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Dev Diary 7 :: 2015 :: May
#1
A new month...a new thread.

This last patch wasn't very exciting since it offered very little to the game until players reach level 200, but keep in mind that there will be no more 'waiting' for level cap increases, and that it truly now goes on forever. Inferno Levels will be exponentially more difficult to reach, but the possibilities are there.

So now we have two features before the anticipated Guild updates.

Crafting and Pet Arena


But before either of those, i'll be working to clean up a few things and also prepare the game for the ever so delayed Kongregate release. This should take about a week, so you can expect development on the next feature to begin ~May 10th. I really want to begin development on guilds for the beginning of June, so it should be a busy month.
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#2
And the next major feature is...Pet Arena

I think I have decided against some original plans with the Pet Arena as something that could potentially be used for PvP. The game is beginning to grow a little bit complex for newer users with all the different features and currencies, so i'll be trying to keep future features as simple (yet addictive & fun) as possible. Guilds are likely not limited to this, due to the sheer amount of features planned with them.


Several people in the past asked how pets will differ from each other, with the hopes that you could distribute into different aspects for pets, but since the ONLY use for HP on pets is specific to the Arena, that will not be the case. What I will offer in the pet arena however, is the ability to severely enhance your pet's damage and earn great pet feeding rewards for arena milestones, and daily progressions.

The Plan:

I'm looking at 25-30 enemies in the arena for your pets to dominate, or miserably fail to. 
The difficulty on each of these creatures will be static, and you will be allowed one failure per day against the series of enemies.
Each enemy defeated will earn you Pet Points, which will allow you to level up your Arena score, which will also increase your pet's power significantly.
Each enemy defeated for the first time (and only the first time) will earn you a nice pet food reward.
This battle system will be separately processed from regular gameplay to allow players to remain in parties and work on this at any point in time, and my eye is on turnbased so it requires no real attention and can be resumed at any point in time.


The difficulty will grow very exponential, and I don't expect people to defeat even the first 10 pets until raising their Arena Level a few....

However, i'm excited to make pets one hell of a force in comparison to their current values. And for those crazy math people who are wondering how that will play out, i'm looking at utilizing the existing base damages on pets and creating a significant multiplier based on the Pet Arena Level.

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Other May plans....

-An Event
-Card Packs
-Kongregate
-Mobile cleanups
-Party listing improvements (to allow full parties outside of guild joins)
-Other stuffings...
 
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#3
Get ready for the Angry Mother's Day event this weekend! 

I'll be including the event with the minor cleanup patch, which should include a resolve to the duplicated daily reward window, and i'll also be looking further into the "Connected from somewhere else" issue. The last patch definitely resolved a major issue in that area, but there's still some lingering issues with connections.

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Also, i'm trying not to be rude here, but I need to point this out to remain honest...

If you have an invalid connection issue, please try to provide details as to whether you were in a party (Were you hosting, or did you join?), solo, open party config, etc.

I have been getting a lot of repeat reports, such as "I got <x> message", which doesn't really help in finding a link to the issue some of you are having. Please include as many details as possible.
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#4
Everyone's total IOU score will be getting a drop due to the removal of Ability Score and the replacement of the (lower tiered) Level Score. This means 'everyone' over the next few days, so it's scaled all the same.
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#5
The issue where you return to the game on the first zone of a planet should finally no longer occur.
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#6
Development beyond the preparations of the (currently) 29 New enemies in the battle arena has finally begun. I'm beginning the interface design, then will be connecting it all to interaction.

This system, while even being simplified quite a bit from the original plans, is quite hefty and I have no accurate eta as to when it will be released, but it is the next major feature. I'm truly hoping to have something ready at least a week before the end of the month.

The event will continue until the next major patch is released.
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#7
Regarding a lot of connection issues, party glitches, and so forth, I think i've come across the cause of a lot of this, and more.

After the last couple of updates, when I shut down all the servers, i've been left with several instances that are completely stuck. They don't shut down, and require a manually forced shutdown. The only thing that would cause this is broken timers, and the only way timers could and should break is memory leaks, which with how the cluster works, I would imagine is simply caused by being run too long.

I've been targeting areas of the connection integrity that I felt were potentially the cause, and may have been part of the problem, but I think a new solution is needed to resolve these far too common connection occurrences. After this Pet Arena update, i'll be reworking a few things for how instances work, and designing a system that can safely reset rooms every few hours to avoid problems.

What i'm hoping this will do is fix guild room desyncs, reverts, and resolve most of the connection issues.

Unfortunately this means 7-10 day delay on the next two feature patches, but I think it's a necessary evil.
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#8
It appears there's an issue with some peoples Challenge Point counts. Players who have not earned points where they should have, and players who earned more points than they should have been rewarded.

This being the case, i've added an additional integrity check on this for the next patch to resolve it.
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#9
The pet system is coming along, but unfortunately we are looking at a few day delay, as it will not be released today. While the battle system for the Pet Arena is not overly complicated, it's also entirely parallel and turn-based with saved progress within a battle, so it's taking a slight bit longer to implement and test through.

I have also decided to go with a Pet Point shop instead of milestones...it just isn't nearly as fun with milestones in this case. This is obviously a bit more work but I think it's worth a little delay.
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#10
The pet arena seems ready to go. I'll likely be releasing it tomorrow afternoon sometime.

A couple notes to diminish expectations ahead of time...

-You need to have your 2nd pet in order to access the Pet Arena!
-The pet arena is extremely difficult early on. You will not get far until you upgrade your pets damage further.
-Your progress in the pet arena resets every day at midnight. This allows you to start back at the beginning challenge and re-earn everything
-You only receive 10x the PP [Pet Points], and bonus food for the first time (ever) defeating each opponent. This is not reset each day, this is overall....however I think you'll still feel great accomplishing each monster for the first time.

Now to hype expectations:
-Pet base damage is going to be Quadroupled!
-The insanely difficult to achieve cap per pet in damage alone can currently increase damage by 4000x (20% per upgrade currently). This may get a rebalance later.
-There is new capability for Pet Criticals!
-There is new capability for Pet Double Attacks!
-There's a new one time Pet Pack (similar to the existing food pack, but contains PetPoints and is higher in price)
-If pets suck in mid/late inferno, i'll ensure that they don't. Pets are going to make a comeback and I want them being a significant part of a player's power. Smile

Thank you for being so patient with this delayed patch. I'm beginning to underestimate the complexity of this game and all the side components that have to be taken into account before giving estimated release dates.

Cheers


Edit:
The Event will also be coming down for this patch. Get the angry out of your system while you can.
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