Patch 2.4 Notes - ParaPHYSICal Activity
SixOkay
Member, Administrator, Master Founder, Robot Entertainment, Early Access, Featured Developer
Patch 2.4 Notes - ParaPHYSICal Activity
Releasing August 26, 2015
Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master
The central focus of 2.4 is increased gameplay depth with decreased complexity.
In 2.4, we are working to increase depth of gameplay while also making OMDU easier to learn. To create more dynamic play, we need to break up the core loop: escorting minions and defending waves. This is fundamental to Orcs Must Die, but the existing loop of three players escorting into the enemy guardian, retreating, spending leadership, and repeating doesn’t offer a lot of interesting decisions or replayability. Further, this arrangement guarantees that one side is going to be outnumbered in almost all engagements throughout the entire match.
Optimally, the game should be comprised of many small engagements where one side or the other can be outnumbered based on what the teams decide to do, not because of a fixed game loop. This does many good things:
- It creates different engagements, with different heroes and different odds in different places.
- It allows less skilled players to sometimes succeed and feel awesome because they outnumbered a better player. because they outnumbered a better player.
- It creates unpredictability and surprise. Because an engagement could happen at any point, the player always has to be ready. Some of the most memorable moments in games are being caught off guard and having to react (which is even more memorable when you are successful).
- It provides more options. There are long lulls in gameplay right now where a wave is done and there’s little meaningful to do until the next wave appears. We want players to always be thinking “what’s the best thing I can be doing right now?”, not waiting for the one obvious best thing to appear.
- It creates more room for skill. Better players become the ones who can better determine the odds in the varied engagements, better react to surprises, and better answer the “what’s the best thing?” question.
But doesn’t this mean that the game now has more stuff a player needs to learn? Nope. OMDU’s gameplay has been pretty linear and the problem with linear is that it requires memorization, which is a burden for new players. Imagine if learning chess were both learning the rules for each piece and memorizing the first 50 moves that would happen in every match, without deviation. Getting over a large learning curve to learn that you’re doing the same thing every time is the opposite of “easy to learn, difficult to master.”
In more organic games, players are presented with many understandable, simple options and the depth of the game is in the choice. It is our job to teach the player their options. It is the player’s job to figure out which option is best.
Fixing this problem is difficult but something we’re determined to achieve. This patch is the largest set of changes since Phase Two and we want to make sure you understand the basic intent. A final note: In our testing, many of these changes (which we tested individually but which you’re getting in one blast) caused a lot of “spirited discussion” and a lot of initial reactions changed after a handful of games. If you could, try to play five or ten games before you decide.
War Camps and Leadership
You do not pick a starting war camp, and leadership has been removed as a resource.
Developer Commentary:At first glance, the decision about which war camp to open at the start of a match seems like a great way to add some depth. Unfortunately, there tends to be a clear right answer. Our initial reaction to that was to try to adjust the lanes to make them competitive with one another. In the end, the changes we make for this only erode the interesting differences between the lanes and make the gameplay more similar in all places.
This is the opposite of what we want to achieve. Instead of an interesting decision that changes gameplay, we end up with one “correct choice”, similar gameplay in all places regardless, and new players confused about the “right answer.” For 2.4, we’ve eliminated this and made the starting camp fixed. Along the same lines, we came to the conclusion that spending leadership was similarly something of an empty choice. Players are currently required to return to war camps on a regular basis and deposit their leadership. The decision to do this is not particularly deep. It’s far more a repetitive upkeep task and something new players often struggle to remember to do. It’s also somewhat complex (as players splitting leadership and slotting new waves instead of leveling the camp shows) and the need to return and complete this cuts in to more interesting player decisions. For 2.4, leadership is effectively removed as a resource. Instead of collecting leadership and spending it at war camps, escorting minions automatically causes the corresponding lane to level up. The intent of this (and what we’ve observed in testing): This reduces the number of resources a player needs to learn and think about. It adds tactical depth because players have more freedom to roam without worry about this chore. It allows us to simplify the war camp UI (which is consistently the most confusing for new players) into only minion placement. It adds depth to the lane choice for escort. Do you want the shorter-term gain of pushing your most advanced lane or do you want to push the lane that needs upgraded to be more powerful later in the game? In order to create more roaming and split-pushing, we have also decided to cap the max leadership earned ta two players instead of three. This means that pushing a lane with three players is more aggressive in the short-term but at the cost of long-term leadership economy.
- There is no longer an option to open different war camps at the start of a match.
- Players no longer collect leadership as a resource.
- Escorting minions automatically levels the war camp in the corresponding lane.
- Leadership trickle has been halved to 10/s.
- Leadership trickle flows to both camps evenly and will open the unopened war camp.
- Killing enemy players generates leadership. This is split between both camps.
- Minions and glyphs now have a coin cost. Most glyphs are 1250 coin, Glyph of Blood is 1000. Minion cards are 0, 450, 600, and 750 coin (by level).
- Maximum leadership for escort changed from three players escorting to two. One player escorting is 25 leadership/s, two escorting the same lane is 37/s.
- When a war camp is at maximum level, leadership from escorting there is lost.
Pillage
There are caches in the enemy base. Smash these to level your hero and war camp faster.
Developer Commentary:Pillage is new for 2.4. The concept is simple: destroy things (caches) in the enemy base to level up the war camp more quickly. This mechanic is extremely intuitive, as approximately one billion games have trained players to smash containers to find the loot inside.
While destroying a single enemy cache is not difficult, finding the right time to do so can be. Roaming about looking for pillage to smash can also lead to small skirmishes, which can get players killed. Even seemingly trivial to destroy caches along the escort route require some time that could otherwise be spent attacking enemy heroes or guardians. The current visual appearance of these is stand-in and adjustments to placement and count are expected. (This would not work very well without fog of war, another new mechanic being introduced in 2.4.)
- Caches (currently these look like pots) have been added to the map.
- You can smash open the caches that are of the enemy team color.
- When you destroy a cache, an item drops out.
- Picking up this item splits 100 XP amongst nearby allied heroes (making the heroes level faster) and sends 250 leadership to the war camp associated with the lane (making it level faster).
- The items that drop from the caches are shaped like the symbol used to mark the different lanes, making it easy to tell which war camp will be improved by the pickup.
- If a war camp is not yet opened, smashing caches in its lane will make the camp open sooner.
- Destroyed caches respawn after 70s.
Fog of War
Enemy units now appear on the minimap only when in proximity to allies.
Developer Commentary:Fog of war is a staple of many RTS and MOBA games (in fact, it was part of the OMDU too, during the early stages of development). With it, enemies aren’t shown on the minimap unless near an ally, which leads to more spontaneous engagements and also increases tactical depth.
One of the great things about this change is that it creates a wealth of options for more experienced players but has almost no negative impact on new or casual players, who tend to pay little attention to enemy (or ally) positions on the minimap. With the recent addition of neutral objectives and pillage, fog of war has become critical to the tactical gameplay and serves well the goal of producing more small engagements. Results in playtesting thus far have been very positive.
- Enemy heroes and minions are not shown on the minimap unless in proximity to allies.
- Allied guardians and barriers will both provide line of sight.
- Fog of war is not currently used in Survival mode games.
Barriers
Gates have been replaced by repairable barriers that block enemies but allow allies to walk through. There are three barriers per lane on Cliffside Clash.
Developer Commentary:There are a lot of changes in 2.4, but the change to gates is one of the largest. Gates have been replaced with barriers. Barriers are designed to preserve the strengths of the original system while minimizing the weaknesses.
This is what we like about the old gates: They provide lane state. At full strength, a lane is different than if all the gates are demolished. They afford defenders some means of protection. They allow some cool moments when enemies are trapped. When still in place, they allow some control over how quickly enemies can approach your rift. Here is what we do not like about the old gates: In many cases, they were lose-lose for defenders. Leave them down and you can prevent enemies from walking past your guardian…but you get to die jammed up against them when you fall back from attackers. Leave them up and you can fall back…but everything else gets to follow too. Trapping enemy players was far too easy. While a cool moment, it didn’t require a lot of skill. The potential for trapping made building escape paths into the maps a necessity. Players needed to manually open and close the gates to move through, which was tedious. Players were incented to counter-intuitively “save” their gate by keeping it open. Players were unable to assist in defense of the rift because the opening the final gates meant letting the attackers in. Opening and closing the gates is something that almost all new players have difficulty with. The new barriers are simple: allies can move through them, enemies cannot. There are no controls. The barriers have fewer hitpoints than the old gates, but they can be repaired when destroyed by channeling at them (if a repairing player takes damage, it interrupts the repair). This maintains what we liked about the old gates and addresses what we did not. Gates are much more effective in protecting defenders, enough that we’ve been able to reduce the guardian’s armor aura. In addition, the barriers make it a lot easier for defenders to fight forward after the first guardians are killed, since falling back is much less dangerous. Gates get to be part of the game during the entire game instead of being staying open until they are used once. The need to repair gates adds one more possible answer to the “what should I be doing now?” question. Trapping players is still possible, but requires skill (and, when it happens, the trapped players have more options since the gates have fewer hitpoints). Gates also work nicely with fog of war, since they provide line of sight and since the fog of war is often what gives you a chance to get behind enemies and repair the gates.
- Gates have been replaced with barriers.
- Allies can move through barriers, enemies are blocked.
- Barriers can be repaired if destroyed. The old gates had 2000 HP in the front and 4000 HP by the rift. The new gates start with 2000, 2500, and 3500 (in order from front to rift). Gates repair to 1/3rd original strength.
- When damaged, barriers cannot be repaired but do slowly regenerate.
- Barriers provide line of sight.
- There are no open / close controls for the barriers.
- Barriers block shots in both directions. You cannot fire through your barriers at enemy players.
- Cliffside Clash has three barriers per lane; an additional barrier at the second guardian on the right and another at the first guardian on the left side.
- Guardian’s Blessing has been reduced to a 50 armor bonus (was 150).
- The first gate on the lane that starts open (right side) is still the old type of gate but has no controls. This gate will simply be destroyed by the first enemy wave of the game. The intent of this is to give defenders a few extra seconds to get traps in place at the start of the game (and also because the initial attack breaking through a gate is cool).
- The first gate on the lane that starts closed (left side) has been removed.
- Survival mode is still using the old gates for this release.
- (Note that there is a bug in 2.4 where enemy or allied gates will occasionally show the wrong team color.)
Leveling
There are now 20 hero levels, combos provide additional XP for leveling, XP from player kills is adjusted based on level of heroes involved, and greater differentiation between hero and war camp levels is possible.
Developer Commentary:Some very common feedback is that players feel like the heroes and war camps in a typical game are always at the same level and that it doesn’t matter if they are not. This makes it difficult to gauge when you are doing well or poorly and it also creates an empty mechanic. If you are always at the same level and level doesn’t matter anyway, why have levels in the game at all?
In 2.4, we have started to address this. Combos have been adjusted to generate more hero XP. In conjunction with pillage, this provides additional ways (beyond player kills and escort) for individual players to level themselves and the war camps. To avoid allowing this to become too one-sided, the player kill rewards now also scale with player level, such that lower level players get more XP when they defeat a higher level opponent. The end result is more skill differentiation (trickle will open your second war camp on wave six but a good team on a roll can open it on wave two) and better chances for comeback swings.
- There are now 20 levels. Overall, you gain these faster than before and each level is worth slightly less. (Weaver upgrades happen at 3, 6, 9, and 12.)
- There is no longer any experience trickle.
- Combos grant additional XP for hero leveling.
- XP from player kills is based on level of players involved.
- Scaling of overall lethality has been adjusted. In general, heroes have more health in the early game, less in the late game.
Traits
Traits are stand-in for 2.4.
Developer Commentary:We have been poking at the trait system, as we don’t think it is accomplishing the goals we set for it. A revision is in the works, but it couldn’t make it for 2.4. What is in there currently is just stand-in for this release.
- Attributes are gone. You no longer get points as you level your account and place them in attributes.
- Trait cards no longer have attribute requirements. You can slot any trait card.
Tutorials and New Player Experience
Tutorials are disabled for 2.4, the starter deck has been revised, and leveling is faster and more rewarding.
Developer Commentary:There is no way that poor Danger Mike could keep up with the changes outlined in these patch notes, so we decided not to damage his sanity by trying. The tutorials are gone for this release. (There is a “how to play” video on the dash.)
Beyond the tutorials, the new player experience has been largely redesigned. We have a lot of data from the beta tests and we have surveyed a lot of players. Based on this, we feel our original assumptions about how players were getting traps and minions and so on were off the mark. We originally felt we needed to make a lot of the pieces of the game fairly difficult to get because otherwise they wouldn’t feel meaningful when players did get them. We now think that has made the game boring for a lot of new players who only get to play with a few of the “toys” and never get to experience the true fun of the game. To address this, the starter deck is entirely new. It now contains six traps (including barricades), eight minions, gear, and a boss. In addition, early leveling is faster and players receive additional traps, minions, and gear as the level up to 10. After account level 10, players receive new trait cards at every other level up. This is a lot more rewarding and certainly allows new players to see more of the game faster. However, it is difficult to get this right. Early feedback is that players now feel like they have too much. The starter deck is more daunting and the additional rewards come frequently enough that some feel they are not important. Expect more tweaks.
- Tutorials are disabled for 2.4. This is temporary.
- There is a “how to play” video on the dashboard.
- Starter decks are entirely new.
- Account leveling to level 10 is faster.
- Players receive rewards at every level up until 10.
- Players receive rewards at every other level after 10.
- A number of skull prices have been changed on items at the store (generally reducing prices).
Chests
Chests have been completely redesigned for 2.4, and cards now use stars to show rarity.
Developer Commentary:Along the same lines as the thinking with the new player experience, we’ve been looking at the chests for some time now. We do not think we have in place is very rewarding. The changes in 2.4 are the first steps toward improving these.
You’ll notice also that traps, minions, bosses, and gear have star ratings. These are an attempt to communicate rarity and “coolness”of these things, not power. All of the content is still balanced as before, nothing has been made more or less powerful because of the star rating.
- There are stars on traps, minions, bosses, and gear. These indicate general rarity and desirability, not power.
- There are no XP rewards in any chest any longer.
- There are no skull rewards in the iron or rune chests. Before, you would often open an iron or rune chests and get some amount of skulls instead of a new card. There are no longer any skull rewards in these chests. You can still get skulls from these chests if you draw a duplicate card, but that is the only way you will see skulls from these chests.
- Note that oak chests, the ones that are sometimes rewarded at the end of a game, do still have a skull reward in them.
- The rune chest contains two things – vanity cards and hero cards. When you pop a rune chest in 2.4, you are always seeing either a new hero or a new skin (unless you get a dupe).
- The iron chest contains everything else – bosses, gear, minions, traps, traits. When you pop an iron chest in 2.4, you are always going to get a new one of these (unless you get a dupe).
- The oak chest has a chance to drop anything you could get with skulls at the store.
- Items in the player’s starter deck and items that are awarded by leveling up have been removed from all chests, so these never cause duplicates.
Bots
Sir Winston replaced by an Oziel bot, all bot difficulties revised, all bots fully reworked, bot heroes show up Survival mode games.
Developer Commentary:We have spent a lot of time playing against our bots, watching people play against our bots, and talking to people about the bots. In their current form, they are fairly frustrating. In 2.4, they have been much improved.
The easiest change to make bots less frustrating is removing Sir Winston. Done. Next, we felt we needed to address the scaling we were using to adjust difficulty. By adjusting minion health and damage, we did make the harder bot levels more competitive, but we also made them less fun to play. When all minions feel like unkillable tanks, much of the fun of Orcs Must Die! is lost. With the exception of one star (easy bots), where minions will have lower health and damage, the two star (normal) to four star (nightmare) difficulty levels no longer have minion health and damage scale from their normal values. This was one of the more frustrating aspects of Siege co-op. We would rather scale difficulty with more intelligent AI, faster leadership gain and coin gain, and bot health. We have made one star bots much easier. One star bots do still use minion health and damage scaling but in the other direction. These bots start with 75% health and damage, along with their minions. They will also gain leadership and coin 25% slower, which gives a lot more breathing room to new players. In addition to these broad changes, the bots have also been improved in numerous specific ways.
- Sir Winston is no longer a bot. Oziel is filling In for Sir Winston.
- All Bot Heroes have had their AI reworked and improved from the ground up (Sorceress, War Mage, Hogarth, and Ivy).
- Bot difficulty levels, from one star to four star, have all been re-balanced.
- Offensive and Defensive heroes will now claim lanes and divide their efforts when pushing and defending.
- Defensive bots will split their traps among both lanes if the second war camp is opened.
- Defensive bots will value their lives more than before.
- Offensive bots will now value their lives more and be much more cognizant of when they are outnumbered or in danger from a rift or guardian. They will prioritize escorting their minions much more and prioritize game objectives more often than player kills.
- Bots no longer act as solo operatives and can communicate with each other. They will actively seek to help other bots and players.
- Bots know how to use the new barriers and can rebuild broken barriers. (Watch out.)
- Bots will farm caches when no threats are around them.
- Ranged bots are no longer as accurate as before. They have a greater chance to miss when a player is attempting to dodge or move away.
- Ranged bots now have a range limit on their primary fire and prefer to fight at closer distances.
- Bots will obey the new fog of war system and pursue you if you try to move out of line of sight, which makes for very interesting gameplay.
- Bots are more aware of their current mana pool and will not recklessly spam abilities, leaving them perma-OOM.
- Bots can now spawn in Survival mode games with a single life. They will hunt players when no minions exist to escort.
- Fixed several targeting issues with bot right click abilities missing by a wide margin or firing before the bot turns to their target
- Bots now require line of sight on a pick up before they decide to pursue it or know it exists.
- Bots will evaluate how threatening the area is around them when deciding whether to pursue a pickup. Bots will no longer suicide into a guardian or rift in order to pick up the drop from a dead player or pillage.
- A bot will no longer ignore an enemy player that is damaging them when they are trying to place a trap or play a wave card.
- All bot decks have been reviewed and re-balanced. Each bot deck has had the cards and traps replaced where needed.
Oziel, The Soul Thief
2.4 introduces a new hero.
Developer Commentary:If you’ve been with the beta for a while, you might expect 2.4’s Oziel to be the Ancestor you once (briefly) knew and loved. His roots are there, but Oziel is definitely a different hero and definitely has a more serious personality. Overall, his power is heavily dependent on Soul Harvest, so finding ways to collect more stacks is core to his use. He tends to be weaker in the early game but becomes a powerhouse late (if you’re doing a good job harvesting those souls).
- Soul Harvest (passive): Any time any minion (allied or enemy) or hero dies near Oziel, he gains soul stacks, one per minion and 10 per hero. Stacks increase his maximum mana.
- Vampiric Burst (primary): Oziel’s main attack heals him with life he steals from opponents. This scales with his maximum mana. (Deals 3 + 7% of max mana and returns 50% lifesteal.)
- Wraith Surge (secondary): Oziel launches a spirit that deals arcane damage. Upon a successful hit, Oziel’s next use of Wraith Surge within seven seconds costs more mana and does amplified damage. (Deals 50 damage + 20 per use. Mana is a base cost of 40 and increases 50% per use. 5s cooldown. Damage scaling for successive hits resets to zero if the ability does not hit again within 7s.)
- Desecrated Ground (Q): Oziel smashes a jar of souls on the ground, creating an area in which enemies are slowed and damaged. Effects scale with his maximum mana. Deaths that happen within the area of Desecrated Ground always reward Oziel souls, regardless of his proximity to the deaths. (Deals 10 DPS for 8s. Slows by 16% at 0 stacks and scales to 50% at 300 stacks. 20s cooldown.)
- Haunting Spirits (E): Oziel sends a lost soul to haunt nearby enemy heroes. Haunted heroes do 30% less damage. If Oziel damages a haunted player, the soul bursts and deals arcane damage around the haunted player, the amount increasing with Oziel’s maximum mana. (Deals 18 +30% of max mana in damage. 150s cooldown.)
- Essence Siphon (shift): Oziel converts his health to mana (2% of health to 4% of mana / second). Oziel can never kill himself with this ability.
- Note: Stacks above 200 are worth only 25% per stack.
Unchained Fortress for Survival Mode
Unchained Fortress is now available as a map for Survival mode.
Developer Commentary:Unchained Fortress is now available as a Survival mode map. It is designed to keep you and your teammates on your toes, requiring you to more frequently defend lanes together. It also seeks to make you think about your trap setup and to adjust this as the game develops. Enemy heroes play a large role, so be careful.
- Unchained Fortress is the default map for Survival mode play.
Wipes
There is an account wipe with 2.4.
Developer Commentary:Nobody likes account wipes and we appreciate the time players have contributed to the beta. However, there are some things we need to test, so we’re going to need to do some account wipes. It’s quite possible we will need more before we move to open beta.
After we get early leveling data with changes, we will likely run some accelerated XP events to allow players to quickly re-level.
- All accounts have been reset to level one.
- Wins and hero victories have also been reset.
- All gold has been refunded.
- Any cards (heroes, traps, etc) purchased with Skulls will be removed from your account.
- Items that were included in Founder packs will remain on your account.
- Promotional vanity skins (like PAX skins) will remain on your account.
Hero Changes
General
- Control effect reduction weavers are now 35% (were 50%).
- A large number of improvements have been made to core combat. Attacks and abilities should fire more consistently and provide better feedback.
- All hero cameras have been adjusted.
- You can no longer jump while using abilities that require you to stop while casting them.
- If you are stunned while cast an ability, the ability will be cancelled.
- The game no longer “bonks” if an ability fails because of lockout from another ability (it still bonks if the failure is the ability on cooldown or insufficient mana).
Cygnus
- Now moves at the same speed as the other heroes.
- Casting Rift Shard is interrupted if Cygnus takes damage.
- Rift shards now deal 20 damage (was 40) but attacks 3 minions (was 1).
- Radius at which minions will destroy the rift shard is much smaller.
- Primary attack damage reduced 15% to 43 (was 50).
- Chain lightning can now chain to four targets (was three).
Gabriella
- Devious Allure and By My Command have swapped positions on the command bar, making all Gabby players curse their muscle memory.
Maximillian
- Decoys now have no build time.
- Decoys have a placement limit of 10 per game. (Not 10 at a time, 10 total.)
- The Explosive Decoy weaver upgrade restores all 10 charges of a decoy.
Midnight
- Vital Strike now deals 17% of maximum health (was 20%).
Smolder
- Incinerate now deals 10% of maximum health (was 15%).
- Dragon’s Breath no longer prevents other abilities after use.
Stinkeye
- Health of both totems scales better with game time.
Map Changes
Cliffside Clash
- Neutral objective areas are larger, better support team fights.
- Neutral objectives now have environmental effects that show progress of capture.
- The old war camps now have a new, more rift-ish appearance.
- Left side guardian area, closest to rift, has been redesigned to allow for more room and more interesting trap arrangements.
- The connection between the right side lanes is no longer a one-way, allowing you to leap down from your right side offensive lane into your right side defensive but not vice versa. The path allowing free movement between the two is back.
Trap Changes
General
- A number of traps have received new art looks and names. The Cursed Ballista is now the Dragon’s Lance, the Charged Wall Blades are now the Wall Charger, and the Fire Arrow Wall is now the Spitfire Wall.
- Dragon’s Lance: 1025 cost ceiling ballista. 1s targeting laser warning. Does 73 damage plus a 4s arcane debuff. 4s refire.
- Spitfire Wall: 1000 cost, 1x1 wall trap. Each projectile that strikes does 10 damage and adds a 23 DPS fire DOT for 4.2s.
- Wall Charger: 1250 cost, 1x1 wall trap. Does 200 lightning damage. 9.5s cooldown.
- Hero Seeker Ballista and Hero Seeker Arrow Wall projectile speed increased slightly.
- Hero Seeker traps do less damage in the late game.
Physics Traps
- Physics traps are making their return. The Haymaker, Flip Trap, Push Trap, Spike Wall, Boom Barrel, and Boom Barrel Dispenser have been added.
- These traps can only be used in Survival mode games.
- These traps are currently only available in chests (Oak or Iron).
- Boom Barrel Dispenser: 1000 cost, 1x1 wall trap. If there isn’t a barrel, it will spawn one every 7s.
- Boom Barrel: 200 cost, 100 health, does 100 damage in a radius of around one trap on detonation.
- Flip Trap: 600 cost, 1x1 floor trap. Does 120 damage to thrown minions. Does not throw heavy minions. 13s cooldown.
- Haymaker: 1500 cost, 1x1 ceiling trap. Drops down on activation and stays active for 4s, doing 65 DPS to minions caught in it. 9s cooldown.
- Spike Wall: 1500 cost, 1x1.5 wall trap. Does 90 damage. 7s cooldown time.
Boulder Chute
- Damage adjusted to improve effects from use on high ceilings.
Dragon’s Lance
- Improvements to firing angles.
Shock Zapper
- Fixed mentions of this as Tesla Coil.
Web Spinner
- Now has a range of 3 (was 1.5).
- Slow effect decreased to 25% with a 2 second duration.
Minion Changes
General
- Bosses that split into sub-bosses (like the Earth Lord) now correctly inherit damage and health scaling based on game time.
Firelings
- No longer damage allies.
- Health reduced by 50% to 120 (was 240).
Light Orcs
- Health changed to 150 (was 140).
Light Soldiers
- Health changed to 185 (was 190).
Gear Changes
Teleport Ring
- Cooldown changed to 105s (was 0s).
Flame Bracer
- Cooldown increased to 60s (was 20s).
Reward and Matchmaking Changes
Co-op Games
- Co-op Siege games no longer scale rewards based on bots difficulty.
- Players with new accounts will now begin against easy bots instead of normal level bots.
Custom Games
- Custom games currently give no rewards. (Note that Survival mode games use their own reward schema, so players will still get rewards from custom Survival games.)
Daily First Win
- This has been removed. Daily first win is simply a quest and does not need to be distinct from that. As the quest system is fleshed out, daily first win will be included there.
Team Matching
- Additional MMR for teams now correctly applied. (We add additional MMR when players queue as a team to account for the advantage of teamwork. The amount we were adding was incorrect.)
Dashboard Changes
- As new modes are added to the game, we’re trying to adopt better terms for talking about these. We are calling the PvP game mode “Siege” and the PvE mode “Survival.” (Endless is a level of the Survival mode, not a mode itself.) You’ll see these used in the dash.
- Deck creation is now divided into Siege and Survival decks. Decks are only valid for the corresponding game mode.
- A new post-game sequence has been added. Post-game sequences can also different based on the item rewarded.
- Quest progress is now correctly shown on dash.
- (Note that new players are rewarded 500 skulls during the first three level ups. In 2.4, these skulls will incorrectly be reported as a chest reward in the post-game.)
- When you log in, you will now see a pop-up summary showing how close you are to your next rewards.
UI Changes
- The main command bar is has been revised.
- Primary and secondary attacks are now shown separately.
- A timer bar now appears when players are stunned or immobilized.
- The bottom right of the screen now shows the war camp status. The icon for each war camp fills to show how close the camp is to leveling. Animated arrows over the icon indicate that leadership is currently being earned for that camp. Three card icons are shown beneath each war camp icon. When green the minion cards in the camp are of the war camp’s current level, when red they are below the war camp’s current level.
- A timer now appears when your team can play a boss, showing how much time you left to do so.
- The neutral objective icons on the minimap have been improved.
Survival Mode Changes
- The Unchained meter is no longer automatic. It is now activated by each player individually. The UI shows when a teammate has activated their unchained. Unchained is more powerful when teammates use it together.
- A leaderboard has been added for Unchained Fortress.
- Leaderboards now support sorting by top wave and top score.
- Leaderboards now offer a “my friends” view if you are logged in.
@SixOkay
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
Post edited by SixOkay on
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Comments
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
Was Warmage's decoy spam at late game stalling the game too much before? How does the change feel in 2.4 playtest as opposed to his old 2.2/2.3 decoy limit?
I do not like disposable traps having limits on how many can be placed per game. How many at a time, yes, but not how many per game. I don't know if you guys took Endless mode into account when making this change, but it's huge nerf War Mage in Endless mode.
It is weird. The weaver restoring the charges is also counterproductive to what the limit is trying to accomplish. The limit of 10 per game makes it so you have to carefully choose when you put them down, but since the weaver restores the 10 charges you have to put them down right at that moment since they are going to get restored back up to 10 charges.
So, are Hero Bots replacing Boss Bots? Are they supplementing?
Also, why are the new gate mechanics being left out of Survival mode?
-R
Robot Entertainment | Marketing Manager
We swapped the skills on Gabriella because directional skills feel more usable on the mouse.
We believe the new barrier system is both deeper and easier to use. Deciding when to repair a gate is a more difficult choice and trapping people is no longer trivialized.
Robot Entertainment | Lead Balance Designer
Our internal playtest group discovered some degenerate strategies regarding decoys that were resulting in games with 2 Maximilians lasting upwards of 45 minutes or reaching Final Wave. It was a great strategy that allowed teams to win consistently which then makes it required to have Maximilian to compete. This is never a good place to be and we do not want long games so we needed to make a change. The core of the strategy was entirely the decoys being infinite quantity. This is why we put a maximum number of placements on them. The weaver upgrade refreshing your "inventory" of them gave this already underperforming weaver more value as it was a really bad choice if you had already used a bunch of your decoys. Also, since it is unlocks later in the game and is not always going to be chosen we are confident that the additional quantity it provides won't create the situations we were seeing in playtest. (@StarPilot: Your suggestion of making it cost more with each placement is an interesting one that we will definitely keep in mind as we see how the 2.4 change affects Max in the wild. Thanks!)
On swapping Gabriella's abilities:
Since the left and right click abilities are part of a hero's weapon I want the abilities to feel like they are coming from the hero's weapon. In Gabriella's case she is using her wand to create the shockwave of By My Command, whereas her Devious Allure is clearly a spell that she can inherently do with her...devious allure. By swapping these new players should be able to more easily mentally map the abilities to the weapon. Your mouse is your weapon. That doesn't mean that abilities won't also use a hero's weapon too, but we want to have things that come from the weapon to be on the mouse where possible. This was actually a change that I wanted to make when phase 2 rolled out, but we couldn't because we would have had to redo the tutorials which we had no time for. Since this patch essentially nuked the tutorials from orbit (it's the only way to be sure) there was an opportunity to make the change. Sorry to screw up your habits! Gabriella is one of my favorites and it has been breaking my brain as well but in the long run it should be more intuitive for new players.
@TillingSaturn
On "large number of combat changes...":
We fixed a lot of bugs with timings on lockouts and cooldowns and other issues with our ability queuing system that should result in more responsive and reliable use of the abilities. There are still a lot lurking out there but giving the details of each individual change was not going to mean much to anyone. The long and the short is that there should be less failures for apparently no reason and things should fire off when you clicked more reliably. (Still not perfect mind you, but a lot of fixes nevertheless.)
@Rys4k
On Barriers being left out of survival:
This was simply a time thing. By the time we were confident in the Barriers in the PvP game we didn't want to add a lot of upheaval to Survival without having time to test them in that mode. The plan moving forward will be to unify those designs and have the new Barriers in Survival as well barring any unforeseen consequence.
On Gates vs Barriers:
OMG the barriers are soooooooo much better than the old gates in my opinion. The streamlining of the game that they have brought to get players to focus on the fun parts of the game instead of the mindless annoyances of Gate maintenance are marked. The ability to not have to open and close gates every few seconds on defense just to navigate the map is liberating. "Gating" an opponent now feels like you earned it instead of it being a trivially easy to achieve tactic with no counterplay. Don't underestimate the potential strategies of being able to rebuild barriers, something that the game did not have before. There were many a shout of joy in the office during playtests of "These new gates are the best thing ever." Please reserve judgement until you have played a few games with them.
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The big 4 new things in this patch are:
- Barriers
- Removal of Leadership
- Fog of War
- Pillage
These 4 features have, in my opinion, completely changed the game for the better. They are all working together to create a much more dynamic, unpredictable, focused, and ultimately enjoyable version of OMDU. I really hope you guys like the changes as I think the game has made another huge step towards awesomeness with this patch.
Thanks for all of your passion for our game and keep the feedback coming!
Paul
So are there leveled trait cards and if so are their account level restrictions?
Orcs are our friends and we must learn to not kill on site.
I mean sure there are different hero compositions and trap setups, but the meta just gets stuck on one strategy for a map and then doesn't move. I wager the meta here could almost compare to laddering in Hearthstone.
Again, exciting stuff and look forward to testing.
- B.B. 1984
Robot Entertainment | Lead Balance Designer
* I like that influence is being reworked, but...
To cap it into 2 players maximum makes it that the 3rd is able to roam gank the enemy offense, especially now that there is no line of sight - wich I`m not so sure it`s really a good change or not.
Also, if one of the offense gets killed early or even before the wave spawns, they`ll not gonna be loosing extra influence.
I`d just make influence to escalate worse with more people, but not just cap it.
* I really like the war camps auto-opening and leveling now - you won`t have to give up a effective push to be able to level the camp before the next wave;
you also won`t be able to open it at the last second and place the cards (sometimes people would get a insta lv 2 camp on the last 5 seconds so the defense wouldn`t be prepared in time).
The minions cards coasting coins sounds interesting - easier for defenders to place their cards in detriment of their own defenses if they think they are able to hold it, so the offense can place the support traps earlier (such as creb-pads). Now more than before, you`ll need good minion cards even if you are defending.
* Pillage - Shoot crates get goodies ! You`ll only be able to get them if you subjugate the defense, so you can still get something even if the wave gots wiped before the guardian. You can also be ganked if you try to get them in the wrong moment now that there is no LOS.
* LOS - Me gusta, pero, feels to me that it will bring some new problems, especially now that you have influence capped to 2 offense maximum, as I explained above. Midnight is also gonna be a bigger bully now.
So, although I like the change, I think some stuff are gonna be re-worked on the next patch to deal with the new issues.
(Some of the changes I`d suggest is to make a no LOS zone inside the killboxes or on the main castle. Maybe a binocular ballista utility trap; and guardians with true sight, to counter some of Midnight`s routes).
* Gate changes - "New players having problems on pressing a key to open them? Make them be fool-safe, fixed !"
I say the gates were just perfect the way they were before: you are awarded by a smart use and control of them; and punished by bad usage. When they were gone, they were gone; not anymore...
I get that you guys want to make the game as noob-firendlly as possible but seriouslly, if that hurts good moves and forgives bad ones, then you should think twice before implementing. I really hope this is gonna be reverted on the next patch, or even better, don`t even make that change to begin with (I know it`s too late now but still...).
___
Last considerations:
- Cygnus not getting a buff / better weaver on his faking death
- Do a new re-work on Max`s decoys, those changes seems really weired.
- Control effect reduction weavers are now 35% (were 50%)
- Attacks and abilities should fire more consistently and provide better feedback x You can no longer jump while using abilities... Not being able to use while jumping is worse, not better.
- If you are stunned while cast an ability, the ability will be cancelled - You got it, good job Brock
- No movement speed buffs - I was so confident that you guys were goind to change it on this patch, maybe on the next one
Overall nice patch, hope you guys are able to fix / undo the bad changes from this patch on the next one.
Keep up the good job and thanks for reading.
Gibi ur moni or i report u...