I think it's good to switch things up a bit here and there, try something new and see how that works out. When starting this one, it was quite clear that this ruleset has already its downsides. What I am quite sure is: if you try to do a competition in Battleforge, measuring speed is the most fair measurement to use.
So after the Screenshot Contest which was artistic and this one about smarts and tenacity, next one will be about time most likely.
Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!
Before we dive in, please note there will be a Rookie Tournament today! More information in the event section below.
• Wasteland Terror
It has already been half a year since we first revealed the upcoming card Wasteland Terror. While originally planned to release alongside our Anniversary Patch, we underestimated the time it would take to create both a fitting in game look and its required visuals.
However, after a lot of hard work, we have arrived at a place we are satisfied with. Wasteland Terror has become an awesome Bandit-take on the dragon model, and fires streams of sand that will lay waste to your enemies. We feel confident Wasteland Terror will make it into our upcoming content patch, and we hope you look forward to using it!
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• New Achievements
With our next patch, we will add a couple of new achievements into the game. Those are aimed to both improve the new player experience, while also giving our more veteran players something to work towards.
[ Infinitely Scaling Achievement ]
First off is a recurring achievement, slightly increasing the incentive to reforge your cards:
Reborn in Fire [1 Mini-booster]
Reforge Cards (Unlocks every 20 reforges, scales infinitely)
[ Beginner Achievements ]
We found that for new players, the jump from the early game achievements to later game ones such as "complete all maps on advanced difficulty" was too steep. At the same time, the rate of card collection was too slow. To ease this transition, we have added a number of in-between-points in terms of achievements, which act as both more manageable goals to complete and more plentiful sources of early cards.
Just a Story [1 Twilight booster]
Complete Viridya and Brannoc's story on standard difficulty or higher (Encounters, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Soultree, Crusade, Sunbridge, King of the Giants, Titans, Ascension)
The Most Dangerous Game [1 Bandits booster]
Complete Mo's story on standard difficulty or higher {Mo, Ocean, Oracle, Slave Master, Convoy, Blight, Raven's End, Empire)
A Debt Unpaid [20,000 gold]
Complete the story related to the Treasure Fleet on advanced difficulty or higher. (Bad Harvest, Treasure Fleet, Mo, Blight, Slave Master, Convoy)
A Mile in His Shoes [2 Stonekin boosters]
Complete Rogan's story on advanced difficulty or higher (Encounters, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Crusade, King of the Giants, Titans, Dwarven Riddle, Guns of Lyr, Empire)
A Wrinkle in Time [250 bfp]
Win the 4-player map Empire spawning at least 5 different Lost Souls cards from a deck containing only frost, shadow, and Lost Souls cards.
Godslayer [250 bfp]
Win the 2-player maps Sunbridge and Insane God on any difficulty.
Apprentice [1 booster]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 5 or higher.
[ Veteran PvE Achievements ]
These new achievements provide a smoother transition towards ''play all maps on expert'', while also adding some unique challenges into the game.
The Road Not Taken [3 boosters]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 9 or higher.
Turn Back All Ye Who Enter Here [6 boosters]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 10.
Nevermore [2 Bandit boosters]
Complete Blight's story on expert difficulty (Blight, Raven's End, Slave Master, Ocean, and Oracle)
Make it Double [2 Amii boosters]
Complete all 2-player maps on expert difficulty. (Crusade, Sunbridge, Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, The Insane God, Slave Master and Convoy)
Never Thought of Him [100,000 gold]
Complete the story of Mo becoming the new king of the fire tribes on expert difficulty with all players in the map using decks containing only Fire cards. (Mo, Ocean, Oracle, Slave Master, Convoy, and Raven's End)
The Long Journey Home [2 Frost boosters]
Complete the story re-establishing the Kingdom of Lyr on expert difficulty using decks containing only frost cards. (Encounters with Twilight, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Bad Harvest, Dwarven Riddle, and Guns of Lyr)
Not Even My Final Form [Rogan Kayle Card]
Win the 1-player map Encounters with Twilight on expert difficulty without using T3 or T4 cards.
Forest for the Tree [Viridya Card]
Complete the 1-player map The Soultree on expert difficulty using only Nature cards from T1 and T2.
A City Strongly Compact [Stronghold Card]
Win the 1-player map Defending Hope on expert difficulty with a deck containing only spell and building cards.
A Force of Nature [Promo Mana Wing]
Complete all 1-player and 2-player scenarios on expert difficulty with all players in your team using decks containing only Nature cards.
Those who complete "A Force of Nature" will be rewarded with a Promo Mana Wing! This promo is unique to this achievement and will not be available from boosters, but it will be trade-able. We hope you look forward to the challenge!
Please note: these achievements are not yet on the live server!
• Upcoming Balance Update rPvE Fire
Fire was added as an enemy faction in rPvE in our Anniversary Patch. While we are currently working on adding Nature as the next faction to fight against, we have been keeping a close eye on the balance and player experience against Fire among all skill levels. With our next content patch, we will be making some changes to improve the experience.
New Building: Flame Crystal
• Spawns in Lvl. 4 and Lvl. 5 camps*
• Will periodically remove debuffs and cc effects from allied units
Fire can be extremely strong, but due to its high attack and low defense, it is extra vulnerable to Crowd Control spells. We want to counter this weakness with a brand-new building, while at the same time making changes to some of its more oppressive tools.
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Abaddon:
• Damage: Decreased
Brannoc:
• Fire Sphere damage reduced
Aspect of Summer
• No longer prevents Ice Shields from being applied
Volcano
• HP: Decreased
• Size: Decreased
• No longer spawns in Lvl. 3 camps*
Plus a lot of changes to smooth out difficulties below 6.
* Lvl 3 camps are usually right behind the T3/T4 camp; Lvl 4 camps are the row behind Lvl.3; Lvl. 5 is always the last row
• Tournaments / Events
• NEW - Official PvP Rookie Contest#2 Clashes of Swords - Today
The Rookie Tournament is happening today! It will be accessible for all beginning players who are interested in improving their skills or being more involved with the competitive side of the community. View more information and sign-up
• NEW - Official 2p rPvE Contest#3 Last Resort - UNTIL 30-04-2022
The rPvE event consists of teams of two going up against the map of the month on difficulty 2 to 6. They will be playing beside a set condition where they're not allowed to use spells or buildings but only units! View more information and sign-up
• ONGOING - The PvP League - Phase II
The league will consist of small groups (divisions) of about 8 players who will fight each other, one opponent per week. The season ends when everyone played everyone in the group, after which people will get promoted or demoted to match opponents of equal skills again. New players are encouraged to join as well! View more information and sign-up
• FINISHED - Official PvE Contest#5: They See Me Walkin', They Hatin'
Players had to complete Convoy on "Advanced Difficulty" while only using pure coloured decks, therefore limiting them from using mixed oriented cards! View more information and sign-up
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
• Active Bounties
A Skylords Bounty is an open-source task for the community to create something needed in one of the departments of Skylords Reborn. If your entry gets chosen, you can win a great prize, and we will reward everyone who applies with a serious attempt with a participation reward as well. A bounty is not a classic contest, and will run until the task is complete. We will give a heads-up when the entries are about to be closed (at least two weeks in advance). View more information on Active bounties.
• OPEN - Spring Forge Bounty
Spring Forge Bounty is an opportunity for the community to have full engagement with the next upcoming Forge. This allows everyone to submit a possible design for how they would like the Forge to look!
A tutorial has been provided to assist and help the community take its first steps for doing so!
• Team Changes
Welcome Friendly Firefly! He's our new 2D Artist! He will be aiming towards working on backgrounds as well as icons for the game and more!
Welcome LamonChan! He's one of our new Tool Developers. He will be aiming towards working on a variety of our tools to optimize the performance and experience for user interactions.
We are always seeking additional help towards the project. Please help yourself to our open positions and If you see anything of interest, then feel free to apply!
• We Need Your Help
This section may come along various times, however we are doing it to visit or even revisit what's important to make this community and game prosper with more development and progression! Please feel free to take a look at our Open Positions to see where you can possibly help out!
• Open Position - Balance Developer
As a balance developer, you are responsible to implement design changes to in-game cards using our internal balancing tool. In other words, you are responsible to implement new cards and changes to existing cards. These implementation requests can come from balance updates and content patches from our Faction Designers, but also from the official Skylords Reborn map making team (for example, new bosses for a new map). An integral part of this role is learning our internal balancing tool, as that is the tool that allows us to perform all these changes. You are by no means required to have any programming experience. Read more and apply.
• Open Position - Video Editor
As a video editor, you are responsible for creating exciting video content for Skylords Reborn. This can range from short card reveal videos to exciting trailers and cutting up Twitch-stream content for highlight videos on our YouTube channel. If you have any experience with audio post-production, you can also help us out with the process of adding new voice-lines and sound effects into the game. Read more and apply.
• Open Position - Game Client Developer
As a game client developer, you are responsible to maintain and develop the game client. This mostly includes add new pre-game features (content outside of matches, so no game mechanics) through .pak files used by the game. You will be responsible to create and design in-game interfaces for new features, add networking support for new features that require it, solve bugs etc. using LUA, XML and little bit of Rust. BattleForge uses LUA and XML in their .pak files, which are loaded by the client. Communication with the server happens through a proxy written in Rust. Read more and apply.
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading!
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code.
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: LATE-APRL-EART-HDAY
The code is valid until 14th May 2022, when we will bring you another Community Update.
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments!
Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #21
These changes sound promising to me. I like that you take your time and try to view each intended change from every possible angle (PvE, rPvE, PvP) before implementing them.
In my opinion it is very hard to see all the impacts on the game's balance a seemingly minor change might have before a large number of players starts useing / abusing the new effects.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you for all the comments so far. It is important for us as faction designers to receive feedback from a diverse set of players and typically speaking the more feedback the better. Feedback helps us to get a general sense for how the player base feels about our changes and if they think we are on the right track. I have a few comments in response so far:
Matter Mastery: There is a lot of speculation about Matter Mastery already here from just a few tidbits of information and I would like to state that it is important not to get worked up over a proposal or an idea both before you have all the relevant information, but also before you have heard the reasoning behind the decisions and have spent time considering the various implications. As I already stated, we do not view Matter Mastery as a problem card, so we are not attempting to use the upcoming changes to building power/orb costs as a way to nerf it. Instead we are attempting to creating two affinities which are both viable in different situations. Too often balancing PvE cards really means balancing around RPvE, but campaign maps are just as important. We are attempting to account for both modes and will release more information on this subject in the future.
I will admit a mistake of mine in forgetting about Fire RPvE when talking about Matter Mastery(g). Fire RPvE's building are the only ones in the game with assigned power costs, and so are the only ones the green affinity cannot takeover.
Grinder's Taunt: I have not responded to the question about the damage debuff from the taunt working on bosses yet because a final decision has not yet been reached.
Gemeye: Piercing damage is essentially true damage. It punctures all damage reduction effects, including Moloch's. We could make it so the effect only punctures Freeze, and I think we should generally be very wary about adding true damage to the game, but in this case I think Gemeye is a safe and fitting candidate for full piercing damage.
Rageflame: The nice thing about the new blue Rageflame is that it can CC every target in range and these targets will not have Freeze's typical damage reduction. Additionally it grants the freeze condition to card's like Core Dredge(b) which deal extra damage against frozen targets. One thing I'd like to note here is that Rageflame(b)'s freeze will have zero damage reduction. The description sounds like it only works on unit attacks, but targets frozen this way also receive full damage from spells.
In terms of some of the suggestions offered: I am somewhat conflicted on giving Rageflame the ability to target air. Not opposed, mostly unsure. About making it like Maelstrom: I think one of the issues becomes, are we encouraging Rageflame to be a 1-2 unit support group or a 5-6 unit support group? By making it like Maelstrom we make groups of Rageflame freeze near instantly, but then you bound a lot of power in a unit with a low stat efficiency and particularly very low damage. I'm not sure if we should be encouraging that. The idea was more to enable mixed compositions and potentially make a "pure" Stonekin deck finally viable from T2 to T4.
Lastly, I want to mention that none of the proposed changes will happen this upcoming patch, but the patch afterwards. We are in the finalizing stages of our current change ideas and we cannot add more to the table without continuing to delay the patch.
Responsible members of the Skylords Reborn team recently met to discuss possible changes to campaign maps. What is outlined here are the proposed changes to the map Nightmare Shard. These changes are not final and are only proposed. As a warning, other map projects such as more RPvE presets and Defensive RPvE have a much higher priority for our team. As such, these, or any campaign map changes, may not happen for a very long time.
Some changes here are firmer than others, all italicized proposals have accompanying explanations for why we are considering them, but they are the most tentative of all the proposals.
Proposed Changes:
1. Potentially decrease difficulty of waves on lower difficulties given how many new players struggle even with standard difficulty on this map.
2. Increase starter wells from 2 --> 3
3. Increase well capacity of T2, T3, and middle power wells from 600 --> 900
4. Remove Fog of War in a 30m radius over infected camps once the goal to destroy the Twilight spawns is activated.
5. Change the effect radius of all spell effects spawned from the wild magic zones to correspond to the 15m radius shown for the zone on the map.
5A. Separate map spell effects from players spell effects (ie. revert damage buff to player's Maelstrom which has also increased the damage of the Maelstrom cast by the wild magic zones).
Nightmare Shard is one of the hardest maps in the game, especially on expert difficulty. It can also be fairly long with a slow start. To alleviate both issues, we are considering increasing starting well capacity, which would increase their lifetime from 20 to 30 minutes. Also, our proposed increase to starting void power will mean less waiting around and more playing the game.
Figure 1: 3rd Starting Well
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