So I was mucking around on my laptop tonight…

I really liked how this screenshot looked so I figured I’d post it.  Wish you could see the fullsize 1920×1200 version.  It’s pretty impressive!

The State of PVP in SAGA

I’m pretty happy that I can say things are significantly improving in the PVP world.  We’ve spent a lot of time mulling over changes and potential changes and I hope everyone would agree that we’re going in the right direction.  Troop and spell balance has improved all around the board but we know there is much left to do.  So here’s a few things off the top of my head to satiate those of you who worry we’re becoming too content.

– We’re currently looking at an alternate version for handling spells.  The current version includes removing spells from the troop CP limitations and allowing players to use a separate spell point system to field their spells.  This will increase the overall usefulness of spells while reducing the need to waste valuable troop CP on those hard, often situational decisions.

– Max fieldable CP will be getting adjusted to relate to the buildings you have on the map.  In PVP you will have to have buildings to field troops.  It’s all tied to a simple formula – so basically if you don’t have sufficient buildings to warrant the troops being at the battlefield they can’t be deployed even if you have the leadership skill to command a larger army.  This will be a start of battle max cap so even if you lose them during the battle it won’t reduce your max fieldable for the battle.

– There’s a lot of thought and some good revision work going on with troops, spells, and specials.  The soon to be released Undead will surely throw a few kinks into the line though so we want to see how that unfolds before going too crazy.  I’ve made a call for players to comment on the worst 5 units in the game and you can add your thoughts by visiting the forums here: https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6532

On the PVP front we also have the upcoming tournament release which is going to lay a much more balanced play field.  We’re also planning on including a tournament rating similar to the generic PVP rating but in this case it will be far less exploitable.  You’ll actually have to play people you don’t want and it will be difficult to cheat the system just to get your rating improved.  This should help us develop a solid PVP rating system and who knows…maybe we’ll soon see our first SAGA Invitationals.  =)

I swear I’ve been writing in here weekly…

Egads.  It really feels like just a few days since I last wrote here but the timestamps on my blog will prove otherwise.  Things of late have been very busy and more-so due to my wife and I having a new baby.  Now that I’m not sleeping I’ve had a bit more time to get back to other things like sharing with you guys what is going on in the world of SAGA.

I’m guessing most of you active players have noticed we’ve been ramping up the promotion wagon.  This means our population is spiking up and in turn we had some server issues.  The good news is we found the source or the problems with the big disconnects and resolved it.  Since then stability has been remarkably improved.  I’d go so far as to say that server/connectivity issues are mostly gone.  We still have a few odd client issues we’re working through but for many people the game is pretty solid these days.

So where to from here?  The next few months are going to be heavy development time for us.  We’re currently working on the World Conflict system as well as a number of other side systems.  At times it seems like there arne’t many new updates but if I could show you the the code that is being updated/improved/added to you’d be pretty impressed.  I’m not sure if many independant studios churn out as much as we do on our budget.  Our team is pretty amazing.

Coming up real soon is tournaments and the new faction.  There are also a few surprises coming which we haven’t announced yet but they’ll add some really fun diversity to things.  If you can guess what it is then great – if not wait until next patch!

All in all things are going well – check my other posts for more specific SAGA news!

Upcoming PVP and Balance Changes

There’s been a lot of discussion about PVP and Balance issues. We’re very aware that things aren’t 100% perfect and we’re working hard on solutions that both fit our vision for SAGA and appease the concerns players have. While the following are features/changes/tweaks in development, nothing is set in stone. However, we’d really appreciate players to take a deep breath before giving into that early gut reaction to the ideas. =) I know it’s difficult…but it’s probably worth it. After that please feel free to send your thoughts our way. So without further ado…here’s Monk’s commentary on some future adjustments coming your way.

All initial balance changes are being made off level 10 units. I’m going to let out a secret right now since I think it will help everyone understand a bit more about how things are being balanced. There will eventually be increased ability changes for troops as they level up. The system is already in the game, we just haven’t “turned it on” yet. This means that all abilities are currently also being balanced for level 10 unit combat. Once we feel that things are in a good place we’ll be adding in the lower levels. This means that lower level combat will perform more akin to that of the higher level combat regarding direct damage abilities and the like.

There are also a few more PVP based changes nearly finished which will be added soon. The first is the garrisoning feature. This basically will allow players to remove units off the field, regain the cps, and then deploy a more useful unit for the situation. The cost will be that 5 cps from your max fieldable will be lost and the unit which was removed will not be available to deploy for some additional period (we’re currently testing 5 minutes). The unit can later be deployed and will maintain its current status while garrisoned (i.e. hit points and all will still be in the same state as when they left the field). This will affect both questing and PVP although it is primarily a PVP based adjustment.

Another update we’re making is that your max fieldable CPs in a PVP will be limited by both your level AND your buildings. So even if you have reached level 35 you will need to ensure that you have enough siege points on the field to muster your army. If you don’t, you will be unable to field your maximum army size. Additionally, we’re adding Stronghold and Keep destruction to the list of PVP victory conditions. While we weren’t too worried about city development being an issue once world conflict comes out, we see this issue as serious enough to warrant such a change. Things will actually be more in line with the original game design than before so we’re pretty happy about the changes.

There are many troop and spell based adjustments still waiting in the wings. It’s easy to make drastic changes to the way things work to try and appease a loud outcry on the forums or in chat but it’s generally not a good idea to give in to those uproars until the issues have been thoroughly dissected and analyzed. We’re trying hard to avoid making large sweeping changes to units in the game to avoid causing even more issues with the nearly unavoidable ripple effects of balance. With that said we are going to be making some big adjustments as we continue to gather the data on what is and is not working according to the “plan.” We’re appreciative of all the commentary on the forums even when it gets a little heated. Please continue to feed us the good stuff in a proper manner and we’ll eventually get things to where they should be. SAGA is a huge beast – it’s not as easy as simply “balancing things.” Complicating issues are the many various ideas regarding what real balance is. Even attempts at discerning the opinions of players as to what is and is not balanced end up being heated and there are normally advocates of both sides. This is only expected though as everyone has different play styles, goals, and capabilities. Consider also that what works for PVP doesn’t necessarily work perfectly for PVE. We don’t want to go the route of other games where we have separate abilities for PVP and PVE – so there will be much time spent on avoiding that sort of thing. Before making decisions we always try to exhaust our potential solutions.

Another interesting, upcoming tidbit would be the breakdown of rating and tournament rating. We’re hoping to separate the two out so players can better assess their competition. While it will remain possible to a degree to exploit/abuse the rating, your tournament rating will be much harder to compromise. We’re also looking at options for creating a “Looking For Battle” option in the game where players will be matched up into PVP battles rather than waiting in the queue for someone to join their game. Both options will still remain available, but we hope to make it easier to get into a PVP contest in the near future. I am under the impression that the tournament system will alleviate much of the PVP frustration being experienced at this time but we’ll continue to add solutions and possibilities as we go forward.

And then there was world conflict…

This is a system I’m really excited about. I’m not allowed to talk about it much yet but I believe it will be exciting and add a lot of fun and draw to most, if not all, of our players. We’re trying to include options for all types of players from the casual player to the hardcore, 18-hour-a-day fanatic. Things are looking good so far – I promise I’ll get news out about it as soon as the guards leave the gate. =)

Anyhow, much to do yet today – we’re working hard on getting tomorrow’s patch ready. It solves every known market issue, fixes some known crash issues, and offers a bunch of little but needed tweaks. We’re hoping to have a bigger update coming up in a few weeks which might be the solution to several of the other key issues plaguing some of you (i.e. crashes) . Thanks for your support and patience – we hope you’re enjoying SAGA as much as we are so far!

Upcoming PVP Changes

There’s some concern about the state of spells in PVP right now. We’re not totally satisfied with PVP at this point even though we know there are many upcoming changes planned for the future. Personally I rather enjoy a casual game of PVP in SAGA a lot more than most RTS games out there. There’s something that just came together in a nice way that I don’t seem to find in most other games. But with all that in mind here’s a few things we’re looking at doing for the future.

1. We’re going to set a 4 unit limit on the battlefield of any specific card type. SAGA is very much modeled after the CCG concepts that many of us grew up on and while I’m loathe to add in arbitrary rules like this we’re thinking it is something that will simply pay off so far as “fun” is concerned. Making PVP more competitive and fun is the end goal…so this is looking very likely for a near future update.

2. Another thing we’re looking at doing for a near future update is allowing deployed units to return to your reserves by garrisoning at any spawn capable point you own. So if your opponent is playing the sit and spell game you can hastily garrison those low CP units in favor of some more sturdy troops and thereby adjust your battle plan. This of course introduces some new quirks and benefits into the game and we’re interested to see how it plays out. The general consensus so far is this could add a really nice flair to the PVP and quest system.

So these are the two “tweaks” we’re looking at right now. There’s no guarantee of course that they’ll be included ever, but if I was a betting man I’d probably be doubling my money soon. Beyond this we’ve a lot of changes we’re hoping to make both before and for the future expansion which should include the world conflict system. I can’t being to express how excited I am for that. Personally it’s more exciting than tournaments though I know a lot of you live and die for tournament style play as well.

Anyhow, that’s enough for now – it’s time to get back to work!

Stress and More Stress

As many have probably noticed things have been really busy around the SAGA offices lately. We’re getting dangerously close to release and there remains a mountain of tasks to be done. It’s always hard to reach the point on a project where you realize you are going to have to cut things you swore you’d never cut. It’s frustrating and you pull your hair out trying to figure out how you can get in that “last feature” but finally in the end you realize that you just have to stop or you’ll never release the product.

There are of course many things that will still be done before release – naturally we’re going to finish up the GUI, continue development on the tournament system, and go through numerous other stability checks and evaluations. I’m hoping we get more time to polish things like particles as well. I imagine we could spend several months still cleaning up things like particles, sounds, and graphical glitches.

Being an indie developer has been a lot of fun but it leaves you with lots of tasks you’d normally be able to push off to someone who is probably more skilled at it and has a lot more time to do it right like the manual – I can’t believe we’re at the end and we still don’t have any sort of official manual for people to reference! It’s coming though so don’t give up on it yet.

So what comes after release? For me the big feature is going to be the world conflict system. I did everything I could to make sure it made it in for release but it was just too big to get done in time. Another big post release goody will be the next faction which will round out the Brotherhood quite well. It’s almost necessary to get that in before world conflict or the poor Brotherhood folks would suffer at the hands of the Order too heavily. I’m aware there is a lot of interest in what the world conflict system is and I think pretty soon I’ll be freed from the bonds of silence so expect more information when I get a chance to post.

Welcome to Monk’s Corner

Welcome to Monk’s Corner. Hopefully I’ll have time to keep things up to date here. The goal is to have a place where I can share things about SAGA, where we are headed, and what to expect in the future.

In case you’re wondering who Monk is:

Monk is the Project Lead of SAGA. You can find out more about SAGA at www.playsaga.com.

And in case you’re wondering how much pull Monk has at the headquarters here’s the disclaimer:

Monk’s Corner is in no way an authoritative source or voice for either Saga Games LLC or Silverlode Interactive. All comments and opinions on this site are his alone and in no way represent those of either Saga Games LLC or Silverlode Interactive. In other words these are, indeed, his own personal ramblings.