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!