Haste Demo - 1.1.0
Posted: May 2nd 2022
Gameplay
- Replaced the current 'Action Point' system with a new experimental system. Cards no longer deplete a pool of 'action points' which must be regenerated. Instead when cards resolve they increase the characters rotation cooldown. Every card played increases the cooldown by about 1 second per casting cost. As an example a 3 casting cost card will result in a 3 second cool down before the character can rotate. The total cool down can never exceed 6 seconds and you are never prevented from playing additional cards. The idea is to create a 'cost' to play cards in the form of risk to your front hero and to prevent you from emptying your entire hand. We've tuned the cool down time so that two aggressive players will have little of any delay, but if one player is playing passively and one aggressively, then the aggressive player will build up a rotation cooldown.
- Reimplemented provisional health but integrated it with the Guard Point system. When a hero has Guard Points, all damage received is 'provisional' and can be regenerated. When a hero has no Guard Points, only 50% of the damage is provisional and can be regenerated.
- Reduced the maximum health of all heroes. With the change to the Guard Point system, there was an effective decrease of about 50% in the overall damage output. This was in addition to the ability to regenerate provisional health. The maximum health was reduced to accommodate this change.
- Removed auto rotation for heroes. You can now only play cards for the front hero. This was done to accommodate the new rotation-cooldown system and the reimplementation of provisional health.
- Decreased action point cost of all cards.
- Reintroduced the Light Attack card and adjusted the overall ratio of basic attacks to hero cards. Light attacks differ from heavy attacks because they do not destroy guard points. This differs from the original implementation where the difference was related to the ratio of normal vs provisional damage. With the new integration between guard points and provisional health they achieve a very similar purpose, but the ratio of normal vs provisional damage you deal is determined by your sequencing of light vs heavy attacks rather than a fixed ratio.
- Added 9 new cards, one for each hero.
- Divine Aura - Garric: A temporary aura which resurrects the hero if they are killed.
- Cleansing Frost - Stalagg: Remove negative status effects and tokens from the entire team. The entire team temporarily adds Ice Tokens when dealing damage.
- Seaking - Diam: Look at 6 random cards and select 2 of them to draw.
- Searing Flames - Amyth: Remove negative status effects and tokens from the entire team. The entire team temporarily adds Fire Tokens when dealing damage.
- Chain Dart - Lai: Pull target back hero to the front and stun them.
- Quake - Khurn: Damage all opponents and remove wards.
- Invisible - Otto: Buff which makes target hero invisible. The opposing team cannot see their health bar. They do not trigger Wards.
- Putrefy - Skrill: Remove wards and positive status effects from the opposing team. Any opponent who has a status removed becomes poisoned. If a ward is removed, the entire team is poisoned.
- Restore: Lynx: Heal a hero with a 15 second delay.
- Modified existing cards:
- Hook Cast - Lynx: You can now target a back hero. They are pulled forward into the front position.
- Searing Light - Garric: Removes negative status effects and tokens from your entire team. The entire team temporarily adds Shock Tokens when dealing damage.
- Modified existing forge cards to give them elements of both the combined cards:
- Godhammer - Khurn: Attacks now add Quake Tokens. Duration reduced to 20 seconds.
- Frenzystrike - Lai: Lai receives a speed buff. Decreased the damage.
- Consume - Skrill: Adds one poison counter to all opponents
- Thunderblade - Garric: Garric's weapon now becomes electrified, adding Shock Tokens to attacks. Thunderblade increases existing Tokens by 1. Damage reduced.
- Decreased the damage bonus when frozen from 100% to 40% for Tank heroes and from 50% to 20% for DPS and Support hero
- Minor balance changes to multiple cards to accommodate the new rotation cooldown system.
- Changed how the card queue is processed. If a character is stunned, frozen, or warped, their cards will not resolve and will be lost. But if a character is blocked from rotating forward to play their card (because the front character cannot rotate), their cards will remain queued until they can rotate forward. With the removal of auto-rotation, this should only occur if you play a card at the same time your opponent plays a forced rotate forward card (Stalaggs Ice Storm, Diams Respite, or Lais Chain Dart).
- Added card drops and equipment drops after matches. If you win a match, you can receive either 3 cosmetic items, or 3 deck building items. If you lose a match, you receive 1 deck building item. You receive card drops based on the characters you have selected.
UI
- Added a gameplay menu to allow customizing how much detail is included in the card descriptions.
- Enabled a card detail overlay accessible by clicking the question mark in the deck builder or by right clicking on cards in game.
- Updated the character card list overlay display accessible by right clicking on characters in the character select screen or in a match.
- Re-added the card queue overlay
- Added a card icon next to the 'delay' timer so you know which card will resolve. In addition if you play multiple 'delay' cards, the timers will stack horizontally rather than on top of each other.
Bugs
- Fixed a cool bug where Lynx always rolled the same side of the dice within a single match. It was random between matches, but always the same within a single match.
- Fixed visual bugs with UI elements floating during ultra moves (and introduced some new ones...)
Technical
- Updated how decks are stored internally. Existing decks are not backwards compatible - sorry!
- Added a localization library and converted card descriptions to be localization enabled. But only English is currently supported.