Sykole

Hello everyone,
I am excited to announce that I will join the Skylords Reborn team as Community Manager!
As Community Manager I will be responsible for the communications between the Skylords Reborn team and the community. This will allow the team to focus more on their own positions, bringing you content and balancing patches faster, where I will be keeping you up to date about everything Skylords Reborn. This also includes on our social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.
One of the ways you can expect this to work is with biweekly status updates, highlighting things you might have missed and giving you sneak previews on what is being worked on.
I will also be making notes on frequently asked questions and the hot topics that are being discussed in the forums, discord or in-game. If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to post them in the forum or discord page, just as you are doing now. I will make sure to forward your ideas and questions to the team.
I'm happy and honored to join the team, being a Battleforge fan from the very first hour and I look forward in helping the project. If you also want to help, please take a look at the open staff positions here.
For now, please give me a bit of time to get up to date with the things happening behind the scenes. After that you can expect the very first biweekly status update, which I hope will result in a positive tradition.
I hope you are as excited as I am about the future of Skylords Reborn, and I look forward to working (and playing!) alongside all of you!

It's been a blast reading through this thread, seeing both sides of the coin really puts progress into perspective.
I love how Zyna and Lada manage the project currently, it surely wasn't a smooth ride up to this point. There's just so many things to be done and to manage it in such a small team is a full time job. For how the whole team managed this time of huge workload and even bigger community expectations I have the upmost respect.
As they mention in on of their latest announcements, staff expansion an restructuring has taken away time from progress being made in other parts of the project. As many other I was disappointed in the slow 'visual' progress being made so I tried to help out where I saw the biggest unused potential: Balancing. That didn't work out, but showed me where I could do some good for the project: Descriptions.
I encourage everyone interested in the project to do the same. Involve yourself in parts of the game you're interested, there's much work to be done and much to be learned. The job doesn't pay in cash but in invaluable experience. 
In my opinion the SR team severely lacks a community embassator, a consistent flow of information, scheduled announcements and transparency. We know there are plans to improve on those front and I'm looking forward to welcome the brave soul who willingly collects information from the different parts of the project to regularly communicate the good and bad new from to the community. It certainly will need to be someone with thick skin, authorial and charming personality who doesn't mind being a public figure. 

First I would like to clarify that I am not attacking you or the staff members. I know you guys are putting in hard work and long hours, I am not denying any of your progress whatsoever. I am merely talking from my point of view and experience about what I think could be lacking. In addition, I am not trying to act superior or judge your ways. Sorry if it's coming off as harsh or rude.
Back to the topic at hand though, my point revolves around the following: Even though the project administrators/managers you listed are essential to any game, and I am not denying their work, I personally don't see them as what this game needs at the moment. Sure, map making is important and all, but how many players will that attract? How about faction designing? In my opinion, they should be lower on the priority list, and things like new content should be given more attention. 
And that brings us to the second point; You said I am not quite aware of your limitations, and although I admit I know less than I would like, I got a general idea from you guys on the call, and was following the development from the very beginning closely, even with Blank on Skype, so I know the limitations in terms of how much you can edit the game, as well as the lack of developers, you made it awfully clear to me hahaha. I am just referring to plausible things, such as making the website more BattleForge-like, increasing community engagement like anonyme suggested, and so forth.
Yet again, none of us is in a position to judge. We all appreciate your work and just having the game there is awesome; we just wish to help. Which is why I will say it again, I think that things like "faction designing" which is already limited due to implementation issues, should be pushed down a little and be more focused on newer content like the great concept of quests/achievements. One more map or one more card will not make much of an impact the same way a new concept would. 
Much love.

First I would like to clarify that I am not attacking you or the staff members. I know you guys are putting in hard work and long hours, I am not denying any of your progress whatsoever. I am merely talking from my point of view and experience about what I think could be lacking. In addition, I am not trying to act superior or judge your ways. Sorry if it's coming off as harsh or rude.
Back to the topic at hand though, my point revolves around the following: Even though the project administrators/managers you listed are essential to any game, and I am not denying their work, I personally don't see them as what this game needs at the moment. Sure, map making is important and all, but how many players will that attract? How about faction designing? In my opinion, they should be lower on the priority list, and things like new content should be given more attention. 
And that brings us to the second point; You said I am not quite aware of your limitations, and although I admit I know less than I would like, I got a general idea from you guys on the call, and was following the development from the very beginning closely, even with Blank on Skype, so I know the limitations in terms of how much you can edit the game, as well as the lack of developers, you made it awfully clear to me hahaha. I am just referring to plausible things, such as making the website more BattleForge-like, increasing community engagement like anonyme suggested, and so forth.
Yet again, none of us is in a position to judge. We all appreciate your work and just having the game there is awesome; we just wish to help. Which is why I will say it again, I think that things like "faction designing" which is already limited due to implementation issues, should be pushed down a little and be more focused on newer content like the great concept of quests/achievements. One more map or one more card will not make much of an impact the same way a new concept would. 
Much love.

I speak for no one, but the way I see it is that upper staff has too many different things to deal with at once. They handle staff recruitment, game designing, project planning, community management, client modifications and pretty much everything else while also giving directions to those working under them.
With the way things are, the game will die out in a year or two, the same way it did in the past, if no significant updates are rolled out, and I am not talking about new quests or achievements, those are, in the grand scheme of things, very insignificant. One of the fuels of this project is nostalgia, and it will eventually run out.
I am not saying upper management is failing at regulating the game, not at all; I am very much appreciative of their work, but I think they should specialize and expand a little bit more in their ranks in order to fill the vacancies, and allow for each of the upper staff members to focus on a project at a time, not handle everything. I applied for just that, specialized administration, but in the end it felt like our visions differed. 
Projects/New mechanics should be tailored toward acquiring new players, not making an update for the sake of having one. Nowadays, a multiplayer game can have like 5 different crafting systems, with player cosmetics, event passes, monthly themes and so many other things. Compared to BattleForge as a game... we have what, card upgrading? 
What I am saying is, I feel like it should be emphasized what the SR team actually is. Are they a team that is hosting the BattleForge game as it is with minor changes? Or are they aiming to become an entirely new (and separate) entity than the old game? Keep in mind that I am aware of the limitations facing the team, and every point I mentioned, I feel there is a fix to. It only requires modifications to the ranks of upper management to allow for a more versatile team overall, instead of overloading the current two administrators, and that begins with having groups, each consisting of an administrator and a few developers, working to finish a specific project that is separate from what the rest of the team is doing. There is a reason specialization is vital in workplaces, since it increases accountability and speed of work.
That said, I still highly appreciate and know how hard they are working. I am merely providing what I find to be constructive criticism from my own point of view. 

A summary of this announcement is written at the bottom.

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies and other Skyfolk!

Over the past two months project progression has considerably slowed down and it has become apparent that the community is in need of a status update. This announcement aims to provide said status update, where we discuss what has happened the past few months, what the current status of the project is, what some of the roadblocks are and how we plan to alleviate them, what we are currently focusing on and what our plans and expectations are to move forward. We also take a more in-depth look at the current roadmap for new cards and card balancing, and newly added staff members.
General project state and current plans
Let us start by going back more or less 1 year. At that moment @Ladadoos and @Zyna were still only client developers and the only server developer, Kubik, had just left us. With no foreseeable new server developer and the server being in a very unstable state, Ladadoos and Zyna decided to step up and become server and client developers. For the next few months they worked many hours per day to fix as many game related issues as possible and bring the gaming experience to an enjoyable state so that Skylords Reborn could finally release. This lead to the project reaching an unsustainably high update throughput, likely giving false expectations for parts of the community for the future. Just before the project released the only two administrators, InsaneHawk and MrXLink, also stepped down from their role. The lack of a leading role started to show and considering Ladadoos and Zyna had the most involvement in the project at the time they stepped up to also become administrators. As a step in the process of re-structuring the team and improving work efficiency, we noticed that there was a clear need for extra designers. Game design has always been behind and with release coming, we needed to finish design decisions quickly. That is when @ImaginaryNumb3r joined which helped immensely and, alongside other designers, we were able to get game design to an acceptable state for release. 
On December 18th, 2020 Skylords Reborn released. With this milestone achieved we decided to shift more of our attention to ensuring our servers properly handle the hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of concurrent players and to start implementing our first ever card balance changes! With the help of ImaginaryNumb3r, Zyna and the discord balancing server we released our first big card balance change on 1st of January, 2021. This was followed by a couple of extra updates, after which the project progression greatly decreased. ImaginaryNumb3r had to spontaneously spend a lot more time at his real-life job and Zyna and Ladadoos had to catch up with university duties like bachelor and master thesis. In the meantime other staff members have also had it busier than usual.
This leads us to where we are now. Two months without game updates and a community without a clear idea of the current state of the project. In the past few weeks we have internally discussed project health and team structure and decided to use the little time we currently still have into adding more team members to the project and improving code and workflow documentations. This process takes a lot of time which unfortunately comes at the cost of even slower game progression. Ever since we made our open staff applications page we have had many new applications come in and a lot of time has been spent processing them. Our goal is to expand the team such that we try to minimize the chances the project hits a complete halt again and as a result you can expect the team to grow in the upcoming weeks/months. We recently also added three new roles (discord moderators, community manager and event organizer) alongside the existing ones, which should improve the current project state. Feel free to have a look!
Faction design and new staff members
That being said, today we are most happy to announce the future for card balancing and potential new cards in Skylords Reborn. To us, card balance is of critical importance to provide new experiences and allow for greater deck building freedom in the game. To accelerate this process we are proud to announce that we have established a team of 5 people which are dedicated to improve the overall gameplay and deckbuilding experience.
With the introduction of this new team, we have created 2 new official titles:
 - Faction Designer: They explore the design space for card changes and create specifications which will be implemented.
 - Balance Developer: They implement features which were designed by Faction Designers or fix bugs of different sorts. They will also help map making in the future by adding new map specific units like bosses.
In other words: faction designers design the cards and balance developers implement them.
The team consists of the following members:
- @RadicalX: Faction Designer with PvP focus
- @WindHunter: Faction Designer with PvE focus
- @Chibiterasu: Balance Developer
- @Razeroc: Balance Developer
- @ImaginaryNumb3r: Lead Faction Designer
Expectations and steps moving forward
Experience has shown that working on balance and faction design is too work intense for just one developer at a time. As such, it goes without saying that you can expect more frequent balance iterations with card changes which won't only address balance, but also bugfixes and quality-of-life changes. Furthermore, we want to use our new resources for improved communication and greater transparency in terms of card and faction design.
Card changes are important steps to make the game more fun, but because there are so many ways one can adjust cards good design is everything. For PvE in particular our ultimate goal is to strengthen the identity of each faction (pure elements and hybrid factions) and give them their own signature playstyles. But for now, our efforts are best spend on cards which don't require a mechanical rework to make viable (like the Mutating Maniac buff). And for PvP, our new development resources allow our expert group (a group of hand-picked community members that help with design) to make faster progress and make more tests. In the future you can expect more detailed short and long-term goals for card balancing.
That is it for now. Thanks for your continued support the past few months and we look forward to what the future brings us!

Summary
Developers and designers are very busy with real-life jobs and university. New open staff roles were made here as an attempt to keep the project progressing. These rules include discord moderators, community manager, event organizer, developers, designers etc. A lot of time is currently spent reviewing applications and making it easier to integrate new staff members. @Chibiterasu and @Razeroc were recently added to staff and are responsible to implement card changes designed by the new faction designers @RadicalX and @WindHunter. This should greatly speed up card/faction balancing.

A fun gamemode could be a deck switch - make a deck (fitting some card requirements, so for example 6 T1 cards, four units, two spells/one spell + one building, 10 T2 cards containing the color of the first orb, 4 T3 cards), then you and your opponent switch these decks and try to beat each other with the other persons garbage.
Pro mode - blindfold on all Power values - costs, Void pool, Usable pool, ya gotta keep a track of that in your head
PvP with fog of war - against original BattleForge principles, but adds some new strategy making
Otherwise any BFP and Gold dumps are a good idea - an extremely expensive 'anything' to strive towards, as it was with Promos in the old days - nametag, card, consumable, chat color... definitely in support of that idea.
Adding spice is fun and nice, why not do it.
Overall makes the game more lively and modern, seconding this.
EDIT: nice to see you alive @Sykole

Long post? TL;DR: 1- New card affinities. 2- Guilds. 3- Adding lore. 4- Potion consumables.
Concept: If creating new cards is out of reach, why not make use of the available things we have access to? Like creating new game systems/mechanics out of thin air with minimal work, just like quests; it's a glorified database with a tracking system, but will that alone be enough on the long run?
Ideas:
1 - Creating new type of affinity(s) (if plausible): Just stick another random affinity color; same card model, different in-game effects.
2- Increasing the ecosystem that have little to do with the actual game mechanics:
Take Minecraft servers for example. They create something out of nothing with a gamemode like King of the Hill; it's the same game mechanics of Minecraft, but with some spicy Java plugins that track each player's movements, give them points, give them EXP, and so forth.  
So this brings us to the next point: Why not create Guilds? Why not implement Guild PvP Wars? If you think about it, it's just /guild in the chat to message your guild, a new tab in the Friends window labelled 'Guild', and a leaderboard. As evident by the Quests tab, it appears that you have quite a bit of control over the client editing with graphical drawing (the green reserve thing).   
3- Adding some spice: Everything in the game has a lore, so why not give Quests lore? Say for example, they are missions given by Moon or Mo, and when completing a quest, it would display a dialogue box with either of their pictures, like they are informing you that you completed said quest with a sound effect? "Good job Skylord, you assisted us greatly" - Moon says, filling the empty void in my heart.
It's all for the sake of adding familiarity and character to the game, instead of being just a bunch of text about what reserve BFP is or whatever. What even is BFP? Why would a Skylord need that? Give me lore! Give me context!
Another idea: "Hey Sykole, I see you lost the map Empire twice. Skylords know no defeat! Make sure to do XYZ, it might help you pass the map!" - I see after the welcome screen in a dialogue box said by Moon, for example. 
4- Consumables and Collectables: Only reason I would open a gold chest is either for a quest or ... nothing else really, I get 4k+ gold every 15min of playtime in rPvE, why care about a 100gold chest? So, instead of just gold, introduce consumables and collectables. A whole new concept to the game. 
Potions: Arranged in slots just like the in-game deck cards, but on the right side for example. One is called the Time potion, reduces your recasting time by 15 seconds. Want an additional layer to the mechanic? Enter levelling, where the higher your in-game rank, the longer your potions last/increase in power. You could have healing potions, strength potions, anything really. They just have to be rare, untradable and orb-neutral.  
Enter; collectables: People and myself included love trophies, so just add random icons next to ours names. Complete all the achievements and you get an icon, right next to your PvP rank, or temporary colored names much like that of mods/gms.   
Why stop there? Add event passes. Each month/season you can purchase a pass with 3000 BFP. This pass lasts for until the end of the season. You get 10% more gold, you get slightly better booster chances, slightly more EXP and so forth. Even get your name highlighted in gold, for example.  
 
Note: Those are just quick examples off the top, they are not literal but I find that if they are properly implemented (I do not know what your limitations are when modifying the game), the game will thrive even more and will give it more purpose than just collecting the most promo harvesters. 

Necroing the thread so that it's visible on right side.
#Hype

Hi, been a while
 
Here are my two cents. First seasonal cycles, which is about constantly changing cards' stats and certain aspects of the game. Secondly how to possibly find a solution to reconnecting to games.
Let me just say first, I have no idea what you can and cannot change in development, so reject or accept as you may see fit.
Seasonal Cycles:-
Keeps the game interesting and more competitive, especially in the PvP scene, where players should be encouraged to try out new things. Creating the perfect Shadow deck will not necessarily mean it will stay the best, no. Throughout the seasons, cards will receive a buff or nerf in terms of speed, damage and health. Think of it like in League of Legends.
However, this will also be beneficial for the economy as well, since prices will not stay the same. As cards have their stats changed, their prices will drop or increase respectively. It will create a more interesting, to me at least, environment. When you think of it, prices right now in the AH are the same as they were like, a decade ago, so bringing a new dynamic element would definitely aid a game like Battleforge. It died out for a reason after all.
 
Client Handling:-
Yet again, I do not know how BF handles clients, or how the server does it either, but disconnecting for a moment just to have my 45 minutes progress go to waste is getting frustrating, so why not have a workaround? I assume the game does not accept new client connections, hence the no reconnect option, so why not create a ghost client for every player, and that ghost client "fits the player's shoes" in case they disconnect? Basically it would be one of two things:
1- Ghost client (A) where it is the proxy of the player's client's (B) actions. So (B) takes action -> (A) takes the same action and plays it. Now, if (B) disconnects, and tries to reconnect, it still can (assumingly, do not know if it is possible to send a client into an ongoing game), since the player technically never left the game to begin with, since (A) is still in the game. 
2- Basically 1, but without being the proxy. So the moment the player's client disconnect, a ghost client takes place (of course, units will be brought to a halt), until the player's client reconnects.
1 minute to reconnect, if player does not reconnect by then, they surrender. (Assuming any of this is plausible)
 
Happy new year.
 

Hi, been a while
 
Here are my two cents. First seasonal cycles, which is about constantly changing cards' stats and certain aspects of the game. Secondly how to possibly find a solution to reconnecting to games.
Let me just say first, I have no idea what you can and cannot change in development, so reject or accept as you may see fit.
Seasonal Cycles:-
Keeps the game interesting and more competitive, especially in the PvP scene, where players should be encouraged to try out new things. Creating the perfect Shadow deck will not necessarily mean it will stay the best, no. Throughout the seasons, cards will receive a buff or nerf in terms of speed, damage and health. Think of it like in League of Legends.
However, this will also be beneficial for the economy as well, since prices will not stay the same. As cards have their stats changed, their prices will drop or increase respectively. It will create a more interesting, to me at least, environment. When you think of it, prices right now in the AH are the same as they were like, a decade ago, so bringing a new dynamic element would definitely aid a game like Battleforge. It died out for a reason after all.
 
Client Handling:-
Yet again, I do not know how BF handles clients, or how the server does it either, but disconnecting for a moment just to have my 45 minutes progress go to waste is getting frustrating, so why not have a workaround? I assume the game does not accept new client connections, hence the no reconnect option, so why not create a ghost client for every player, and that ghost client "fits the player's shoes" in case they disconnect? Basically it would be one of two things:
1- Ghost client (A) where it is the proxy of the player's client's (B) actions. So (B) takes action -> (A) takes the same action and plays it. Now, if (B) disconnects, and tries to reconnect, it still can (assumingly, do not know if it is possible to send a client into an ongoing game), since the player technically never left the game to begin with, since (A) is still in the game. 
2- Basically 1, but without being the proxy. So the moment the player's client disconnect, a ghost client takes place (of course, units will be brought to a halt), until the player's client reconnects.
1 minute to reconnect, if player does not reconnect by then, they surrender. (Assuming any of this is plausible)
 
Happy new year.
 

Hello Skylords,
So now, let's talk about what we're going to do after all you will have to wait a bit longer, and please forgive us for this delay.

We have decided on a few things:
Everyone will receive 2 boosters once the game will be in open beta (you'll still get them even after a potential reset) From the 1st of February and until the Open beta, we'll invite some players everyday to the closed beta, to increase the amount of players, progressively (Giveaways will happen anytime during the day, morning, afternoon, evening ..) You'll be able from now to pre-download the client, and we finally after a lot of discussion decided to give the client here on the forum ourselves. Want to pre-download it ? You can use Mediafire or MEGA to download it! (You cannot start the game right now, you'll have to wait for open beta, and the release of our launcher to make it work.)  
 
INFORMATION : Giveaways for the Closed Beta will resume! These giveaways will mainly be held on Discord, but it may also happen on the forum, so keep following these two closely!
Discord : https://discord.gg/0y3WGMGXhd5q2lXA

With kind regards and apologies for any inconvenience caused,

Sincerely,
The Skylords Reborn Team

Sorry, people

UPDATE: We made it! This is now the official cardBase. You can check it out on the usual link in the top bar of the forum.
Or Here:
https://allcards.skylords.eu/
If you want anything added or changed or have a bug to report, comment below!
 
Known bugs: 
- Some cards are sorted into the wrong place or display outdated info in the tooltip. This is because some data in the API is out of date and there is not much I can do about it.
 
1.8: - You can now sort cards in a deck using the arrow keys <- and -> - Booster Simulator now has a button to share a booster 1.7: - Added a Booster Simulator (link in the top bar) - Some Visual Bugfixes Patchnotes 1.6.6: - Added a slider to adjust card size. - Moved view maps button to the top line. - Added easier implementation into existing website. Patchnotes 1.6.5: - Small GUI edits - Made sure cards with bugged API stats still get added to all filters that they provide data for. - Deck pictures now also have a "small" version Patchnotes 1.6: - Massive clean-up and GUI improvements - Added Link Bar on top of page - Decks can now be exported as pictures to link in forum posts (or anywhere else) or downloaded! - Maps can now be sorted by player count Patchnotes 1.5: - Deckbuilding is live! Hover over the INFO text to get started. - Card links are aquired by shift-clicking now. - Decks can be ex/imported. Shift-click on any card in the deck to get a link! - Some minor tweaks to improve usablity on wierd screen resolutions. Patchnotes 1.4: - You can now choose your orb order and sort by cards you could play with it! - Double clicking a card shows a permanent link to the card. - Added Button to reset all filters. Patchnotes 1.3: - Added filters for Rarity, Affinity and Edition. - Added Unit Stat filtering. - Changed all exclusive selectors to Multicheckboxes. You can now filter in much more detail. - Fixed messed up UI for smaller screens - Renamed remaining Back to Purple Patchnotes 1.2: - Added option to sort alphabetically - Upgrades are now always in the correct order - Added Maps View, which includes Minimap previews and loot tables - Renamed Color Black to Purple Patchnotes 1.1: - Greatly improved loading speed and stability. - Tooltip is now displayed next to the card, and intelligently chooses its position to be on screen. - Tooltip now contains upgrades. Effects + where they drop. - Sorting by Orbs or Energy is now exclusive of each other. Bugfixes:- Firefox scrollbar working now.  
 See you in beta.
 

ok sry

Not that it is forbidden, I am not the creator of the quote; but on forums members tend to not take what others already have, a way of respect.

I have no problem with you whatsoever, but are you serious?

I have no problem with you whatsoever, but are you serious?

I have no problem with you whatsoever, but are you serious?