Volin

Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
NO!
It's PvE event!

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
 
Mo is in trouble and you have to get him out....with pure colour decks!
 
What?
Speedrun contest on Ocean with extra rules. Send me your (single) quickest replay to participate.
Find the replays under Documents=>battleforge=>replays
 
Infos!
map: Ocean

server: liveserver, no testserver replays allowed
difficulty: advanced
special rule: Only mono colour decks are allowed (pure fire/frost/nature/shadow), neutral cards are also allowed.
restricted cards: Enlightenment, Amii Monument
How to contact me: Use the pm in this forum, Discord (Toggy#8400)
 
Until when?
Send me your replay via Discord or the forum until 30.04.21. I will sort them and cast the quickest runs.
Please only send your quickest and last replay you want to submit via Discord.
 
Prize pool!
1st place  - 3 Booster packs
2nd place - 2 Booster packs
3rd place - 8th place - 1 Booster
most creative strategy (in the top10) - 750BFP
 
Big thanks to the devs who sponsor the booster packs!
 
If you guys like it there will be more and more of these little challenges in the future, let me know what you think about it.
Looking forward to several cool replays!
 
Greetings,
DasToggy

Hello fellow Skyladies and Skylords!
 
Another 1on1 tournament, who is the strongest Skylord? We will find out on the Testserver.
To get to the testserver start "LauncherTest.exe" in you Battleforge folder.
 
Format?
The tournament will be played as a 1on1 best of 3 double elimination tournament, grand finals will be best of 5, no reset.
 
Prize Pool! (subject to change)
1st place  - 4 Booster packs
2nd place - 3 Booster packs
3rd place - 2 Booster pack
4th place - 1 Booster pack
 
Big thanks to the devs who sponsor the booster packs!
 
 
When?
On 24.04.21  starting on 3pm CET (Berlin time), the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance.
 
Organisation?
The tournament brackets will be on Challonge, so register and join the tournament there. Please use your in game account name to make communication and finding your enemy easier.
The streaming channel that will be covering the tournament is DasToggy on twitch.tv.
In case of problems contact me or one of my mods via Discord, Battleforge or in the stream.
 
Twitch mods: LynnTaki
 
 
Rules!
-Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake.
-Not showing up to your match after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
-After your match, go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats . The brackets will be updated automatically.
-The Map Pool is:
1st round: Haladur, 2nd round: Simai, 3rd: Elyon, 4th: Lajesh, 5th: Uro and 6th: Yrmia (same pool as in ranked duel, we are using the new maps). The first match of the round will be played on the fixed map, then it is losers choice.  The winning player (who won the previous match in this bo3) also has to lock in his deck first.
-The brackets for the tournament will be shuffled before the tournament starts.
-Use your Battleforge name for the tournament. If your Challonge account differs from your Battleforge account name use the "Sign up with an alternate name" feature or change your name for the tournament in the settings. Finding your opponent will be a LOT easier this way.
Bonus rules for the testserver:
All cards that have an affinity that does not exist on the lifeserver are forbidden.
 
 
 
Please notice, that the tournament is on the testserver to use the newest balance patch. This brings the balanced maps, which we will use. Wazhai is not in the pool any longer (finally).
Reply in this thread if you have questions, I will check it out later.
 
 
Best regards,
Toggy

Perhaps they fled seeing you

what would be really cool is to add special signature Promos (untradeable!) if you complete with Pure Decks. Like a Promo Shaman, Frost Mage, Nox Trooper/Dreadcharger and erm ... maybe Sunderer (?) that you can show off.
Simple, not disturbing the economy, and something to "show off" for those who did it.

We are not opposed to add extra achievements (and we hope to add more in the future!), but especially for end-game achievements a reward such as an ordinary booster or card is sometimes not fulfilling. You don't want to receive a booster when you already have all cards. Some achievements scream to have a custom reward that can only be received by completing this achievement: and if you can show this accomplishment to others, the better. I think an achievement like this is a good example for a custom reward, where you could perhaps receive a custom title that shows next to your name or a fire border around your in-game avatar. The idea is that people see this title and know you can only get it by completing a specific achievement (and therefore are aware of the effort you have been through to get it): an indirect flex, if you will. 

 

I think we have a problems with terms here. Some are speaking of speedrunning and some are speaking about speedrunning - but you mean complete different things.
I would rather call the one speedrunning and the other farmrunning or something like that. And ofc all farming tactics are based on speedrun tactics, mostly in the way that is a most easy version of the speedrun.
However, this exists in almost all games I've played, and if an instance/dungeon whatever is disarmed, then the next best farm possibility is sought. There will always be players who just want to have everything as fast as possible and fall back on such tactics.
Unfortunately, I think that the intersection with the people who scream after a short time "I've seen everything,I have everything and I need new content" is very large.(assumption of me) They have seen nothing and know as much about the game as John Snow does.
But in my experience... you can't really do anything about this, that has more to do with attitude
Btw - nothing against a bit of farming from time to time. But of course also have to smile a bit too when 3 feeders are looking for their runner
 

It all started out with you publicly complaining about the issue of the lack of tournaments. In that discussion you were already showing a somewhat passive aggressive attitude towards @Ladadoos. A few days later, you approached him via his DMs in a rather aggressive way. He told you that he's not ignoring the issue, but not interested in a personal discussion with you, due to your attitude. Normally we wouldn't mind discussing something like this, as long as there's respect and common courtesy. In fact, I discuss topics like this with @Toggy quite often. It is rare that we decide to ignore someone. So to conclude, it was not the choice of words, but your general attitude you have shown both in public and in private.
He also obviously did not ignore the content of your message, because even before you DMed him we already decided to address these issues. We wanted to make a general project status update, and we wanted to add the positions for the community ambassador and the event organizer role.
We literally put thousands of hours into this project in the last year. Obviously @Toggy is one of the most engaged community members, but you're seriously underestimating how much work goes into this project. A lot of the work we do is generally not suitable for announcements to the public. Especially back in January, we had to spend a huge amount of time on the project just helping out new people with technical support and moderation issues. There was so much moderation work, that pretty much everyone had to help with that.
The platforms Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were in fact not decently managed before release, but also definitely not ignored. In the period from the end of 2018 to early 2020 there were no posts on these platforms. However, starting in August 2020 Ladadoos and I started with helping managing these platforms aswell. Obviously, given our roles in this project, and the fact that we have personal lives, this could not be kept up, especially given that our previously very active server developer Kubik left the team. Looking at the unofficial steam or skype groups for example, they mostly already died down on their own 2-3 years ago. I was able to find barely any posts, even after we announced the release. So these issues did not suddenly start after release.
Also, you really seem somewhat conflicted here. On one hand you say "If the staff do nothing, why should the community?", but on the other one you say "[...] but the future of this game should, UNLIKE the big companies I mentioned, in my opinion be more open and community driven". We believe this project is a community effort, not just a staff effort.
 We post updates when we make progress in development. However, in the last two months there was simply just not a lot of progress. Which is mostly due to the fact, that both Ladadoos and I heavily neglected our studies for the sake of this project in the year before. At the moment, we are the only server and client developers. Expecting constant updates at the pace they were released in the last year is completely unrealistic, especially given the fact that we're unpaid and doing this in our free time. Feel free to read this announcement aswell, we also touch upon the topic of unsustainable progress there.
 
There are so many little things staff could do all the time. Give responses to all posts, ask for clarification on bug reports, remind people to send their logs, offer to help people with technical issues, participate in feature discussions, and the list goes on. The issue here is simply that all of these little things, some of which are in fact not little, together do in fact take a lot of time.
This is just a another example of things, which might seem like they don't take a lot of time, but they in fact do. Who looks at all the replays? Who decides what's the funniest entry? Who hands out all the boosters? Who organizes the challenge? Who manages the challenge? And even then, people do have quality standards, and they don't want to waste their time with half-baked challenges. It's also generally not good for our image if we just try to pump out content with no real thought behind it. Generally we would like to go for quality over quantity, although we're aware that currently there are no challenges or tournaments. Staff members had been working on both a challenge, and a tournament in fact. They simply couldn't find the time to continue with these plans, hence why we're looking for more volunteers. As you can see from @Toggy and others, staff involvement is not a must for challenges or tournaments.
Obviously we care, and we try our best. And the best we can do right now is to get more volunteers on board, who can help us solve the exact issues you're bringing forward. It's disappointing that you imply that staff doesn't "really care" about tournaments, challenges and growing the community after more than 5 years of hard work.
I really think we're doing the best we can in the current situation, and I'm honestly not sure what you expect us to do differently, given the circumstances. @anonyme0273 in this post you only mention all the issues, and how you don't care that we're hiring new staff to attempt to solve them. Given the current circumstances, what do you expect us to do differently now?
You mentioned that Ladadoos and I participate in a lot of topics. We believe though, that there is a difference between particpating, and actively contributing. Here's how we participate in all things you mentioned:
Staff recruitment: yes, we handle that alongside the respective lead roles. Client modification: yes, we handle that completely, we're the only client and server developers at the moment. Community management: I would argue we're not doing the job of a community manager, but feel free to correct me. The most we do in that regard are maybe official statements. Project planning: there are examples of multiple different projects which work independently from Ladadoos and I: There is the Skylords Reborn Descriptions group, managed by @Mynoduesp. They are working on revamping all of the ingame descriptions. Our participation in this so far has been mostly limited to a meeting, where we discussed their proposals. There is a group working on additional rPvE factions. It started with @CrazyCockerell, and since then @Emmaerzeh has been looking over that project. There is the balancing team, which is managed by @ImaginaryNumb3r and will work autonomously. At the moment I'm still training the balancing developers a bit, until they can work on their own. Game design: we just give feedback on proposals (independently worked on by dedicated designers) in regards to technical limitations, and as server and client developers we implement finished proposals. Cloud you clarify what you mean with "pretty much everything else"? I hope it's clear that we have a team of more than 20 people who are putting their time into this project. They handle moderation, balancing, design, map creation, technical support, etc. Obviously we do a lot, which is to be expected as both an admin and developer, but to claim we do everything is absurd. You could even say that there are already multiple "project administrators" in the project who are overlooking a general process:
@ImaginaryNumb3r is the lead in game and faction design. @Emmaerzeh is the lead in map making, and organizing the map making effort. @RadicalX is in charge of the PvP expert group for balancing. In the future @WindHunter could be in charge of a similar process for PvE. It really does not seem like you are aware of the limitations we are facing. Our current biggest limitation in this regard is the lack of active developers.
Currently we have freund17, and Maze, who are working on a (for now internal) web interface/admin tool for Skylords Reborn. They are organizing themselves and the features they work on are currently determined by the moderators, who are in need of a moderation tool. We have Chibiterasu and Razeroc, who are part of the balancing team. There is fiki574. He's not as active as he once was, but he's maintaining our public APIs. He also listens to feedback from the community there. We have Aviat0r, who is also not too active at the moment, who has been working on a new updater tool. There is also empty, who's currently inactive. So unless you want to manage Ladadoos and me, there's unfortunately not a lot developers to manage right now, hence why we are looking for new developers rather than such a position right now. If with "developers" you mean people who are not in staff, you are generally welcome to organize these kinds of special projects without staff involvement. We're generally happy to assist you if we believe you are working on something which can help out the project. For example, Maze made this useful tool before he was added into staff:

We hope that we could answer all your questions. If everything goes well, all of these things will be less of an issue in the future. We plan to add the positions we are currently lacking to the staff team in the upcoming weeks.

Best regards,
Ladadoos and Zyna ~

Numerous times before it was said that just because there is not an official staff reply in a topic or suggestion, it does not necessarily mean we are not taking it into consideration or discussion behind the curtains. Demanding replies and/or personal attention does not speed up the process at all. Having in mind the lengths and extents this thread has went to, it is obvious it needs proper look at and preparation of a reply, because a lot of points have been touched.
Also, why are we being compared to big game studios at all? Totally different history, totally different circumstances, totally different "organization".
What I say might be irrelevant as I'm inactive by much lately, but the general feeling of complete underappreciation from some members of the community has never went away, and the continuous and complete lack of understanding for the staff's non-SR related (potentially real-life) activities is, to me, unfathomable. Even now, when there are lots of things in planning, lots of things in progress, lots of new people coming on board, Lada and Zyna giving their best in managing and organizing everything, developing the server, recruiting, attending colleges and finishing their degrees...
Whatever we say, whatever we do, it is never enough, never was and never will be.
Meaning there were 13 players in that map's chat channel, there are around 27-ish chat channels for other maps as well, as far as I know.
Relevant data can be found on https://stats.skylords.eu

Not even kidding, just the other day I also thought how an ignore function would be great.
There is just something about the combination of that avatar, incomprehensible drivels that take ages to decipher and then realizing the entire content was stupid to begin with that grinds my gears.

Who made you mad? 

Guess once

While I generally agree with you that players can set their own restrictions and challenges (I restricted myself to only Twilight Edition cards, no enlightenment, for an expert run without cheesing maps), I dont think we should just make everything available to everyone and call it a day. In this logic, why have color differences at all? Why cant I play both frost mage and sunderers on tier 1? I think I saw someone (maybe it was you?) suggest that monuments would be changed to allow all orbs at the same time, to switch things up. I think that would be a huge mistake and undermines the whole idea of the game. 
Anyway, In general I think pure cards (as in, SSFF) should be more powerfull than XXSF, since you get the benefit of support spells and strategies. I dont think the solution lies in making everything XX??, but rather reward players more by either buffing the pure cards, or nerfing the splash ones. 

New achievements suggestions. We already have free regulars boosters for standards, advanced and expert campain completion. It would be nice to add achievements for each pure factions.
 
exemple:
Complete all maps on standard with only pure fire decks, grants 3 fire boosters. 
etc etc 
 
It would add extra challenges.

I would like to mention that the approach taken here is not the right one when it comes to notifying us of (unfair) bans. The best thing to have done would be to have created a Ban Appeal thread or to have contacted us on Discord using the staff bot (and not in public chat), as Ultrakool said.

We indeed have full history of all in-game transactions and can easily check the flow of resources between different accounts. We are more than willing to spend the time to investigate the case and unban if necessary, if you approach us through one of the two previously mentioned ways. But you need to have a little patience and should not expect an immediate answer from us.
 

I really don't know what some expect. That new content and events just spontaneously materialize?
This post in particular seems to be mostly about events but so many other people endlessly repeat "NEW CONTENT WHERE?". You can't just shovel shit into the game, it has to meet a quality standard. Otherwise everyone will just come to take a look, realize it's cobbled together crap and leave to never return. Developing that stuff takes time, it takes effort and above all it takes people. This being a volunteer project, it's obviously going to struggle in all of those aspects. Especially since it was such a niche title to begin with.
You gotta manage your expectations. To me being able to play the game is the acceptable baseline. Everything above that is a bonus. And that's despite me being someone who would love to see TONS of changes and additions to the game. But resources are few. I think it would be nice and helpful to have a regular update on something but I know how it is. You don't always find it in you. Especially if there is no incentive like a job would mandate. At the same time you can't just take whoever to help out because then you run into the problem of poor internal communication, coordination and simply too many cooks. And, again, because this is a volunteer project, people can have a way lower threshold to tolerate frustration. Because why put up with it, there is nothing tangible in it for you. So there are falling outs, people become inactive, people leave.
As for the community, novelty and hype wear off. This is just the current state of the entire video game industry. It's all just a giant ball of hyped sheep flocking from one big thing to the next, with the minority sticking around in most cases. People are quick to write things off because the market is so over saturated and there is always the next thing to go to or the established mainstream thing to return to.
 
Basically, this is a full time gig running on volunteer and all the problems that come with that. There is always room for more and some small things wouldn't take too much while helping out big time (like just small, official updates so the thing seems alive) but it's always someones freetime that has to be sacrificed for it.

Long story short: Please No
Amii & Enlightenment are already too OP

Hi, all you weird people who like me still visit the forum for some reason.
I've come to share my first negative experience with the project and hope to bring more attention to what I believe matters most.
Now we all are here for the game and its community (can't have one without the other for long). The game is almost the same as when we fell in love with it so many years ago. The community changed over the years since the establishment of this project until now - for the better in most cases, I'd say. There is still positivity everywhere I look and support has seemingly never been stronger, now that we can play to our hearts content. But is playing all I expected from this project? Not really.
The game is (essentially) the same, you can tell me all about the changes to BFP, quests, balances... I think I know all of those. But the community, in my opinion, is at a standstill. Not because the hype is dead, that is not the case. But there is nothing official happening. We have a few amazing streamers and content creators and honestly praise be onto them, they keep this project fresh for me. Things are happening BY the community FOR the community, while the staff team hires more people to work on the game. Why is that not a good thing? More maps, more stable development, a clearer image of what the game can be - all those are great, but are all for nothing if the life of the game is stale with no official events, tournaments or something to look forward to by the staff.

I brought this idea up in Discord without much reply, so I took it then privately to @Ladadoos, who ignored the content of the message because of the way it was worded - a rather shallow behavior. I admit, I lost my temper in how I addressed this, but I will not apologize because I firmly believe that map designers, discord moderators, and more developers are not necessary until the word gets out there to both existing and hopefully new players. We can have the best game, but with only ~1000 active players it won't be long until those numbers start to fall and sooner or later the hype dies with it. What we should be doing, in my opinion, is supporting the community, its content creators, the games public image, rather than the inner workings. I believe noone here can complain about the job done until now - impecable! The game works, we can play, trade, talk, strategize, get better, grind. But that won't last forever, unless the community has something more to look forward to - again, tournaments, events, official livestreams, contests of all kinds. I love this game and the community that grew over the years and don't want it to die just because the staff is busy growing itself and the game mechanics when the player numbers are what essentially matters long term.

So yea, to be blunt and completely honest, in the last few weeks, I couldn't care less about rebalancing cards or hiring new staff and in my opinion @Toggy has done more for the game this year than any other actual staff member. Watching his tournaments and seeing the people root for their favorite deck, player, and generally enjoying the vibes is what I always looked forward to! I am so grateful we get to play the game, and I want it to stay a great place to go to, but not if it's at the cost of the people that came along with it.

If you disagree with me, please, let me know. Maybe I am missing a big picture, some future amazing prospects and plans that elude me, but for now I stand firmly by my beliefs that if nothing changes, soon this game will be just that - another game, nothing special. And that would be the worst thing to happen after all this work.

Greetings Skylords, Skyladies, and Skyfolks!

we are happy to announce another addition to our team today, @Eirias! As a game designer he will work on designing new quests and achievements, evaluating and improving match rewards and distribution, designing new ways to use currencies (gold being the more prominent currency), proposing improvements for a healthier economy (currency sinks for example), designing new progression systems or features etc.
We are glad to have him with us and we are looking forward to his contributions. On a side note, we are still looking for more volunteers! We would love to be able to provide new content at a more steady pace, and you can help us in various ways. You can have a look here:

Best Regards,
Skylords Reborn Team

Slave Master Nature Solo
A really easy one, while farming Insane God I thought I give it a try and got control over the map first run - I was just stupid enough to kill the Slave Master too soon. Strategy is everything - let the Twilight do your work on one Monument you while keeping to the right side as much as you can to access the other (with a time limit of 25 minutes to setup everything, so much room for mistakes too). Nature is really powerful on the defense, with the right buildings you easily get 6-7 T4 units going for offense, only depending on how many support units you want in the root network. What I really liked is that this is the place for the Sylvan Gate to shine. Still some tests needed to do it with Thornbark and Spikeroot instead of Razorleaf for a budget deck, but Wheels / Shrine of Memory / Forest Elder are all not needed to succeed.

 
Update Budget Deck:

Thornbarks have no problem dealing with the Skycatcher. Sylvan Gate Heal gains importance, and you have to check in from time to time for Repairs on the Emitter and the Healing Gardens. 6 Thornbarks + 1 Spore Launcher still leaves room for 6 Wyrms and 3-4 Drones for Offense. I added a Howling Shrine and Fountain for flavor, but it is not neccessary. No support units for the Root Network.
 
Slave Master Nature Solo.pmv
Slave Master Nature Solo Budget.pmv

Sub 2 Minute HYPE!
 

update for Bad Harvest speedrun 1:59.0 by Kamen + FoodForThought + Asj + Soulharvester

Same for BG, it opens BG1 in this case

I got you covered ;D
https://skylords-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Starter Decks