Majora

Disclaimer: The following thoughts are from me as a player, not me as a community manager or representation of the Skylords Reborn team. In general, I'm against making the game easier and in favor of removing map abuse. People complain about the lack of new maps/content all the time, yet we see mainstream map abuse or weird interactions that clearly should not work, resulting in maps being way easier than they should be. This again results in people ''completing'' the game at a faster phase, which is not helpful for player retention. Now I'm not saying every map needs to be insanely hard, but there can definitely be a few hard ones that requires a few restarts. My favorite memories of the game include struggling with my friends on a hard map, slowly gaining more knowledge and skill to complete it. The game has plenty of maps, so especially the ones that are unlocked late in the game and don't block any other maps can be harder to complete without scaring people away. We should also keep in mind that the game has an expert mode for a reason. Making expert maps easy because newer players are struggling makes little sense to me, we already have standard and advanced for those players. In my opinion, expert should embrace the idea of the map, challenge you in a good way, and assume you have a decent collection. Convoy Convoy is clearly one of the harder maps, and the one I was struggling with the most. I think it took me two nights with my friend to complete, but it still holds a fond memory. I think getting rid of the abuse is a good thing, but I disagree that the number of walkers have to go from 3 to 5. Suggestion: - Remove walker trapping and other tricks that can get you into the canyon (which is clearly not intended in the map design) - Keep the number of bandit walkers the same Crusade + Defending Hope I like these changes. Empire Empire was the last map added to the game, and it shows. The idea is cool, but it is still completely unclear to me which side is supposed to be the past, and which one is supposed to be the present. The fact that the side quest with Kobold Engineers and Midwinter doesnt really do anything does not help. Suggestion: - Agree with the suggestions - Maybe make it more clear which side is past, which is present, and how things actually impact each other. Encounters with Twilight I like these changes King of the Giants I agree with all suggestions. Nightmare Shard I'm against making expert maps easier, but if newer players indeed do struggle on standard, I'm all in favor of making Standard easier. I do think the map can be a bit tedious with its low power. However, increasing starting well capacity does not help with that. I'm more in favor of suggestion 4 (increasing void power to get slightly faster start). Nightmares End I actually would prefer to see this swapped the other way: make it so you have to destroy the power shrine to build the orb. Since the map is already quite long, I'm not against speeding the early game up a bit by adding some void power. Ocean No strong opinion on this map, except that it feels like there is too much going on that does not actually do anything for you. This was especially visible on the speedrunnig contest of Toggy, where you can just skip huge parts of the map. Oracle Flavor wise it makes no sense that the ritual doesn't do anything, so I'm in favor of this. Siege of Hope Don't have a strong opinion on this one. I remember playing it the first time and thinking it was insanely hard, but it has a good learning curve and is definitely playable. Slavemaster I never ran into this issue, but it can be long map so I'm not against these changes. Sunbridge It makes absolutely no sense that advanced is harder on expert on this map. I'm hugely in favor of getting rid of the switch abuse. I'm also in favor of making the boss fight harder, since by then you already dominated the map, and its currently no challenge at all. I'm not really in favor for swapping the dragon with Abomination, but it's something I can live with. The Dwarven Riddle I'm not really sure how I feel about adding a 4th orb. I never felt it was needed on this map, and it's part of the charm that some players fill a more supporting role. The guns of Lyr Guns of Lyr on expert is a very hard map if you don't trick it, but very satisfying to play with some friends. I'm all in favor of removing all map abuse here. The Insane God The transformed priest does feel a little bit lackluster, but it still has very decent stats. I don't think it needs to be changed, but a strong burrowers wall spit sounds like a cool idea. The Soulstree I agree with these changes The Treasure Fleet This one is actually one of my favorite maps (without exploits). Adding another fun challenge to it, without impacting the nostalgia or making it easier, sounds very cool to me! Titans Sounds like good changes to me. On closing notes, I'm also in favor of removing Nightguards Ability to take control of units she is clearly not meant to swap with. This also makes some maps way easier than they should be. Part of the charm of BattleForge is finding ways to beat certain challenges. Nightguard is one of those one-size-fits-all problem solvers that clearly is not meant to be used like this.

Do you mean a higher focus on unit combat and less spell support options? Personally, I don't think so. Part of the charm of BattleForge that makes it stand out from traditional RTS is the current system. Its the reason why Fog of War is not in the game, being able to instantly spawn reinforcements and support with spells makes it differ a lot from the traditional ''build a bigger/better army and attack key points in the map''. The game is also heavily balanced around (Crowd Control) spells. The spell-system is just too ingrained to adjust it without breaking the current game. The void-power system also results in players having to be careful throwing their spells around. If your eruption only killed 50 power of units, you are set back. If you oink or freeze constantly without actually getting rid of the units, you are falling more and more behind. What is the specific reason you dont like spells?

We can design these variations, but as far as I am aware, there are no leftovers from EA times no.

But but but.. my community updates 😞

What do you mean with ''rank only pack''? As a PvP player myself, I definitely agree it would be cool to add an incentive to reach top X.

Sadly, adding in completely new animations is currently not possible. There also aren't that many un-used models, as far as I'm aware there is only one. Since BattleForge last days under EA were kind of dire, I suppose they already used everything they could.

While a fun idea, I could imagine it being quite annoying if you are in a 4 player group (or god forbid 12 player) and everyone starts spamming units and spells like crazy, lagging your computer up. It could be fun to test stuff out though, but then it should be optimal and not by default on. I think Ladadoos is the Forge expert, so he can better guess if such a feature is do-able and/or a lot of work.

Welcome back and glad to hear you are enjoying the game!

You can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here.

Thank you very much for your feedback 🙂 Personally I would also like to have voice-overs for the campaign as well. We all hate the babbling Moon sometimes, but BattleForge just isnt the same without it. Sadly, we currently have no way to add new soundfiles or voicelines, nor someone who can work on new PvE maps, so im afraid we'll have to be patient.

Greetings Skylords! It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn! Share your feedback, get a booster! You are currently reading the 10th Community Update! We hope you find these updates interesting, whether you are an active player or someone who wants to keep an eye on the project. Time for some reflection and feedback. Last month we asked for your feedback regarding the Official PvE contests, but this time we want to know your opinion about Skylords Reborn in general. What do you like? What could be better? We want to keep improving the game and growing our playerbase, and your feedback is crucial for us. Please give us your feedback here. As a thank you there will be a booster for everyone who fills in the survey. Your feedback will be anonymous. Next Patch Soontm Our next patch is finally nearing completion! We expect the full patch to hit the test server at the end of this weekend. Once we are sure no bugs are within these changes, we plan to patch to live as soon as possible. There are truly a ton of changes in this patch, resulting in the patch notes already being 12 pages long, excluding bug and description changes! We will post the patch notes on our Patreon first, but of course we will share the full notes with everyone when the patch goes live on our main servers. And for those who are wondering; yes, Ravenheart will finally get its rework this patch. A discussion of upcoming map changes The Skylords Reborn team recently discussed changes to PvE campaign maps. The goal of these changes would be to maintain the identity of the map as closely as possible while improving aspects such as major exploits, unused sections of maps, and problem areas where players feel forced to "break" the map to play it. It is important to note that all of these changes are proposals, none of them are guaranteed to be implemented! We do not want to make changes to something as fundamental as campaign maps without input from the community and what they want to see or not see change-wise. Please discuss what you think of the proposed changes and share your ideas in this topic or the discord. You can find all of the proposed changes in the attached PDF. Proposed Upcoming PvE Map Changes.pdf PvP Improvements in development We are also looking at ways to make it easier to find matches in PvP. One of the low-hanging fruits here is better rewards. Currently, the reward system is heavily favoring playing PvE over PvP. The low number of players currently playing PvP also isn't helping with completing Daily PvP Quests, and can cause for a lot of idle time for players. To counter this and reward players for playing PvP, we are currently looking into options like draining the BFP-reserve while being in the ranked queue. Another nice feature we are working on are PvP Happy Hours. During specific time periods, players will receive additional rewards playing PvP. We notice the current PvP is quite scattered, with a lot of players wanting to play, but going offline again when they cant find opponents. We hope that by clustering those players together during certain time frames, we can encourage the PvP scene. As mentioned in a previous Community Update, it will soon also be possible to still see sparring lobbies while being in the ranked queue, without having to cancel your matchmaking. We also expect the next balance patch to cause a breath of fresh air. Currently we are planning to offer Happy Hours for both 1vs1 and 2vs2. During Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active. When we have fleshed out our ideas a bit more, we will announce more details. Tournaments & Events • Finished: Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Tournament - August 22th Last weekend Toggy hosted another Tome tournament, meaning players had to build a deck from a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. You can rewatch the stream here in case you missed it. • Host your own event / tournament Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Hiko 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. New Team Members / Open Positions We have a new Map Tester! We are very happy to welcome Rawne! At the same time we are sad to see our balance developer Razeroc go. We want to thank him again for all the hard work he put into the project, and we hope to still see you in the forge from time to time! We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however. Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk! 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. Open Position - Map Artist As a map artist you are responsible to polish the aesthetics of a map. This includes texture the map, add decorations and add different effects and sounds. In other words, responsible for making the map look and feel good. Open Position - 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. In Conclusion Thanks for reading! This marks the 10th Community Update already. Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? How do you feel about the structure of the updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know! Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S010 The code is valid till September 11th. Please note you can also get a booster by filling in our survey. Archive Community Update #7 Community Update #8 Community Update #9

Looks awesome! 😄 Thanks for putting in the time, hope we will see it in use in the future.

For those unaware: How can I join the test server? To join the test server you simply need to launch LauncherTest.exe located in your BattleForge installation folder. It is important you run the updater first, so you download the latest test server files. In the future we plan to make it easier to join the test server.

Update to the post: A new tome tournament has been announced! This one is open for everyone, but you need to sign up in advance by contacting Toggy. This will be another Tome tournament, meaning you will build a deck with a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. Sign up and read the details about it here.

The links should work just fine, which ones are you trying?

Lovely way to spend my Sunday, im game!

We do use them in every community update since the second one actually 😛 And yes, credit goes to Rhino. 🙂 The full wallpaper versions are available on our Patreon.

Greetings Skylords! It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn! Deep Dive: Rarities As our development of new cards continues, a frequently asked question is the upcoming rarities. These will be the first brand new cards for Skylords Reborn, so we want to have a system in place to provide insights on what makes a card common, uncommon, rare or ultra rare. We have explored this in a document, providing a deep dive into the rarities EA used in their first edition for the game: the Twilight Edition. Even though these are not always consistent, and expansions have not made things any easier, we still can take some lessons from the current distribution and apply it going forward. If you are interested in the thought process behind card rarities and how we will decide them for our new cards, you can read the full document here: Designing_for_Card_Rarity.pdf And in case you missed them, here are the rarity icons for our new cards: Test Server Patch Notes Iteration 17 of our test server is here! Check out the patch notes. This patch mainly finalizes the PvP changes which will soon hit the live server. Please keep in mind that these changes are all relative to the previous iteration. The final PvE changes will go live in the next iteration. There are also some noteworthy requested general changes in this iteration. We fixed the inventory sorting, which should now properly sort the cards as specified. We also added a power well and a monument for each player in the forge. You can now test out all your damage combo's without the need to find a building that has exactly the same amount of health as these buildings. We also made another change to the game that will certainly be the topic of many conversations in the future. We added a preliminary fix so units in PvE maps always have correct orb and power costs. This means that certain abilities, like e.g. Nightguard Swap or Mindcontrol cannot ignore the orb requirements anymore. Please note these changes will not be included in the next live server patch. We want to test and gather feedback before making a change like this, but first had to figure out if it was even possible. You can discuss these and other changes on our balance discord. Next Live Patch Delayed Because of a delay of the Test Server Patch we sadly also have to delay the Live Patch we were hoping to release this week. Since this is going to be a big one, we need a little more time to make sure all the bugs (not you Scythe Fiend) are taken care of before we patch to live. Please be patient a bit longer, we are still hoping for a release in August. Special Effect Tool Last Community Update we gave you a sneak peek at our new special effect tool. With the this tool we will be able to create fancy new spells and effects. Even though we are currently not able to add new models to the game, this is a great step in allowing us to create new visually appealing content. We are looking for players who are interested in learning how to create special effects and give feedback on how to improve the tool. If you are interested in this, please reach out to Ladadoos on Discord for a quick explanation. We have plans to open source the editor in the future. Tournaments & Events • NEW: Feedback official PvE events Now that we have hosted two official events, we are looking for some feedback regarding both the events and the stream to improve upon them where possible. Feedback is anonymous and can be provided here. Please keep the feedback constructive and understand we do this in our free time. • Finished: Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Invitational If you played BattleForge back in the day you might remember Tomes. In this gamemode you get a selection of boosters that you have to use to build your deck with, after which you play PvP matches. While Tomes got discontinued around the end of BattleForge and are not available in Skylords Reborn, Toggy hosted a limited-access event last weekend to relive the experience. It was a great success, with crazy off-meta plays and is bound to return. For now you can rewatch the stream in case you missed it. • NEW : Community Tournament: Toggy's Tome Tournament - August 22th A new tome tournament has been announced! This one is open for everyone, but you need to sign up in advance by contacting Toggy. This will be another Tome tournament, meaning you will build a deck with a selection of random cards and play PvP matches with them. Sign up and read the details about it here. • Host your own event / tournament Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Hiko 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. New Team Members / Open Positions We are happy to welcome a new member to the team: Kerkk has joined us as a web developer! We could definitely need some more help with the Skylords Reborn project however. Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. Open Position - Map Tester As a map tester you get early access to new maps and gamemodes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes check how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly. Open Position - Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn and to attract veteran and new players alike. This includes actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, youtubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. Open Position - Artist As an artist you are responsible to create the visuals required for new content. This is a broad position and there are many areas where you could help in, depending on your skills and interests. Think of loading screen artwork for new maps, card artwork for new cards, visual UI elements for new features that involve adding UI to the game, banners for events/tournaments/community challenges/large game updates etc. Our current artist Tweeto is hard at work on new cards, but he can only do so much. If you have the skills and want to speed up the progress, please reach out to us. In Conclusion Thanks for reading! Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know! Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE9 The code is valid till August 28th. Archive Community Update #6 Community Update #7 Community Update #8

We definitely consider ability costs when we look at the balance of a card. For example, Spearman had their Switch-stance cost removed. But this is not something we can or will shortcut to all cards. Sometimes it has to do with the effect instead of the cost, sometimes the cost is already too cheap, and sometimes the ability makes no sense, either by their cost or the units role. The next balance patch already covers a lot of cards again, so please bear with us while we get through them all 🙂

Stream is now live:

Thanks! Looks like I will need it!

Hype! Hoping for viridya in my pool 😛

Join us tonight at 19:00 CEST for the stream announcing the winners of the second official PvE Contest. There will also be some giveaways, so even if you did not participate; we invite you all to join us for a night of Skylords Reborn fun! twitch.tv/skylordsreborn

Greetings Skylords! It's been two weeks already since our last community update so it's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn! This community update is a bit shorter than you have come to expect from us. Every area of development is progressing nicely, but we are currently not in a position where we can share the results just yet. Rest assured new cards are still actively in development, and so are our new game modes. Skylords Reborn is being developed alongside our jobs and studies, and real life can get in the way sometimes. We also don't make any money from the game, since all our Patreon income goes directly toward server upkeep. Some of our team members also struggled with the flood from two weeks ago. We know you are all excited for new content, and we try to provide you with a steady stream of information in these Community Updates, but some tasks might take a bit longer than expected. Upcoming Patch We are still hard at work on our upcoming balance patch to the live servers. Sadly, we are running into some delays because of all the changes that accumulated on the test server and now have to move to the live server. We are now looking at an expected release of mid-august. In our next community update we should be able to provide the patch notes, but you can expect some changes to pure frost (check our deep dive if you haven't already!) and a lot of cool changes for both PvE and PvP. Free PvP Decks Adjustments When Skylords Reborn released in 2020, we introduced our free PvP decks. Every week you can select up to two decks that are fully upgraded and can compete in the PvP meta. For our new players, here is a quick recap: - Select the sword on the top right of the menu to select your 2 free PvP decks. - Free PvP decks are fully upgraded decks, that can only be used in PvP. - You can select two new decks every week, if you want to switch things up. - You can freely swap around cards in those decks with cards in your collection to customize the decks to your liking. You can do this by clicking the tab in your inventory on the top left (see the image). The meta of Skylords Reborn has seen a lot of changes ever since release, with multiple balance patches hitting the live servers. The contents of the free PvP decks did not change with them however. We plan to change that with the next patch*, and will continue to adjust them when new patches hit the server. Below you can find a list of all the changes coming to the free PvP decks. As mentioned above, if you don't want to alter your deck, you can still use your own cards to adjust your list to your liking. Keep in mind some cards might increase in price however, since they will no longer be available in some, or all, of the free PvP decks. Tainted Darkness (Pure Shadow) + Satanael (red) + Blood Healing - Evocators Woe - Phasetower Gifted Darkness (Shadow Nature) + Mo - Evocators Woe Blessed Darkness (Shadow Frost) + Lost Reaver (red) - Mountaineer Infused Darkness (Shadow Fire) + Bandit Stalker (green) - Phasetower Tainted Flora (Nature Shadow) + Spearmen + Unstable Demon - Treespirit - Evocators Woe Gifted Flora (Pure Nature) No changes Blessed Flora (Nature Frost) + Razorshard (red) - Crystal Fiend Infused Flora (Nature Fire) + Magma Hurler + Mutating Maniac (red) - Brannoc - Disenchant (purple) Tainted Ice (Frost Shadow) + Lost Reaver - Mountaineer Gifted Ice (Frost Nature) + Lightblade (purple) - Lightblade (red) Blessed Ice (Pure Frost) + Icefang Raptor + Mountain Rowdy + White Ranger - Frostmage - Skyelf Templar - Lyrish Knight Infused Ice (Frost Fire) + Glyph of Frost + Icefang Raptor (blue) + Gladiatrix (green) + Warlock (blue) + Eruption - Frost Mage - Mountaineer - Scythe Fiends - Skyelf Templar - Virtuoso Tainted Flame (Fire Shadow) + Wrecker + Bandit Stalker (green) - Mortar Tower - Ashbone Pyro Gifted Flame (Fire Nature) + Mutating Maniac - Mortar Tower Blessed Flame (Fire Frost) + Icefang Raptor (blue) + Warlock (blue) + Wrecker - Mortar Tower - Scythe Fiends - Mountaineer Infused Flame (Pure Toggy) + Sun Reaver - Mortar Tower Those changes to the Free PvP decks are planned alongside our new balance patch, planned for release mid-August*. This might give you a bit of a sneak peek at some cards receiving buffs this iteration. We hope you are looking forward to a fresh new meta! *We do want to make sure changing those decks will not break the game, so they might release a bit later. Special Effect Editor We have made some great progress in the project in a different area: the special effect editor. With this tool we are able to edit the special effects of BattleForge and create new ones from scratch. This is particularly useful for spells, since they are for the majority special effects. Many units also have special effects on their models though, like the flames of Batariel or the frosty cold effect emitted from Frost Mage. We can create complex new effects like Fire Sphere or meteors that leave ice shards on impact. Even though we are currently not able to add new models to the game, this is a great step in allowing us to create new visually appealing content. The tool is currently still work in progress. After it matures a little and we gain experience creating new special effects, we should barely be limited anymore for creating new special effects. Upcoming Tournaments • FINISHED Official PvE Contest#2 Slave Master The second official PvE contest for the map Slave Master has ended. Thanks to everyone for participating! The winners will be announced on a stream on Monday 19:00 CEST on our official twitch channel. We will also do some giveaways, so even if you did not participate; we invite you all to join us for a night of Skylords Reborn fun! • FINISHED Skylords Open #10 Last week marked the return of the Skylords Open, with its 10th edition since release already. Joining Toggy as co-caster was RadicalX, so if you are interested in PvP, be sure to rewatch the stream. • Host your own event / tournament Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organiser Hiko 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. New Team Members / Team Changes Another new member has joined the Skylords Reborn team. A frequent contender in the Skylords Open, and traumatized for life by Harvesters; we are happy to welcome DutchyDutchy as a Discord Moderator! As always; if you want to help the project, please take a look at these open positions in our team! In conclusion Thanks for reading! Is there anything you wish us to cover in upcoming community updates? As always, we are open to feedback so please let us know! Here is a scratch code you can redeem in-game for 100bfp. COMM-UNIT-YUPD-ATE8 The code is valid till August 14th. Archive Community Update #5 Community Update #6 Community Update #7

Hey everyone, Please understand this is a passion project that we all work on in our free time, for no profit, alongside our actual jobs. That means both the development, discussions and the moderation. I don't want to silence constructive criticism or complaints, but at this point I don't see this going anywhere productive. To conclude, we won't be removing the multi-account ban rule, but we are looking into a more rewarding system for playing past the daily. I'm not a moderator but since this threat is turning highly toxic, I will lock it for now until a moderator has time to look at it and decide how to go forward. Please respect each other and stick to a discussion, instead of a flame war. We are all here because we love the game.