We're in the planning stages for the next big build, and we have some ideas:

New Major Element: Earth.
We plan on adding a third major element to the game in addition to ice and fire: Earth. The Earth element will provide defensive buffs including healing and protection. Earth monsters will protect and heal other monsters, while Earth weapons will similarly provide healing to teammates, in a different fashion from current healing weapons.

Earth will do more damage to Fire, Fire will do more damage to Ice, and Ice will do more damage to Earth.

Necromancer Subclasses and Niches
We have a rough layout for Necromancer subclasses and niches, including a subclass focused on resurrection and another focused on the blood magic ability.

Game Randomization
Currently, each game from map to map is the same. We plan on making things more exciting by making a mutator so that before each game loads, there is a chance that one or more waves will change. For example, wave 12 will have a chance to turn into a Warlord wave, like in old DC. We could have an Ice only, Fire only, and Earth only waves. We could also have green ghosts only waves. There are a lot of possibilities, and this should make each game different and fun.

Props: Hats, Helmets, Emitters, Sounds
We can also use Game Randomization to provide a small chance each game to spawn a rare monster or loot. These monsters and loot will "unlock" abilities that provide aesthetic props such as hats, helmets, emitters, and sounds. This means that all aesthetic props will initially be locked to all players and cannot be purchased unless you are lucky enough to be in a game where one of these monsters or loots spawn.

This provides a way for high level players to dump their accumulated stat points in, and it creates a sense of purpose to unlock all the props. The more you play, the more chances you have at unlocking these props. Once unlocked, props will remain available to you forever even if you sell.


And more to come! To provide an estimate of time, this won't come out for at least several months because of a busy schedule. I will try to set aside time each week to work on this though and hope it will be enjoyable for everyone!

Hey everybody!

The 'Earth' element development is progressing rapidly, so we thought we'd share some screenshots with you:













We aim to release the first version of the '208' development at the end of the week, which will have the full Earth monster beastiary, alongside some critical and minor bugfixes.

Happy slaying!

208 is live on the server.

Need to know:
Heat weapons deal more damage to Ice monsters.
Ice weapons deal more damage to Earth monsters.
Earth weapons deal more damage to Fire monsters.

No penalty and no damage reduction for using the wrong element on a wrong monster. You can never do less damage with a magic weapon (unless its a - modifier).

208
- Introduction of Earth monsters. Earth monsters heal other monsters within a radius, as well as shoot down player projectiles. Earth monsters have the highest HP of any element. Use Freezing weapons on Earth monsters to deal more damage.
- New "Earthly" magic modifier. Each + gives a 6% chance to spawn a flower upon killing a monster. Flowers provide either regeneration, adrenaline drip, shield regeneration or resupply in a small radius area, about half the size of a healing sphere. Picking up multiple flowers stacks the effect. Grouping together with other teammates who pick up flowers also stacks the effect.
- Two new solo missions:
Herbamancer: Collect flowers dropped using an Earth weapon
Forest Hunt: Kill earth monsters

Minor updates:
- Necromancers can no longer possess Tech Slugs or wave 17 bunnies
- Fixed an issue where the specialist proficiency niche could be bought while another proficiency niche was already purchased
- Added a minimum health stop that the sacrificial heal artifact could continue depleting. Without this health stop, this could've caused the server to crash
- Fixed an issue where Link Gun ammo did not spawn on maps
- Increased condition measures on Phantom ghost to prevent magic effects from getting applied to players in Phantom
- Fixed an issue where the Holograph combo continued into Phantom
- Fixed max sentinel summonable decrementing beyond one on Bombardier niche
- Fixed an issue where drones targeted pets while the owner was inside a vehicle/turret
- Fixed emitters not destroying on the Glow Streak artifact

Wave configuration has been changed to accommodate Earth monsters. I will continue to configure the waves to find an appropriate balance. Please let me know of any bugs, crashes, or issues!

Edit: Some known issues:
- Flowers do not provide aid as they are picked up while in mid air. They must land first before being picked up
- Ice Giant Gasbag is a sitting duck. Easy fix for the next update, but enjoy the free kill for now

I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe during this epidemic. I've noticed an increase in ping the past few weeks and am wondering if this has to do with an increase in internet usage overall. The UT2004 master server failed to query last night, however you can still join the server directly via the server's IP address: 68.232.165.172 In the mean time, I'll continue to work on 208 as much as I can. The April Fools event is on the server now.

208A
This is primarily a patch for some fixes.
- Fixed Giant Ice Gasbags
- Fixed an issue where Necromancers who were in Phantom could be stuck with slow speed
- Fixed an issue with Necromancers where getting into a vehicle or turret permanently stopped the blood magic ability
- Fixed an issue where more than one team mission could be activated during the countdown period
- Fixed an issue where kills made with the Utility Rifle grenade did not show up in F3 stats
- Potentially fixed an issue where Arctic Bio Skaarj and Lava Bio Skaarj could cause crashes between their bio globs contacting other bio globs. I could not replicate the crash on instant action, but took steps to reduce its chances of crashing.
- Fixed an issue where players with Loaded Weapons could pick up more than one Bio Rifle
- Added the Vorpal modifier to Bio Rifle and removed Gorgon from Shield Gun and Utility Rifle
- Life Mend mission now counts for healing done by healing artifacts and healing flowers. Life Mend now also counts for shield healing and similarly includes shield healing by the Engineer Link Gun, artifacts, and flowers
- Increased the % chance on flower drop from Earth weapons from 6% to 7% and increased the modifier range to 3 - 7. However, the max % chance of flower drops is capped at 50%

208B
The aim of this update was to provide something that could make each game a little different and less linear from map to map.

The new "Wave Randomizer" mutator provides a % chance that certain waves will spawn a new loadout of monsters. The current setup is:
Wave 6 - 100% chance of "monster roulette". This randomly selects from a list of monsters to appear on wave 6. Most of the time, the monsters will be evenly distributed, but some maps will have a higher concentration of, say, Brutes, while another map will have more bugs
Wave 8 - 33% chance of Green Ghosts only (that spawn the Invasion portal. The max number of Green Ghosts out at a time is reduced significantly over a normal wave)
Wave 10 - 33% chance of Ghosts and Undead only. This includes ghost Nalis that take HP and adren, Phantom Nalis, the Sorcerer Nali from the last wave that resurrects monsters, and skeletons and skulls. It does not include the flying ghosts
Wave 12 - 33% chance of flying monsters only
Wave 13 - 33% chance of Warlords only
Wave 14 - 50% chance of Elements only, such as Ice, Fire, or Earth only

You'll receive a message at the beginning of the wave if the wave has been randomized. The Wave Randomizer provides us with a way to use a larger asset of monsters than the 256 limit (16 waves with 16 monster slots). We can also use this for spawning rare and unique monsters, or doing something fun like seasonal monsters(Summer/Winter, holidays, etc.).

We increased the max number of waves from 16 to 18, and also reduced the duration of each wave by 10 seconds. The time duration will be the same as it has been before: 16 waves at 90 seconds and 18 waves at 80 seconds. Waves 15 and 16 on the old wave setup are now waves 17 and 18, so the difficulty cap should remain the same. 18 waves let's us use a clear difficulty tier: 6 easy waves, 6 intermediate waves, and 6 challenging waves.

Another important thing: Titan waves have moved. The first Titan wave is now wave 11, and the second Titan wave is now 15. I know the wave 6 Titan was iconic and a tradition of old DC, but this was made with best intentions toward new and low level players and providing a more smooth experience in the game.

Other Updates:
- Fixed an issue where arrays were being accessed out of bounds for the missions ability(under the hood fix)
- Fixed an issue with Possession where the monster points and adrenaline required were not matching up with Ice, Fire, and Earth monsters
- Green ghosts can now spawn a larger variety(and now configurable list) of monsters

Bear with us while we tweak the balancing of the new wave setup. Hope everyone is staying happy and healthy!

208C

Necromancer subclasses and niches:

Resurrector subclass: Higher levels of Loaded Necromancer and Experienced Resurrection, lower levels of Plague
Vampire Resurrector niche: Heals x% of the damage dealt by players that you resurrect
Power Resurrector niche: Increases damage dealt by your resurrected allies

Blood Mage subclass: Higher levels of Blood Magic, lower levels of Resurrection
Dracula niche: Increases your max HP when healed with the Blood Magic ability, and increases the HP % return on Blood Magic. Decreases weapon damage
Decay niche: Drain adrenaline with Blood Magic in addition to HP. Reduces defense

Poison Mage subclass: Higher levels of Plague and immunity to poison effects, lower levels of Blood Magic
Diseased niche: Increases the time that you can carry a plague and increases the infection radius. Cannot receive adrenaline from Adrenaline Drip ability while carrying the plague
Lethal niche: Increases the damage done by the plague. Decreases the time that you can carry the plague as well as the time that you remain in Phantom

- Fixed an issue where the plague message was not showing for Necromancers carrying the plague
- Under-the-hood changes to Team Missions. The coding is more streamlined and smooth, Musical Weapons should truly be randomized now when selecting weapons rather than skewing toward Bio Rifle

All,

I know things are wack out of balance now on multiple fronts. I am battling a big battle though and that is getting to the root cause of some map crashes- it seems that Invasion doesn't like non-DM maps and it looks like we have to modify the Invasion gametype itself. I already have a prototype down, but I'm not quite sure it will solve the crashes since I cannot replicate them offline.

This is my last week of classes and next week are finals week, so I'm kind of juggling multiple things here, but I promise things will improve! Thanks for your patience.

Hope the exam prep is going well!

As you mentioned, necro is very much out of balance and I have no doubt you’ll get it ironed out when your exams are over. Base necro is definitely the problem. Thought I would share my ideas on the subclasses though for when base necro has been balanced in the future though. The thing I like about engineer is how each subclass has a distinct identity and flavour, so I had some suggestions to make each subclass feel similarly different. I liked the fact the lethal niche changed the color of plague to red, as it makes the class visually different and makes you feel like you are playing a distinct subclass. So some ideas just aim to make the subclasses visually distinct

Poison mage

I’d really love to see some kind of small toxic explosion when an enemy who is under plague dies, which damages nearby enemies by a small amount.

Another idea would be reducing the weapon damage (but not DOT effects), and giving the subclass a poison weapon maker of infinity, like the old DC poison weapon that deals DOT to one enemy. To be clear just poison damage not transferring plague. This way the class focuses entirely on DOT

Resurrector

Two ideas here, both centred around the resurected player. Feel like it makes the resurector a bit more fun than just a longer resurrect and more xp;

Soul wail- creates a ghostly explosion around the necro and resurrected player when the player is resurrected.

Death nova- creates a mini ghostly ultima when the resurrected player dies

Blood mage

Change to Soul mage, the subclass gets to upgrade blood magic to soul magic, changing visuals to a ghostly tether and pulling souls from enemies with similar visuals to the soul wraith monsters in game. Changes the blood magic weapon to the soul magic weapon, which fires souls that seek out and damage enemies. Currently, the blood magic weapon is something you save up over a period of time and then go on a short rampage due to ammo constraints. But it’s not something you really use regularly in the way you would a flack or rocket. The soul magic weapon could be less taxing on ammo and be usable more frequently, though obviously dealing less damage then the current blood magic weapon does.

All valid points, thanks for the suggestions Fate! Will get to them eventually

208D

DC Invasion:
It was never my intention to customize the Invasion gametype. However, there were several alarming logs that I couldn't ignore. We know some maps crash more often than others and they are usually non-DM maps. I suspected these logs were related to the crashes... I was wrong. Seems like these maps still crash even when I've modified Invasion to be compatible with non-DM maps. I'll continue to investigate.

DC Invasion adds an optional "bonus" wave after the end of each wave. Currently, we're treating the bonus waves as Titan waves - one after wave 11 and the other after wave 15. This is done to keep the wave number from going beyond 16, which is a hard limit set in Invasion(otherwise, things go "out of bounds" in programming). BONUS letters now unlock the bonus wave for wave 16.

I've also been notified about several issues with DC Invasion, and I will see to them tonight. Just gotta get through my physics final

Other changes:
- Fixed multiple copies of Kill All Pets and Kill Oldest Pet artifacts on Necromancer
- Fixed issue where Resurrector subclass continued to sacrifice health when resurrecting
- Tech Manta now ticks with Nanite Crash
- Booster combo "fixed" (was never really broken, but Vehicle Invasion that we used previously increased the max shield which didn't display on the player's HUD)
- New Titanium Titan
- New magic modifier: Gambler's
- Fixed a number of niches where they could be bought under level 180

I've made the waves more easy in general. I thought waves 17 and 18 previously were kind of bonkers. I've removed elemental Titans and Queens, but not completely. I want to treat them as optional bosses for future updates.