Welcome to 2017, Defenders! I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. For the first time in nearly six years at Trendy, I took a month off to focus on my mental health. Apparently going 110% all the time isn't healthy. Weird.
While I was slacking off, the team went into hyper-overdrive before the break. Blacksmith and a few others worked through the holidays to help us conquer our ambitions. I firmly believe this update will turn some heads in the community. I believe it'll also achieve world peace, but setting reasonable expectations is my resolution this year, so I'll settle for turning water into wine.
I was hoping to share more specifics this week, but those details need some extra time in the oven. But there are some questions about the update I can answer now:
Q: What's the goal of the update?
A: The goal is endgame! This won't be the final version of our endgame, but it lays down a foundation we can expand upon in future updates. It also aims to improve loot, build customization and a lot more.
Q: What is this update called?
A: We're having fierce internal debate, but you should leave your suggestions in the comments below. We've used community names in the past! (Wipeageddon came from someone in our Twitch chats.)
Q: When is the update coming out?
A: We don't have a date just yet because we want to give ourselves iteration time. We also want to get player feedback in as early as possible, so we can iterate off of that, too.
Q: How can I give feedback on these changes?
A: The best way for you to give feedback is to join the Remote Playtesting Group. The RPG is a group of volunteer community members who get to play early builds and offer feedback. Contact [email protected] if you're interested. You can also keep an eye out for our update blogs in the coming weeks and leave your feedback in the comments.
Since we've returned, we've been digging into your Siege Roller feedback from the last update. We're investigating some issues with the weak spot hitbox that is making it more difficult for towers and melee heroes to deal damage to the spot. We're also discussing how many Siege Rollers spawn for solo players. I hope to have more info for you soon.
Also, it seems like this week's patch improved connection performance for a ton of players! That's freaking awesome! If you're still experiencing issues, let us know.
While most of us are deep diving into our changes, a few of us decided to come up for air to give you a few extra treats:
Steven Collins, Lead Level Designer (@Esorath)
Working on a massive update for Dungeon Defenders II and that comes with some new enemies. I left you a sneak peek at one of our favorite enemy designs at the top of the Dev Log. Let the theorycrafting begin….
Jesus Diaz, World Builder (@N3oDoc)
Hello, Defenders!
I've been doing some fixes to the Social Hub and Private Tavern, so you can expect some new cool things in the next update! Aside of that, I'm working on new assets for the upcoming DD2 levels!
Daniel Diaz, World Builder (@Danimix1983)
Hope you all had a good start this new year! I've been so busy working on new assets, fixes, updating some levels, collisions, lots of stuff! Here's a preview of one of the new assets I've been working on this week (work-in-progress).
John Muscarella, Digital Puppet Master (@Muskie4242)
New year. New people. New challenges.
The Animation and Tech Animation departments are now teaming with new faces. There is a lot of fresh talent here to help us push through 2017.
SO! To kick off the new year, I’d like to give you all a gif-t. Please enjoy these reaction .gifs that you can now use to harass us and each other on the forums. (Shhhhhhhh… Don’t tell Isom these are from me.)
Happy New Year, Defenders!