Community update #9 - August 14th 2021

[Majora]

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. 

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Community Update #6
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Community Update #8

[Dallarian]

That fan arts are awesome, please use them in every community update ❤️

Are they made by Rhino?

[Majora]

1 hour ago, Dallarian said:

That fan arts are awesome, please use them in every community update ❤️

Are they made by Rhino?

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. 

[Xanatoss]

Huge respect to the developer department which, despite all obstacles,  keeps pushing the live release forward. You guys are the unsung heroes of SR.

[Cocofang]

With the release of the now third official document I made a wiki page dedicated to providing an overview of the various pieces for quick and easy access.

[Hrdina_Imperia]

Props to the dev team, nice work on the game so far! Cannot wait to see the new cards. 

[Xanatoss]

Was able to read the Rarity-Document now. Once again I am very impressed by the structured approaches to so many considerations regarding SR and thus had a great pleasure reading.

Only thing which bugs me is the example of Sunderer "paying" twice for S-Knockback and beeing a L-Unit. Current Mountaineer would fit that kind of budget better instead.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Xanatoss

[WindHunter]

7 hours ago, Xanatoss said:

Was able to read the Rarity-Document now. Once again I am very impressed by the structured approaches to so many considerations regarding SR and thus had a great pleasure reading.

Only thing which bugs me is the example of Sunderer "paying" twice for S-Knockback and beeing a L-Unit. Current Mountaineer would fit that kind of budget better instead.

I'm glad you like it overall.

In terms of units like Sunderer and Harvester receiving "extra" points for their size's inherent knockback: One of the hardest parts of developing this system was putting aside what we wanted to be true and focusing entirely on what leads to the highest success rate in terms of explaining rarity. I did not want to commit the equivalent of double jeopardy for these units but the numbers required it. Our focus here was not "what we think rarity should be" but "what was rarity to the original devs" so that we could do the best job of explaining the existing system and providing ourselves a template which would result in design consistency moving forward.

[Xanatoss]

17 hours ago, WindHunter said:

I'm glad you like it overall.

In terms of units like Sunderer and Harvester receiving "extra" points for their size's inherent knockback: One of the hardest parts of developing this system was putting aside what we wanted to be true and focusing entirely on what leads to the highest success rate in terms of explaining rarity. I did not want to commit the equivalent of double jeopardy for these units but the numbers required it. Our focus here was not "what we think rarity should be" but "what was rarity to the original devs" so that we could do the best job of explaining the existing system and providing ourselves a template which would result in design consistency moving forward.

I can understand this rationale completely. In particular, the tightrope walk between a supposedly elegant reverse engineering solution and its merciless empirical performance.

But because Sunderer and Harvester are currently unique in their size-to-tier-ratio wouldn't it be obvious to add one/two points to T1-Large and T2-XL in the complexity table and scratch the artificial S-Knockback from both unit-sheets? That way potentially future T1-L-Units would automatically be rare and T2-XL-Units automatically ultra-rare while still leaving some design space _while_ being more consistent to the other L/XL Units _and_ still being empirical robust overall.

First I thought there was another restriction to this suggestion, like the cost-increase for lower tiers following some kind of Fibonacci sequence, but the T1-Flying (+4) and T1-XL-Knockback (+10) neither do fit such patterns. So what am I missing?

Btw: I find it interesting that there is a cost for T1-XL-Knockback in the first place, while there is none ("X") for T1-XL-Creatures, which indicates to me, that there is a future design space for the former but not the latter.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Xanatoss

[WindHunter]

@Xanatoss

There are a two reasons why I think the current system of making units like Sunderer and Harvester pay for their inherent knockback is better than just adding a point or two to their respective sizes for their tiers.

1. Flying units do not inherently have knockback on their attacks. Any increase to complexity cost based on size would thus add to the complexity of flying units of that size inappropriately. You can see this with Skyfire and s-knockback in T2, which Skyfire does not possess. 
2. Right now all ground-based L and XL-units have knockback inherently but that does not mean they always will. For example, I personally want to remove walking knockback from all floating head type units such as Wrathgazer, Deepfang, Magma Fiend, Lost Horror, etc. The model of the floating units quite literally flies over most s-units and several M-units, so why are these units being knocked back? A future L-sized Magma Fiend in T2 (hypothetical) would thus not pay the S-knockback "tax" in the current system but would if we increased L-size complexity cost to compensate for not calculating the s-knockback cost. 

In terms of things like flying in T1. These are very difficult to calculate. The only flying unit in T1 is Mana Wing which has an active advanced ability +3, but is rare. So where does the rest of the cost fit in? By making Flying in T1 cost +4, it means any future flying T1 unit, even the most simple kind like Skyfire, is automatically uncommon. If we were to add anything but a simple passive it would also be rare. Notably this means we cannot add anything more than an active advanced ability to any future flying T1 unit, because T1 UR cards do not exist and there are no plans to add them. 

[cosmicwaterfalls]

Hello, its one of my favourite games from past. Nice work guys. PROBLEM:

 

The download links are DEAD. Can you create a normal download place here, or refresh links??!!

[Majora]

18 minutes ago, cosmicwaterfalls said:

The download links are DEAD. Can you create a normal download place here, or refresh links??!!

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

 

[Majora]

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. 

[Xanatoss]

On 8/18/2021 at 2:35 AM, WindHunter said:

@Xanatoss

There are a two reasons why I think the current system of making units like Sunderer and Harvester pay for their inherent knockback is better than just adding a point or two to their respective sizes for their tiers.

1. Flying units do not inherently have knockback on their attacks. Any increase to complexity cost based on size would thus add to the complexity of flying units of that size inappropriately. You can see this with Skyfire and s-knockback in T2, which Skyfire does not possess. 
2. Right now all ground-based L and XL-units have knockback inherently but that does not mean they always will. For example, I personally want to remove walking knockback from all floating head type units such as Wrathgazer, Deepfang, Magma Fiend, Lost Horror, etc. The model of the floating units quite literally flies over most s-units and several M-units, so why are these units being knocked back? A future L-sized Magma Fiend in T2 (hypothetical) would thus not pay the S-knockback "tax" in the current system but would if we increased L-size complexity cost to compensate for not calculating the s-knockback cost. 

In terms of things like flying in T1. These are very difficult to calculate. The only flying unit in T1 is Mana Wing which has an active advanced ability +3, but is rare. So where does the rest of the cost fit in? By making Flying in T1 cost +4, it means any future flying T1 unit, even the most simple kind like Skyfire, is automatically uncommon. If we were to add anything but a simple passive it would also be rare. Notably this means we cannot add anything more than an active advanced ability to any future flying T1 unit, because T1 UR cards do not exist and there are no plans to add them. 

@WindHunter

Sorry for my late reply. I became a second-time father and was therefore unable to participate for some time ^^`

Thanks again for your comprehensive explanation. The floating heads rationale is amusingly specific. I would avoid the hassle to implement that, by arguing that the units temporarily give up their hovering to smush these pesky bugs; like WH40k-antigrav-vehicles (like tau devilfish) could give up their hovering to ram other vehicles, crush infantry models or give cover to own units.