PoW roadmap discussion thread

Nate has some really exciting changes planned, which he is listing in this thread. As it is a closed thread so that Nate's announcements are easy to read, let's all discuss the plans here :]

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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

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I think this is going to be super exciting for everyone. New players/gladiators and old alike. I think it will have certain gladiators really dominate some brackets, due to the sandbagging before the tavern changes, and a gear inequality at the top end of the game, but with it being a week long competition, it's quick enough to dust yourself off and have another crack at it, tweek strats, and so on.

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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.

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I'm liking this change a lot. One month means less time to wait for the next chance at a good ranking if you have decided to retrain your gladiators [which currently writes off 2 months of play if you want to get a good rating]. the bigger change though, is one fight every 12 hours. This is going back to the old school days of PoW, and strategy will be more important than ever. I'm missing a lot of points as to why I'm excited about this change, but I just cant quit explain it properly.

PvP is going to get properly serious now though :D


/ponders if old badass managers will return, and how Oedi and SOTC will show down with each other.

Definitely sounds amazing. I am mostly looking forwards to the 1-week-rounds! Not having to wait for level 50+ to compete in another part of the game will feel good.

I like where this is going Nate. Looking forward to see more. Any ETA on this stuff yet?

I'm working on the new seasons changes and hope to have them in place for the next season which starts in a few days.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

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Originally Posted by Nate

I'm working on the new seasons changes and hope to have them in place for the next season which starts in a few days.

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Just enough time before hand to get to zee gym and VERK OWT!!!

Apoc, Ahhnold would never post this, you accidentally took the wrong account, I assume?

And yes, that are amazing news.

You are correct. I've changed it to something more appropriate :P

I'm pretty keen to see what tweaks are implemented :)

Next season will be the start of the new format. Below is a quick list of some of the more notable features:

* Seasons will last 4 weeks.
* Blood God gladiators will automatically fight (and be resurrected if needed at the owner's expense) once per day at 2pm PST.
* No more patron blood god teams.
* There will be two leader boards. Weekly and overall. The weekly leader board resets each week.
* Similar to how the lower brackets work, how well a gladiator does in a fight affects their rating, not just their record.
* Match making is no longer a round robin and will instead be based on a gladiator's rating from the overall leader board.
* A gladiator's next opponent is unknown and pulled from a pool of similarly rated gladiators.
* Gladiators can fight teammates if they are closely rated.
* BGP will be awarded weekly to all gladiators based on their rating from the overall leader board.
* Bonus BGP will be awarded at the end of the season to the top 3 gladiators in each category on the overall leader board.
* Bonus BGP will be awarded daily and weekly to the top 3 gladiators in each category on the weekly leader board.
* In the event there are an odd number of gladiators in the Season, the Arena officials will provide an opponent to whoever doesn't get matched up.

With the change to the match making algorithm and the inclusion of a weekly leader board that resets, all gladiators will have a good chance of competing for top spots on it and the Blood God bracket will be far more hospitable for the uninitiated. Promotions from Primus will continue to happen once per week, and as there will be a weekly leader board they'll be able to jump right into the competition.

Additionally, the slower pace in Blood Gods of one fight per day instead of 8+, I'm offering anyone who is interested in re-recruiting any of their Hall of Legends gladiators who were once Blood Gods free of charge for a limited time, provided there is room in their stable. If you would like to take me up on this offer, send me a PM ASAP and let me know the names of those HoL gladiators you would like to re-recruit.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

How about experience will that be increased to count for the missed fights.

Will there be any change in the rating requirements for the legendary items? And as far as the BGP are concerned, will your gladiator be able to win enough BGP to buy a legendary item during the same month, provided that he passes the rating threshold? If not - will there be any change in the mechanism to carry BGP between the seasons?

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Originally Posted by oedi

How about experience will that be increased to count for the missed fights.

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It has been increased slightly. Please see the update notes for more details.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

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Originally Posted by Kreegan

Will there be any change in the rating requirements for the legendary items? And as far as the BGP are concerned, will your gladiator be able to win enough BGP to buy a legendary item during the same month, provided that he passes the rating threshold? If not - will there be any change in the mechanism to carry BGP between the seasons?

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No changes regarding legendary item requirements or carrying over BGP between seasons. The amount of BGP a gladiator earns is dependent on how well they perform in the Season. Some may earn enough for legendary items, some may not. All your questions will be answered with time. :)

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

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Originally Posted by Nate

Additionally, the slower pace in Blood Gods of one fight per day instead of 8+, I'm offering anyone who is interested in re-recruiting any of their Hall of Legends gladiators who were once Blood Gods free of charge for a limited time, provided there is room in their stable. If you would like to take me up on this offer, send me a PM ASAP and let me know the names of those HoL gladiators you would like to re-recruit.

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Awesome update Nate! I'm very interested to see how it all goes. It does make it harder for Ahhnold to catch up to Sedris' kill record, but oh well. Totally worth it :P

The rerecruited HOL option is making me so happy right now. PMing you now

* Blood God gladiators will automatically fight (and be resurrected if needed at the owner's expense) once per day at 2pm PST.

Does this mean that a gladiator in Blood Gods will automatically get a bit of XP every day without having to log in the game? I'm not very interested in the game below lvl 55 so this will fit good for me.

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Does this mean that a gladiator in Blood Gods will automatically get a bit of XP every day without having to log in the game?

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Yes.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

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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...

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I'm looking forward to this change as well. Are you planning something similar for the Gauntlet (maybe run it once a day successfully, extra runs for trophies)? I personally appreciate the philosophy of POW being a game to supplement your other activities (not gaming for me - just life). I like being able to do everything necessary within an hour every day, but still having some content if you get a bit more free time (but not where you feel compelled to midlessly grind just to stay competitive). What I like about POW is that it's an actual strategy game (not like most other "freemium" games which are technically racing games with strategy/rpg trappings).

On another note, In Blood Gods, have you given any thought to a possible team mode as well?
Perhaps something where you are automatically assigned to a team of 3 (balancing teams based on rankings, only one glad from a stable, etc) and your team competes for the month in a round-robin.
Maybe you could throw in something like target priorities (target enemy if already engaged, target rage second, target highest health third, target lowest endurance fourth, etc) based on... (intelligence?).
This could add an extra dimension to the strategy, planning, and interaction.