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Update 38 - A fair chance for all

[img=http://forced2.com/images/Forced2_Update_A38.png]

Contestants!

We’re nearing the reveal of my super secret event on the 23rd of March, but I wanted to give you an update before that.
If you’re wondering where update 37 went, it was a hidden update for some, but now everything is aligned. :)

In this update I’ve added a new daily mode, the Equality daily, in which everyone has the same Contestant, companion and deck, fighting the same challenges. Now you can truly show your mastery of the show compared to others!

I’ve also done a lot of fixes, and more notably, scaled up the gold gain in the Crucible based on some feedback from the forums.

Here’s the full changelog:

Features

  • New daily mode: 'Equality' - Everyone plays with the same (random) champion, companion, deck and card draws.
  • New Twitch features
  • UI improvements
  • Performance improvements
  • Steam achievements for the quests you complete

Balance

(37 was a stealth patch - you may have already experienced some of these changes during the past week)

  • General:
    • Shard rewards and crafting costs increased.
    • There is a cap to how many shards you can have (so it makes sense to spend them as you go along).
    • Minimum enemies in an arena increased from 2 to 3. A side effect is that more difficult enemies are now more gradually discovered as you get further in the game/battle.
    • Arenas have less spiky difficulty variation.
    • Bosses rebalanced to make them more consistent in damage and difficulty.
    • Some quests that require playing lots of cards of certain types have had their requirements reduced.
    • Season scores are now based on the rank you achieve for a daily, rather than which score you got.

  • Shows:

    • Slightly more enemies in tutorial battles. (not changed since 37)
    • Increased difficulty/enemy count of all Crucible battles: Chamber 1 +14%, Keeper 1 +10%, Chamber 2 +22%, Endboss +8%. (not changed since 37)
    • Increased difficulty/enemy count of all Grand Return battles
    • particularly for the later chambers and the endboss.
    • Boss health scales more dramatically. They will have lower health in Crucible + early Frontline and be tougher than before in late Frontline and mid-late Grand Return.
    • Increased Crucible gold gain by 50%.
    • Increased Frontline gold gain by 25%.
    • Daily gold gain reduced by 30%. The bonus gold from One Try Daily has not been reduced.
    • Daily now gives time bonus for the first 90 seconds per arena completed, rather than the first 60 seconds. The time bonus is still 1 point per second saved.

  • Champions & Companions:

    • Stormy's max distance increased from 9 to 10 (to match default arrow range).
    • Brutus' attack changed from a flat heal to 15% of his damage.

  • Cards:

    • Fairy Bottle now correctly heals 3 per enemy hit, instead of 1. Damage reduced from 15 to 10 (making it a more powerful healing tool but slower group clear).
    • Duobot duration reduced from 20 to 15 seconds and bots shoot slightly slower (10 DPS per bot, down from 13.3 DPS).
    • Deadly Impact now hits its targets a lot faster.
    • Wrecking Ball changed from +100% damage for 3 seconds to +70% damage for 5 seconds.
    • Flash of Anger has 100% proc chance (up from 50%). Damage bonus reduced from +25% to +20%.
    • Murder Pals damage increased from 8 to 10. Can damage each enemy 2 times per second, down from 4 times. Now also kills barrels.
    • Murder Pals can now stack the buff multiple times for additional damage.
    • Deadly Impact deals its damage more swiftly, so you can better rely on it to interrupt enemies at your destination.
    • Mass Effect should no longer move yourself by pulling enemies into you.

  • Boons:

    • Who's Next!?: Move speed decreased from +2 to +1. Duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds.

  • Enemies:

    • Treasure goblin drops are now random and scaled with the difficulty the battle.
    • No more than 3 boomers can spawn in one arena.
    • Spawning costs of ratworld and dungeon enemies tweaked.
    • Jahun's Stone Prison ability had cooldown reduced from 8 to 7 seconds.

  • Battle Rules & Bosscards:

    • Delicate Summons reworked: "Summons take double damage. +100% summoning portal efficiency."
    • Direct damage from battle rules, bosscards and player cards (e.g. Curse of Excess, Stayin' Alive and Masochistic Blade) can only bring you to 1 hp but not kill you. Indirect damage (e.g. Magma Storm and Raff's Son) can still kill you.

Quality of Life

  • There is now a tutorial popup about shards and an early quest reward, giving you enough to craft a common.
  • Quests have names
  • Cleaned up quest menu and reward display a lot.
  • In-game mouseover tooltips (buff icons, modifiers, stats etc.) now only pop up when paused or in card phase. This tradeoff was made because disabling it midfight gave a huge FPS boost for all users.
  • Stormbringer aim line now indicates when the basic attack is fully charged.
  • Several battle rule descriptions streamlined.
  • Boss cards more clearly display their type and how long they are in effect.
  • Chain Reaction clarified to say that the explosions only hurt enemies.
  • Cards that use the same tooltip multiple times (e.g. Paranoid with 'Shield') only list the tooltip once.
  • Fortune menu: The card spin animation speeds up if the player presses any keys meanwhile.
  • Fortune menu: The process of receiving cards is faster.
  • Fortune menu: Sharding duplicate cards no longer takes extra time.

Fixes

  • Fixed a number of issues that were causing crashes.
  • Daily score should now be consistent in-game, on victory/defeat screen and on leaderboard.
  • The gold reward countup when ending a campaign now shows how much each win actually gave, rather than just dividing the full reward.
  • Snappy Stormy works correctly again.
  • Health Up boon works correctly again.
  • Just A Sip boon works correctly again.
  • Reaction effects should now occur correctly when taking many hits at the same time.
  • Fixed some attacks that were causing reactions more often than they could actually damage you.
  • Dailies now offer boons of all the same rarity.
  • Daily boon choices are now the same for everyone playing.
  • Fixed some issues that were knocking enemies out of the arena.
  • Reanimation shrines, Spawn World Minion and Clone were not making zeppelin tanks and spawner shrines active after respawning them.
  • Alden no longer leaves a flame trail when there is no solid ground beneath him.
  • Trip Drone will no longer punish you for movement outside your control (e.g. knockback).
  • Quests that required a certain number of actions in a limited time were not resetting progress correctly.
  • Quests that required reaching a certain stat value were not completing correctly.
  • Cleaned up some obsolete questlines that were still showing up in the menu.
  • Spellweaver Puff was not showing its buff icon when only one of them was cast.
  • Bloody Finale no longer displays its damage on the enemy that explodes.
  • Not Today no longer shows Emergency Spleen icon when triggered.
  • The "Win 100 battles quest" was requiring 200 wins.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause points to disappear or be transported to you immediately.

Remember you can follow the development of the show at:
https://trello.com/b/m8udgXeV/forced-2-main-board

<3
C-SAR