New Features
Today's patch marks the release of quite a few major features: quests, medals, titles, a new profile screen, a new loading screen, and a new chat interface! Let's go over the changes!
Throughout Infinity Wars' history, we've seen players have a lot of confusion about how to get new exciting things for free. New players get lost, not knowing where to go next. Furthermore, long time players have no end-game goals to shoot for, and no way to show off their accomplishments to other players. The new quest system is our answer to these problems. As you play Infinity Wars, you'll complete various quests, giving you better and better rewards.
Many quests award Medals, which are used to show off your accomplishments in Infinity Wars. When you play against another player, our new (and much more optimized) loading screen will show off your medals.
Another reward you can earn through quests is Titles. Once earned, Titles can be displayed to other players. Ever wanted to be known as Champion Puffy? Well now you can! (Or rather, you could be if your username was Puffy, which it isn't. Also, Puffy's win/loss ratio is terrible.)
All these new additions can be found on the Profile screen, which has been completely redone.
This Quest system replaces our previous Faction Levels system, and all rewards from the Faction Levels system have been moved into the Quest system.
Last, but not least, we have an entirely new chat interface. It is now much better laid out, especially for talking to friends, and is persistent across all aspects of the game, making it much easier to talk to friends.
Balance Changes
We've introduced adjustments to a few cards released in Infestation, which will we explain here:
Infected Drone now transforms into a 7/7 (previously a 8/8).
When Infected Drone transforms, it becomes one the most efficient character in the game, a 8/8 for 2 (in addition to being Artificial, generally a benefit in Genesis). In Genesis, transforming the Drone is a fairly trivial task, and allowed Genesis to have early game aggression far beyond its curve, so we've turned it down a bit.
Aether Acolyte is now a 5/5 that increases by 1/1 when an ability is played. (Previously a 3/3 that increased by 2/2).
While in a vacuum Aether Acolyte's power level isn't overpowered (although it's a very powerful card), in the context of Verore it becomes simply too strong. Normally, Verore doesn't have efficient, fast beaters, and this is an important weakness of the faction. We've decided to bring up Aether Acolyte's base stats a little bit, but severely decrease how quickly she can get large.
Uncontrolled Rift now costs 2 (previously 1).
Uncontrolled Rift is arguably one of the reasons Aether Acolyte was so strong. However, we feel that Uncontrolled Rift is in too strong a place right now, and can be used with many other cards to overpowering effect, Aether Acolyte was merely the best option at the time. We never intended Uncontrolled Rift to be so furiously competitive, it's a card that while fun, introduces a level of dumb
luck that we don't want to push too hard, and are going to bring it down a bit.
Flame Dawn Fanatic now has 8 power, up from 6.
Not everything has to be nerfs! We felt that Flame Dawn Fanatic's stats were simply too low to be sexy as a three purity card, so we're making him stronger.
Ritual Master is now a 0/4, and his ability doesn't buff himself.
Ritual Master, if left unchecked, is a very strong card. However, in its previous incarnation he left very little room for any player to deal with him, and we wanted decks to be able to answer a Ritual Master.
Death Ray and Perils of Command have been moved to Uncommon (previously common).
Drafting Verore has been extremely strong, since its commons offer some of the best removal in the game. We decided to bring this back a bit, so that you can't guarantee yourself a full playset of premium removal when you draft Verore.
Bloodthirst health bonus has been reworked.
The health bonus from Bloodthirst has been reworked so that it acts as a buffer against damage, as in its previous incarnation, a Bloodthirsted character would usually simply die at the end of the turn.
Bug Fixes
- Various fixes for various causes of the 'endless turn' glitch.
- Swarmer characters should now get Consume functioning correctly.
- Fixed a bug with Swarmers' display text being incorrect from increases/losses from Brutal Swarmer.
- Swarmers now correctly longer apply in command zone.
- Cyber Infested Dragon no longer leaves play if it dies in command (formerly token spawning wasn't occurring (correctly) although it was still getting removed from play (incorrectly)).
- Dead Feaster will now correctly keep stats when dead.
- Hubris of the Strong now flushes damage dealt, so it doesn't kill cards that have previously taken damage.
- Splatterer, Devil of Despair, Ritual Master and Frenzied Monstrosity's discard now properly resolve in the resolution phase instead of the planning phase.
- Infected Purifier should correctly become undead on transformation.
- Agent Coyle, Zomborg's splash ability correctly hits battlefield now, instead of all cards in play.
- Agent Coyle, Zomborg's ability can no longer be used when the player has insufficient resources.
- Immortal Traveller can now create Survival Swarmers.
- Preemptive should resolve correctly on several cards in Infestation where it did not.
- Chalice of Madness now correctly discards a card prior to drawing for the turn.
- Xi, who honors the dead should correctly check for valid targets.
- Shield generator allows cards to be played the turn its owner chooses to sacrifice it.
- Fight can longer target it's controller's cards for it's second target (as per card text)
- Card abilities that trigger when entering the battlefield should no longer proc a second time if their zone changes from out of play.