🙌 Hello all ! During the month of July we worked on social features and private games. And we're going to take advantage of August - traditionally less frequented by players - to rethink the whole game creation system instead of the crafting system that requires a little more thought.
Social features have arrived
Throughout July you could see the social features coming, transforming Arena into a much more accessible and less austere game. We were pleased to see that you liked private games, because they have outnumbered tournament games.
It also means something: we're on the right track, but the types of games need to be rethought.
Rethinking the games
We've decided to spend the entire month of August rethinking how game creation works in Arena. As the updates progressed, it became clear to us that game diversity is more interesting to you than pure competitiveness, and that is why we have decided to rebuild the whole game creation system:
- the games will no longer be modified according to the cycles, but according to “modifiers” which can be cumulated
- clients will display different sceneries and moods during the game to visually vary the game
Upcoming changes to game types
These changes to the games will be reflected in the types of games we will offer you. As a result, the “Classic” and “Tournament” game types will no longer be available. Instead, we will offer you:
- the “Immediate” game type will allow you to find opponents quickly. Theme and modifiers will be random, and player calls will be more frequent.
- the “Daily” game type will have a fixed theme and modifiers for the day (00:00 to 23:59 UTC). Every first game of the day, your loots will be doubled.
- the “Cycle” game type will have a fixed theme and modifiers throughout the cycle that will not be in the previous two types. Each win will be doubled in case of victory.
All these changes will be effective when the Cycle changes on September 4th.
New sceneries
Currently, Arena is relatively poor in terms of graphics, and we know that. We have limited time, and we have decided to spend that time creating content rather than creating sets.
Those days are now over: with the cycle system properly set up and origins complete, we can now take care of the sceneries during the game. These sceneries will present several layers by creating depth and different atmospheres.
More diversity, even in the activities
We've heard your feedback on the crafting system, and we fixed it before we started development. First of all, the crafting system will not come alone: we will add a system of daily quests (with easily achievable objectives) and weekly (where it will take a few hours of play to complete).
Here are two changes compared to what was presented two months ago (see https://www.thefirstspine.fr/blog/etat-du-jeu-2020-05):
- the items will not be craftable with the Celestial Particles, but with mana shards
- the runes will not be obtained by purchasing cosmetics, but by completing weekly quests
We'll have plenty of time to come back to this in the next state of the game at the end of August, as there may be a lot of tweaks going on between now (your opinion matters to us!).