Elliot Cannon, Creative Director
This week, we’re about to start playtesting the Unholy Catacombs Spectral Knight Incursion. I love the idea Steve Collins has on this. He needs to finish it! We’re ready to play! I’m staring at him. Willing him to fix his Kismet bug! He’s deep in thought. He’s behind schedule. Bites nails. Must not disturb the puzzle master.
Brett is hooking up the Sword of Unholy Fire. If you missed the stream, check out the recap and watch him melt enemies with his virtual flame thrower shield effect on block.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgoLy4uaCp4
I’m glad to see the Squire get some walking wave of destruction type fun. Burn! Now granted we want to do a big hero boost and balance pass soon to get all the heroes up to the same level of face-smash as the Abyss Lord, but the plan is to get the strategic revamp nailed first and THEN do that. Otherwise, you’re boosting stuff for the wrong matrix. Speaking of which, we had a playtest of the revamp with some folks and have tons of super useful feedback. Thanks to everyone who put serious time into this. It’s getting there. Needs more iteration and love.
There’s tons of stuff going on, I won’t steal anyone else’s thunder. Stoked about how the Gun Witch’s animations are coming along. She’s going to be a riot. EV2’s animations are getting cool refinements and jamming up too. I’m glad to see so many folks playing again. We’re going to keep trying to fix, improve, and expand the game as hard as we can. I’m working on details of features that hone in on more player-driven goals so you have longer-term reasons to destroy baddies.
Daniel Haddad, Design Director (@Blacksmith)
So, I designed the Sword of Unholy Fire with the idea of making a DPS Squire viable. It’s theoretically a cool idea: Run into a group, pull them to follow you, turn around and burn them all to cinder (we love fire at Trendy). Now it is in Brett’s hands to build and make awesome. Can’t wait to see the VFX Brian makes and SFX Afshin puts together.
Other than that, lots of EV2 work. Working closely with John to refine some of her animations and I’m wrapping up a first pass at her kit. The goal is to have a rough version of her playable by Friday and have our dedicated, hardened, and veteran DD fans playing her and filling out a survey (this was super helpful for the Abyss Lord). If you’d like to join the ranks of DD’s finest, contact [email protected], and he’ll hook you up.
I still have a good bit of design work to do; EV2 passives and skill spheres, Lavamancer 2nd draft, and 3 more heroes yet unannounced. This will be a busy few weeks.
There is a fish beside the Abyss Lord… it is a very strange fish… a very distracting fish…
Dan Pingston, Character Artist
Getting these characters a fresh paint job before shipping them out the door. Here is a preview of the Gun Witch update. Enjoy!
Tim Shannon, PS4 & Live Producer (@TimmyTrashTier)
Lots of patches. We released a PS4 hotfix on Monday cleaning up some PlayGo issues and making tickets non-selectable. Hotfix 2 for PS4 is in the pipe at the moment and will resolve the scavenger dupe problems and set up a May Monthly Mission for you all to enjoy. We’ve had two PC hotfixes this week as well and have a super exciting release we’re working on at the moment for next week (expect new content!). Also we finalized our milestone plans for PS4 and I think you all are going to be excited with where we ended off...
Steven Collins, Lead Level Designer (@Esorath)
Working on the Spectral Knight Incursion for the Unholy Catacombs update. This one will play out a bit differently than previous Incursions, and I’m excited to see how people play around the new puzzle.
James Reid, Software Engineer (@Driscan)
Greetings Defenders!
Just back from a much-needed vacation and ready to get back to making this game awesome! Before I left, I worked on adding the ability to purchase Blank Hero Cards for 2,000 Defender Medals! That should be coming out with the Unholy Catacombs update.
Now that I’m back in the saddle I’m catching up on the plans for the rest of the milestone. Looks like I’ll be working alongside Brys to hammer out a game browser for matchmaking.
I’m also slated to gut the most beautiful UI in the game. You guessed it…..the summary screen! I’m taking that bad boy and tossing it in the garbage. Then I’m gonna light it on fire, step on it some more, drown it, and then kick it. Once all that’s done, I’m gonna add back in some basic functionality such as returning back to the Tavern and showing some useful things such as the number of Defender Medals you earned. Consider it a Phase 1 for a better end-of-map experience.
Daniel Diaz, World Builder (@DanielKaMi)
Hey Defenders! You guys are kicking ass! Again most of you were right about the level we were working on, but we won’t ruin it here. Not yet.
You'll have big chances in this level for pushing mobs into the hot lava but be careful to not fall with them!
Jesus Diaz, World Builder (@N3oDoc)
So yea, [redacted] is coming back to DD2, and we already made some good progress.
As you can see from the pic it's not a warm and comfortable place between four walls anymore. Since it was invaded by the Old Ones, the place has turned into an inhospitable place where only true Defenders have a chance to survive and fight against the horde.
Chris Flores, Lead QA (@likethatwhenigothere)
So these past few weeks have been extremely busy. We knew going into the initial Abyss Lord release that there were still going to be a lot of lingering issues with the build. So we’ve been trying to play catch up and continue to get everything logged and hopefully fixed sooner rather than later. This also includes us going through all the stuff you guys are reporting and getting those logged as well. Personally, I’ve been burning the midnight oil trying to figure out why for no good reason at all a random Daily Mission will complete. In the meantime enjoy some free Defender Medals to help unlock the Abyss Lord. (Was my evil plan this entire time!)
The rest of the team has also been catching up on bugs and plowing through the hotfixes for both PS4 and PC as they come up. We’re just now hitting the Unholy Catacombs update full on and, we’re on the edge of getting our hands on the Strategy Revamp and…… EV2! We’re looking to get a playtest build together for the strategy revamp possibly this week and for EV2 shortly after. Contact [email protected] if you’re interested in doing some early playtesting for EV2. Tell him I sent ya and make sure to flood his inbox! He loves e-mail!!!
As a side note, thanks to all to helped out with the focus testing on Abyss Lord before his release. A huge portion of how he came out is due in part to all the feedback and suggestions you guys reported. Internally, we have a very short timeframe to get some of this stuff QA’d and released that it sometimes leaves very little time to actually just sit back and “play” the game to make sure it’s fun as most of our time is spent just trying to get stuff in a shippable state. So all this feedback is important to making sure something is actually fun. It helps a lot.
P.S.
Gun Witch 2016
Dani Moore, Remote QA Manager (@Dani)
Getting ready for some very important upcoming testing. We got some community love with a DD1 update about to fall into our lap, we’ve had a few runs over a very familiar map from the previous game, got our sights on a major strategic revamp, and we’re expecting some hands-on time with a very deadly android very shortly.