So I wanted to post a little bit about the current direction of Pox and give you guys an idea of the reasons for what was done and what we are currently planning and thinking about. Heroic Achievements and Play Incentives We introduced Heroic Achievements, one stage of the Play Incentives plan. While the game has many short-term reward systems, Heroic Achievements now provides a longer-term reward system for players who want the additional rewards. We'll be extending this system with additional types of achievements. We have plans to adjust the way Levels/Rank to make them more meaningful as well from this perspective, by providing rewards for gaining Levels/Rank during the cycle, as well as rewarding you for achieving especially high Level/Rank by the end of the season. Theme Development We have now shifted towards Theme Development. In this expansion, you can see that we reworked Salaman and Ferren quite heavily, and also did some work on several other themes. Expect this to continue in future releases. Abilities As usual, an expansion brings new content and mechanics. This expansion showcases the type of design we are now going towards which is more situational/combinatorial in nature, such as the way Salaman abilities work along with Provision. The idea is here to provide building blocks of interlocking mechanics that allow creative deckbuilding and theme development, as opposed to just using the most "meta" of runes and abilities. Ability series (or Keywording) also allow for more diverse effects while minimizing the complexity creep effects they will have, and is an approach we will likely continue to take when designing new abilities. They are also less time consuming to develop, which hopefully frees up more time for other tasks. Themes themselves will be more likely to be recipient of truly new, and unique abilities, such as the new Ferren Focus and the Salaman racials, and to a lesser extent stuff like the Blood Abhorrent's Blood Convergence and the Blackblade's Gravebind. We are also continuing to consolidate and better align ability costs to their effects, relative to other abilities. Good points have been brought up by many players regarding naming conventions for abilities and simplification of text/effects, and we will be working towards those goals as well. Quality of Life Stuff We will likely also shift some resources into Quality of Life improvements. This expansion re-arranged the way Lobbies work and fixed some miscellaneous issues with those systems as well. And yes, we will address the notification issue with the Global Chat tab. New User Experience Another initiative is the New User Experience (or NUX). We have identified various issues with the new user flow and have been making plans to address some of those issues. For example, as a new player, unlocking decks don't actually lead you into deck building and largely makes early rewards feel useless. We will be adjusting the way decks unlock and what rewards you get so that they will be more useful and meaningful. Advertising
Sigh.. 1st off, half of the drags don't have it. Rumbler is shoebox. Aerial Supremecy lasts 3 rounds only each, and its useless on champs like imperator. Also half of those on your ability search are shoebox because they were only good when they previously had blitz.. The theme is dead, theres absolutely no incentive to run drags exclusively. No boost, no commander, no defender, no battle master, no racial spells besides dragon fear or revealing your runes, no synergy. The theme is dead now and they are left with a half racial like draksars but worse.
I still think as a short-term income for the game, name change tokens should be considered. I'd pay a dollar for a couple name change tokens. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up fast when people want to name entire battlegroups.
Good to see those new achievements (and having quite some time to do them). Good to hear about future QoL.
I like the direction of UNIQUE theme abilities. As much as people rave about wanting their boosts and things, it much more interesting to have abilities unique to a racial or theme. It gets really boring to know play x race with surge/boost race x = win
With the quality of life improvements, are there plans to fix the memory leak problems and lag issues with the game client?
My previous comment was a bit harshly worded, but dragons being decent hardly has anything to do with synergy or it being a "good theme." They are only decent because some of the dragons are meta viable, not because of any consistent racial or synergistic incentives. To be honest though, it isn't always a "good racial" that is needed to make a race fun and competitive. Simply creating a few racial spells could entirely change the synergy of Dragons. For example an idea I had for a Dragon spell that would give all Dragons flamethrower/flamestrike 3 for a turn or a spell that would give all Dragons ground striker for a turn. This supports SL's characteristic power rounding strategy and incentivizes an all Dragon bg to maximize the benefits of casting that spell. I have yet to see Dragons without snogvie in the bg. Skeezick is really the only SL theme with strong enough synergy to exclusively run the race
I haven't tried a "myx mix" lol maybe I should. In ff they lack range pretty hard and spam pupae basically. They are right under draksar in terms of power
