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Rolith ‏@Rolith_AE

Oversoul Alpha is still coming sometime today, hopefully. We've got a lot left to do before it goes live, and are working hard to get there
Retweeted by Oversoul

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Oversoul ‏@OversoulGame

RT @evil_risto_7ae: http://oversoul.artix.com/about.html I love the @OversoulGame theme song!!! Listen to it over and over

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Greetings #Oversoul Players! Finally, sometime today, Alpha Testing is scheduled to start! Stay tuned! Who here is http://twitpic.com/au79if

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Alignments will only restrict your choices within the Character Tree.You can possess any alignment while exploring the map.

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Anyways, let's show #Ebilderp that they can't mess with us! Their #Gameocide plan will fail!

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It should have large attacks like spiky pumpkin vines reaching out the ground. Everything a REAL PUMPKIN LORD SHALL HAVE!

I like it! The Pumpkin Lord with real Pumpkin Lord Powers! You can be sure I'll make that for Oversoul!

-Nulgath

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I think logging out of combat is just Griefing :/

What happens to your game when a player logs out?
Players that log out or disconnect should have computer AI take over their character to finish the match. If this is working properly, there shouldn't really be a way to abuse logging out if you're losing.

Me, Klunk and Dilligaf we're PvPing at my house on different computers and saw this system work first hand. Klunk got disconnected from a fight with Dilligaf mid-battle but Klunk's character continued to fight to the end because he was taken over by the computer AI. Of course, the computer AI isn't very smart so Dilligaf won the battle despite Klunk not actually being in the game.
As far as I know, this system is still working properly.

-Nulgath

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Hello Alpha Testers!

The issue causing the crashes has finally been found! Now the process of fixing the problem has begun.

Most of you have noticed that the recent release of new characters are not easy to find or possess. One thing to note though is that most of these Veterans have a master rank that you cannot see just yet. So you're not fighting so hard for simple looking characters. Most have 1 more evolution yet to be seen. I'll let you guess what your veterans might possible upgrade to. A little hint, the rarer the encounter the more impressive the Master! Have fun! Alpha testers will have the jump on the public players coming soon! http://twitpic.com/aoepsx

-Nulgath

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If i may, it might be a cool idea for a Artifact that adjusts spawn rates in some way. If I could pay currency in this game right now I would SO buy that, Although Gold would be nicer.

We have plans for Artifacts that increase your possession rate by a lot!

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Will Veteran forms of Alpha Pirate and Skexis Fiend be added?

Rank ups for characters can always be added. Yes, eventually I'll add to those characters.

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@Nulgath And my Sword Apprentice looks like a normal nomad except in wars. It's weird O.o

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean in town you look different from when you're in battle?

-Nulgath

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Also, Blood Fiend is distracting to use, as the claws keep quivering and shaking and all.

That version of the Blood Void was put in by mistake. It's meant for another rank. I'll be correcting that soon.

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You see, I've been spending 4 days looking for Skeleton. Many people here have done so too and not seen a thing. I know it's almost certain it turns into some kind of badass ArchLich or something, but the thing is, When I spend 16 straight hours looking for a Skeleton I find it's less fun and more a chore.

I understand your frustration. The spawn rates for the current characters will be adjusted later as more characters are added. In most cases, the harder the character is to obtain the more desired it is. But the appeal of a character is in the eye of the beholder. As more characters are added, you may find a character to your liking that isn't difficult to possess at all. The infrequent characters are for those that like having characters very few can find.

Many other features have yet to be implemented. Finding characters won't be the only thing to do later. Altering your characters stats, finding artifacts, questing and card customization will also be on the upcoming agenda. Not to mention being the top PvP player on the leader boards.

The only problem I see with the current system is that the map hasn't been expanded yet and there are so few characters available. This is to be expected since we are still early in development. Once the world map expands and more characters are entered, the spawn and possession rate variety should balance things out. I know... I'm tired of battling wolves too. :::)

-Nulgath

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On the rare character topic. I'm not a fan of making things rare in the way it is done in AQW. Though, essentially that's what the Stress and Alpha testers are getting, that doesn't mean there won't be different variations of a Void Knight or Skexis available to everyone in the future. The red runes at the feet will be an indicator of a character difficult to obtain.

-Nulgath

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Nulgath, I do have 2 questions. Is beta going to have some kind of major feature update, and since you may have seen our massive bickering about Inevitable Beta people ruining the community (Well maybe not just Beta but you get the idea), what will you do to prevent that?

The plan is to release a bunch of new content with Beta. But right now fixing these bugs is top priority. The believe community will remain good. I imagine there will be a lot of talk about strategy and what characters players like best. I stay focused on the good things about people. What you look for, you will find.

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are you going to fix that issue with level reset after rankup? It would be extremely frustrating to get back to level 1 after you have reached level 10! If you play your characters like other players do, I think you will not like it either

That was an idea by Rolith that I thought was interesting. As of now, I don't mind the level resetting to get to Veteran. Leveling from 1-5 is fast and 1-10 is fair. I have all my characters at Veteran rank. I've started my shadow recruit to Master today so I will find out what that feels like soon. I will also level to the Pikeman Commander.

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@Nulgath Glad to see a game creator who cares enough to experience their game from the level of its community ^^ Are things still on schedule for the Halloween Beta Release? And will the master forms you mentioned be released, then?

Things are on schedule. I'm confident we can have these bugs address before then. Game stability is top priority. The unreleased Masters should release on Halloween too.

-Nulgath

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wait so how many and what are the characters that have Master form now?

Hello Alpha Testers,

I have a little behind the scenes info to share. Only the Huntress, Augustiner, Alpha Pirate, Skexis and Peasants do not have Master forms yet. ALL of the other Veterans in-game have Master forms. They just haven't been released yet.

On that note, the Veterans are difficult to possess because of the Masters they will be able to evolve into. Know that the Masters are vastly different from the elmental Nomads and Apprentices they evolve from. The encounter rate was supposed to be raised significantly for all of last weeks characters. If it seems the same, it will be fixed.

We all know there's a ton of bugs with the recent release of levels, special cards and the character tree. Bugs are to be expected, it's why we have alpha tests. Our team is small. On the art side, there's me who does all the art for Oversoul including interfaces, backgrounds and all the animations. Revontheus is my character art assistant, he helps me by creating new characters using my template. After he completes a character I animate it. Klunk and Dilligaf do all the sound FX and music. All of the sound effects have to be be manually put into each character by me as well.

Warlic and Rolith are the Oversoul programmers. Rolith deals mostly with the server side of the game while Warlic deals more directly with the game engine and mechanics. They both have other duties besides Oversoul too. Warlic is also in charge of AQW sound work, music and recording and Rolith does programming on Dragonfable and other things.

The bug fixing process is a little slower than we'd like because Warlic is basically the only one dealing with Oversoul's many bugs and at the same time trying develop and add the new features I want for the game. The new card specials, leveling and the Character-Tree are the main features in game right now and with them came a lot of problems as we've experienced in the past weeks. But they will be fixed!

We all know this game has great potential! The bugs are part of the process. I know what you players are talking about. I'm leveling my characters just like you, I want to experience exactly what you're experiencing. I don't have super Dev powers to make things easier. I want to possess the Skeleton and Ice Nomad. Haven't see the Skeleton once and failed to possess the Ice nomad.

My goal is to make this game fun the way I envisioned it and it's getting there! I'm focused on gameplay. The art and animations are just bonus. Thanks for helping us improve this game with your suggestions and bug reports! You too are part of the development of Oversoul.

-Nulgath

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I made some art updates to the Blade Skeleton. You can expect this to happen randomly on occasion.

Right now I cannot directly modify the cards or anything except for art in the game so it's a slow process to edit character card decks. The Pikeman Commander should not have counter strike right now because of the energy cost to use it. This will be changed later.

The smaller quantity of cards you may have noticed in the new characters is in preparation for card customization. For now, due to some data restraints, you will only be able to add cards to your existing deck. Obviously, a smaller starting deck will be favorable in this situation so you can add more of the cards you want. I hope I will be allowed to add more customization in the future. But this will make things interesting at the same time. Reason being, this will make the actual characters you use that much more important because of the starting decks they have.
BUT everything is subject to change so the plan could be different than what I described once we start working on it. That's the great thing about an evolving game. I will always look to improve Oversoul's gameplay!
-Nulgath

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The idea is simple, when you Explore a location you will enter a new Area in D&D or Choose your own Adventure dungeon style.

I already plan to do something similar to this. There will be dungeons to find and explore where you can find rare monsters and rewards. We also plan to have queued up monsters where you'll have to defeat more than one monster at one time on the same health bar. Dungeons won't be for a while though as creating this feature will be a big project for the programmers by itself. But you can expect this in the future as the game continues to develop!

Random monster encounters like Final Fantasy is also planned. I have so many things I want to add. Oversoul will constantly be evolving it's gameplay so you'll always have something new to look forward to!

-Nulgath

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#Oversoul Public Beta is slated to release sometime today! Stay Tuned!