Patch v0.9.5 is Live! Including New Card Set, Guild Update and much more!

v0.9.5 Dev Notes

Pushed @ 5:15 on 6/19/13

Deck Editor Improvements

- We have added a new feature to the deck editor that will allow you to browse all cards. When in this mode you will be able to add non-lockable cards to your deck to test in a versus mode, and purchase directly from there if satisfied. This will be the true 'try before you buy' model and streamline adding specific cards to your deck
- The filter/searching system has been reworked to be a lot more specific. All the filter buttons at the bottom have been moved to a single filter button that brings up a bunch of checkbox options to allow you to look much more specific for certain cards. You can select multiple sets/abilities/mana costs/types/rarities etc

Tournaments

Schedule Changes
- Credit drafts now start every half hour as opposed to every 10 minutes.
- After this push Tournaments will be disabled for a few hours to make sure the patch went smoothly. They will be re-enabled shortly after.
Time Waster
Added a work in progress mini game to the Tournament panel (once inside a tournament). It should help pass time in between those long rounds :)

Guilds

General
- Fixed bug with member applicant renderer messing up with more than 8 applicants
- Max battles per war per player increased to 30
- Guild news feed formatting cleaned up a little
Fight Everyone
- Players now must battle each member of the opposing guild during a war. Each player will randomly pick people from the opposing member list until they've battled everyone once, then it will reshuffle that list so the order is unknown
Everyone Counts! (to a degree)
Now all players will contribute to the overall score of a guild during a war, however it is weighted based on the position in the war
- Score ranks 1 to 5 contribute 100% of their points earned
- Score ranks 6 to 10 contribute 50% of their points earned
- Score ranks 11 to 15 contribute 20% of their points earned
This will increase the maximum points in a war from 100 to a potential 255
Defense Bonuses!
- Now when players return to the guild screen, if they defended against an opponent they will receive a popup saying how well they did (to a max of the last 100 battles since last check in).
- They will then earn 1 bonus honor per successful defending!
More Stats and War Summary
- You will now be able to view recent wars and the results of them. In addition to this there will also be an offensive/defensive tab on the participants panel which will show how individuals held up in the respective categories. In addition to this there will be two toggles to: Show Attempts as well as Show Enemy. These will show the total tries in addition to the points as well as the opposing guild's scores.
Max 3 Wars
- Max wars was reduced from 4 to 3 to make room in the UI and streamline the system for the upcoming League feature.
Unlock Cards
- Arsenal cards will now be placed under the guild rewards section instead of the dynamic market or crafting, and available for honor. All Rare and Uncommon guild reward cards have also had their Gem prices adjusted to be more in line with other cards in the game. This is the first of MANY guild changes coming in the near future!
- Uncommons will be set at 300 honor or 10 Gems
- Rares will be set at 1250 honor or 30 Gems
(honor prices are subject to change as we review the guild feature as a whole)
- Precious Ring has been added as a guild reward
Guild Leagues!
And so it begins. Guild leagues have been added. Important note: We do not have the resources to fully test the league system, so we are attaching the Beta warning to this feature until all bugs are ironed out. We appreciate your patience. Now onto the good stuff. Much information has been previewed about this, but to recap:
- League system will replace previous war initiating system
- A league season lasts 9 days
- Guilds will be split into 4 tiers (1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 30+)
- Within the top 3 tiers, each guild will fight each other guild in their tier 3 times. Bottom tier will have random matches
- 3 wars will be automatically initiated and last for 24h (on server day start)
- Earn higher gold per battle win based on the tier your guild is in (75,100,125,150 respectively)
- At the end of a season, the top 3 guilds in the top tier will earn (1000,600,400) gems respectively and split amongst the guild
- Gem reward will then be divided based on contributions (both offensively and defensively) throughout the season
- Current placements will define the initial tiers
- The bottom and top 3 guilds of each tier will move down and up respectively to the new tiers
- Guilds made less than 24 hours before the patch will be unable to join in on the first day of the new guild wars league
- Players who join a guild will the unable to participate in battles until the next days war to discourage guilds rotating members

Improved AI

- We did a pass on the AI to improve their performance
- They now value: Milling, Discarding, Charge Disruption
- They now have more intelligent targeting on Spells
- They now properly value Gear targets

Arena Changes

Match Making
We have switch backed to the 30 second count down match making, and if no opponent it will go directly into an AI fight to streamline the arena battles
Beginner Arena Returns!
We are bringing back the beginner arena, which served as a great stepping stone for new players getting into the pvp arena. It will replace the rotating arena (which served as a placeholder until tournaments arrived). The new beginner arena will be AI only and use the Limited rule set.

Card Changes

Creatures
Gatling Gnome: If you control a gear card, this creature has +1 ATK +1 HP
Shatterblast Gnome: On death: Destroys an enemy gear with mana cost 3 4 or less
Justice, Demigod: Whenever Justice or your hero is dealt damage: Deals that much damage to enemy hero
- Tribute lowered to 7
Spells
Ancient's Will:
Target ally creature gets +2 atk +2+1 HP and gains Intimidate. If you control two or more Ancient creatures, that creature gets an additional +1 +1
Divine Ascension:
Target ally creature gets +2+1 atk +2 HP and gains Flying
Rune-words
- Several Rune-Words have had their turn duration altered to better benefit the player who plays them
Delay:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Grounded:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Corrode:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Mundane:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Powerless:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Bane:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Indestructible:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Preserve:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Silence:
- now 5 turns, was 6
Recoil:
- now 3 turns, was 4
Subtype Adjustments
A few cards had some inconsistent subtypes and were adjusted to make sense
Realm-Sworn Bard - Lord added, Shaman removed
King's Herald - Lord added, Bard removed
Grand Summoner - Wizard added, Shaman removed
Soothesayer - Wizard added, Shaman removed
Mystical Shaman - Renamed to Mystic Invoker. Human, Lord added, Spirit, Shaman removed
Front Line Officer - Warrior added, Soldier removed
Seraphim Guardian - Knight added, Warrior removed
Aryn, Knight-Damned - Knight added, Warrior removed
Frost Bark Ent - Warrior removed

Optimizations

- Cards (other than the CORE set) are now streamed in on a needed basis to keep the initial load down. Load size decreased by over 25% as a result

Bugs/Minors

- Blink no longer triggers the death effect of gear
- Rewind no longer triggers the death effect of gear
- Phantom Image now properly triggers the on enter effect of the copied creature
- Scroll bar issue when scrolling too fast and items disappearing has been fixed
- Users on .com will now receive a registration complete email
- Tournament chat stays open for 5 minutes or until the last person leaves
- Browser favicon finally fixed for .com users!
- Added more stats to the player profile including: last time logged in, as well as tournament stats
- Tinker no longer triggers double death effects of gear
- Fixed an issue with some tournaments stalling and not rewarding
- Grovenholds War March now does a proper attack animation and logic