The Road Map For A New Beginning

[Nate]

Greetings Pit Masters!

For anyone who hasn't read my previous post regarding future changes for the game, you can read it here (http://forum.pitofwar.com/showthread.php?2441-A-Return-To-The-Past).

I've been furiously working on the road map for the new direction Pit of War will be heading in. Many of the main ideas and goals are in place with the details needing to be filled in. I'm going to use this thread to post information and updates to keep those interested informed. I don't usually like to give out too many details ahead of time because in game development things often change for numerous reasons and then sometimes players become upset when a feature they were hoping for is scrapped or changed. I'm going to go ahead and give you as much information as I feel is appropriate with the understanding that nothing is set in stone and can and may change. Right now I haven't thought out solutions to all the technical challenges which is why some things may change, however, what you will be able to see will be a good indicator of the general idea of what Pit of War and the Great Realm will look like down the road.

I don't have a timescale in place yet for all of this, it is basically ASAP.

Later tonight I'll make another post offering the first glimpse into what lies ahead.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

P.S. This thread is locked so I am the only one who can post to it in order to keep it better organized. If you want to ask a question you can still do so. Simply create a new thread somewhere else and if I have an answer for it I'll do my best. I may not have an answer yet though, so keep that in mind. :)

Edit: Apoc has created a thread to discuss this here (http://forum.pitofwar.com/showthread.php?2464-PoW-roadmap-discussion-thread).

[Nate]

Thanks for your patience everyone. This will be a multi-part post that will happen over time. To start off with I'm going to explain some of the top level ideas for the future:

Pit of War originally began as a game that was meant to be a supplement to your regular gaming schedule, and as such there wasn't a lot to do each day. Many of the early adopters enjoyed this. As the game grew, more players kept requesting more to do and some wanted faster progress. This resulted in the game you see today.

In the early days, gladiators did five tavern runs each day and fought twice per day, once at 2am PST and once at 2pm PST. This type of format actually created a much richer PvP environment since the focus was on each fight because there weren't so many of them and gave players time to think and strategize more. Rivalries could be created more easily and moving up and down in the rankings felt more important as you had at least 12 hours to stew over a loss or bask in victory for a win and gloat. Each fight was important. This was especially true if you were challenged. For technical reasons and in the hopes to accommodate the newer generations of gamer (e.g. less than age 30-35) unfamiliar with this format for a game the switch was made to the arena token system we have today. This was met with mixed results as many of the hardcore players didn't like it, and many of the new generation loved it.

I'm of the opinion at this point that a better compromise can be made and that is what I'm working on now. Areas of the game that have an arena token like system or energy based system allowing players to fight when they want and are able to, and areas of the game that have the slower scheduled format hyper focusing the players on each fight. The challenge with the slower scheduled format style like in the old days of PoW is when a new player checks out the game it can be boring if they can't fight right away and see what it is all about. Imagine if you check out a game, make a character and then it tells you to come back in 10 hours. :) In today's marketplace where we have literally over a million games at our fingertips, boredom or not catching someone's interest in those first few precious minutes means a lost customer and wasted marketing dollars. The good news is I think I've come up with a few solutions for this which I'll be sharing later.

Most likely all XP and training points will be earned via the arena. All other areas of the game will simply enable players to earn more gold and loot if they so desire. As such, they will be optional. A player choosing to skip all other areas of the game should expect that they'll need to support the game if they want to play with a full stable and all the shiny toys of destruction. Areas other than the arena will offer players the ability to earn and win shiny toys. As is the case with all free games, it'll be a money vs time trade-off, not too dissimilar to now. I'll do my best to design it in such a way so the balance is as good as possible.

Now onto some details...

[Nate]

The Tavern

The tavern is going to get a complete overhaul. The daily contracts are going to be removed. Conquests in its current form is going to be changed. The current and only conquest The Underbelly and all future ones are going to become something more like a weekly raid or world event. Running the same dungeon 100s of times per week is boring, but doing it once a week is special and doesn't get boring as quickly. I don't have the large team and the resources to make adventures fast enough like large companies which is why we only have one right now. That coupled with my extremely high standard for art makes them take even longer. Having them become a once a week type of activity (raid and or world event) allows the game's content to last longer and not bore players, and more importantly makes it more exciting since you know you only have one shot that week.

"Daily runs" will be replaced with mini text-only conquest type adventures. We'll be using the world/realm/territory/region maps and players will drill down just like now, click on the banner to select the mini-conquest they want, choose their difficulty setting and away they go. The mini-conquests/dungeons will be level based (i.e. not scale) and as a gladiator completes them it will unlock new ones and new territories and regions allowing the player to explore the Great Realm. Players will be able to go back to any one that is completed and farm it for whatever rewards it may contain if they want. The text only nature of these allows them to be created much much (times a 1000) faster and the best part of all it lets the most powerful graphics rendering engine in the world (your imagination) do all the work! It will literally be YOUR adventure however you visualize it in your head. In addition, some sort of tavern rankings and leader boards are in the plans as well.

I hope many of you like what you've read so far. More info about the future to come soon...

[Nate]

Blood Games

The Blood Games are going to change into multiple one week long tournaments. Each bracket will have its own tournament allowing all levels to compete. Gladiators will need to manually register. The format will most likely be something like the following:

* day 1 = registration (organize gladiators into groups. Groups might be random or by specialty, race, weapon type, etc.)
* day 2 & 3 = group matches, group A only fights other group A members. At the end of day 3, X gladiators from each group make the cut and determine bracket seeds for the 16 gladiators for the round of 16.
* day 4 = Round of 16 (start of the single loss knockout rounds)
* day 5 = Quarter-Finals
* day 6 = Semi-Finals
* day 7 = Finals

[Nate]

Seasons

Seasons will likely be changing into what is now the Blood Games and last one month instead of two (probably won't be called seasons anymore, since we were already pushing that definition with a two month time scale). Blood God gladiators will fight once (maybe twice) per day on a fixed schedule, no arena fight tokens. Matchups will be handled based on the gladiator's current points like how the Blood Games handles it now. Opponents may or may not be known ahead of time.