RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (Full Version)

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Therril Oreb -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/19/2016 18:48:23)

quote:

An Epicdule 2 on steam servers is a golden idea ! i support that and this would be better than the current ED am sure ... with loads of features and emotions battle animations mabe make it 3D or something ... that's my own opinion i don't know about others but am ready to spend tons of cash on it if it gets into the making ! will take time ? ill wait , i played this game since 2010 that's 6 years ago and wont hurt to wait a year or 2 to make it .

Machaar is right it would be just a waste of time to be back to a dying game ! you have a better chance of making a new version on it, i supported on steam cause simple that platform have more than 20 + million users daily active, I myself amm a steam user and daily active and i see how many are online at once and it never got below 1 million lol . dota 2 (the game i play) have more than 8 - 10 million players active , and with publicity some might try it and like it and play it who knows ... but just fix the balance issues and leave the rest to guest artist.


It is one of the possibilities. There are plans, but instead of leaving projects half finished, BioBeasts gets finished completely first.
With the experience gotten from this, EpicDuel can be reworked or something else could happen.

Know that the developers have not forgotten about ED at all. It is why they did the BioBeasts project.
So I understand the harsh words said here but do stay civil.



dfo99 -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/19/2016 20:15:49)

the war lbs was erased, lol, now their actually means nothing..



Cyber Dream -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/19/2016 20:36:58)

lol, seriously?



Gold Shock -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/19/2016 21:26:45)

Yes, the old leader boards that were their are completely gone. What a slap to the face. Don't even want to bother with this war now.



Buffy A. Summers -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 4:11:55)

I Thought I Would Chime In And Add My Thoughts.

I Am Ashamed And Shocked At All The Negativity Over The Now Returning And Frequent Wars Areas.

First Off, In Regards To The Prior War Area Leaderboards, Did You Honestly Expect Those To Remain Unchanged For Years?

They Were Not Promised To Be Permanent And At Some Point The War Cycle Would Renew And Return To Those Previous Areas.

Now As For The War Restart, I For One Am Thrilled At The Concept Of Battles Actually Having Meaning And Faction Importance On A Regular Basis Again.

One Of My Complaints Was The Stalled War, And All These Battles Not Earning Influence.

This Is A Great Thing To Have It Occur More Regularly Now, It Will Increase The Motivation For Faction Opportunities At Influence, World Domination And War Captures. Isn't That The Same Thing Many Of You Have Wanted?

It May Not Address Some Other Lingering Issues, But At Least It Gives Some Purpose Behind Exile/Legion Rivalry, Faction Competition And Players Earning Something (Influence And War Rank) From Battles.

I've Had Many Issues With The Lack Of Faction Improvements, Rewards And Value, But I'm Very Surprised How Many Of The Forum Regulars And Long Time Players Are Taking Something Positive And Jumping All Over It.

A Cyclical Renewal And Consistent Cycle Of War Areas Is A Good Thing And An Update To The Entire Pacing Of The Game Engine.

And I Enjoy Seeing Some Of The Vintage Seasonal Rares (Like Celtic Weapons) Return And Give New Players The Opportunity To Obtain Them.

So Why All The Negativity About This?

These Active War Areas Are Helping To Keep The Game Alive And Server Active, Especially With The Newer Player Base.

No, It Doesn't Address Some Of The Other Things We Have Hoped For And Long Waited For, But It Is Most Certainly A Good Thing NOW.

It Sounds To Me Many Of You Want The Game To Be What It Once Was Or What It Could Be, Instead Of ENJOYING What It Is In The Now.

If You Are In The Mood For Pizza, You Don't Go To The Hot Dog Stand And Demand And Complain That They Aren't Serving Pizza. Go Get Pizza.

If You Are Not Enjoying The Game, There Are Many Other Alternatives, Including Other Games From Artix Entertainment.

Seems Many Of The Vocal Players Are Asking For A Complete Revamp Of EpicDuel Which Is Going To Make It "NOT" EpicDuel.

I Don't Want My Game To Die, I Want It To Improve. Sounds Like Many Want A New Game. If So, Go Play Another One. Or Create Your Own.

Forcing The Staff To Recreate EpicDuel, Is Forcing Them To End This Game And Start Another On Mobile Or Make A Different Version.

Why Not Be A Part Of The Solution And SAVE THIS EPICDUEL?

Although I Do Agree With Goldslayer1 That Taking Away The PvE Aspect of EpicDuel Hurt It Severely And Limits It To An Extent, Forcing Only PvP As A Form Of Any Real Player Progression And Achievement.

I'd Love To See That (PvE) "Partially Restored" As A Means To Extend The Life And Playable Content If The Server Population Continues To Decline.

Cause Launching An All New EpicDuel Alternative On Mobile Or ED v2.0 Would Essentially Kill Off The Original Game.

I Sincerely Hope That Does Not Happen.

~ Buffy

#keepepicduelalive



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 4:48:50)

quote:

Yes, the old leader boards that were their are completely gone. What a slap to the face. Don't even want to bother with this war now.


They should make war leader board for every area and top 20 players with the highest influence for all time get's to be listed on it. Or just revamp this whole dam thing. I prefer flags anyway... [:'(]

So every time you play it counts and means something, and not just during war.



Xendran -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 5:06:54)

quote:

Cause Launching An All New EpicDuel Alternative On Mobile Or ED v2.0 Would Essentially Kill Off The Original Game.


Preserving the original game on a new platform without reworking all of the math is just a double-suicide.
Continuing to support ED in its current state is also suicide, as well as PR suicide for AE because flash is highly vulnerable to attacks, and unsafe to use.

I feel like a lot of people on these forums don't understand what the death of flash means.
Flash is not just dying because it's unpopular.
Flash is not just dying because it's slow.
Flash is dying because it is not safe to use it.
Continuing to support and encourage people to use an unsafe platform is extremely damaging to your company. You don't want to be the company that gets seen as encouraging preteen and teenage children to engage with unsafe software.



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 5:26:00)

^Like NW said, using it's o own client is the best idea. Runescape used to be a browser game, but not anymore. They use their own client and it works fine.


quote:

Cause Launching An All New EpicDuel Alternative On Mobile Or ED v2.0 Would Essentially Kill Off The Original Game.


EpicDuel 2 is welcome, but what's even more welcome? Being able to play current ED on any platform. Again i'm gonna have to use RuneScape as an example. Even after RuneScape3 launch, old/classic runescape did not die. Tons of people still play for numerous reasons and for the same reasons even after the launch of ED2, ED original won't be forgotten.

NW says if they make ED 2 it will take time. I say it doesn't matter because making ED a cross platform is their best bet. Because currently there are tons of game like BB, it's not so original, but ED is and ED can be their most successful project ever.



Xendran -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 6:05:40)

Even with its own client, the game has serious problems derived from the core systems that need to be solved.
The game would simply get a spike of players due to the new platform, all of whom will quickly dwindle away for the exact same reasons that people are already quitting over.

Whatever the new iteration of ED is, if it has the same fundamental mathematics in its core it will fail again.
It would be a waste of time to do a revamp and leave it in the flash client, and it would be a waste of time to change clients without a revamp.
Both things need to happen if ED as we currently know it is to be preserved. If it is not manageable to do this while preserving the existing ED, then it's time to move on to ED 2 or a new project.

I think that a new client + a mathematical revamp is the best way to do it, using primarily existing assets (or recreated versions of them).
Has to be both though, not just one.



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 6:18:38)

^I get that. Balance revamp is must, but first comes existence. If the game doesn't exist, what's there to balance?? First a new home, then solve the inside house problems. IMHO.



Lord Machaar -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 6:22:39)

quote:

First Off, In Regards To The Prior War Area Leaderboards, Did You Honestly Expect Those To Remain Unchanged For Years?

They Were Not Promised To Be Permanent And At Some Point The War Cycle Would Renew And Return To Those Previous Areas.


According to what the game says, and not what players say:
http://puu.sh/neKvk/d58a91f432.jpg

The word immortalized to me means forever. I don't support the leaderboards staying there forever, and I also don't support their total removal. They could have placed them somewhere in the map, or for instance creating a new NPC for showing war results of each region. That way you can see the history of wars in each region, not wiping out the effort of the players in 1 take.

quote:

I've Had Many Issues With The Lack Of Faction Improvements, Rewards And Value, But I'm Very Surprised How Many Of The Forum Regulars And Long Time Players Are Taking Something Positive And Jumping All Over It.

A Cyclical Renewal And Consistent Cycle Of War Areas Is A Good Thing And An Update To The Entire Pacing Of The Game Engine.


I don't know how much you are active in-game. But as a currently active player in-game, I can guarantee you that this war system doesn't give you the feeling that you are actually playing a war. I won't give the reasons here because I've already mentioned them quadzillion times, and I refuse to waste more of my time explaining why this war system is broken.
If you are interested though, everything was explained here: http://forums2.battleon.com/f/tm.asp?m=22092901

There are simple ways to fix the war, that wouldn't take much time off the devs' schedule, but well, personally, I guess not releasing any way is better than releasing a broken one, making players sure that the devs do not really care about the game. Hence why I want NW to tweet what he has said to us here to enlighten ED's player base.



Xendran -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 6:34:26)

One important thing i forgot to mention about this revamp: You REALLY want to make this a CLOSED beta/alpha, and not release it to the public until the core combat revamp is done.
While existence does come first, the revamp has to come before proliferation of the game to consumers, otherwise they'll see the game in the state it is and have absolutely no reason to wait for it to be fixed instead of playing something else (Especially given the history of the devs here, which you can bet the current players who migrate over will vehemently rant about to the new players if they see the game hasn't changed).

The most realistic and effective option is starting off by making a completely bare bones combat-only closed test of the new version with only the basics.
No skill cores, no boosters, no focus, no rage, percentage based defences. A clean combat system to start adding things back into later.
No factions, no PvE, no missions, no story, nothing that takes extra implementation time and does not contribute to testing the core gameplay.
Start from the ground up with a clean system, then layer on versions of what we had before in more effective ways.

All of these extra features are useless for this testing phase, and the people participating in this test are not there for the 'enjoyment' of all of these distractions. They are there to help you mechanically refine the very core of your game. It's volunteer work, not a privilege at early game access. Treat your volunteers like volunteers, and give them a suitable testing environment. Those who treat it as simply early access to the game are not the focus of this test.


If you can't make your base combat system fun and involving without all of these extras, it's not because those extras make the game what it is, it's because the combat still needs work.
All of those things should serve the core system of 1v1 battling, not those things being required to keep you engaged after you become disengaged with the core gameplay.

The Duel part of EpicDuel needs to be refined before anything else can be considered.



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 6:54:26)

imo, currently the game is way too much dominated by luck. Ik you might say luck is part of the game, but it's part, not everything. Luck should be reduced to max 5%. Not 30-40%. When you stun or critic your opp, you should actually feel lucky and not just a usual thing that happens every now and then.



Xendran -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 7:03:06)

EDIT: I swear to god this wasn't a wall of text when I started. Well... it is now.

Luck itself isn't the problem, it's a lot of factors that go into it that make it both worse than it should be, and then feeling even worse than that.
The primary factor involved with why luck is so swingy in this game is that matches are so short. This means that while your luck will average out over the long course of the game, within any individual fight the luck is much more likely to be extremely skewed.

Arbitrary Example:

Fight 1
Turn 1: Block
Turn 2: No Block
Turn 3: No Bock

Fight 2
Turn 1: Block
Turn 2: Block
Turn 3: No Block

Fight 3
Turn 1: No Block
Turn 2: No Block
Turn 3: No Block
Turn 4: No Block

Sure, your RNG averaged out in the end, but you got screwed in the last fight and your opponent got screwed in the middle fight. The shorter matches become, the worse this problem gets.
I understand i only provided one random example, but it should get the point across as to why short matches cause this to happen. The longer the match, the more likely you are to even out RNG.
This combined with the fact that there is no compensation for first turn advantage (a guaranteed unmitigated luck factor), and that you only take 1 action per turn is what really skyrockets it.
If you do something and it gets hit with RNG, you lose almost your ENTIRE turn, bare minimum you lose half of it.

Combine all of these things and you get nastiness like going second and then getting blocked. Congrats, you're now 2 turns behind in a 3-4 turn fight. Even if you had a plan, you have no time to catch up and are SO far behind that you would need to make optimal plays while your opponent simultaneously makes terrible ones. Even the amount of RNG you would need to come back from this is ridiculous, considering you have no time to recover and take advantage of this.

As a counterexample, the game I'm currently working on is split into 9 Action Points (similar to how Hearthstone has turns separated into 10 mana, instead of playing 1 card per turn), and a match is meant to last around 10 rounds.
This makes it INCREDIBLY unlikely that you lose an entire turn to RNG, unless you take a calculated risk and spend all of your AP on an ultimate. Combine that with longer matches, and you see RNG impacting fights in much more regular ways per battle.

ED gives the RNG no time to average out over the course of a fight, and forces you to do the equivalent of spending 10 mana on 1 card every turn in Hearthstone.
Another issue is the inconsistency of the application of these elements. Block and Deflect are the primary offenders here, as they are too specific. It's borderline impossible to accurately predict how players are going to interact with these mechanics since you can completely play around them.
This brings in another issue with epicduel which is counterplay based on what RNG elements work against your damage, rather than counterplay against strategies and actual plays.

Dex build? Just don't use blockable stuff.
Tech build? Just don't use deflectable stuff.
Then comes the fact that while deflections are meant to cover what blocks don't, they do not work on skills for some unknown reason??
Then some skills are arbitrarily unblockable and whatnot to bandaid fix certain meta shifts. It's just all a huge mess.

There's just so much inconsistency and layered mechanics and decisions that have contributed to RNG in this game feeling so terrible to interact with, even when you're on the winning side of it.

What's worse, is that I'm not sure the devs have even put this much thought into why people dislike the RNG, but instead only focus on how they *think* they can fix it. Can't fix something if you don't know why it's broken. This is why I've been saying for years that EpicDuel needs a designer on their team. If they have put this level of thought into it, they clearly either came to a different conclusion or assumed it wasn't a problem (which it clearly is).

They have the skills to make the game function, they have the skills to make it look good, and they have the right ideas.
Problem is, ideas are worthless unless you have someone specialized in executing those ideas, analyzing why they do or do not work, etc., something that 2 fulltime programmers and artists do not have the time or qualifications to do.
This is why EpicDuel has all these updates with great ideas that just flop: They don't have a designer to make the ideas more than just ideas.

Anyone can think of a game ideas, or a combat idea, or a skill idea. It takes a designer to execute on them. This is why Designer is it's own role in game development. This is why people are hired specifically to do design.
The state of epicduel right now is equivalent to the state a painting would be in if a person with a beautiful idea but no artistic training was painting it.

In the end, RNG elements should feel like an extension to the way your build works, not something that swings a fight.



Also, regarding games in general, and i say this not just to the devs of this game but to any other developers out there, indie or otherwise:

If a player has a problem with your game, they're probably right that there is a problem.
However, 99% of players have absolutely no idea what that problem actually is. They THINK they know, but they don't. The ones that do are the ones who are also developers.
It's your job to dig in and find out what the actual problem is in a system.

RNG is a good example of this. People don't like RNG. They think its because there is too much. When you look at the raw percentages though, it's really not an egregious amount when everything gets averaged out.
Therefore, you need to look at the core problem in genera: Something is wrong with RNG.

You give it some thought and analysis, and you end up coming to the REAL answer. Not that there is too much RNG, but that.. well.. everything I said in my post.




SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 7:33:19)

If money is a problem for making ED 2, then why not do a Kick-stater? AQ3D got a pretty good response. There's tons of people out there willing to help. You can even do one for the present ED and hire a person revamp the game, while you guys finish of with BB. Sounds like a good idea too me. Win-win for both.



Xendran -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 7:39:25)

Thing is, I'm not sure the devs are accepting of the fact that they are out of their qualifications when it comes to actual balancing of core systems.
They've been shown to be very inflexible until massive amounts of pressure have been applied, and through the many many discussions i have had with members of their balance team over the years, I have heard (and occasionally witnessed) they are also very prone to vetoing things because they believe their way is better, or because they don't believe that large change is needed.

Humility is key, and I'm not sure we've seen much of that. It's a difficult step to take, giving someone else so much control over the second-most intimate part of your game (most intimate being programming, followed by this which is core mechanical design), and I get that it may make them feel like it is not "their" EpicDuel anymore, but I'm hoping history proves to be a good learning tool and they take that step to make the next iteration of EpicDuel the best it can possibly be.

Remember, it's still your EpicDuel even if you didn't do all the numbers yourself. You created the concept, the vision, and the catalyst for all of these numbers to be expressed.
Your skills are in programming, and bringing the vision of Delta V to people. Allow a designer to then use their skills to bring your vision of combat on Delta V to life in a way that people can really enjoy.
It still is your vision, you are just allowing another party to incorporate their vision into yours, enhancing both of those goals in the end.

It also frees up time for the coders and artists to improve their coding and art skills without having to worry about players complaining to them about something they aren't truly passionate about or qualified to deal with.

When I say the devs are not passionate about balance though, I do not mean that they are not passionate about the combat in the game, i just mean an actual passion for working with numbers, running things through spreadsheets and formulas, trying to perfect every little bit and always looking for new inspiration and ideas.

To make what I'm saying a bit more clear, and not like I'm trying to hate on the devs or say they don't care about the game, think of it this way: If the devs had a magical Auto-Balance button, I'm sure they'd use it.

A person truly passionate about balance is someone who would rather do it manually, and get into the nitty gritty details and have intimate knowledge of all the systems and how they interact. It is their focus. They'd rather the system be slightly imperfect with lots of flavour and hand-crafted situations and goals, because they enjoy the work and feel that rush of satisfaction when the results pay off. For the current devs, balance has been the opposite of a passion: It's been a nightmare for them and a constant source of stress and discouragement.

Nightwraith and Charfade are passionate about art, Titan and Rabble are passionate about coding. Both of these are very obvious when you consider how much time and effort all 4 of these people have put into improving and widening their skillsets related to these fields.
Not so with balance, as has been clearly observed over the last 7 years, and this is not a bad thing. It is just a thing that needs to be accepted and effectively worked around. The bad part is denying it and refusing to take the necessary action to effectively deal with it.

I'm not sure the developers of ED have really realized this, but I've been on your guys side the entire time. No matter how harsh I have been at times, and immaturity back when us beta players were all 14, it's always been about the future of the game.
How many times did I warn you, and basically predict the exact state of the current game for the exact reasons? Despite your best efforts to understand the reasoning behind the decline of the game, the game has continued to decline.
This is why my posts over the last year or two have been so heavily focused on the actual theory of game design, mindsets of players, etc.

I want you guys to create the game you always wanted, but there are just certain things that need to happen for you to allow yourselves to actually do it.
Maybe if the release of the project I'm working on is timed right, it might apply a bit of pressure to you guys to really focus on how to bring everything together.

There's a massive hole in the 2d Turn based PVP RPG market. You probably don't want to let me fill it before you guys have an answer to it.
Game on. May the best team win.



goldslayer1 -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 7:50:14)

@Soul Prisoner
Its kind of ironic that they took this route for balance when they had nerfed Mercs to smithereens for having strength merc builds back in Gamma because it was a luck based fast build. It pretty much required you to go first and stun the opponent to be effective.
When enemies went first, Tech mages would either shield up or BHs would smokescreen/shield.
At which point you had very low chances of hitting BHs, and their bloodlust would let them survive the damage barrage.
It was the easy to use, luck reliant build for Gamma when all other types required more strategy.

To give you context (For level cap, full varium players), a strength merc would get about 65%-80% win rate (This was considered very low back then) while tech mages would range from 90%-96% (Often times higher for highly skilled players) depending on how good the player was. Strength BH used to get 85%-95%.

The only difference was speed.
Where a tech mage would get 35-40 wins an hour, a BH got 45-55
and strength merc would get 55-65.

It was a fast build to rack up quick wins, but in terms of winrate it was one of the worse builds out there.
Its focus was to win fast or lose fast and they nerfed it.
I think that was the tipping point for the Merc class in 1v1 and it never really recovered after that.

@Xendran
That's something I've brought up before regarding short matches making the RNG feel worse than it would be since luck is crueler in shorter matches and I agree.

This is why I primarily enjoyed ED the most during Delta with builds like strength/dex CH (Decent strength with frost slayer primary, Energy armor and plasma armor, High dex where defense was still higher than resistance, high level heal) it was essentially a 'modern' heal loop tank.

Or strength tank TLMs with high dex, high field medic, max hybrid armor, high reroute, smoke screen, frenzy, atom smasher, and technician.
(still have a picture of this build)

These were builds that required the player to use their skill level in order to maximize the build.
They made matches long, they made them good, and it was fun to play with.

One of the things I liked most about them is that when they were copied, others couldn't use it to the same effect due them requiring better strategy and a play style that played the long game.
12-20 round matches weren't uncommon vs other skilled players with these. I think I even had a 28 round match vs a faction-mate using the same CH build.



Xendran -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 8:06:54)

That actually is a big part of why beta and gamma were so much more successful. Fights were generally around double the length they were now, with heal loop builds often being around or sometimes greatly exceeding 10 turns.
Lots of chances for changes in pace to the fight, different skills to come into play, more branches on the path of predicting what the other player is going to do.

Go look at any of my ED videos. Even ones like "Lets Kill People" where i wasn't using a heal loop build have matches around 5-7 turns long. That's specific video is also a great example of high skill play actually being an important factor. It was a build designed around having counters to as many things as possible in exchange for not having any single extreme strength against another build, but by accurately predicting what your opponent was going to do you could pre-counter many of their actions, and etc.
It was very rare that you ever saw a video of a short match. That also brings me to another point which is that you had much more control over the speed of your fight when playing defensively back then.
Now, if you go defensive and fight a glass cannon, the speed of the fight is almost always sped up more by the glass cannon than it is slowed down by your tankiness, making almost every good option boil down to "Go even faster". The few builds that manage to slow games down this far are using the most extreme defences, and often they can only do this against one damage type.

This is also why it was so much fun to watch people like me fight, long battles actually give you some insight into the synergies between skills and stats, and gives you more time to understand how or why a strategy or build works. Two heal loop mages battling had so much potential for changes in the pace of the fight, and different strategies to emerge even mid-fight.

Now, everything is just short cookie cutter fights. Everybody smashes everybody in no time at all, and almost everything comes down to going first, because going first now gives you a way bigger advantage than it used to be (You're dealing 25% more damage if you go first in a 4 turn match. You're dealing 10% more damage if you go first in a 10 turn match.)

The point you brought up about build copying is also a really great one.
I remember back in beta people would try to copy my builds all the time, but almost nobody actually understood how to use them at first. Remember the seemingly odd things i did like using malfunction, but having a physical sidearm and auxiliary, and almost never actually striking with frostbane? The length of games allowed you to have intricacies in your build and playstyle and made copying a build not effective unless you also know the strategy. It was like trying to copy a deck in hearthstone. Sure you have the cards, but you don't know the combos, you don't know what things to watch out for, you don't know how to play under different circumstances that you can be put in.

There were still simple builds like smoke/mass out there though, that allowed less experienced players to be competitive. Even moreso, the smoke/mass build had so much DPS that they would often tear through a heal looper.
That was actually a nice dynamic (while i agree heal loop had to be nerfed, it didnt need to be hit as hard as it was back in the day): The high skill build is trickier to play (there's more to heal looping than simply heal looping, which was obvious as i often destroyed other heal loopers) but can counter more builds. The low skill build is a counter to the high skill build and is still competitive, but is weaker to a higher number of other builds.

To make a bit of a point about the length of games these days: I won my Daily 1v1 with a Triple Malfunction tech mage. How often does a fight even last long enough these days that you could even use malfunction 3 times?

----

Also, this is a separate point but I'd just like to bring up Reroute.
Removal of reroute is one of the examples of a massive amount of depth being taken out of the game with a seemingly innocent change designed to encourage MORE depth by not having 'mandatory' passives. Instead, the opposite happened.
Reroute was the most interesting skill in the game, because it was simultaneously rewarding, punishing, controlling and able to be controlled.

As a mage, you relied on reroute for your energy. This was a great system, because mage builds often relied much more heavily on energy than other classes.
It brought in so many interesting dynamics. It's rewarding for you to get hit, and allows you to punish builds that deal consistent damage output by giving you consistent access to the resources to answer that damage output.
It also allowed you to both control, but be controlled simultaneously depending on the context of the fight. Choosing to skip turns or peform seemingly suboptimal actions in order to deny rerouting of sufficient energy was a powerful tactic.
On the flipside, putting yourself in a position where your opponents strongest skill gives you enough energy to counter with something extremely powerful (or heal) could force them into doing suboptimal plays in order to save themselves.

There was just a whole lot of depth in that skill, and the way it is interacted with both by the user and the other player changed with the context of the fight.
Now? Nada. Energy control is homogenized and has no interesting interactions like being reliant on the actions of the other player.



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 9:39:29)

To put it in simple words, when passive skills went active, the players in-game went from active to passive, lol.



ambien -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 20:26:29)

l just gotta laugh really night you now come out an say that bio beast is where all your money was placed on. well sorry bio beast will crash an burn as bad as ed is if you hide things from the gamers that supported ed for how many years. if you would have came out from the start an told us ed players from the start remb we cannot tell you what we are doing but soon we will remb that silly little kids post you an the devs made and it killed ed. the only way titans game epic duel will an ever have a chance to ever come back is to shut the game down for 5==6 months redo it as a app game or a down load format to safe the game. sorry l will not support bio at all until we get a true answer from the whole team an the devs to
about this game. if it is going to die then pull the plug, if you are really going to save the game, do not beat around the brush saying well we gotta to see how bio is doing etc, etc. you should know bye now if bio will make the grade or not.


l really like ed but this late note night you dropped here was overdo . what makes me mad you people knew flash was going to die over a year ago an you said nothing. which l think was wrong for the ed players. instead you and the team said lets do a app game format, and it was your call but you left epic duel to die in the mud which it has. l am sorry for that an so are a lot of the other players that invested so much time and MONEY on epic duel.



any way my thoughts on this very very sore subject always the syfy



goldslayer1 -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 20:58:26)

@ambien
I wouldn't blame ED failing due to flash or the popularity of browser games dwindling.
ED's problem's started before those things became considerable factors. They're just the nail in the coffin at this point.

The Omega update was the point where this game started going downhill at terminal velocity.
I warned them (Everyone here in forums, and some testers) many times of problems that would arise from some of the changes they had announced, BEFORE Omega was released.
Despite this, they continued to hype Omega (all the staff, testers, AKs, and the super optimistic players) to moon as if it was the next best thing since sliced bread. Leaving a massive void of disappointment when they failed to deliver on the hype.

Had they announced upfront some of the changes they were making (NPCs not counting as wins, removal of enhancements, uniqueness of items, etc) they would've had a much bigger uproar by the community and may have been forced to change some of their planned changes. Which could've been much better than what we ended up having.

What sucks about these changes that have had bad effects on the game is the stubbornness of the devs.
They make a mistake adding/changing something, so when it doesn't work rather than removing it, they nerf/change it even further to continue messing it up.
This happened with CH when they attempted to buff it by buffing Static Charge (IMO it wasn't UP right before PA, but wasn't OP either, it just required skillful build making) and then buffing it even further by adding Plasma Armor when it didn't need that big of a buff. Making a ridiculously OP class in the process.

So rather than removing plasma armor and trying an alternative way to balance it better, they instead proceeded to nerf other parts of the class.



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/20/2016 23:44:43)

Bringing back the passive skills could solve a lot of problems currently faced. Like, a match being too small, boring, repetitive and so very predictable. But i don't get why Dev's are being so stubborn about it. Nobody is going shame/mock you for correcting few things that didn't work out. It would rather make you look like a person who currently understand the game situation and took a mature and reasonable step to solve the problem. You tried something and it didn't work out. No biggy... But acting like what's done is done and cannot be undone seems like their biggest downfall.
I don't even get why they changed it in the first change. I mean what were they trying to accomplice??

Dev's say they hold meeting every week and discuss about the game. It's been literally years since Jugg needed a fix, but i guess you guys were probably too busy talking about the good old times
just like everyone else.

Anyway, onto the current situation. I really hoped/thought that, i get it they are busy with BB, but at least they would have done something to fix the war, but nope! Exile is wining, leading by around 200k and the gap is only getting bigger and bigger. This is the exact copy of the previous war and couldn't be any more meaningless.



goldslayer1 -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/21/2016 1:11:00)

quote:

It's been literally years since Jugg needed a fix, but i guess you guys were probably too busy talking about the good old times


I'm not sure if you're familiar with my Combat Ratings idea.

Ever since level 35 rolled around, I've been saying the problems to juggernaut was level ranges.
With opponents being a maximum of 5 levels lower than you, you started seeing a ton of level 30 opponents with varium gear.
Varium gear back then mostly started being big after level 30 due to the level cap practically being non-existent below lvl 30 since before beta.

This meant that at lvl 34, juggernaut was MUCH easier than at lvl 35 due to the differences in opponents.

That's why I came up with the combat ratings idea. (While I primarily emphasized 2v2, its the same for juggernaut)
It's to basically pair players up based on their level and gear they own. (Which was more prevalent back then than it is now) rather than just flawed level ranges.

A simple match making with level ranges doesn't take into account the statistical (%) shrinkage level cap players experience vs the other 2 opponents.
The higher the levels go, the more statistical (%) shrinkage they have in comparison to their low level opponent.
This happens in every mode, but is much worse in juggernaut by far due to it being 2v1.

A match maker based on rating %s would be much more accurate and solved the statistical shrinkage problems for the level cap players.

(example numbers)
So if Level cap player has a CR of 1000, you could set the match maker to pair him against someone that's 65%-80% his size for juggernaut. So someone with 650-800 combat rating would be the size of his opponents.

for 1v1 another example is this 80%-120% of the player's CR.
If level cap player has 1000, his opponent will need at least 800 CR.
The lowest opponent, statistically speaking would be 80% his size.
Where as with the current level range system a lvl 35 player is in theory around 88% the size of a lvl 40 player.

in a CR system, a range of 65%-80% would be similar to having a 26-32 level range for lvl 40 juggernaut's opponents.
I'm not sure if that would be the ideal level range right now, but the numbers can be tweaked to better reflect proper balance.

The removal of passives massively nerfed juggernauts since they'd have to use a turn to activate actives now, which means being behind 4 turns vs their opponents.
I kind of feel sorry for jugg mode players. It seems like they were affected the most by this passive removal during the Omega update.
It was bad enough that their only competitive builds options were focus tank variants, but then they lost the passives that made those tank builds work.



SouL Prisoner -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/21/2016 1:15:59)

^That's a decent idea, but like everyone says, it's a lot of work and as you know Dev's now don't have that, but lowering Jugg opp level is really a quick fix. Would barely take them few secs to do that.... but i guess it seems even years are less in this case... :/



goldslayer1 -> RE: =ED= February 18, 2016 The Dread War Returns! (2/21/2016 1:34:51)

@Soul
There could be another workaround to that if a full fledged CR system is too complex.
And that is to enter level ranges for each individual level at each mode that reflect the balance of said mode.

But that might also be hard work and time consuming because it requires some knowledge and research of balance for all modes.

Its either that or let juggernauts match the opponents turn for turn. (meaning juggernauts would have 2 turns vs enemy's 2 turns rather than the current 1 turn vs 2 turns).
But I feel the turn for turn option is too lazy, and may require to actually increase the level range rather than decrease it in the current format.

The opponents would still have the advantage of diversity (both in skill points and damage types).



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