Patch 2.1 Notes
SixOkay
Member, Administrator, Master Founder, Robot Entertainment, Early Access, Featured Developer
Patch 2.1 Contents
Overview
We’ve been busy bees over here in the studio since we brought the beta back up for Phase II, and it’s been awesome so far! We’re extremely grateful for the amount of participation and feedback from everyone.
Here’s the down and dirty:
- Co-op is much easier to matchmake and PvP matchmaking produces far better matchups!
- A new Dashboard layout!
- New Weavers for Stinkeye and Gabriella!
- Games reward A LOT more skulls!
- Iron and Runed Chests may now be purchased in the Store!
- Oak chest doesn’t reward 150 skulls anymore!
- Cliffside Clash map changes: there is now an escape route from the far side lane, and the Rift Guardian has been moved!
- Rift Lightning from the Rift that attacks minions and enemy Heroes!
- Before the first wave spawns, gates are invulnerable and you can resell traps for a full refund!
- You can now see your escort aura on your minions!
- Each Offensive hero may only play one glyph per match.
- Added new Kill and Assist Callouts!
Keep reading for more details on these, and many other changes going into CB9! Whew look at all these exclamation points! EXCITEMENT!
Heroes
Blackpaw
- “Call to the Beyond”: cooldown increased to 75 from 45 seconds.
- “Call to the Beyond”: Summoned Gnolls now have 135 health and will gain +12 health per battle level, up from a flat 400.
- “Call to the Beyond”: Summoned Gnolls now deal 17 damage, up from 15.
- “Call to the Beyond”: Summoned Gnolls now have 100 physical and 100 magic armor.
- Jumpy Wolf Weaver upgrade: mana cost reduction lowered to -10 from -15.
- Bug Fix: Summoned Gnolls should prioritize Wounded targets.
Cygnus
- Health increased to 150 from 85.
- “Rift Lord”: maximum damage reduction lowered to 75% from 90%.
Dobbin
- “Spare Dynamite”: coin bags now drop 100 coin, up from 20.
- “Spare Dynamite”: chance to spawn coin bags reduced to 15% from 30%.
- “Spare Dynamite”: coin bags cannot be picked up by enemies, only last 10 seconds.
- Bug Fix: Dobbin no longer receives the 5000 coin from his Weaver upgrade every time he dies.
Gabriella
- Now has a unique Weaver!
- “Devious Allure”: duration on Heroes reduced to 2 seconds from 2.5 seconds.
- “Devious Allure”: duration on minions reduced to 5 seconds from 10.
- “By My Command”: cooldown increased to 25 from 20 seconds.
- “By My Command”: mana cost increased to 60 from 50.
- “By My Command”: damage lowered to 60 from 80.
- Summoner Trap: Summoned Retainer health reduced to 175 (+25 per level) from 200 (+50 per level).
- Summoner Trap: Summoned Retainers no longer have a ranged shield by default.
- Primary attack speed lowered by 10%.
- New Primary attack animations!
- *NOTE: Many of the changes were a result of adding the unique Weaver upgrades.
Hogarth
- “Shield!”: duration increased to 6 seconds, from 5 seconds.
- “Shield!”: damage reduction increased to 50% from 35%.
Ivy
- Shattershaft Weaver upgrade: duration of trap disable effect increased to 8.5 seconds, from 6.5 seconds.
- Shattershaft Weaver upgrade: area of trap disable effect increased to 225 from 128.
- Primary attack damage decreased from 33 to 28.
- “Penetrating Shot”: damage decreased to 85 from 100.
- “Life Current”: may now be cast while moving.
- Edited descriptions of Weaver upgrades to be clearer.
Maximillian
- “In Your Faces”: splash damage decreased from 90-130 to 80-120.
- “Can’t Touch This”: now starts its effects immediately upon activation.
- Bug Fix: “Can’t Touch This” now reflects damage from projectiles.
- Sturdy Decoy: no longer consumes trap cap.
- Sturdy Decoy: maximum number that can be placed at a time reduced to 4, from 6.
- Baby, I’m a Firework Weaver upgrade: Explosive Decoy Damage increased to 150 from 100.
- Has new animations for movement and attacks!
Midnight
- Health reduced to 420 from 440.
- Primary attack damage reduced to 35 from 45.
- “Vital Strike”: now deals 15% of the target’s health, from 10-20% based on level.
- “Vital Strike”: now deals physical damage, rather than unmitigated damage.
- “Premeditated Malice”: Stun duration reduced to 1.5 seconds, from 2 seconds.
- Hunter Weaver upgrade: cooldown reduced to -7 seconds from -10 seconds.
- “Prowl”: mana cost increased to 10 from 7.
Smolder
- “Heart of Flame”: now increases move speed by 15%, rather than lowering move speed by 20%.
- “Heart of Flame”: no longer provides crowd control immunity.
- “Heart of Flame”: no longer canceled by being Stunned.
- Wildfire Weaver upgrade: now grants “Heart of Flame” crowd control immunity.
- “Dragon’s Breath”: now deals 60 damage per second, from 50.
- “Incinerate”: Now properly deals 15% of the target’s remaining health at all levels (was being reduced previous).
- “Incinerate”: damage now occurs instantly, rather than over 1 second.
- Fire DOT damage lowered to 8 from 10.
Stinkeye
- Now has a unique Weaver!
- “Arcane Anomaly”: damage reduced to 140 from 150.
- “Arcane Anomaly”: damage ring stays put instead of following Stinkeye.
- “Totem of Tyranny”: damage against players reduced by 25%.
- “Totem of Tyranny”: no longer shoots a bonus projectile every second while being attacked.
- There are now friend/enemy effects on the totems and the ghost Stinkeye in appropriate team colors.
Maps
Cliffside Clash
- New offensive escape area added to both cliff-side keeps. Balcony rail is broken where the escape is suggested. The escape route takes you all the way back up to you the War Camp on the far left of your fortress.
- Lots of bug fixes, including areas where players could get stuck.
- Moved the Guardian down the central hallway since we added Rift Lightning.
- More Blackpaw (and other Hero) jump prevention blockers placed in specific areas.
- Updated lighting pass.
Unchained Fortress
- Big Face lift – New Textures and geometry in a lot of places.
- Non-trappable spaces made to look more organic.
- Lots of environment work on backgrounds and geometry in the backgrounds.
- Bug fixes with trap grid and pathing.
- Added team colored assets to help recognize the bases.
- New Minimap.
- Updated lighting pass.
All Maps:
New Feature! Rift Lightning. We’ve thus far had a sort of wait-and-see attitude about the need for strong defenses in the rift room. From what we’ve seen in the beta, we determined there’s no more waiting necessary.
- Rift Lightning is now on at all times. Rift Lightning, similar in function to Guardians, will now defend the Rift room for your team by shooting Lightning at enemies.
- If enemy minions are in the room, the Rift will attack the minions until the minions have either scored or been killed.
- If enemy Heroes enter the Rift room, and there are no minions present, they will be targeted and dealt damage. Rift Lightning does more damage with each successive hit.
- Note from the devs: This way, it should be possible to push a wave of minions into the Rift, while still making the Rift room a dangerous place to just ‘hang out’.
General Gameplay Changes
- Escorting with 3 players now rewards SLIGHTLY more leadership than before.
- Gates can now be interacted with by aiming at them, rather than only at the lever.
- Gate interaction range reduced to 1200 from 2000.
- Gates are now invulnerable to attack until the first wave spawns. Opening the gate on your own will cancel this invulnerability.
- Gates have team-specific color coding.
- minions blocking your character camera will now become transparent.
- The range at which you gain leadership and grant minions the benefits of your Escort Aura are now the same radius, still centered on you.
- minions inside your Escort Aura radius will now display an icon to indicate they are being buffed.
- VO for doors under attack has been removed.
- Movement speed max cap has been increased.
- An offensive hero may now only have one glyph placed at a time. Note from the Devs: We want offensive heroes to bring exclusive power to the table, similar to how the defender-exclusive Traps work, in an effor to highlight their uniqueness and encourage extra thought about when and how to use Glyphs.
- Bug fix: minions getting stuck in ceilings.
- Bug fix: Gates being blocked by dead people.
- Bug fix: Heroes being able to shoot through doors.
- Bug fix: a few geometry-related bugs (like flying).
Leveling and rewards
- The Daily Quest system is still very beta. For now, the Daily Quest type has been changed to ‘Play any 3 games’ to get the Skull reward.
- Skull reward for the daily quest has been reduced to 300 from 400.
- Skull rewards for reaching account levels 2, 3, and 4 have been added (500 Skulls at each level).
- Chest Rewards have been updated and re-balanced.
- Skull rewards for playing games have been greatly increased.
- Hero victory Skull rewards have been rearranged. You get the Skull rewards for earlier ranks. (2000 Skulls each at 5, 10, 15, and 20 Victories).
- Daily first win Skulls have been reduced to 200 from 250, in light of the other economy changes made.
- Bug fix: overleveling your account past 40 now awards 500 Skulls.
- Reduced Skull cost of Charged Wall Blades in the store. It is replacing the Ice Vent as one of the low-cost starter items (Ice Vent Skull cost has also
been increased).
- Note from the Devs: This gives players a late-game trap for cheap. We want to apply these changes to the starter deck, but to do so would require an account wipe. Changing the cost of the traps is a temporary fix.
Tutorial and Practice Game Changes
- Tutorial Maps have updated art.
- New barrier effects.
- Various bug fixes.
- Coached Game has snazzier VO. It’s still one of the slightly odd voice robots who does our tutorial VO when Maximilian and Gabriella are unavailable…
there was a thing, and there were lemons, and… you know what, it’s a long story.
Traps and Glyphs
- Edited several descriptions to be clearer, including the effects of elemental damage and special modifiers.
Traps
- Glory-seeker traps now deal unmitigated damage.
- Glory-seeker Ballista coin cost lowered to 1000 from 1800, damage decreased to 4% health from 8%.
- Glory-seeker Ballista will no longer target minions.
- Healing Well now restores 5% health per second, down from 10%. Now has twice as many charges.
- Healing and Mana Well effective radius has been reduced to .5 trap units, down from 1 trap unit.
- Changed ‘trap is building’ shimmer color to green.
- Traps placed before the first wave stay in building mode until the first wave begins. They can be cancelled for a full refund. This is to make it easier to lay out initial trap setups.
- Traps sell for full value before the first wave spawns.
- Bug fix: Grinders no longer consume charges or deal damage too quickly.
Glyphs
- All glyphs now cost 1750 leadership (Down from 2000-2500), except the Glyph of Blood which costs 1000 (Down from 1500).
Gear and Traits
Gear
- Edited descriptions to be clearer, including explanations for elemental damage.
Traits
- Changed descriptions to specify allied traps or Guardians.
- Removed % sign from some traits that were not giving percent increases.
- Added /s to specify that health and mana were number per second increases.
- Re-worded the trait stats to be clearer.
- Added several icons to trait-related buffs on the UI bar. Text is still buggy.
Minions
Light Soldiers
- Health decreased to 155 from 165.
Light Orcs
- Health increased to 140 from 120.
Kobolds
- Now attack guardians.
Archers (Orc and Human)
- Bug Fix: Archers are less likely to get stuck attacking decoys without destroying them.
Hobgoblin Shamans
- Bug Fix: Can now properly heal other minions.
Trolls
- Health reduced to 1200 from 1425.
Giants
- Health reduced to 1100 from 1200.
Bosses
Captain
- Health reduced by 10%.
- Increased Rift point value. Now scores 4 points, up from 2.
Bulgod, Armored Ogre
- Health increased to 2500 from 1775.
- Speed increased to 500 from 400.
- leadership cost to play increased to 4k from 3k.
Swiftyhooves
- Health reduced to 2200, from 2500.
Gaeadin, Earth Lord
- Health increased to 3.5k from 3k.
Urza, Fire Lord
- Increased fireling explosion damage to 100, up from 50.
Veyetality, Cyclops Resurrector
- Reduced time between resurrecting a minion to every 7 seconds, down from 10.
Tiklik, Hobgoblin Healer
-
Bug Fix: Now properly heals players.
Guardians
- The Rift Guardian on Cliffside Clash has been moved downstairs (in case you missed it under the ‘Maps’ section)
- Guardians have team-specific color coding.
- VO for attacking Guardians and Guardians being under attack has been removed.
War Camps
- War Camps will emit a mini-ping (visual concentric circles) when there is an empty slot or underleveled minion.
Bots
- Bot difficulties have been re-organized. There is only one difficulty now for Co-Op games.
- Various bot behavior fixes.
UI
Several UI and Dashboard changes have been applied, with many more to come!
- Low health effects have been improved. They are more visible on the screen and the heartbeat is louder.
- Assist and First Blood call-outs are now displayed.
- Mana pips (the little dashes that divide your mana bar) are now 25 mana per chunk, up from 10.
- Added subtitles to the Practice games (Basic and Learning OMDU), these appear by default but can be turned off in the ‘Sound’ options menu.
- A bazillion Localization bug fixes.
- Bug fix: Several typos in descriptions.
Dashboard
- Launcher UI has been updated for easier navigation.
- Navigation Bar and Home Page and been further refined:
- Instant access to the Community through a new button at the bottom.
- Access to Play, My Stuff, and the store returned to the top.
- New “Play Again” feature at post game stats returns you to the Game Select page after a game. If you were solo queued, in either coop or multiplayer, you will be automatically requeued. Note: Currently, this feature will not re-queue parties. This functionality will be added at a later update.
- Store Cleanup – More polish and improvements coming, but it should be slightly improved over CB8.
- Various dashboard bug fixes.
- Maximum number of decks that can be built has been set at 5.
- Bug fix: An issue with re-joining a game if you are disconnected. Clicking ‘yes’ should now reload the game you were in.
Matchmaking
- Added banding to Multiplayer Matchmaking.
- Your rating is now banded by your account level. Players are grouped at levels 1-5, 6-10, and 11+. You will not be matched with players outside of your
group. If the PvP matchmaker cannot find enough players in your level group after three minutes, the game will fill with bots.
- Note from the devs: This means no more getting sorted into games as a brand new player with veterans that stomp on you.
- If you are in the 11+ group, your MMR search range expands more slowly, and will never fill up with bots.
- If someone drops out at the last minute, you will STILL not get a bot in 11+ games! Games that do not have all their players loaded in within 60s will be canceled and all players will be returned to the Matchmaking Queue.
- Your rating is now banded by your account level. Players are grouped at levels 1-5, 6-10, and 11+. You will not be matched with players outside of your
group. If the PvP matchmaker cannot find enough players in your level group after three minutes, the game will fill with bots.
- Teams now have additional rating points applied for matchmaking. The larger the group, the more rating points added.
- Note from the devs: This means that if a five-player group matches with five solo players, each solo player will have substantially higher skill rating to account for the coordination expected from a group.
- The matchmaker still prefers to match groups with groups, which means team searches of five players will take longer than a solo search or a smaller group. If you are trying to match in a larger group and are having difficulty finding a game, try breaking up into smaller groups or search solo.
- Co-op no longer has multiple difficulty options. There is now only one co-op bot difficulty.
- Co-op players will now search in a single queue.
- Co-op games will still use player rating, but players of all ratings will be mixed in together.
- Various bug fixes for games not launching. /li>
Store Updates
- Iron and Rune chests are now available for Gold in the Store.
- Chests can drop multiple rewards.
- Chests reward XP and skulls in “chunks.” You might see a 1000 skull reward from a chest granted as two slugs of 500 skulls each. This is part of a system that is in development right now.
- Everyone’s ‘favorite’ 150 Skull reward has been removed from the loot table.
@SixOkay
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
Post edited by SixOkay on
1
Comments
Sixxy thought the notes above were too brief so he asked that I crit you with the following additional detail wall of text:
OMDU Matchmaking
This last round of testing uncovered a number of issues that prompted improvements.
First-Timers vs. Expert Teams
First up, probably the worst problem is that brand-new players frequently get matched against very experienced players (or teams).They are then murdered.
There were checks in place intended to prevent this, but most of them were based on rating. Since skill rating fluctuates a lot when a player has not played a lot of games (and since we’re pretty aggressive about expanding the acceptable range of ratings when players are waiting), it was possible for really…bad...matches to happen.
To address this, we are matching lower-level players together. New players up to level five players will match together, as will level six to level 10 players. At level 11, players graduate to general matchmaking.
Below level 11, getting games going is the priority. After a three minutes, bots will fill in as long as there is at least one human player on each side. Above level 11, bots do not fill in.
Teams vs. Solo Players
Secondly, the advantage of a pre-made team was horribly under-represented (mostly due to a bug we tracked down while checking on some of these matchups). Combined with the aggressive expansion mentioned above, this resulted in frequent matchups between a very high-skill team and a group of lower-rated randomly selected players. This was not fun for at least 50% of those involved.Teams now have additional skill rating added, compared to the same players when matching solo. The more players in the team, the greater the amount of skill rating added. This is designed to offset the advantage in communications and cooperation a team has over a random group of solo players.
(Note that the matcher attempts to match groups with groups first and the additional rating is offset in this case.)
If you are in a team, are of a higher skill, and are having trouble getting matches – you’ll have more luck if you break up and search solo or as smaller groups.
Co-op Fragmentation
Next, we saw a lot of action with co-op, which is awesome. The thing that made a lot of co-op players crazy was an inability to match into multiple skill categories or to see how many people were matching in each difficulty. They just wanted to get games and our system made it very difficult – we watched (with tears) a lot of dancing around from difficulty to difficulty trying to find one another.To address this, for now, there is ONE co-op difficulty. The opponents are little harder than normal and a little easier than hard. Nightmare is gone for now, as is easy (easy seems to have enough options with the practice and custom games).
Co-op matchmaking doesn’t use player level and care as much about skill rating – the system will attempt to match similar players but will put higher and lower level or skill players together if it makes a game. Co-op will also use bots if not enough players are found (our assumption is that bots are more “ok” in co-op than PvP, where it really sucks
We will introduce ways to get different difficulties in co-op later. For now, we want to see how much eliminating the fragmentation improves things.
Showing Matching Information
Speaking of this, we changed the way we show “action” and wait times in matchmaking, primarily because these confused almost everyone. A lot of players attempt to match, see “2”, think this means that two people are playing, and drop out in frustration – this is a player that would stick around and cause a match to happen otherwise. We’re using a general low, medium, and high now, based on the number of players who have submitted to matchmaking within the last hour. The expected match time also no longer uses seconds, mostly because seeing wait times of seemingly random numbers wasn’t useful.Missing Players
Yes, yes. Nothing sucks more than getting a match only to have someone drop or AFK or not appear in the first place.For now, we have a system in place that will kill a game when players are missing at the start. If the ten matched players are not present one minute after the game begins, the game will be killed (with no penalty to the players who are present, but the normal drop / AFK penalty for the players who are not there).
Not yet in but being worked on is:
- An AFK check (a pop-up when a match is found that forces all matched players
to click).
- Background notice – bells and whistles when a match is found in case you’re
off surfing while waiting.
- Bot replacement for players who go missing after a game is being looked at
now. (I have posted previously about not liking this but I think I was wrong –
the problem I was trying to avoid by having replacement is less and issue than
trying to play while down a player.)
- Better re-distribution of resources when a player is missing. If something
sucks more than losing a player, it’s seeing their motionless hero standing
there collecting its share of leadership and coin.
All in all, we got a lot of data out of the last run (thanks), we’ve changed a lot of things, and now we’re excited to see if this makes the experience better for all players.OMDU Rewards
Unlocks, Starter Decks, and Starter Items
We like starting with basics and introducing new concepts as a player advances. This provides the best chance to show the ropes but still get to fun quickly. If you don’t do this, you often end up with my favorite kind of new player experience, ye olde skoole MMO tutorial that begins with “press ‘W’ to move forward” and ends with “here’s how to go on a 30-player raid after you hit the level cap.”We started using deck slots to pull this off. For example, at one time you couldn’t equip gear until a higher level, so new players didn’t have to know how to deal with gear from the start.
That tack accomplishes “introduce new concepts over time”, but causes balance problems. You end up with players who have and don’t have access to gear in games together.
Our approach on progression now is more self-guided. We no longer unlock slots. Instead, we provide new players with a more basic starter deck and then nominate various bosses, traps, minions, and gear as “starter” things, making them lower cost and more frequently dropped in chests.
This way, players can get these fairly easily and they get to decide if they want to deal with something new (gear or bosses or just deck building, period). And, if they don’t seek these things out on their own, the increased drop chance in chests means that they eventually get a reminder.
Our first starter decks and initial starter set had some issues. We do a bad job of indicating that these are starter things – players see the lower cost and nothing else, and immediately think these are crappier things. They aren’t, and we plan to add some indication of the “starter” status of these to try to make this clear.
We also did not include a good late-game trap option in the starter deck or in the starter set. Keep in mind that this is NOT a more powerful trap. Early game traps that cost less to place are actually more cost:damage efficient than the more powerful late game traps. It’s the trap cap and finite trap space in a lane that makes the late-game traps worth it.
Not having an easy to get, late-game trap can screw up game conclusion. To address this, we should really change the starter deck but (currently) that would require a server wipe, so we’ll hold off there. Instead, we’ve swapped out one of the former starter traps (ice vent) for a late-game trap (charged wall blades). (But we will change the starter deck in the future.)
Per Game vs. Daily Rewards
The intent of dividing up rewards between things you can get per game you play and things you get for completing objectives that occur daily is to reduce the feel that you need to grind.This is great, but using this structure doesn’t automatically mean the balance between per game rewards and daily rewards is correct.
I’ve posted about the “real” rewards a few times and all data we’ve collected thus far show that the rewards we expected players to earn are actually being earned. At the same time, perception of the per game reward (and the ability to play to get things) was poor. It improved substantially when we looked at the response to things like increased reward event weekends.
Based on this, we’ve shifted the rewards around a bit, increasing per-game rewards considerably and slightly reducing the rewards from other sources.
Quests
Just being honest with you guys: The quest model in the game currently is in only because not having it around would encrapify a bunch of information about rewards that we can collect with it there.It is missing many, many things. (For example, the ability to be more than one quest, to not be the exact same quest all the time, and the ability to show players progress on their quests.)
We’ve changed the quest to be a bare-bones, simple “PLAY THREE GAMES” for now, just to ensure that co-op players have an equal chance to complete this too.
Please bear with this for a bit – what is there now is an ugly chrysalis that will eventually break open and vomit forth a beautiful quest-butterfly.
Hero Victory Rewards
The point of the skull rewards on heroes is to give players strong incentive to try out other heroes. This is a reason why we give these rewards even on free heroes and don’t force players to own the hero to earn their victories.The structure we had, with skull rewards at 50 and 100 victories, felt right (these are big accomplishments) but it also works against what we want – you do not need to play a zillion games with a hero to see if you like them.
To address this, we’ve moved all of the skull rewards for hero victories to 20 victories and below. This encourages playing different heroes or trying new heroes and at one reward per five victories, these are lot easier to get. It also ends and you’re never facing “now win 50 games.” Past level 20, the rewards we have in place (or will add in the future) are vanity related, which feels like it makes more sense.
Another question about this system is how it should be rewarded. There’s a camp that feels losses should get a partial reward and victories should be the full reward (for example, imagine if a loss counted as half of a win). There’s another camp that feels only counting rewards makes this more of an accomplishment. We’d like to hear some feed from players on this.
Chests
In the future, the oak chest is probably going to get the axe as something you can buy. We liked the idea of having a skull-only chest option that was a little bit of a lottery ticket. In practice, it confuses a lot of players. This would continue to be something you could get as a reward for playing games – which everyone seems to like getting. (It would be great to get some feed on this too – would you rather have the oak chest as a bonus only or as a bonus and something you can purchase for skulls?)
The iron chest is intended to be for core content, while the rune chest is designed to offer a chance at a small set of exclusive things, like special vanity skins. Some additional functionality is required to make these work (they especially need to provide more visibility into their contents and make it clear what they offer) and is being worked on now.
For now, this is what is in the chests:
OAK
There is a chance of everything except heroes, vanity, and tier two and three trait cards in the oak chest.(All of the trait cards were possible in here before but they’ve since been divided up and put in the other chests, primarily to allow some option for targeting these.)
Duplicates reward 150 skulls and 100 XP.
IRON
There is a chance of anything except heroes, vanity, and tier one and three trait cards in this chest.These do not drop XP rewards.
This chest has much better chances than he oak chest – it changes depending on what is in your collection already, but in general your chance of a minion, boss, gear, trait or trap is very good.
Duplicates reward 700 skulls.
RUNE
Rune chests have a chance of heroes, vanity (including vanity that is available nowhere else), and tier three trait cards.These will not drop tier one and two trait cards.
This chest has better chances for minions, bosses, gear, or traits than the iron chest and also has a good chance of containing a hero or vanity (again, it depends on what is in your collection already). Also, rune chests will not drop any starter set items (none of the lower-cost items in each class), so the chances of an item with a higher skull value is better.
These will not drop XP rewards.
Duplicates reward 2000 skulls.
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
All sounds good. [Space reserved in case actual application changes my mind].
In all seriousness though, awesome patch. Good work guys.
Orcs are our friends and we must learn to not kill on site.
Are the new account leveling rewards being granted to high level accounts retroactively, or will new accounts get the advantage of more skulls? I see the advantages of BOTH positions. It will all be moot when the accounts get wiped going into open beta/phase 3 anyway, so it does no good to get upset about either choice, but I would like to know what to expect.
EDIT: I'm blind.
@Zenja They tweaked it, but from my understanding he will get some what of a rework in the future. This (like midnight) seems more or less a quality of life "Band-Aid" fix for the time being till they can get over to addressing them....vs flat out removing them which would be a very unpopular thing to do.
They reduced the damage reduction from his shield from 90% to 75%..
Changes all look solid and the midnight nerf isn't as horrible as it originally sounded (Although it still is a disappointing change for an already offensively challenged game). Other than that, don't see much that is going to shorten these games down much, which has made the game hardly playable for me at this point.
Side note, I'm happy they improved low health indicators - I keep diving in without noticing I'm at low health
The other changes look good on paper, we'll see how it turns out in practice. Maybe the changes will stop matches from taking 40+ minutes.
Robot Entertainment | Lead Balance Designer
Question. Are the new hero win rewards retroactive at all for players who have already reached 15 and 20 on some heroes? Likewise with account levels 2 3 and 4?
It will be great to get your feedback on this.
All the designers were involved in designing his tree. It's pretty great, huh?
Robot Entertainment | Lead Balance Designer
Robot Entertainment | Community Video Coordinator | Skull Ninja
Orcs are our friends and we must learn to not kill on site.
Robot Entertainment | Lead Balance Designer