LagOps

I have watched the progress since the start never posted or wrote anything but i feel like i should.

Most people that are leaving negative comments, just don't bother with reading anything, they just see that there is not what they desire and complain, there's also some people which are doing it again and again under your Facebook Posts for example.

I hope you don't listen to much to it, i know it is hard to "disappoint" people that are longing for something,but most of them just forget, without you these people would not even have something to complain about, there would be no revival of Battleforge, they would and will never have a chance to play it.
They also forget,that this is not a game to make money with as you already have stated and have not the slightest clue how time investing all of this is.

I just wanted to speak my mind and say thanks for all the work and giving the chance to people to play this game again, don't give in to negative people and think about all the smiles you will give to all those people cheering for you.

I guess most of peoples (that are not programmers) will not understand most of what you said, but you get the point. I guess they originally want to have multi-server structure, but they figure out it is not possible to send something to server A and wait for response from server C so they have it multiple copies of big servers and split players across them. I hope it was not their intention to make it that weird.

@Kubik i can feel your pain!
Just looking at how the game handles certain tasks, such as opening boosters etc. It's pretty clear that the game locks the ui when waiting for updates from the server... you know, the kind of flaws that would have gotten a 2nd semester university project i was once doing failed instantly (it's annoying to the user and also very, very error-prone if the server doesn't deliver exactly what you expect it to straight away and a clear sign concurency is foreign to the developer). Looking just at the surface issues in the programming... yeah "wtf" moments are pretty much expected.  

It was the right decision and i am happy it has been made despite the previously set release-date.

I barely even played BF before it was taken down, but i couldn't pass up an opportunity to make a meme

It was the right decision and i am happy it has been made despite the previously set release-date.

Am I doing this right?

@fiki574is that you?

Damn, some fine pieces of art here.

People in the discord be like

As stated through the whole thread, these memes don't come from a place of animosity. Please take this with a grain of salt

Dearest Skylords, Skyladies, Skyfolks,
I'm sure most of you have an idea what this announcement is going to be about, given the latest status on Open Beta. As you all have realised, we haven't quite made our promised release goal of week 8. This mainly has to do with PvE breaking way more badly than we expected and fixing taking a lot more time than anticipated. How much time will this take? Well, please allow me a bit more space to explain. 
The Skylords community has grown bigger and better than ever before, for almost 3 years now. We are growing closer to the public beta release of the game, and we're growing more hyped and enthusiastic with every development update Fiki posts. This is a fantastic thing; the BattleForge community has always been my favourite community around, where everyone is relatively friendly and inviting, has fun together and creates a warm, comforting atmosphere. However, as with most hyped projects, enthusiasm can rapidly take over and make both community and developer overexcited. This is generally a great thing, except when it concerns voluntary development as is the case with Skylords Reborn. Don't get me wrong, it's great that you are all so excited about the game; it's really mostly on our side that causes issues. 
The programming team is just as excited about this as you are, and they are working tirelessly to make Open Beta a reality as soon as possible. However, with great hype and little experiences with such projects and group communities, comes great positivity. As you may know from the past, we have always been quite generous with our milestone and deadline estimations, striving every single day to make you all as happy and enthusiastic as possible, pushing our limits to satisfy you, the community, as well as we can. In our combined enthusiasm and desire to bring back a great game to you all, we have been blind to the risks of game development, and made completion date estimates very positively; but game development doesn't work like that. Something will always break, and several things have broken and put us back, changed things up, turned our schedule around. Real life has interfered, servers have been crashed, and the programming team has generally just been looking at the development cycle way too positively and have given themselves way too little time to work with in case things wouldn't go as planned. This has created a lot of frustration on the team and we have been rushing while we shouldn't rush.
Especially in this week of hype, the entire team has experienced the results of massive hype. Tonnes of repeated questions, lots of enthusiasm, but also lots of doubt, lots of impatience, and foremost, intense amounts of pressure on all of our shoulders. The drive and need to meet our target time got so emphasised, and the expectations were unfathomably high. And sadly I have to say that it is taking its toll on some of our team members, even outside of the programming department; we're being hit very hard, but we remain steadfast, for all of you!. We are doing our utmost best to keep you all informed, engaged, and excited about the project, and the last thing we want to do is to disappoint you; and every single time that we may have to, every single time that things go wrong and Open Beta ETA's have proven to be just a little too generous, we disappoint you. And I am certain that I can speak for the entire team if I say that it sometimes genuinely does feel like we fail you all with these hopes we work up for you and end up being forced to shatter. Please be aware that this was never our intention, and unforeseen consequences have resulted in many delays. This has driven the team to a very important and hard decision.
We are not going to give you any exact Open Beta completion times anymore. We will be more broad in our approach, and development timeframes will be larger.
I regret to announce that this is something that really must happen; but I truly care about you all as a community and it breaks my heart every single time we awaken hopes in you that turn out to be false, disappoint and fail you with declaring that we haven't met our terms... needless to say it hurts all of us, the SR team. We're done making unrealistic promises to you guys, and we are sick, tired, and exhausted of disappointing this amazing community over and over. You don't deserve that, and so we will broaden our estimations widely. 
This means that any development estimated times will be longer, but also more uncertain.
This does by no means imply that we are slowing down development. On the contrary! We are working and progressing harder than ever, as many Closed Beta testers can actively tell you. We understand you may be doubting us at this point, we understand you feel like the project isn't progressing enough, and we truly do understand you all want to play; but just short of a hundred testers can tell you that we are making massive progress every day. This project is happening right now as we speak, and those who doubted we would ever get the game online have been proven wrong, and we strive to keep proving doubters wrong as we progress daily. With this new way of announcing progression, it would mean less stress on the team, hopefully no heavy disappointment to the community, and the more exciting and enjoyable the moment is if we finish way ahead of schedule (which is now also way more likely). Hopefully this will give you all a better impression and allow for more realistic expectations.
Game development can take a lot of time, and especially for SR, it is extremely unpredictable. Things can suddenly go wrong, or we can suddenly make huge surges of progress. The most important thing remains that we don't want to rush things. When we release Open Beta we want stable servers, and the best experience for every single one of you. Coding under pressure will only create more bugs, flaws, crashes, and mental problems for our programmers, so we are giving them the time they need. We hope that you can understand this.
That being said, with some of the issues persisting, we will have to give Fiki and his majestic team of programmers some additional time to iron out the remaining bugs, memory leaks, and other annoyances before we allow you all in. Trust us when we say that we don't want you to get hyped, enter the servers, and have an uncomfortable experience or have the servers crash. That would be awful, and we don't want to kill off your enjoyment like that.

------TL;DR? Start here-------
The programming department has stated that they will need some more time to fix these issues. Although we consider this to be able to be completed sooner rather than later, we need to take risks and possible further delays into account. If we do end up knowing when we're releasing Open Beta with absolute certainty, you bet we'll have you know when!  -- Remember, we could be done way sooner or later than expected! Check the devplatform for the most up-to-date status of the game and/or release predictions: http://dev.skylords.eu/

Another very important note: There has been some false information that has been spread through the community on several different platforms, causing a lot of unnecessary havoc and stress for both community and staff. We would like to remind you that you can find all relevant and correct news and announcements on our official social media, but most importantly forum posts that keep you up to date. Please do not blindly trust any dates or information given to you by community members that you don't know, especially if it sounds groundbreaking or impactful; if you can't find it on the forums, it's probably not true. Remember, content written by any member with a coloured name are staff posts; official announcements made by them are to be considered as true. Confused as to who is part of the team? Follow this link for a list: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/staff/

But there's some positive news too!
> The launcher is coming along nicely, and has been worked on separately from the server. That means that once server work is done, we won't also have to start making the launcher from scratch, which will save a lot of time!
> Many of you have expressed that they missed the original Booster Simulator. Now, the simulator is back in action and better than ever, integrated in our new cardbase, accurately supporting the booster ratios that will be in-game. Find it here: https://allcards.skylords.eu/booster.html
> Additionally, we have noticed a huge amount of questions for when Open Beta starts. Trust me when I say there will be a giant thread when Open Beta is released that will explain everything to you! Please be patient with your Open Beta questions until it starts; it will all be revealed.
> Feeling like you may have been too enthusiastic about Closed Beta giveaways? We will assure you that if you have been blacklisted on our Discord server and prevented from entering Closed Beta, your bans will be revoked and you will be given a second chance for Open Beta. Please don't break anything
> We have upgraded the forums to handle more traffic. You should all have a way smoother experience than before; our server was running at 220% CPU capacity, ouch! We're now running more smoothly, so you should experience faster loading times and a better overall connection to this website.
> During this upgrade, however, we almost lost the forum database because of all the problems linked to our server. We managed to save it just in time!
> The next big announcement we will make will be the Open Beta Announcement, which we will stream on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/skylordsreborn). In the meantime, it is possible that we will stream some BattleForge on the official channel to give you an idea of how everything runs while we work on getting a good Open Beta working for you.
We would like to once again apologise for yet another delay and future vagueness on estimated times, and we would like to reassure you that it's healthier for the game's development, safety, stability, and enjoyability, as well as it is better for the health of the team, as we can take things easier on the moderation team, and allow the programmers to prioritise quality over time. We will do our utmost best to bring Open Beta to you as soon as we can, without the pains and frustrations and disappointment of further delays. We hope that you can understand and respect this decision, have the courage and determination to be patient for just a little longer, and that we may stand strong as a community, and that we may remain the most welcoming, friendly and comfortable community out there. Together we will soon reclaim the Forge and protect the lands of Nyn once again!
Sincerely, and on behalf of the entire Skylords Reborn Team,
MrXLink, your Community Manager

"Wasn't there a date in here?" Yes, that is correct, and we removed it for good reason. Refer to this post for details.

Elemantary PvP Knowledge
 
 
This Guide is mainly for beginners and less experienced players of PvP.
I want to share basic knowledge more experienced players have over starters, so that they can try to have fun playing PvP even if they get stomped. Then they can look at this, helping them to analyze their games. So obviously, this is not a guide beginners just read and suddenly be strong, it just should give them ways to think how to get better.
There are a lot of guides out there already, written down or recorded as videos. This guide here will be my personal opinion on what is basic, and if one wants to improve further I recommend watching game commentaries of top players or guides like from Cicada etc.
Anyone who likes to add thoughts or critics to this, I would like to encourage to do so!
 
 
So what do experienced players usually know?
It is knowledge about:
0) How do I get started and better?
1) Energy
2) Summoned cards do different special damage.
3) Do I summon units dazed or better not?
4) Moving and placing units more efficiently
5) Focus Fire
6) When do I focus my damage on a well, when on an orb and when on a unit?
7) Split attacks
8) Don’t forget about your units
9) Watching the animations caused by the opponent player
10) Keep an eye on the mini map.
11) Estimation of a fights outcome
12) How powerful are additional orbs, when should I grab one?
13) Wide knowledge of existing cards, often played in PvP
 
 
 
 
0) How do I get started and better?
Honestly speaking:
Put some cards into a deck and play. Be brave to lose a LOT!
But you’ll definitely need: Ground units (I use the plural here and mean it. It’s possible to play with only 1 T1 unit, but you want to learn how to play right?) in T1 of ONE color (better T2, too)
Everything else is optional, you will find out quickly enough what works well and what not so.
Lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible and try to understand your mistakes and maybe those of your opponents.
 
 
 
 
1) Energy
 
 
So, I would like to spare you from the very details. But what is important to know right away?
 
 
There are generally 2 ways of energy income.
a) from wells
from void
 
 
When you start a map you get 2 wells, and a base of 400 void energy.
Beside that you get 100 energy for free at the start of a game.
 
 
Every second you constantly gain about half of the amount of what the 2 arrows show you in the top right into the power you can actually use.
The top arrow shows income from void, the second one the number of wells you have up.
 
 
Whenever a unit dies, a spell is casted or an activated ability is used 90% of the used energy will recycle into the void power.
So you only lose 10% of its energy in the long run completely (mainly over about 2:30 minutes, I know this is very gross: there are much more detailed lectures about this topic), but be careful that you have a temporary loss of power.
However! If you lose a well or an orb you won’t get your energy back. So try to not lose those without getting clear compensation (getting a temporary advantage that you can use to counter attack: e.g. a larger army on the field and or more temporary energy available to use).
Repairing is refunded 100%, but is temporary very costly. When to repair a well etc. or not is not an easy decision even for very good players, so I recommend to get your own experience (it’s very situational).
 
 
Being able to grab wells earlier is a big deal because you will also be able to take the 2nd earlier if nothing happens. But does that mean you should take one as quickly as possible? If you think you can do so without losing it to a rush being 100 (decreasing on time) down, yes. Here also: Get experience! Usually being bold and greedy might look dumb at first, but that’s a way to learn. At last if you cannot figure out how to hold, it was probably unreasonable to be greedy. This is then valuable information you can use when your opponent goes well first in the same situation next time. Lot of times you can keep fighting, even if you lose a well before you gained its 100 power, there are a lot of  things important other than just being ahead or behind in energy.
 
 
Also: Be careful not to cast anything not clearly helping you to win or stall a battle, your opponent might be able to ignore or run from (e.g.: a Life Weaving-75 energy-, spells and buffs are good but you need to get its value played out) and put you into a temporary power disadvantage, so your opponent could take a well etc. for same or similar cost.
And of course if you kill a unit with more costs then your own unit or spell, you get a power advantage.
 
 
Whenever you end up with having less energy, that’s mainly due to decisions in game.
You can always improve with any new knowledge.
 
 
 
 
2) Summoned cards do different special damage.
 
 
Units casted have 4 different sizes: Small, Medium, Large and Extra large referred to as S, M, L, XL Units.
If on the bottom left of a card there is a sword (melee attacker) or a bow (ranged attacker) then right of that symbol is S, M, L or XL written. That means that it does an additional 50%! damage against that size of unit. For example: We call a unit that does 50% more damage against S-Units an S-Counter (M-Counter etc. likewise).
Obviously often (of course you have to find out the exceptions by experience) it is efficient to attack an S-Unit with an S-Counter etc.
 
 
If the symbol is a star the text on the card will explain what special damage it does (e.g. multishot, siege damage etc.)
 
 
Letting the right units fight the opponents ones is one part of what is called micromanagement (like unit movements such as spreading, kiting, body blocking or focus fire, explained later on)
 
 
 
 
3) Do I summon units dazed or better not?
Dazed units do less damage and have only half health. But when you are attacking far away from a spawning point, where your units are cast undazed you don’t have much of an option. But be careful with low health units which might die before they even get out of daze (especially against fire or shadow). So if you run an offense spawn some units before you reach the opponents units. Often in higher level play you see a T1 fight with some units “pre”spawned, so that they are able to fight with full force.
 
 
 
 
4) Moving and placing units more efficiently
Micromanagement is fairly important, and because movements are quite slow in this game it is in my opinion not as hard to get ok-ish at as in faster games like starcraft etc.
Let me explain some techniques you should be aware of and maybe try for yourself.
 
 
Spread your units!
That avoids splash damage to hit all your units at once. But try to spread them only as far as needed (yes you need to gain experience here again: vs. nasty surprise, lava field etc.), so that they still fight efficiently. Often it is good to spread units in a circle or to attack from different angles. When you cast new units also try to place them so they are spread efficiently.
 
 
Kite!
Hit and run if you have faster against slower units. (scavenger, frost bite and so on are also very helpful)
If you have a slower unit or your attack is “muted” by some special abilities. You can run with that unit and attack the attacker with another unit.
 
 
Block!
Many units get slowed down when enemy units are in the way. You might use that to your advantage!
 
 
Stampede!
Some units can trample others down and hinder their attack.
 
 
 
 
5) Focus Fire
Especially with ranged units focus fire is important. Means: Attacking the same target with a bunch of your attackers or with all of your attackers.
Let’s explain it with an overly simplified model(the units are not as simple, but it still applies often enough): Two armies A and B are fighting each others. All of A’s and B’s units do one damage per attack and have 4 hitpoints.
 
 
Round 0:
A(4) B(4)
A(4) B(4)
A(4) B(4)
A(4) B(4)
A uses focus fire and B not.
Round 1:
A(3)
A(3) B(4)
A(3) B(4)
A(3) B(4)
Round 2:
A(3)
A(2)
A(2) B(4)
A(2) B(4)
Round 3:
A(3)
A(2)
A(1)
A(1) B(4)
Round 3:
A(3)
A(2)
A(1)
Well, I hope you got the point.
 
 
Similar models you can make for pincer attacks (sandwiching) etc.
 
 
 
 
6) When do I focus my damage on a well, when on an orb and when on a unit?
 
 
You do want to get down something which is not getting recycled into the void (wells, orbs), but we aware!
When you shoot on a building you are not doing damage to something which may attack you back. Wells and orbs can serve as static tanks. So I cannot answer this question in a simple fashion. But the higher your DPS (damage output per second) is the likelier is an lesser punished focus on a well or orb.
Also with siege units you might prefer targeting structures.
As for targeting wells and orbs:
Wells have more function in the earlier stages of the game (in later stages why would you want to invest 100 energy when the game almost ends and the void income is huge) and lesser health than orbs. So you usually you want to target down wells over orbs early and the other way round in the late game.
 
 
 
 
7) Split attacks
Often it is easier to defend one place than two.
For example: Try sending 2 siege units to attack a well on one point of the map and if possible at the same time with the rest of your army somewhere else, your opponent will have a tough time trying to handle this problem.
 
 
 
 
8) Don’t forget about your units
Use your units you have cast. Try not to forget about any of them. They are bound power (not even void income) if they do nothing. If they are too far away to do anything helpful,  consider sacrificing them. Same goes for towers if they have lost their strategic value.
 
 
 
 
9) Watching the animations caused by the opponent player
There is no fog of war. You need to collect all information you can get. So carefully observe what your opponent is casting.
 
 
 
 
10) Keep an eye on the mini map.
Well same as point 9)
 
 
 
 
11) Estimation of a fights outcome
That needs a lot of experience and/or good judgment, but…
At least: Do not sentence your units to death walking into obviously lost battles.
I have seen beginners run with one t1 unit into an army of t1/t2 units without a special idea to handle that (at least I couldn’t come up with one). You might do that if your one unit is much stronger and/or you have the energy and supporting spells prepared (e.g. nasty surprise, lava field, corpse explosion, life weaving)
 
 
 
 
12) How powerful are additional orbs, when should I grab one?
I personally like to stay lower tier and grab a well or the map presence instead, if I think I can defend. But an additional orb, especially t3 is a huge power (not in the meaning of energy besides void manipulation cards) boost. Here also, I do not really have THE beginner tip. But the more defensive your deck is build the more you might want to stay lower tier and collect more energy etc. instead.
 
 
 
 
13) Wide knowledge of existing cards, often played in PvP
 
 
The more cards you know in detail the better your judgment will become and the more likely you are to make the right decisions.
Usually (also depending on buffs and nerfs of cards) there will be a so called meta game (cards you find in most top players decks). Work on knowing those cards and how their animations look like in the game.
 
 
Ok,
I hope I did tell as less nonsense as possible, and
I know this is not even half of what one can learn and many of you might have diffrent opinions about what is important or basic.
 
But I hope it will help especially those, who find themselves at a huge loss at what to do and think about in PvP,
HiyaMC

It was the right decision and nobody can say you didn't try really hard. Even if it is "just" an open beta launch, it needs to be in a playable with minor bugs remaining. Launch may be delayed, but that's definately better than having a dissapointing launch.
Thanks for your dedication!
 
Edit: I am not so sure about the two free boosters tho. i would be more happy if players were to start with more untradeable stuff, primarily gold. 2 boosters might get players to multiaccount. Just give us plenty (fixed) starter commons and gold for upgrades and we will be just fine.

There are tons of great moments in anime, it's pretty hard to make a pick, so i will just go ahead and make several.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
For me personally:
#1 Griffith's speach to princess Charlote from Berserk (the 97's version and movie version are pretty much on par here imo) (Such a pivotal moment and masterfully delivered, gives great insight into Griffith's character as well as Gutt's reflection on his own dream afterwards. Drives to plot forward in a masterfull way and sets up maybe one of if not the deepest and richest villan character i have ever seen with a whole bunch of forshadowing. This scene gives me shivers every single time and is my #1 moment with no contest)
#2 Zero's requiem from Code Geas 2 (The ultimate redemption of the main character, which also did an incredible job at making himself (seemingly) utterly irredeemable during the last few episodes prior)
#3 Assault of the Boars from Princess Monoke (I legit cried, what a scene! if you haven't seen Mononoke, you haven't lived yet. Was the first anime i saw over 10 years ago and i didn't even know what anime was. What a way to set up high standards...)
#4 The ending of Wolf's Rain (Actually called Wolf's Reign, it's a misstranslation and yes that bothers me. Just when you thought things might actually work out in the end... also that soundtrack gets me every time!)
#5 The ending/tank scene from Ghost in the Shell (Phillosiphical and quite unexpected. Also very nice symbolism and great cinematography)
#6 Naruto vs. Sasuke fight in the valey of the end from the original Naruto (Insane buildup and great delivery. Felt very emotional and personal and the action was amazing as well. Great choreography, animation and cinematography really bring the sheer scale and power in the battle to life)
#7 Final battle in Sword of the Stranger (Again beautiful horeography, animation and cinematography, even better than in Naruto in my opinion and also comes with amazing soundtrack and sound design. Didn't manage to be as emotional as the Naruto fight and that's why i rate it a bit lower) 

Hello everyone.
It's been a while since this thread was posted, and as we are inching closer and closer to the dream of the grand reopening of BattleForge, with the best case scenario of Open Beta being End of Febuary (Not set in stone), I have given some thoughts how to best organize this great coaching idea. After all, this coaching scene could come alive within just a few months! 
I've gotten in touch with Destoyerfros and we have decided its a good idea to open a Coaching and Tutoring server on discord. Please bear with me, the server is a Work In Progress and is not even close to done. We will have a bot system where you can apply your own roles and the factions you play etc, as well as text channels to ask and receive answers regarding strategies etc.
Anyway, regardless of whether you are a Tutor who applied or an apprentice, or just a keen BattleForge soon-to-be player, anyone is welcome in the discord server. 
The link is here: https://discord.gg/dZzKexQ
As always any comments or critics are welcome as a reply or in the server under #Serversuggestions.
Ultra

It was the right decision and nobody can say you didn't try really hard. Even if it is "just" an open beta launch, it needs to be in a playable with minor bugs remaining. Launch may be delayed, but that's definately better than having a dissapointing launch.
Thanks for your dedication!
 
Edit: I am not so sure about the two free boosters tho. i would be more happy if players were to start with more untradeable stuff, primarily gold. 2 boosters might get players to multiaccount. Just give us plenty (fixed) starter commons and gold for upgrades and we will be just fine.

It was the right decision and nobody can say you didn't try really hard. Even if it is "just" an open beta launch, it needs to be in a playable with minor bugs remaining. Launch may be delayed, but that's definately better than having a dissapointing launch.
Thanks for your dedication!
 
Edit: I am not so sure about the two free boosters tho. i would be more happy if players were to start with more untradeable stuff, primarily gold. 2 boosters might get players to multiaccount. Just give us plenty (fixed) starter commons and gold for upgrades and we will be just fine.

It was the right decision and nobody can say you didn't try really hard. Even if it is "just" an open beta launch, it needs to be in a playable with minor bugs remaining. Launch may be delayed, but that's definately better than having a dissapointing launch.
Thanks for your dedication!
 
Edit: I am not so sure about the two free boosters tho. i would be more happy if players were to start with more untradeable stuff, primarily gold. 2 boosters might get players to multiaccount. Just give us plenty (fixed) starter commons and gold for upgrades and we will be just fine.

It was the right decision and nobody can say you didn't try really hard. Even if it is "just" an open beta launch, it needs to be in a playable with minor bugs remaining. Launch may be delayed, but that's definately better than having a dissapointing launch.
Thanks for your dedication!
 
Edit: I am not so sure about the two free boosters tho. i would be more happy if players were to start with more untradeable stuff, primarily gold. 2 boosters might get players to multiaccount. Just give us plenty (fixed) starter commons and gold for upgrades and we will be just fine.