Phaselock Bugblatter

    As I suggested to j-wiz, an icon indicating spectator in the room would be nice. Melvin suddenly 'spoke' to me mid-game and that spooked me :)
     
  4. Phaselock

    Phaselock Bugblatter

    fyi: alert doesn't trigger when you are running full screen video in another tab. This is not a bug.
     
  5. Kodi

    Kodi Orc Soldier

    Finally!

    Edit: My warrior martial skill is missing :( ! the one that give you: all out atack+trip+bludgeon!
     
  6. Gabbek

    Gabbek Orc Soldier


    Suddenly all martial skills I've got are so horrible that my PvP decks are much weaker... hmm, interesting! Arcane skills seem to have traits still in them, while martial only for bashing... *starts to think*
     
  7. Wozarg

    Wozarg Thaumaturge

    Every single high rarity arcane skill is gone >.< all those bad for them and forks!

    Removed all the armor and shield skills i see. Is there a reason you made all the martial skills much worse and made the arcane skills fine but with less traits?
     
  8. Dorian

    Dorian Mushroom Warrior

    From an internal design standpoint, the skills have always been something of a mess. The two primary problems were:

    - Many of them contained cards that were not intended for the initial release.
    - In terms of power level, they were heavily clustered in a small Item Level band, so players would more-or-less stop finding them once they got past the early/mid levels.

    There are still just as many skills altogether, and I've added many skills that are objectively *better* than what were previously available. (For instance, there's now a high level Arcane Skill that contains two Spark Generators and an Obliterating Spark, and a Martial Skill that's 2 x Impaler and an Impaling Stab.) The reason it feels like there are fewer traits in the class skills, is that (in general) the Common skills now contain one trait, the Uncommon skills contain two, and the highly-sought-after 3 x Trait cards are now rare. If you keep playing/shopping, you'll be able to amass a collection of these again. Also (to address Gabbek's observation above), the different class skill sets all have the *same* number of traits-per-item now. Arcane has Firestarter/Spark Gen/etc. in the same proportions as Divine has Altruism/Holy Presence/etc. and Martial has Bruiser/Impaler/Slicer.

    Some cards like Bad for Them, Fork and Enlarge will, I'm afraid, be leaving the game entirely for now. We're reserving them for higher level content. (There are a number of such cards in the item set as well; I'll be pruning those out this week.) Note that All Out Attack still exists in three different Martial Skills -- about the same as before -- but because as part of my redesign pass I had to destroy certain skills, you'll have to go out and find them again.

    Thank you all for your great patience, in this ever-shifting Beta landscape!
     
  9. Wozarg

    Wozarg Thaumaturge

    For the sake of balance as much as it pains me to say this i really think Electroporter Novice needs some kind of fix its a no talent 3 trait uncommon item, compared to what warriors have its godly.
     
    Gabbek likes this.
  10. Gabbek

    Gabbek Orc Soldier

    There's uncommon arcane skill - Electroporter Novice with 3 traits. What I'm basically trying to say that is there still are decent 3 trait no-talent cost arcane skills while martial skills are (at least right now - need to find more!) much, much worse, I don't see any with double impaler on no-talent cost, interesting.
     
  11. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    Two of the traits are just versions of the same one - minor/major version, and the third is utility - I don't find that godly at all compared to any martial skills.
     
  12. Gabbek

    Gabbek Orc Soldier

    3 cards less in the deck, 3 cards useful - two traits stacking with each other... and with martial skills you've got at best two traits (bruiser/impaler - one of those two is totally wasted) and the third card is some crap :)
     
  13. Dorian

    Dorian Mushroom Warrior

    I'd like to leave it in for now, and here's why: on the one hand, [3 x any self-replacing cards] makes for a great skill, since it thins your deck. On the other hand, 2 of its 3 traits are from the relatively weaker set, and it's what I call an "unfocused trait," meaning not all the cards feed into the same game systems. In other words, it's the kind of skill that savvy players may realize is better than it looks at first glance, but "normal" players look at and think "Meh. Dimensional Traveler and Spark Inductor? No thanks." It's good to have that sort of thing in the game. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that in practice among the entire player-set, it's not as popular as the similarly-no-talent Apprentice Sparking [Spark Generator, Devastating Spark, Spark]. I'd like to collect a bunch of data about how often those skills get used.

    You may very well be right, in which case it should get nerfed or removed. It does sit at the very top of the power-curve in terms of no-talent skills.

    I always appreciate the feedback, so thanks!
     
    Gabbek and Pengw1n like this.
  14. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    That's based on the perception of using traits as a card draw mechanic, which... isn't really it's purpose? Also, the bruiser/impaler combo is only useless as long as you stick with 1 kind of attacks - it opens up for combo decks.

    Edit: In response to Gabbek, Dorian snuck his post in there in the interim.
     
  15. Gabbek

    Gabbek Orc Soldier

    I'd agree it opens up combo decks, but with 3 attachment limit and warrior mechanics I fully doubt you would want to go for combo deck since in general you would want to have as high chance of reliability in your deck as possible -- but then again, this is only PvP point of view as in PvE it's much more different :) Another thing about 3 trait: dimensional travel *procs* before terrain attachments making it really, really useful. A weaker version of spark isn't a bad thing, especially if you happen to have some arcane spells in your deck - since -2 to rolls is a beast against blocks, mainly for lovely whirlwind enemies and winds of war. But observations are indeed the best to go around everything so I'm looking forward to see more! :)
     
  16. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    Not really the latest build, but last one - but all non-talent elf racials I have access to has a drawback, so I find myself running unslotted on my lvl 16 mage. Anyone else?

    Cowardly and superstition on a mage for some extra move? No thanks.
     
  17. Wozarg

    Wozarg Thaumaturge

    Apprentice Evasion seams acceptable and is not epic and above but yes they are lacking in non horrible ones
     
  18. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    Yeah, that's at least acceptable - but don't have it sadly. Still, all the few elf racials I owned actually got worse from the perspective of an elf mage.
     
  19. Wozarg

    Wozarg Thaumaturge

    The common elf skills are really terrible because they come with horrid drawbacks but the more rare ones are really good now if you ask me.
     
  20. Pengw1n

    Pengw1n Moderately Informed Staff Member

    Yeah, but if running an unslotted elf skill is percieved as being better than some of the drops - they might have been a bit too crazily tuned. Payoff with using them is very limited in terms of the risk you pay for those drawbacks.
     

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