Combat Support AMA, Summarized
We recently did another AMA, this time covering upcoming Combat Features as well as answering a variety of questions regarding combat, balancing, and even the true meaning of love within the Void.
You can watch the AMA here, or you can read a brief transcript of every question, answer, and upcoming feature below.
To begin with, of course, we should discuss new additions to Devikins coming in future updates — updates that will first be seen and played by those in the Combat Beta — and later come to the full game with the proper worldwide release of Phase 2.
One feature requested by many players is the ability to bypass training, something which will be coming to the game with the addition of Instant Growth Items. Players will be able to attain or purchase two items that allow them to bypass training, which at this moment have been named Grow, and Max Grow.
Grow simply speeds up the entire process and instantly turns your Devikid into a full-fledged Devikin, whereas Max Grow maxes out their attributes along the way. We’re still cooking up a proper name for these two items, and will give more details as to how to attain them as we get closer to the update.
We’re also adding a variety of Quality of Life features, such as a stage/star counter for each Story Mode zone, as well as the number of enemy waves and what level(s) those enemies may be in each stage. One can also see the possible rewards for each stage before jumping in, as well as have the option to instantly complete that stage and gain rewards by spending DVK. But, to be able to instantly clear a stage you must have already completed it and earned yourself a full three star ranking. This skip also consumes energy, so it cannot be spammed endlessly.
One major feature we showed off in the AMA was Nightmare Mode, a form of New Game + which allows players to go through a Story Mode zone they’ve already completed and fight new monsters in harder versions of the original stages. This mode provides greater rewards than normal difficulty, and allows for much more replayability when it comes to PvE.
Another feature discussed was the awaited addition of skill upgrades. To summarize quickly, one can burn duplicates of a skill to feed experience into a remaining copy. As an example, if you had five copies of Venomous Strike, you could burn four of them and funnel the experience gained into the last remaining copy. After it has enough experience you can use materials to upgrade the skill to the next star level, increasing its effectiveness. At this current stage, skills can be upgraded up to five stars.
For those who love to customize, flex, or just look fashionable while dishing out a good old fashioned beating, weapons skins are being added in the next update. But that’s not all, as last but certainly not least, we are implementing further customization in the form of weapon/equipment slots, which can fit cartridges/chips that increase the stats of your weapons and equipment or even add brand new stats and modifiers to them.
These upgrade slots can be compared to gems in other games that players can put into their gear to make them more powerful, or materia for those JRPG fans out there.
Finally, we have questions from a multitude of players, answered as succinctly as possible.
Weaknesses and resistances seem to vary, with chill being an element which occurs less often and is therefore rare when compared to other elemental weaknesses. Are weakness and resistance explicitly varied, and how do you plan to balance it?
The actual benefits that weaknesses and resistances provide aren’t numerically identical. As chill was an example, since it’s a ‘rare’ weakness for a Devikin to have, that means that those Devikin that are weak to Chill would take more damage compared to, say, a Devikin that is weak to Plasma. We also intend to shift weaknesses and resistances from season to season as part of re-balancing and meta shifts for PvP.
Will players get random NFTs such as weapons, skills, or equipment as rewards for playing, or are they only available via Void Scraps or purchase using DVK?
Players will be able to dismantle or otherwise destroy item NFTs in future and use the resources gained, named Dusting, which can be traded for forge materials to create new items. Items will also be provided as rewards as part of seasonal events, as well as regular in-game events.
Will there be a different reward pool for each league? If not, then pauper league would be competing for the same rewards as whales.
The way we’ve structured PvP is that there aren’t explicit leagues, but arenas. These are distinct in that each day of the week, only one type of arena is open in PvP. That means that it could be a Monday and the pauper arena is open, whereas the next day it could be only the unlimited arena. This way every player gets to play every composition without being shoehorned into regimented leagues.
Will you limit players to competing in one Synchronous and one Asynchronous league?
Synchronous PvP and Asynchronous PvP are divided into explicit leagues, with Asynchronous leagues running on a weekly schedule, and Synchronous running on a monthly or seasonal schedule.
When combat is released there is the potential for abuse via emulators, by queuing off peak hours and trading yourself wins. Is there a way to prevent this?
First and foremost, accounts that lose often will very quickly be put into a separate bracket in which they can’t queue against the account that’s winning. We also track gameplay data, so win trading or other exploits are something we can take swift action against.
What is the meaning of love inside the Void?
Fighting.
Is there a minimum account level required to participate in PvE/PvP gameplay? Are there any advantages to having a higher account level?
There are no minimum account level requirements in Devikins as that would needlessly gate content. In regards to having a higher account level, the higher the account level the more combat energy one has to work with, which means more PvE/PvP gameplay.
Will replica/forging materials be added to the Wicked Well drop pool?
Replica you can get from combat as a reward/drop, but the Wicked Well will have weapon and equipment materials added to their drop pool, allowing for item upgrades and forging of new items.
Common and 100OA modes are pretty much identical, do you plan to raise the OA cap or add a higher one in favour of uncommon or rare Devikin.
The gameplay statistics and discussion we have shows the opposite, in fact! Players are actually running different numbers of Devikin in their teams, as well as different types when it comes to OA. It’s still too early to know for sure, but from what we can see so far there seems to be a good amount of variety between different queues.
We also expect the meta to shift radically once the game is fully released, as Beta’s are never truly indicative of what the PvP landscape will actually look like.
Will only weapons be distributed via seasonal mint, or all items?
Weapons and armour will be distributed via seasonal mint, whereas skills are more readily available, since they’re the core customization aspect of gameplay. Skills dictate your team composition, whilst weapons and equipment dictate their effectiveness. As such, we want skills to be more accessible.
How do you plan to address disconnect abuse upon release?
Coming with the next update we’ve improved disconnect handling, and have also adjusted things so that someone who disconnects/leaves a match gets an instant loss, and the player left in the lobby gets a win. This will effectively disincentivize players from, in so many words, rage quitting and ruining the match.
So, if someone leaves your match, you can give yourself a pat on the back for not just winning regular, old fashioned warfare, but mental warfare as well.
Will there be a future option to invite specific players to battle? Like a friendly duel system. This doesn’t need to have rewards.
Of course! We’re cooking up an invite system right now so you can quickly jump in and play with one of your friends without any rating on the line.
Finally, we briefly discussed a few of the more hard to pin down facets of combat and hope that players will have a better understanding of those little intricacies with this quick explanation.
Turn Sequence Calculation
Turn sequence is calculated via the Agility stat. The higher the Devikin’s Agility, the sooner its turn takes place in the combat sequence. In the rare instance that there’s a tie, a descending checklist is run through to sort out which of the tied Devikin gets to take their turn first.
What this means is that turn sequence is always calculated and never random.
Interaction between Elements and Ancestry
Different Ancestries are weak to different Elements. But, this is only a single part of a complicated damage calculation, with a Devikin’s various stats and level also being taken into account.
As a rule of thumb, if the icon over a Devikin is green when you want to attack it, you can make the assumption that you will do more damage to it than you would against one with a red, or yellow icon (Resistant/Neutral respectively) — just make sure to tap on that Devikin and quickly check whether or not it’s a very high level, or if its equipment makes it tankier than it first seems.
For the time-being, that’s everything, but we hope you found this article helpful, educational, or otherwise interesting, and we look forward to doing another AMA of this type soon
