If there is one issue that overall is the most heavily discussed by our forum community, it is competitive balance. This is a normal development – if you look at the forums of almost any online game you will see similar discussions and topics. The people who are active in forums tend to be those that have a lot invested in the game, who by extension are often those who take the game seriously. Probably the majority of forum posters first joined in order to complain about something or argue about game balance – it is natural that people who are happy with the status quo don’t bother to get on a forum and post about it. But because the members of the active community are united in this focus, a lot of thought about other aspects of the game tends to get ignored or shoved aside; most notably the concept of playing casually being a goal worthy of attention in itself.

A lot of players will look at a rune like the Shock Toad or Barbarian Guardian and immediately think “shoebox”, and in terms of dedicated competition they would be right. But for every player who approaches the game in that way there is also at least one who sees the Shock Toad and thinks “I could make a fun deck with this rune”. By its nature, competitive play focuses on a small percentage of the game, both player-wise and rune-wise, which is something that should not be forgotten. Only around the top 500 players play exclusively in the realm of Poxnora where using a shoebox rune will significantly lower your chances of winning. The rest operate in a world of “suboptimal” decks and single player battles, and are not necessarily worse off for it.

Also important to consider is that as long as there is a limited rune dock size, there will be a limited number of runes that are considered competition-worthy. If 40 new super strong runes came out in one expansion, then they would have nowhere to go except to replace 40 old super strong runes. Of course, the theoretical exception to this rule is multiple theme decks per faction. But in the general case either one theme or a mix of themes that uses certain key runes from both while preserving parts of the original synergy will be clearly superior over the others, and thus will be the only deck played competitively – it is simply natural. The end result of this is that every rune released cannot be intended to rock the metagame – some runes must be released with the knowledge that they will not be the best of the best, but that some players somewhere will use them in a fight and enjoy it.

In short, while balance is important it is not the only consideration of note in the game. A key example of this is the Forsaken Wastes faction. Over the progression of the game, FW had evolved to the point where a fairly large portion of the playerbase simply disliked the faction, regardless of how powerful it was – it had become something of a griefing faction, using tactics that were considered “annoying” by players . The thing about games is, if people are not finding them fun then something needs a change – and in this case, despite not being a problem balance-wise, Forsaken Wastes needed a change. The champion runes that FW is getting in Rise of Serkan reflect this change, and I think both Forsaken players and others will be pleasantly surprised by them.

So then, which of the two is more modes of play is more important? In truth, neither – what is important is that you have fun with the game. As a player I remember my first deck had a motley assortment of runes, notably including a Nefari Dragon and Ice Dragon, both of which were not at all competitive at the time. I had the dragons in the deck because I thought they looked cool, and I had a lot of fun playing with that deck win or lose. Later on I went on to play a number of ranking decks, and had fun with those too, though in a different way – it’s enjoyable to match your ingenuity in deck building against the best others can offer. In conclusion, if you find yourself stressing over competitive play too much, remember that you do have options – no one is forcing you to play that way. You should seek out what works for you, and let others do the same.

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Kaervas Associate Game Designer

Well, its been quite a while since we had a simple deck to show off here. This week I’m going to take a break from the more general discussions to share another interesting build with you all.
Acid Elemental x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 55 hp, Acid Bomb 3 - 91 Nora

Angel of Restoration x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 46 hp, Aerial Supremacy - 99 Nora

Elder Garu x2
Upgrades: 12 speed, 66 hp - 93 Nora

Krikkinwing x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 55 hp, Poison 2 - 91 Nora

Elven Archer x2
Upgrades: 10 damage, 40 hp - 70 Nora

Skeezick Cannoneer x2
Upgrades: 8 speed, 38 hp - 59 Nora

Snake Charmer x2
Upgrades: 40 hp, Drive - 58 Nora

Varu Howler x2
Upgrades: 45 hp - 49 Nora

Acid Dragoleech
Upgrades: 8 speed, 36 hp - 51 Nora

Flame Dragoleech
Upgrades: 8 speed, 36 hp - 51 Nora

Elven Artisan
Upgrades: 38 hp, Nora Miner 2 - 53 Nora

Draconic Benediction x2
Firestorm x2
Grimlic’s Mirror x2
Herbal Antidote
Nature’s Wrath
Taint
Elite Blade x2

This deck focuses around a theme of super champions. The K’thir Forest bonus, Elite Blade, and Sundered Lands bonus all work incredibly well together on super champions to create very lethal, very resilient units. We’re able to include a number of different options as the focus for our superchamp theme to cover different situations and still be fairly confident that they won’t be less effective in a general battle, as the two factions have a number of units that function quite admirably at high costs. Underlying this basic idea is a strong core of cheap, effective champions, who are run at super low cost to take advantage of the way the K’thir forest bonus lowers the minimum cost necessary for effective champions. Finally, incredibly cheap leeches and a miner give us options to combat opposing nora generation.

The 4 super champions, the Angels, Elementals, Elder Garu and Krikkinwings, are all excellent targets for the elite blade. Which one you choose to use your mirrors and blades on depends on the situation and the opponent. In general, the Elder Garu is the most basic solid bet - 13 speed and pummel gives him huge threat range, and with a blade equipped he has 76 hp and 30 defense. With those stats, the elder can rip through most enemies. The Angel is a better choice for longer matches where you can rely on intensify, as she will be more offensively useful with 6 range once intensified - a defensive powerhouse too, with 40 defense against nonflyers. She also serves as your primary healer, which is very useful with such high defense champions. The Krikkinwing is excellent against FS, SL and IS - for his poison and drown immunity against the former, and his DoT, an AoE and defense debuff against the latter two. A krikkin with the blade is essentially a range 1-4 champion thanks to mobility. Finally, the acid elemental is best used in early game conflicts where his deflect is key or against masses of opponents for his global damage - he is flexible enough to be support for the others in almost any situation, though he does the least damage of them all directly.

The supporting cast of champions is fairly simple and self explanatory. The Elven Archers and Skeezick Cannoneers provide cheap, long range fire - with low speed they will not normally win a stand off battle, though Draconic Benediction helps with that, and are best used early on as support to an Elite Bladed unit. They are fairly expendable, and often times the enemy will make the mistake of treating them as if they were as valuable to you as their more expensive, normally built full faction cousins. The Varu Howlers are super cheap and quite damaging for their cost, and are your only cheap melee option aside from snakes. The snake charmers provide you with a bit of a long game and some additional melee support, as well as providing drive to your super champions, which can make quite a difference. The leeches are kept dirt cheap purposefully, so that they are no loss in an average game and easy to deploy. Generally, you want to keep them safe and force the opponent to spend resources on them when facing nora generation, otherwise they are basically short range, expendable units. The Artisan provides some nora generation as well as shatter (mostly for enemy negative equipment) and craft, which is very useful in resetting the cooldowns on your Elite Blades.

Nonchampion support is simple for the most part. Standard SL spell lineup of 2x Draconic Benediction and 2x Firestorm, giving a solid damaging spell base and the power of DB. Taint is the only odd man out there, being used specifically for synergies with the powerful Elite Blade (on a KF angel it can render her nigh-unkillable, with 40 defense and 11 hp healing/turn). Herbal Antidote stops the opponent from stonewalling your superchamp, and is something of a rarity these days and as such can throw opponents off. Nature’s Wrath gets the nod more for the power of defense reduction than simply AoE killing power, though that is important as well. The Grimlic’s Mirrors are one of the keys to your superchamp strategy, allowing you to get more of the appropriate high cost unit on the field for cheaper, though clones cannot equip the blades properly. Finally, the Elite Blades are the keystone of the strategy, and are used with your 8 high cost units to acheive powerful results.

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Kaervas Associate Game Designer

This week we’re going to finish up the deck we’ve been working on with a selection of spells, relics and equipment. While you will almost always have more champions than spells, spells are very important for a successful battlegroup for one simple reason: they provide immediate benefit. Without a strong selection of spells, it is almost impossible to carry a fight into an enemy position, and the defender will almost always win. Relics are usually useful for providing a global benefit that otherwise is not available to your champions, like nora generation or healing reduction. Equipment provides more lasting but usually weaker buffs and debuffs than spells and can be destroyed.

So, for our purposes, we’re going to look at our options for our FW skeleton deck. The first thing you want when making a full faction deck, if you have one, is the warbanner. Warbanners provide solid stat bonuses at a cheap cost, and over the course of the game their refund effect really adds up. The warbanner is also very useful as a font holder or contester, being one of the cheapest and most hp efficient relics. So a warbanner goes in. Next we want to look at spells, which are generally more important than relics or equipment. It can be pretty tough to judge the usefulness of spells, which have wildly varied effects. Generally, area effect damage spells, ap granting spells, spells that cleanse/heal and spells that summon units are all useful.

Looking through the list, FW’s only real area effect damage spells are Hungry Dead and Chain Lightning. We’re going to want at least 1 of those for finishing off champions, and Hungry Dead also offers us tactical options, so for now we will include 1x Hungry Dead. Next, looking for ap generation we see Throw Bones and Mobilization - Throw Bones requires us to sacrifice a champion and provides less benefit, so obviously Mobilization is better - indeed it is one of the best spells in the game. So in go 2 Mobilizations. Next spells that cleanse - none of those in wrath factions. Finally, we come to spells that summon units - the most notable one in FW is Dark Rising, which summons a number of skeletons. Seems to fit our theme perfectly, and works really well in the deck too - it will ramp up our Tomb Lord damage and get boosted as well. So in goes 2x Dark Rising.

We’ve now got a pretty solid base of spells. Now this next part is pretty hard to generalize - we need to go through and fill the rest of the spell/relic/equipment slots with runes that are useful and effective. Most of selecting these runes is experience and trial and error, honestly. You can often tell which runes are a waste of time for a competetive deck, but there are a lot of decently playable options in any faction to pick from even throwing out the less useful ones. In general its best to look for effects that fit the deck you are making, and those that are considered conventional strengths of the faction you are playing. Below I’m going to list the ones I chose to finish out our list and the reasons why.

First for me is the spell Domination. Domination allows you to control an enemy unit for 1 turn, and offers a ton of tactical options - you can use it to waste enemy abilities, move them out of position at a crucial point, run them into cliffs or negative terrain, and just generally play havoc with your opponent. I try to include at least 1 Domination in any FW group I play. Next is Essence Drain - perhaps the highest single target damage spell in the game, and supremely effective for allowing unexpected kills. It is wise to include an Essence Drain in most FW armies as well. Following that, to round out our spell selection I’ve chosen Reanimate - this spell is very useful if you have a number of high cost champions, and in a deck that relies so heavily on a Tomb Lord being alive, having it to provide you with an effective 3rd deploy for your Lords is excellent.

As far as Relics go, we have a few solid options. One that is vital is the Unholy Tomb, the premiere form of nora generation for FW. The Tomb provides a massive advantage in long games or games against masses of enemies, like the moga of Shattered Peaks. It can easily generate 10-12 nora per turn in an average game, and the constant chipping away at hp is not to be ignored - it can mean the difference between survival and death of enemy units. Given the importance of the Tomb, it is possible to run 2 despite the fact that they do not stack to increase your chances of drawing it early - but since we are tight for slots here I’m going to only include 1. The other generally useful relic for FW is the Tome of Hate. The Tome provides the best shrine healing in the game, but does not work on avatars. Since we aren’t too heavy on shrine damage here, we’ll forgo the Tome and rely on Transfiguring to Avatar form to heal our shrine.

Finally, equipment. FW has a few useful equips - the Crown of Corruption, Sacrificial Dagger and Cursed Blades all stand out as notably effective. In this case we have many useful offensive effects and no way to debuff yet, so Cursed Blades are an excellent choice - they are cheap and highly debilitating to otherwise damaging champions, especially those that may receive beneficial enemy equipment. Into our deck goes 2 Cursed Blades, and with that we now have a full 30 runes! The deck has come a long way from a simple concept, and is now fully ready to play. Below I’ll list the full build (note that the recent patch has adjusted some of the champion builds).

Tomb Lord x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 49 hp, Summon Undead 2, Boost: Skeleton 3 - 94 Nora
Grekin x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 57 hp - 64 Nora
Animated Blade x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 50 hp, Rend 1 - 78 Nora
Bone Elemental x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 60 hp - 74 Nora
Bonemauler x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 54 hp, Vulnerability: Magical, Rend 3, Multiattack 1 - 74 Nora
Crossbone x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 40 hp, Poison 3 - 69 Nora
Skeletal Berserker x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 44 hp, Short Lived 2, Multiattack 1 - 48 Nora
Skeletal Raider x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 45 hp - 71 Nora
Spectral Emissary x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 48 hp - 79 Nora
Xulos, Undead Sage x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 48 hp - 100 Nora
Lich King x1
Upgrades: 11 speed, 11 damage, 45 hp, Teleport 1 - 100 Nora
Dead Fairy x1
Upgrades: 11 speed, 10 damage, 40 hp - 89 Nora

Mobilization x2
Dark Rising x2
Domination
Essence Drain
Hungry Dead
Reanimation
Cursed Blades x2
Unholy Tomb
Elsarin Vex

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer

Hey everyone, it’s Elrac. I’ve been asked to poke my head out of my cave and do one of these here ‘blog posts’. I figured I’d give everyone a glimpse into how we go about designing and implementing general features in Poxnora. Now, I’m not talking about in game stuff like abilities, and effects, that’s Slugbait’s department. No, I’m talking about features that are in the lobby, like the campaign windows, the chat system, observing games.

Step 1, Coming up with an idea.
The first step for anything is to come up with an idea for it. Our game designers are constantly trying to think of new and interesting ideas for us to do with our game. After they have come up with ideas of what they want in an expansion, the programmers sit down and discuss how we are going to implement the ideas, or if they are even feasible. From this we have a game plan for how we are going to attack the next expansion.

Step 2, Refining the design.
Often the features I work on involve some sort of UI. The next step we take is for an artist to look at the design and draw a mock-up of the screen or screens involved with the feature. After the initial mock-up is done, I usually check it over and give suggestions on what is needed to make it work from a technical standpoint. Also I let the artist know what UI elements I don’t have. For instance, when they made a row of special buttons for the top of the game list I let them know that we don’t have the font that they had used in the buttons, so I would need them to give me each of the whole buttons, including the text and picture.

Step 3, Putting it all together.
After the design has been refined, the mock-up has been made, and the pieces cut, I put it all together. I usually start this process with the first thing the user will see. In the case of Ranked Match, this was the button at the top of the lobby. At this point we have a pretty decent library of ui elements, so all I needed to do to place this button was go to the place in code where the lobby is set up and add a PoxButton. To find the position, I measure the mock-up with a pixel ruler, and I know what the UI elements are supposed to do from the meetings in step one. While setting up the UI I also make the necessary changes to the server to support it. Sometimes this is as simple as finding a number, like how many people are online, and sending it to the client. Often, though, it is more complex, like checking the Ranked Match queue and trying to find a match.

Step 4, Testing.
Contrary to popular belief, we test everything thoroughly before we release it. After the UI looks like the mock-up, and is functional, a copy of the game is put up on an internal server. When this is done the testers are notified of all the changes that were made and they get to work testing. If there are any problems, the testers let me know and I fix it. This cycle continues until there are no known issues. After the build is “blessed” by the testers it waits until the features are supposed to be pushed, either the next wednesday for small things, or the next expansion for large features. After a feature goes live all that is left for us to do with it is wait and see if there are any bugs reported.

So there you have it, how ideas become features in a nutshell. I hope that this was at least a little informative and wasn’t to long winded. I’ll see you all the next time something forces me out of my cave.

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Elrac Associate Programmer

Last week we described basic rules for upgrading champion’s stats to fit their role in a battle group. In this week’s blog, we’re going to apply that knowledge and work on picking an army of champions to go into our deck. We’re working with a skeleton theme deck, of which we have already selected and upgraded our core champions - Tomb Lords in this case. With that selected, we can work on filling out the rest of the Battlegroup with combat champions.

Since we have Tomb Lords and the deck is a skeleton, the first thing we want to look at is definitely all of the skeletons in Forsaken Wastes. Listing all of the skeletons aside from the Tomb Lords, we have:

* Animated Blade
* Bone Elemental
* Boneguard Infantry
* Bonemauler
* Broken Bones
* Crossbone
* Decayed Mercenary
* Elsari Mason
* Gravewatcher
* Grekin
* Skeezick Boneblade
* Skeletal Berserker
* Skeletal Raider
* Spectral Emissary
* Toll-Taker
* Xulos, Undead Sage

Now, deciding what to use from a list like this can be tricky. The most valuable tool in deciding what champions to use is play experience - it gives you a grasp on which units are generally effective and which are not. If you aren’t sure what runes are best or haven’t played much, the best way to determine is to compare a given rune to those that you know are good, or failing that, to all the alternatives. To provide an example, let’s look through this list and pick a solid, generic melee fighter with no frills for our deck.

There are a lot of alternatives here - a good number of the runes listed are simple melee runes.

* Boneguard Infantry
* Broken Bones
* Decayed Mercenary
* Grekin
* Skeezick Boneblade

To save time, I’m going to cut out those that are just not going to cut it - individual comparisons with the more worthy runes could be done to show why the ones cut have better alternatives, but for the sake of brevity I’m not going to write those out here. So now we’re looking at a straight comparison:

* Decayed Mercenary
* Grekin

Now, the Decayed Mercenary and Grekin are very similar, both filling the role of a cheap unit to take and absorb some damage. Both are usually upgraded to 10 speed (we use 10 speed in this case because our Tomb Lords grant +1, so that they operate as at least 9 speeders normally and as 11 speeders with a Lord out) and +6 hp, and both have the same cool down. The Grekin has 13 more hp and some useful offensive abilities for 4 nora more, while the Mercenary has a superior defensive ability (Block) and 1 more damage. 13 hp is almost always going to be superior to Block 1, so the Grekin has the edge in both defense and offense, so the Grekin is the winner here even with a slightly higher cost.

Now that we’ve decided among the many general melee units, most of the units left have more specific abilities and roles. So let’s start from the top of the main list and work our way down. First, we have the Animated Blade - the blade is the antiequipment skeleton, and also offers decent offensive ability, so we’ll include one with 10 speed, +6 hp and Rend 1 (DOT abilities are very effective and should be upgraded almost every time). Bone Elementals are next - you definitely want 2 Bone Elementals. Not only are they fairly cost effective if you look at their stats and abilities in comparison to our general beater, the Grekin, but they also have one of the best abilities in the game, Bone Fracture, which generates very solid skeleton summons when the Elemental is hit normally. You should definitely run 2 Bone Elementals in a skeleton deck if you can, they are the best rune in the deck after the Tomb Lords - my build for the Elementals is 10 speed, +6 hp (some people prefer Charge 3 as well, but I find it a waste of nora on something that doesn’t need to move around fast to be effective).

Now we come to the Bonemauler, which is very strong offensively - the build I prefer once again makes use of 10 speed, and also has +12 hp and the Multiattack 1, Vulnerability: Magical and Rend 3 upgrades, putting him at 79. He is probably worth including as an offensive option against high defense Ironfist decks and to complement our other more defensive melee. After the ‘Mauler’ is the Crossbone, which is the most solid ranged skeleton available - fairly cheap, tough and decently damaging under Boost, and generally useful due to the power of Poison 3 at range 5. You should definitely run 2 Crossbones - I use a build with 10 speed, +6 hp and Poison 3, clocking in neatly at 69. A couple Crossbones at that build will make a fine base for your ranged combat ability. Following the Crossbone on the list of remaining runes is the Elsari Mason, a hybrid damage dealer/shrine healer. Shrine healing is not a big issue for a skeleton deck, and we have plenty of melee options available, so the Mason remains on the back burner for now - we can revist him if we lack runes at the end.

Having gone through about half the list, our deck now looks like this:

Tomb Lord x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 45 hp, Summon Undead 3, Boost: Skeleton 3 - 93 Nora
Grekin x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 57 hp - 64 Nora
Animated Blade x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 38 hp, Rend 1 - 78 Nora
Bone Elemental x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 60 hp - 74 Nora
Bonemauler x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 54 hp, Vulnerability: Magical, Rend 3, Multiattack 1 - 74 Nora
Crossbone x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 40 hp, Poison 3 - 69 Nora

It is starting to come together into a definite working deck. Now next we are looking at the Gravewatcher - essentially a walking reanimate spell. While reanimation is nice in a deck that focuses on a single rune like Tomb Lords, he is not a combat champ, so for now we will leave him out and possibly look at him again later when we are considering spells, relics and equipment as an alternative to the Reanimate spell. Following him is the Skeletal Berserker - as a Short Lived rune, the Berserker is pretty cheap and powerful, but comes into play with only up to 5 rounds to act. 5 Rounds is usually more than enough though, and the Berserker is so cost effective under boost (doing a base of 16 damage!) that it is very advisable to play 2 - I prefer Multiattack 1, +6 hp and Short Lived 2 for 48 nora - Multiattack 1 offsets the Berserker penalty, and Short Lived 2 is necessary to get offensive use out of the rune. Following the Berserker is the Skeletal Raider, a decent champ mainly good for his massive hp through dropping a Decayed Mercenary and Detection 3. He is worth including for the detection and as a blocker in the early game - with the basic build of 10 speed and +6 hp comboed with boost and a warbanner, his total hp is 105 for only 71 nora, which is not a bad deal at all.

Finally we are down to our last 3. The Spectral Emissary is a nice rune that gives some damage type flexibility and a bit of utility to the deck, bringing flight and stun. Since skeleton decks have no other disabling champions, I consider it worthwhile to include a standard Spectral Emissary, at 10 speed and +6 hp for 79 nora. Second to last we have the Toll-taker, who is a ranged magical champion with a useful signature ability. However, unfortunately for him his combat stats are mostly mediocre and Tariff does not carry him by itself, so it’s better to leave him out. Xulos is our final champion, and the Forsaken Wastes Hero. Given how huge his stats are while boosted, you definitely want a Xulos in any skeleton deck, and his Attack: Psychic and Death Touch are very useful as well in a deck with few damage types. For a skeleton deck, my opinion of the optimal build for Xulos is a standard 10 speed, +6hp build which puts him cleanly at 100.

Now we’ve gone through and added all our skeletons - all that is left in terms of champions is to consider if we want any nonskeleton units. Looking over our list, we are a bit light on ranged units - FW has two solid ranged units in the Lich King and the Dead Fairy that we could include. For this deck, I will include one of both - you could run two of one as well, but by running 1 of both I am playing to the cooldown strength of FW while also making better use of the Lich King’s Immortality ability, while having more options overall than running 2 of one. As far as builds go, as a Teleporting ranged unit the Lich King needs 11 speed to be able to teleport and attack on any given turn, and as a long ranged unit more damage is well worth it, so he runs 11 speed, 11 damage, Teleport 1 and +8 hp for a clean 100 nora. The Dead Fairy starts at 10 speed so we should definitely go to 11, and he has fairly low damage so +2 damage is a good choice here - leaving us with a standard build of 11 speed, 10 damage and 40 hp for 89 nora. At this point our deck has really taken shape, and we’ve now a complete champion force:

Tomb Lord x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 45 hp, Summon Undead 3, Boost: Skeleton 3 - 93 Nora
Grekin x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 57 hp - 64 Nora
Animated Blade x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 38 hp, Rend 1 - 78 Nora
Bone Elemental x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 60 hp - 74 Nora
Bonemauler x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 54 hp, Vulnerability: Magical, Rend 3, Multiattack 1 - 74 Nora
Crossbone x2
Upgrades: 10 speed, 40 hp, Poison 3 - 69 Nora
Skeletal Berserker x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 44 hp, Short Lived 2, Multiattack 1 - 48 Nora
Skeletal Raider x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 45 hp - 71 Nora
Spectral Emissary x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 48 hp - 79 Nora
Xulos, Undead Sage x1
Upgrades: 10 speed, 48 hp - 100 Nora
Lich King x1
Upgrades: 11 speed, 11 damage, 45 hp, Teleport 1 - 100 Nora
Dead Fairy x1
Upgrades: 11 speed, 10 damage, 40 hp - 89 Nora

Next week we’ll start wrapping up the deck with a look at the Relics, Spells and Equipment.

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer

Hey there Poxers, TheParagon here checking in! I am excited to be blogging today as this is my very first blog entry ever! I was having a little trouble thinking of what I wanted to blog about, so good ‘ol Hawkfain made the suggestion that I write about new, upcoming features that we are in the process of implementing for this new expansion. Since we’re half-way to the new expansion, I thought that this would be a good idea, and hopefully it will get you guys as excited about the new expansion as I am! So, grab a drink, sit back, and take a deep breath because some of these changes aren’t small ones.

1. Phase out older runes in ranked play

Gasp! What did TheParagon just say? OMG! That’s right, we’re gonna start phasing out the older runes. The biggest reason: I hate the Lich King. Can’t stand him. My champions have to equip binoculars in order to see him. Another reason: Pox Harbies. The rune everyone loves to hate, unless you own one, of course. Rather than tweaking stats of older runes, I thought “Well, why not just phase them out?” Personally, and I’m not just saying this because it was my idea, I think it’s a great idea. From a design standpoint it makes sense because now we won’t have to worry about how older runes play with the newer ones, and we can focus mainly on balance of the newer runes. The idea also makes sense in terms of finance because now players will have to buy the newer runes. Which, of course, means TheParagon can upgrade his 3-series bmw to the 5-series. Yeah baby.

2. 30 rune dock, with a twist…

So, rather than picking the 30 runes you are going to be playing with, how about picking 50 runes, and then having the 30 runes you play with randomly selected?! I know what you’re thinking, “Well, what if I get stuck with like 20 spells and 10 champs?” How about this - YOU choose 20 runes that are automatically put in your battlegroup, and the remaining 10 are randomly selected from the pool of 50? How does that sound? I also know what else you’re thinking, “But if we’re phasing out older runes, won’t it be harder to pick 50 runes from a single faction??” Well….this brings me to change #3.

3. Combine the 8 factions into 4!

Ta-da! Problem solved! By combining the 8 factions into 4, this will mean a larger selection for when you are creating your 50-rune pool. Don’t worry, the merging of factions will make sense. I hope. Most-likely there will be some sort of huge battle in the story that will nearly wipe out several factions - forcing them to team up with other factions of their respective alignment. We still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do with faction bonuses, and all that stuff, but the designers are furiously working to straighten out all those issues. Obviously the DoW system will need to be tweaked just a bit, but no one cares about DoW, so I don’t know.

4. Random - in more ways than one (maybe)

Even with the merging of the factions, we are still a little concerned that players will not like the amount of selection that they have. So, we are thinking about brining random battlegroups back. This is a big maybe. We’re not really sure if that’s a route we want to take. Also, we are strongly considering bringing the random factor back into gameplay! Lets be honest, who DOESN’T miss the old Sheoul Demon that had a 55% chance of Frightening you with his Horrific Aura?? Oh man, that brings me back. Remember when Shield of Darkness gave you that 55% chance of an attack against you missing? Shield of Darkness on a Fallen Hero FTW! And who doesn’t enjoy chanting “please miss, miss, miss, miss!” when your opponent was attacking your champions? I know I DO! Yes, I realize all the examples I just used are runes that will be phased out, but there are other runes that will step up in their place. Don’t you worry, young Poxer!

5. A couple changes not related to gameplay

No more bugs and troubleshooting forum. I’m gonna go ahead and just say it…..Thank God. Nothing depresses us programmers more than the dreaded Bugs and Troubleshooting forum. I mean, you’re sitting here, working hard, enjoying your day, when you decide “hey, I wonder what’s going on with the forums?” You check out General Chat because that’s where the party is happening. Same ‘ol, Same ‘ol….Couple hash threads, one or two egami threads that I almost delete, one or two more egami threads that I REALLY almost delete, and a few rune balance threads here and there. No big deal, right? And then you see it out of the corner of your eye….you don’t want to look because you’re scared, but you do want to look because you’re curious - Bugs and Troubleshooting. You moan and groan, and you’re seriously torn inside. You could just ignore it, but the guilt is like a bowling ball in your stomach that you just gotta poop out….no matter how painful. So you click on it, and BOOM! Blue screen of death. Seriously. It’s that bad. SO, why not get rid of it? Morale everywhere will be boosted, no doubt. The developers will go to the forums, and say “hey, no bugs, sweet.” The users will go to the forums and say “hey, no bugs, sweet.” Everyone wins, do you guys NOT SEE THAT??! Anyways, from now on, you’ll have to submit a support ticket to our wonderful support team anytime you have a bug. And as asdf described a couple weeks ago, the process may leave you pulling your hair, but hey, as long as I don’t have to see that Bugs and Troubleshooting forum, I’m happy. OH, and we’re gonna put a tax on the rune trader.

Well, guys, that’s all I have for now! I hope you will all leave some feedback on all the changes. What do you like? What do you dislike? No wait, scratch that. Only tell me what you like. Any post saying that you dislike something will be deleted and your account will be perma-banned. And any of your alts will be perma-banned. And any of your sibling’s accounts will be perma-banned. And any of your sibling’s alts will be perma-banned. And ANY of your mom and dad’s account WILL BE perma-banned.

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Happy April Fool’s Day,

TheParagon Associate Programmer