Metagross31

We could maybe, if the demand is big enough, have kind of like an "archive" category in the custom map section, where old maps can still be played without getting gold rewards, so farming them is no longer an option.

Sorry if this came ober the wrong way. I do not want to make her untauntable in general, but only remove the fact, that she is still frozen after the taunt. It could be made for example, that she will chase the lightblade for as long as the taunt is active and afterwards run back to her path and only then continue running towards the goal. This way, together with other CCs such as freeze and slow, you can still buy a lot of time, but it is a little bit more engaging, because you have to micro your lightblade away from her instead of just clicking once and then the whole mechanic of the encounter is frozen for ~2min. Changing the timer on exp might be something to consider as well, if it turns out to be just too difficult, but I also like the idea of Ascension being a kind of "final boss" map on expert, being the most difficult, since it is also the conclusion to the whole Virydia story line.

I fully agree with you. To be honest, I only learned what the "wrath of the souls" actually does a few weeks ago, eventhough I have played BF since the early EA days. I even think it could be buffed by a substantial amount, such that the map functions similar to sunbridge; one map has the wrath on it, so they can't really advance that well and should focus on defense and hold their positions while the others make progress. Also, here are some general thoughts on the proposed changes: Ascension: I generally like them, but what about the Lightblade bug on map2? Shouldn't that be considered an exploit too? Convoy: I like the removal of the blocking, but increasing the walker amount to 5 is maybe making it too easy. As some people before me already stated, expert maps should really be tough, so leaving it at 3 or maybe 4 walkers should be fine. Additionally, I think it should be considered, whether it should be possible to reach the middle part all together, since you could still use scythe fiends to get in there and use your units to support the walkers, which would defy the purpose of the map. Lastly, the gate-warping. One simple fix for that would be to only spawn the final boss, once the power shrine has fallen. But that might cause the Wrath of the Speedrunners to come to your map. But to be fair, I have not yet had any issues with people gate-warping in casual play, so this might not be that big of an issue. Crusade: I love the idea of the additional secret boss! Also, that it is tied to an achievement. But I would love to have an incentive to kill him more often than once. Maybe, with an objective based rewarding system for XP, as it has been discussed before, would achieve just that. (Such a system could also be a step towards fixing Bad Harvest farm runs.) The triggering of the final wave seems fine to me; to be honest, that is probably only something top speedrunners will care about, since in casual runs you are slower most of the times (at least when playing with me lol). Defending Hope / Siege of Hope: I kind of like the fact, that the times no longer have a lower limit. Also, more gold chests are always great! 🙂 Empire: First of all, fixing bugs is always great! Also, I like the idea of making the two timelines interact more with each other, f.e. via the kobold engineers. Tbh, this is another one of these situations, where I don't even know how exactly the mechanics work, because I see it in use so seldomly. Encounters with twilight: Love it! King of the Giants: Timer: Great addition! Artifacts: Love the idea! So far the only one I sometimes use it the one, which casts eruptions around it, to clear stonekin units lol. Midwinter: Yes, please give her some love! Maybe make it, so she can be freed before going over the last gate? This way she can already start clearing stuff. But then she would still need some more bulkyness and a speedbuff (Edit: I just played the map and saw, that it actually is quite fast. But since the players are usually rushing ahead, it still doesn't do anything. Maybe just beef up the final stretch by a lot?), so she doesn't die in the first camp or get left behind right after the first camp. And again: Gate-warping anyone? Nightmare Shard: Starting Well pool increase: Yeah, why not. Lowering the difficulty on standard might be fine, but I think advanced and expert can stay a bit tougher. Same for the first camp; Mana Wings, Mine, Frostmage, Roots+mass WW etc. seem like several decent options. And as people mentioned before, this might encourage people to cooperate more or go out of the standard path and go to the second camp first. Nightmare's End: Starting Well pool: Yeah, why not. Starting void pool: 100 might be fine, but 200 might be a bit too much. And as stated by some people before, the idea of not destroying the shrines is very counterintuitive, when the game tells you to destroy them. So I agree that this change is not really necessary. Ocean: Removing chests: I get the idea of standardizing the chest count on all maps, but I always liked how you can scout out all of the islands to find some gold chests. Makes you feel like a real pirate 🙂 So maybe having extra gold chests as the additional things to find on the optional islands isn't that far-fetched. Also, Dropship counter shown ingame is a great addition! Oracle: I like the idea, that succeeding the ritual gives a reward / failing it punishes you. But as someone already mentioned, if the fire units aren't worth it and only crowd your unit limit, people might now intentionally fail the ritual. Maybe make it punishing to mess it up by enemy units or - even better - make the spell devices overload, casting freeze, damage spells etc. (whatever is involved in the ritual) on your own units? Sunbride: Eventhough I find the gateswitch bug kind of iconic and I am almost a bit nostalgic for it, it is probably still better, if it is gone. Adjusting the difficulty of the first bigger wave might be a good compensation for it then. The Dwarven Riddle: I like the proposed ideas, but I also do not have any great ideas on how to prevent the solo-carry strat without making severe changes to the map. But in the end - similar strats can probably be done on most multiplayer maps, it is up to the players though, whether they do them. The Guns of Lyr: I am all for the fix of the southern flame and the blocking mechanic. I am not 100% sure yet about what to do about clearing the final base over the wall, but I am not too confident in how the spawning mechanisms on this map work to have a clear opinion on it. The insane God: I like the idea of buffing the own priests, as I have never really felt that it was worth it to get them. The Soultree: Amii Monument? The Treasure Fleet: Like the idea. And I would also be interested in how much time this actually saves. Also, you would need to make sure, that you can't switch the path of the wagon midway, as a means to shortcut from the blue to the red path in the middle section. Also, can the wagons get zapped away by the twilight evil eye, that is patroling before the top left camp? Titans: The thing with the rituals and the shamans is another thing, that is so irrelevant, I don't even know what it is doing. So giving it some purpose sounds good! Unblocking Journe also seems good, as this can usually be done to trivialize the job of the top right position. Also, giving pos 3 another job sounds cool! Some more thoughts on Passage to darkness: The bossfight seems like a very cool ending to this map. Maybe, to increase the connection between the maps, it could be handled similarly to the Raven's End or Empire Bossfight, where the Boss is really really bulky and ports from map 1 to 2 and 3 after getting a certain amount of damage, while the other maps get to fight adds and a super beefed up wrath of the souls. So, these are some of my thoughts on the proposals. Most of it has already been stated, but maybe some of the ideas are new 🙂

Wow, this actually turned out great!

So, is it an open tournament this time? Sadly, I won't be able to make it either way. Hopefully next time 😉

Changing the cost of special abilities is indeed a great tool to use during balancing. However, some special abilities are already super strong for how cheap they are, so that removing them would just make them way to strong. Take for example the special abilities of Tremor, Timeless One or Stormsinger - they all have amazing effects for a super low cost, especially compared to spells, which do the same (for example: Timeless One's freeze costs 10 power, while Coldsnap costs 75). So, I think some ability costs might need some tweaking, but removing them all together overshoots the goal by a lot imo. If you want to talk more about specific topics regarding balancing, also check out the Skylords Balancing Discord.

Sounds great, but also sounds hard to implement.

This sounds interesting, definitely looking forward to it!

I hope everyone is fine and noone got hurt by the flooding. Short (slightly drunk) question: why remove frostmage from pure frost PvP Deck? Edit: There are some more things unclear about the free PvP deck changes. Do you guys have a full explanation of the changes somewhere? Also: for special effects!

I think it is possible to make custom PvP maps, which have all of the things you mentioned here. I also think new PvP maps will be surely added to the official pool at some point in the future, but only after extensive testing. Also, all of the points Majora mentioned still have to be considered. But hey, maybe someone will create some bigger/slower maps, which are decently balanced at some point 🙂

Sounds good to me 👍

There is currently already a plan of making it deal full dmg to frozen targets to fix the first issue. For more info on that, check out the balancing discord.

Glad to hear, that community maps are getting some more love! But I think the biggest feature mentioned hear is the "view lobbies while in a ranked queue" feature. Finally you no longer have to commit to only waiting when in a queue, but can still do other stuff meanwhile. This is such a great feature imo! I think this can help PvP playercount a lot!

In the order that they appear in the deck: Curse of Oink Creeping Paralysis Equilibrium (g) Regrowth Disenchant (g) Revenge Twilight Pestilence (b) Thunderstorm Inferno Cluster Explosion (both affinities) Earthshaker Eruption Mine Nomad (g) Gladiatrix (g) Twilight Creeper (p) Abomination (b) Breeding Grounds Shrine of War

Very cool guide, thanks a lot for it! Is it also viable to use bloodhealing on a night crawler spawned by infect?

I see your point and, to be honest, I don't really care for 5bfp most of the time either, but I think the main advantage of this system is, that it might discourage players from rerolling quests for specific maps and thus increasing the popularity of lesser played maps by a bit.

I think this is intended, since the ranged attack does siege damage (+50% against buildings). So basically the ability not only changes range but also dmg type.

There you go 🙂

In case it hasn't been mentioned here yet:

I don't think you can warp into the middle canyon (If it is possible though, I am open to see how :)). What you can do, however, is warping over the gate before the boss with nether warp. This is for example done in the speedrun:

Great idea! Another option would be to do it like in WoW; grant achievement points for each achiev - more for harder ones, less for easier ones - and have a leaderboard for those points.

There is already a brainstorming thread for that: