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Community Update #25 - July 2022


Majora

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Greetings Skylords!

This community update is a bit different to what you are used to. We would like to take a bit of time to communicate to you all, the player base, about the state of the project, and give you the opportunity to communicate to us as well. 

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 Share your feedback, get two boosters!
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Last month, we released our latest patch: "Force of Nature". We hope you are all enjoying it, and are curious to hear how you feel about Skylords Reborn in general.  

It has already been a year since our feedback survey, so it is time for some reflection and feedback. What do you like about Skylords Reborn? What could be better? We want to keep improving the game and growing our player base, and your feedback is crucial for us. 

As a thank you, there will be two boosters for everyone who fills in the survey. Your feedback will be anonymous.
 

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 State of the Project
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We are very proud of everything we have accomplished with Skylords Reborn so far. Not only are fans able to play BattleForge again, but over the last two years we have added many new features and content. However, a lot of effort is required behind the scenes to create these new features.

Skylords Reborn has a very loyal and consistent player base, but has been struggling to find new players. This also results in less potential contributors, resulting in a few individuals doing a ton of work. There is only so much we can do as volunteers, and at the current rate it is becoming unsustainable to keep the same feature output rate.
 

Without additional contributors, Skylords Reborn will only get card and balance updates moving forward.

This means new cards and adjustments on existing cards, but not features like Reforging, improvements to the UI, Happy Hours, etc. While we are currently working on a couple of new and existing cards, to improve the game, we would really like to add new features as well. 

To give you an idea of what we are currently missing out on, below are some features highlighted that we feel would really improve Skylords Reborn. This is a game with so much potential, and we would love to bring it to you! 

 

 What could be: potential features for Skylords Reborn
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Before we dive into them, please note:
- The following features are currently not in development, due to a lack of game client developers, game server developers, and fullstack developers.
- You can directly help create this features by applying for a
staff role.
- You can indirectly help by spreading the word.
- Images shown are very early mock-ups.

 

PvE Map Modifiers

Map modifiers are global effects that can be applied to matches. These can be chosen before the start of a match, and different modifiers can be combined for limitless replayability. Examples of modifiers are: all enemy units regenerate 3% of their health every second, all enemy units move 25% faster, all enemy units spawn a hostile Nether Crawler on death, or cards return less power to the void pool. The more modifiers are active, the higher the reward from the match. The following is a mockup of a UI to choose the modifiers before lobby creation.

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New Reward Distribution System

Do you dislike receiving achievement and quest rewards through the in-game mail? What about your auctions? Isn't it also a bit boring to see your scratch code rewards in a small static window? This feature is a new way to make it more exciting to open rewards. Imagine the following mockup with nice animations and sound effects, showing you what you received and actions to take with the items. The idea would be to move away from the lackluster interface and user experience of the in-game mail.
 

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Cosmetics

Currently, the player can only express themselves through their character avatar. This feature would add numerous cosmetics like character borders, character banners (textured and colored), player titles and more avatars in general. The following image shows a Christmas themed border, and a green character banner. Instead of `Master of the Forge`, the player can also own and change their title and other cosmetics in a cosmetic management screen. We already started on this with the Cosmetics window currently found in-game, although it is currently limited to avatars. The idea is to add more tabs to the right of the Cosmetics page for the different cosmetics. Achievements, events and even leaderboard positions can also reward special cosmetics.
 

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Compare Profiles

Amassing many cards, becoming the richest player, completing all the achievements and collecting all the different cosmetics is rewarding, but showcasing and comparing your accomplishments with others is also part of the fun. With the compare profiles feature, players would be able to manage what they share publicly, and easily compare their profiles with those of other players, either globally or specifically with one player. The following image is a very early concept of a screen to compare achievements with a specific player.

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Map Progression Indicators

Map progression indicators is a feature for the world map that indicates, through the usage of stars above each campaign map, what difficulties you have completed for each map. This allows you to quickly have a glance of what you have already completed, and what you have not.

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New Campaign Maps

While rPvE is arguably the most played game mode, we know players would really like to continue the story and/or experience new campaign maps. While we already have some of the resources to make this happen, we are lacking in the map department to make the push to get this done in a way that fits the quality you can expect from an official campaign map. Please consider applying as Map Artist, Map Designer or Map Developer

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New Community Map Experience

The experience of creating, sharing, finding and managing community maps has always been very cumbersome. Currently, it is a unmanageable list that leaves much to be desired. This feature would completely overhaul how the community maps screen looks like, for both PvP and PvE. More filters, more sorting, public upvoting and private downvoting, highlighting of frequently played maps, deleting maps you have uploaded, viewing when a map was last edited and viewing the minimap of community maps without having to download them are a few features that could be included.

Another option to improve the accessibility of Community Maps would be adding a second world map, where the best community maps would be found, similar to the campaign maps. 
 

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rPvE Deck Builder Mode

Quite popular in other card games is a mode where you face challenges while your starting deck is slowly expanding by picking a card from a random selection. We think this could be a great new way to play Skylords Reborn, with every run being unique and allowing you to experiment with different cards and combinations. This would require quite a bit of UI work though, which is why this mode has not been developed yet. 


Seasons

Seasons are a broad topic that could include many features that reset or adjust based on the start of a new season. Some examples are Seasonal Leaderboards that reset at the end of each season and automatic events that occur throughout the season. But also seasonal objectives and/or objective trees to complete, similar to a battle pass in other games, are topics that have been discussed in the team quite often. We feel seasons would help make the game feel more fresh, and reward players for playing through each season, giving older players a reason to return. 

Seasons are a broad feature that would probably require other features mentioned above to be included first, like the improved reward system, modifiers on maps to create new challenges, and additional cosmetics to be rewarded.  

 

As you can see, there is still a lot of potential for Skylords Reborn, and we would love to add them to the game. 
As mentioned before, these features are currently 
not in development due to a lack of people to work on them.

 

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So get your friends to join, or have them return to check out the new content and achievements, give us suggestions (through the survey) on how to improve the player base, or apply for a staff position yourself. We really can't do this without you! 

 

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 Team Changes
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Due to personal reasons, Friendly Firefly sadly had to resign from the team. We are grateful for his help with Burning Spears and wish him all the best!

While not technically a team change, we would also like to take a moment to thank Kapo for his contributions to Skylords Reborn. You might know him from hosting the CCC events, but Kapo has been doing a ton of work for the team behind the scenes as well. From helping out with the recent Force of Nature trailer, to proofreading and providing feedback, we can always count on him. Due to his contributions to Skylords Reborn, we have awarded him with the rare Skylord of Honor title. 

 

 In Conclusion
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Thank you for reading this Community Update. We hope you will consider helping us out. 

As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code. 
The code will reward you with a general booster: 
NEWL-EGEN-DARY-WHEN
And remember: By doing our survey, you can grab an additional two boosters! 

The code is valid until August 1st, when we will bring you our next Community Update. 

As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments! 
 

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Archive
Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
Overview Community Updates
Community Update #24

 

Kapo, Deadman, Ladadoos and 13 others like this
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The coolest feature in my opinion would be the Map Modifiers.

You could introduce a new line of Achievements (e.g. all maps on expert with full modifiers) for really challenging gameplay.

Hopefully this post spreads awareness and the team gets bolstered with the most needed position(s)!

Carofex, Stachino and Metagross31 like this
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Guys keep up the amazing work! I would suggest to go to other RTS game forums and try to inform these players that battleforge is alive as skylords reborn. And btw custom games are the future for these type of games. I still play warcraft3 for some good old legion td. Skylords have a great future! 

Metagross31 and Majora like this
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PvE Map Modifiers LET'S GOOO. This is a feature I want so much that I might learn C++ just for this.

Reading the requirements on the staff position posts really makes one appreciate all the hard work that has been put into the project. thanks to the whole team for all their contributions up until now!

Dutchy and Majora like this
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51 minutes ago, Yuah said:

PvE Map Modifiers LET'S GOOO. This is a feature I want so much that I might learn C++ just for this.

Reading the requirements on the staff position posts really makes one appreciate all the hard work that has been put into the project. thanks to the whole team for all their contributions up until now!

For most of the client development it is sufficient to know a bit of XML (quite similar to html) and some LUA, which is much easier than C++. 🙂

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You know that these files are not an actual XML, so knowing structure of real XMLs is helpful, but not necessary. And LUA is mostly defined by interface provided by the game, so knowing plain LUA is again just helpful, but I think anything more than function, calling a function, and creating string from numbers, is not really necessary. And if someone know any programing language all that can be figured out in minutes 😄

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  • 3 weeks later...

Imagine if they opened their eyes and realized this will never grow. The team, the money, the game, the fans. not with this game plan. I play this game since a child, EA ruined it but built it. Now Skylords is just a slow decay. a painful one. no new content. hardly a new card.. maps... new aspects variables etc... nothing. just ease of life add ons... map modifiers? so i can replay the same map ive already done 19999999123912 times? Ill pass. I understand where the team is financially and legally but... this is just a waste of time at the end of the day... 

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3 hours ago, 392Ahkao said:

Imagine if they opened their eyes and realized this will never grow. The team, the money, the game, the fans. not with this game plan. I play this game since a child, EA ruined it but built it. Now Skylords is just a slow decay. a painful one. no new content. hardly a new card.. maps... new aspects variables etc... nothing. just ease of life add ons... map modifiers? so i can replay the same map ive already done 19999999123912 times? Ill pass. I understand where the team is financially and legally but... this is just a waste of time at the end of the day... 

Have you applied as map creator or even tester?

It's easy to say "there is no new content" when you didn't contribute yourself. Sit for hundreds of hours making maps for free AND THEN complain about no new content.

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Thank you for your constructive feedback.

I am unsure if you are aware, but the whole team only consists of volunteers that instead of playing the game spend their free time  working on the game so the others can play it.

As for the "no new content", we are a small team and we are consistently pushing out new content. The speed of this is highly depended on how many people are willing to help us out. See our open applications. 

A sneak peak behind the scenes, but this month we got more new members on the forum than any month in the past 6 months. So I would not say we are on a slow decay, but more on a steady forward 😄 

5 hours ago, 392Ahkao said:

not with this game plan

I am curious what game plan you are referring to.

5 hours ago, 392Ahkao said:

this is just a waste of time at the end of the day... 

Well, none is forcing you to play. Its up to you how you spend your time. But we spend our time on something we love, which is this game. 

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5 hours ago, 392Ahkao said:

Imagine if they opened their eyes and realized this will never grow. The team, the money, the game, the fans. not with this game plan. I play this game since a child, EA ruined it but built it. Now Skylords is just a slow decay. a painful one. no new content. hardly a new card.. maps... new aspects variables etc... nothing. just ease of life add ons... map modifiers? so i can replay the same map ive already done 19999999123912 times? Ill pass. I understand where the team is financially and legally but... this is just a waste of time at the end of the day... 

Why you not join to create new content?

Metagross31 and Majora like this
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9 hours ago, 392Ahkao said:

Imagine if they opened their eyes and realized this will never grow. The team, the money, the game, the fans. not with this game plan. I play this game since a child, EA ruined it but built it. Now Skylords is just a slow decay. a painful one. no new content. hardly a new card.. maps... new aspects variables etc... nothing. just ease of life add ons... map modifiers? so i can replay the same map ive already done 19999999123912 times? Ill pass. I understand where the team is financially and legally but... this is just a waste of time at the end of the day... 

Then.. don't play?

Replies like this honestly baffles me. You literally create a new account to complain about a game you don't want to play? Crushing the motivation of the team of volunteers who work their asses off to provide entertainment for others? Our content is arguably faster than during the end of EA times, and we don't get paid or have the source code. Constructive feedback is always welcome, but basicly saying ''everything you do is shit'' is not going to help anyone. 

I'm glad we had the survey, which gave insights in thousands of players, to see you are the rare exception with a mindset like this. 

 

Volin, Metagross31, Kubik and 1 other like this
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43 minutes ago, Majora said:

Then.. don't play?

Replies like this honestly baffles me. You literally create a new account to complain about a game you don't want to play? Crushing the motivation of the team of volunteers who work their asses off to provide entertainment for others? Our content is arguably faster than during the end of EA times, and we don't get paid or have the source code. Constructive feedback is always welcome, but basicly saying ''everything you do is shit'' is not going to help anyone. 

I'm glad we had the survey, which gave insights in thousands of players, to see you are the rare exception with a mindset like this. 

 

At this point, it is most likely just trolling on his part, not worth attention.

As for the topic at hand, I must applaud the devs on the work being made. Especially considering the conditions and possibilities. 

Kinda wish I could help more, but my skills end at creating mediocre maps. Oh well, some people are destined to be just the players :^)

Keep up the good work!

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1 hour ago, Nemoo SK said:

Kinda wish I could help more, but my skills end at creating mediocre maps.

You can apply and learn as you go along. I never did any moderation either 😛 

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17 hours ago, 392Ahkao said:

Imagine if they opened their eyes and realized this will never grow. The team, the money, the game, the fans. not with this game plan. I play this game since a child, EA ruined it but built it. Now Skylords is just a slow decay. a painful one. no new content. hardly a new card.. maps... new aspects variables etc... nothing. just ease of life add ons... map modifiers? so i can replay the same map ive already done 19999999123912 times? Ill pass. I understand where the team is financially and legally but... this is just a waste of time at the end of the day... 

Bro.. You are out of your mind XDD I start playing as battleforge drop to shops. EA have easy access to commercial so they promo this game so well... at the beginning. I  guess Yours memory can be blured apart, You was just a child like u said, so let me rewind sth... Skylords Reborn consistently every month give us new balance patch. In first year they made more small/big changes then EA EVER! EA as BF exist create a stunning number of two new maps(correct me if im wrong). HUGE. DISSAPOINTING. Maybe well they do something else to make this game not be a super stereoid cash bank succking snake witch steals ours wallets? Well yeah/!? We got 1 bfp per day of playing compare to quest system rewards not made by EA.??? At all a Luck of innovation makes me quit for 2 years and later, again the same period. Unlikely i found out that there's no server left. Conclusion? The game state is much more healthy than before. Balance change, slowly many direction progres witch this team achive will push me to replay same map over a xTimes more than You mention.

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  • Majora unpinned and unfeatured this topic
  • 9 months later...
11 hours ago, UltDragon said:

Joined because of this, I looked at those potential featured and thought "I need to make this happen".

Been so long! Those things take a lot of time and effort :X

Cosmetics - Done

Compare Profiles - Done

Community Map Rework - Done

One day, all of those will be done 🙂

Super glad to have you ❤️ 

UltDragon, Metagross31, Zyna and 1 other like this
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