We are working hard to try to release the next update some time next week. It will have a long awaited balance pass, a new Perk system, the start of a Skin store for cosmetic items, other new minor features, and a new Boss and related content.
Development
The engineering team created a Steam DLC bundle; updated character Selection puck in game; finished Skin store; started implementing Explore mode; created a Replay downloader for internal QA; added damage analytics.
The art team modeled a new skin for Renna; worked on Celestial Giant card art and defense portal; did a first pass at Celestial Beast concept; skinned Celestial Giant; started concept for Spirit Beast; modeled new skin for Renna; modeled Spirit Beast; created Celestial Giant animations; added FX and materials to Celestial Giant.
The audio team added sounds for Celestial Giant.
The design team wrote VO dialog; setup Blade Master skin in game; and most importantly continued to balance cards.
Future Hero/Boss Price Change
Thank you to everyone who purchased one of the new heroes or bosses. We appreciate your supporting Labyrinth development while it is in Early Access. In order to run Labyrinth as a free to play game that can sustain its operating costs and better cover the cost of development for a given hero or boss and their associated level-up cards, we will be increasing both the cash and Gold prices of the non-basic heroes and bosses in the patch after this one. We want to give players advanced warning so that they can buy any hero or boss at the lower price right now if they should so desire. Heroes and Bosses will still be purchasable with Gold.
Basically, last warning. Get yours now.
Stardust Miscalculation
There was a bug in the calculation for Stardust that was refunded after the account reset in the last update. A temporary fix had been included in a patch. After analyzing all of the data, we discovered that players were either awarded the correct amount, or in some cases, just slightly more than they should have with that temporary fix. So we will not be adjusting anyone's Stardust at this point.
Backer Rewards
We also discovered that codes for some of the Backer rewards require an update to the server, so we will distribute those shortly after the upcoming update. The rewards will include backer badges, offense and defense loot bonuses, and 5 card packs/week of the non-giftable variety for the players that qualify for each of these rewards. Other rewards will be distributed as they are implemented in the game.
Top Players
Now just for a little fun, here is some data of the Top 100 players ranked by all sorts of arguably meaningless stats. Let the trash talk begin! Trash talk only improves in value in proportion to how meaningless the underlying stats are. So hopefully this data raises lots of questions. The only thing I'll say is that all data is gathered since the last update on April 13, otherwise you are on your own to guess at what it all really means.
If you would like to see yourself ranked according to any sort of meaningless statistic, please request in Discord. The dev Skyvaltz will be your guide to this madness.
https://discord.gg/labyrinth
Spirit Beast
Despite the constant delays in releasing a build covfefe
Labyrinth server problems
The backend service for Labyrinth is experiencing outages and you may not be able to login or buy items. http://status.playfab.com/
They are aware of the problems and are trying to fix them.
We will update this thread once we know the problem is fixed.
Week 76 Progress
State of the Meta
In the past we showed an analysis of hero or boss balance versus their popularity. Below are graphs updated with data from this current update. As can be expected, Lavella, Korghan, and Renna are quite popular since they are basic heroes, but other combinations of similar Discipline heroes provide a bit more power, propelling the Faith, Warfare, Wizardry parties to the right on the win / loss axis. We are taking this data into consideration in re-balancing for the upcoming update.
As can be seen from the boss balance chart below, Maessna is clearly a powerful boss, but hasn't become the most popular boss like Radaghar with Pale Rider had in the past update. Our analysis shows that Caster cards give Maessna her advantage. It's possible that Adolphus, also a Caster, could become very strong if played similarly, but may be overlooked being one of the basic bosses. MechaScorpion also remains strong, but is not popular. As for the heroes, the upcoming update takes the data shown below into consideration for re-balancing the cards.
Additionally we have put together a system that, on a daily basis, automatically monitors all the cards used in Labyrinth. This monitoring system provides a huge amount of data that we are taking into account now when we rebalance cards. Because the core set is going to change fundamentally in the next update, we don't mind sharing this meta changing information right now: here is a summary of some cards you might want to play (or not play) pulled from today's card ranking.
Upcoming Build
New Boss:
We're hard at work on the next update, which should be dropping soon, in a week or so. Our main focus with this update has been balance, but we've also been making some significant changes to the card pool in other ways. Here is a preview of some of the upcoming changes:
Balance
In the last update, our goal was to re-establish the difference between the abilities that affect health: melee attacks, ranged attacks, and healing. The efficiency of ranged attacks and healing abilities were reduced to account for their greater flexibility. This mostly affected Heroes, which reduced their overall damage output, and as a result the balance of the game shifted in the direction of Bosses. Our data have shown that since the last update, both Heroes and Bosses were winning about 50% of the time. In another game, this might be the ideal balance, but because of the nature of Labyrinth's asymmetrical gameplay, we feel that the active human player should be winning more often that not. All things being equal, this means that the overall balance should favor Heroes. We've spent the last month doing a thorough pass on the card pool to shift things back toward the Heroes. We've also identified and corrected some outlier cards that were way above the curve in terms of power level.
Perks
We have also taken a fresh look at Perks. Our experience showed that common perks had kind of a clunky role within the card pool. Some of them were very powerful and were crafted by players early, but then those same players would later open several duplicates that were only good for Stardust. In general, it wasn't clear what made a Perk common or some other rarity. We've introduced a new keyword: Stack. Stack is always accompanied by a number. You may add a number of copies of a Perk with Stack equal to the Stack number. From now on, common Perks will generally have Stack. Higher rarities may also have Stack, but its main home is common. To go with the new keyword, we've designed a new suite of Perks at common. Most of these new cards modify specific spells. Our intent is evoke the feel of adventurers leveling up their key skills and abilities. Perks that affect the whole deck have been shifted to higher rarities, which is a better place for powerful, "build-around" cards. The big-picture goal is to make common Perks more collectible, and have their own role within the design.
Basic Card Pool
We've also made a significant number of changes to the basic (free) cards. Our intent is to further simplify the cards that players are first exposed to in order to reduce the complexity of the game in the first several hours of play. Some of the staples have been moved from basic to common, and simpler versions have taken their place at basic. Other staples have been kept at common in a simplified form, but may be modified with Perks to regain their original complexity (and sometimes gain new power.) These changes should help new players understand the game a bit better, and grow into the complexity of the game over a longer period.
New Features and Content
There will be a new boss and we will introduce a hero skin too. Plus other additions...
Future Hero/Boss Price Change
Thank you to everyone who purchased one of the new heroes or bosses. We appreciate your supporting Labyrinth development while it is in Early Access. In order to run Labyrinth as a free to play game that can sustain its operating costs and better cover the cost of development for a given hero or boss and their associated level-up cards, we will be increasing both the cash and Gold prices of the non-basic heroes and bosses in the patch after this one. We want to give players advanced warning so that they can buy any hero or boss at the lower price right now if they should so desire. Heroes and Bosses will still be purchasable with Gold.
Stardust Miscalculation
There was a bug in the calculation for Stardust that was refunded after the account reset in the last update. We said that we will be fixing affected players, but have not had the time to complete the calculation. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Backer Rewards
Codes for some of the Backer rewards, those mentioned previously, have not yet been distributed due to time constraints working on other aspects of Labyrinth. It is in the works. Sorry for the inconvenience with this too.
Development
The Engineering Team worked on perk stacking; purchasing and switching skins for heroes and bosses; tutorial data progression data moved to server; added partial Victories; daily gold cap; Hero/Boss shop card preview; raid limit display, raid credit display; Discipline packs; season reward dialog and info; ranked crowns; Steam DLC.
The Art Team worked on the Blade Master Skin; a Spirit Beast Boss concept; Skinned Death's Harvester and Celestial Giant; completed Celestial Giant; made backs for Shadow boss, Renna, and Fayden.
The Audio Team worked on sounds for minions; traps; planning for Heroes' sounds; added missing sounds; preparation for Voice Over.
The Design Team worked on new beast, caster defense cards; made card revisions to sorcerer, celestial, elemental, giant defense, mechanic, spirit cards; card balance pass; blast vs ranged mods; card display cleanup; finished celestial giant; formalized adventure mode spec; automated Meta and card analytic monitoring.
Week 73 Patch
Card Fixes
Revised Quicksilver Bauble to not target self and revised range to 4
Fixed Warcaller's Chant breaking on Warfare Hero first in tick by switching timing to end of turn
Revised equation to show correct damage blocked for Null Barrier
Revised Angel of Death unlock to only give one Opaline Ossuary
Revised Evasive Maneuvers, Steely Resolve to not block destruction
Set Strangle/Extinguish to destruction
Fixed Earthquake Tremor
Fixed range on Pound
Fixed Armor on Kylee
Fixed Beseech the Sun God heal not canceling on Assault
Revised targeting on Swipe to allow retargeting if initial target moves out of range
Added filters to Perks triggered by card types to prevent triggers on Channel sub-actions or serial actions in cards with multiple actions
Added flag to Elemental Mastery results to prevent counting as individual card plays
Revised card discount filter equation to allow actions that equip Offhands to be discounted
Revised Kylee and Renna default weapons to range 7
Other Fixes
Between healing and a shot in the dark, we are attempting to fix some bugs that emerged once there were lots of players playing lots of encounters. It's hard for our small team to verify that are fixes work, so please let us know if you are still experiencing these problems after this patch.
Fix for black screen/blank dialog
Fix for "loop" bug where players would be stuck playing same opponent over and over
Fix for disconnect at end of encounters
Fix for encounters getting reset to Tick 1 after a disconnect
Revised conditional discard actions for Bosses to give same priority to discard unplayable cards as playable cards
Fixed bug with inventory not getting added
Fix for friend list not finishing loading when you have 0 friends
Future Hero/Boss Price Change
Thank you to everyone who purchased one of the new heroes or bosses. We appreciate your supporting Labyrinth development while it is in Early Access.
In order to run Labyrinth as a free to play game that can sustain its operating costs and better cover the cost of development for a given hero or boss and their associated level-up cards, we will be increasing the price of the non-basic heroes and bosses in the patch after this one. We want to give players advanced warning so that they can buy any hero or boss at the lower price right now if they should so desire. Heroes and Bosses will still be purchasable with Gold.
Stardust Miscalculation
There was a bug in the calculation for Stardust that was refunded after the account reset in the last update. We said that we will be fixing affected players last week, but have not had the time to complete the calculation. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Backer Rewards
Codes for some of the Backer rewards, those mentioned two weeks ago, have not yet been distributed either due to time constraints working on other aspects of Labyrinth. It is in the works. Sorry for the inconvenience with this too.
Development
In addition to getting this patch out, the team did the following work to advance Labyrinth:
The art team worked on the 8th Boss, the Celestial Giant; a skin for the Blade Master; and art for the Doom Clock.
The design team worked on balance for the next update; as well as new cards.
The engineering team worked on inventory migration; a change to the matchmaking algorithm to match by Stars; AWS/FTP runner bug; Android build; and store UI for skins.
Haven't heard from the audio team this week.
Week 72 Patch
PATCH CONTENTS
This patch mainly addresses bugs and other issues with cards. It should also fix disconnect problems we have seen with Giant Queen. We are still gathering data on the meta game and will address balance issues in a following patch.
CARD BUG FIXES
Text on Invoke Ruin kicker
Trigger on Thirsting Axe Durability spend v multiple attackers in same turn
Harder They Fall damage result vs Boss
Moordiar, the Sorcerer and Sarkhet, Death's Envoy name missing on certain UI elements
Added redundant Tenacity check to Draw In targeting to prevent sequential pull of Heroes within Dauntless Vigil
Revised Exploit Weakness debuff evaluation to prevent calculation errors
Revised base Hero draw 2 to start of first tick instead of unit turn first tick to prevent lost draws from Temporal Anomaly and allow looking at all three Hero decks
Fixed text on Channel the Storm range
Fixed required stats on Death Grasp to match range
Fixed Molten Veins decreasing cost of Fire Channels
Fixed Blade of the Immortal spending on Counterstrike
Fixed Judgement of Urix kicker to process damage instantly to trigger Sarkhet's ability
Fixed restrictions on Dauntless Vigil preventing Sarkhet from adding to deck
Revised next attack buffs to filter out use on entire Channel so as to use/expire on first attack in Channel instead
Fixed Surefoot not ignoring Difficult Terrain
Revised Tranquil Bloom and Quicksilver arrow to refresh your move only
Fixed Beseech the Sun God healing after Assault
Fixed Time to Feed healing total damage done for each hit instead of just damage for that hit
Revised targets of kill triggers on Angel of Death ability, Ghostbite, Tinker's Warplock, Cycle of War to prevent missed triggers
Fixed summon triggers for Eerie Marauder, Dawn of Zha, Cave Spider to make sure they happen on tick and not boss turn
Added Tenacity filters to Venomfang Queen Tick add, Chilling Growl move debuff, Blizzard Golem move debuff, Shockwave and Crushing Blow Knockback, Howl from Within Tick add
Added redundant Tenacity check to Awakened Might targeting
Removed Tenacity filter from Word of Command targeting
Added Structure check to targeting on Subdue, Word of Command, Force Push, Howl from Within
Fixed Tremor damage result
Fixed Pounce movement result
Fixed tooltip on Doomsday Machine using Great Experiment structure for stats
Removed Strength of the Undying unnecessary filter preventing play by Boss
Minion Ai revisions to prevent moving out of revised range for Aspect of Zha and Cannoneer
CARD REVISIONS
Allowed Entreat the Goddess and Primitive Idol to be used on full Health targets for Devotion gain and Offhand turn passing, respectively
Increased Star Cost on Splinter of Nilath (3), Boots of speed (2) for Heroes
Increased Star Cost on Howl from Within (4), Heart of Primeval (6), Aether Tap (3), Force Blast (3), Chill of Ice (4), Geist-Charged Arsenal (4), Inertial Inhibitor (3), Warlord's Might (3), Horn of Uldenum (5), Strength in Numbers (4) for Bosses
Revised Giant Queen Armor to 1 and Health to 55
Nerfed Mech Scorpion to 35 Health for consistency with Mechanical trait Health v Armor balance
Switched odd/even for Mech Scorpion ability to prevent even Tick attack deck exploit
Tagged Magnetron, Dynomine, Arc Node, Flamewall Pylons, Voidmine damage as attacks and give visible attack power
Revised half health triggers and text to less than or equal on Bloodborn Bracers, Oath of the Deathless, Go For The Throat, Awakened Fury, Awakened Might, Awakened Force
Future Hero/Boss Price Change
Thank you to everyone who purchased one of the new heroes or bosses. We appreciate your supporting Labyrinth development while it is in Early Access.
In order to run Labyrinth as a free to play game that can sustain its operating costs and better cover the cost of development for a given hero or boss and their associated level-up cards, we will be increasing the price of the non-basic heroes and bosses in the patch after this one. We want to give players advanced warning so that they can buy any hero or boss at the lower price right now if they should so desire. Heroes and Bosses will still be purchasable with Gold.
Stardust Miscalculation
There was a bug in the calculation for Stardust that was refunded after the account reset in the last update. We will be fixing affected players later this week. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Rolling Updates
We increased the number of server instances for Labyrinth and will now being releasing rolling updates each time we update the game. This means that anyone who logs in after we release a patch will be presented with the new version, and those who are currently in a raid when we update will be presented with a screen after they finish that will tell them to restart the client to get the new version. This should minimize interruption and downtime for players.
Hero/Boss Build Update Notes
Build Update Notes
Maintenance Period
The servers will go down shortly and may be down for around 4 hours while we update the game. Thank you for your patience.
Cards
Added 75 new unlock-able cards, 60% of those are unique to the Hero/Boss that unlocks them, the other 40% are shared by all Heroes/Bosses of that trait. These occur more frequently during leveling.
Reduced total Star Points for both Heroes and Bosses. They gain Stars less frequently as they level, but there are no longer slots for Perks, so Heroes and Bosses can add as many as they can afford. Also rebalanced the Star costs for Perks across the board.
Added 2 new Heroes (Sarkhet, the Angel of Death, and Moordiar, the Sorcerer) and 1 new Boss (Mech Scorpion, Clockwork Beast).
Free Heroes are now Lavella, Rohin, Korghan, and Renna. The free Bosses are now Radaghar, Roggix, Adolphus, Queen of the Northern Wastes, and Maessna. The other four Heroes and two Bosses are now purchased in the store (if you don't already own them). The free heroes and bosses cover each of the disciplines and traits respectively, so when you get a card from opening card packs, you should be able to use it right away.
Fury spending is now automatic like Amps.
Changed medium range to 4 spaces and long range to 7 spaces to represent 1 and 2 full moves of distance away.
Re-balanced damage and healing as a function of range and Piercing across the card set.
Re-balanced equip cost, use cost, and/or durability of several weapons.
Re-balanced many of the lower Tick cards, with some instant cards now costing 1 Tick (in anticipation of being discounted to instant) and some 1 Tick cards now costing 2 to prevent playing as instants when discounted.
Nerfed both the offense and defense tutorials and reduced their length of play.
Since we made so many wide-sweeping changes, we will monitor hero/boss balance daily and as we see the need to do so, we will patch right away in an effort to iterate on the balance and address any emerging meta game issues.
Accounts Reset
Accounts had to be reset for this build as we mentioned previously. Similar to how we have reset accounts in the past: All card packs purchased with gold will be returned as gold and those purchased with Tokens will be returned as Tokens. Any card packs purchased with real money will be returned as Tokens. Gold on balance will remain and Gold from Ranked rewards will be added (see below.) Earned Stardust from Defense and email registration will be returned as well. Stardust from disenchanting will not be returned.
Backer Rewards
The following backer rewards have been enabled in the build and codes for them will be distributed next week according to the reward tier of the backer.
Backer badges
Bonus Loot (Gold) for Raids
Bonus Loot (Stardust) for Defense
Weekly non-giftable card packs
Ranked Seasons
We have added seasons to the Ranked mode. Seasons will be 1 month long, starting on or around the 1st of the month. This month's season will be short, since it starts now. Rewards will be given for this previous season that has lasted up to this update.
Season rewards are:
Rank eternal, 250 Gold
Rank 2-5, 200 Gold
Rank 6-10, 150 Gold
Rank 11-15, 100 Gold
Rank 16-20, 50 Gold
Rank 21-25, no reward
Client and Server
We optimized the client in preparation for porting Labyrinth to mobile. Many of those optimizations are in this build. So, things may look a little different than you are used to. If something looks "wrong", please let us know. Some of you on older computers should experience a more snappy game.
We did extensive backend server work to aid in migrating data from one build version to the next.
Week 69 Progress
Upcoming Major Update
The next major update is coming soon, in a week or more. Accounts will be reset then. Similar to how we have reset accounts in the past: All card packs purchased with gold will be returned as gold and those purchased with Tokens will be returned as Tokens. Any card packs purchased with real money will be returned as Tokens. Gold on balance will remain and earned Stardust will be returned as well. Stardust from disenchanting will not be returned. This is the method we used last time with the addition of Tokens and real money.
You will be able to play the 4 basic heroes once you complete the introductory Offense tutorial and the 4 basic bosses once you complete the Defense tutorial. All other heroes and bosses will be available for purchase in the store for Gold or cash. Any non-basic heroes or bosses that you are able to play right now will be unlocked for you after the reset, as a thank you for playing the game early and providing valuable feedback and data to help develop Labyrinth.
The 4 basic heroes are one from each discipline: Korghan (Warfare), Lavella (Faith), Renna (Wizardry), and Rohin (Skulduggery). The 4 basic bosses cover combinations of 5 of the 8 traits: Radaghar (Spirit/Warlord), Oros (Elemental/Warlord), Roggix (Elemental/Beast), and the Giant Queen (Spirit/Giant).
We are adding 4 heroes and 3 bosses to the store. The heroes for purchase in the store will be: Marrik (Warfare), Sarkhet (Faith), Moordiar (Wizardry), and Kylee (Skulduggery). The bosses for purchase are: Maessna (Celestial/Caster), Adolphus (Mechanical/Caster), Mechscorpion (Mechanical/Beast). At least 1 more boss will be added before exiting Early Access.
So this upcoming update will have 2 new heroes and 1 new boss. Their images are shown below.
Development
The engineering team has been optimizing the game for improved performance and preparation to port to mobile. In the last two weeks, they fixed issues caused by optimizations; refactored the timeline clock; worked on a data migration system to minimize future wipes; refactored targeting arrow; set up build settings for multiple scenes; refactored UI shell; fixed store and quest bugs; placed maps on table; refactored map display; set up controller; worked on remote to Unity interface; established ranked seasons; and optimized load times.
The art team optimized lairs; worked on idle animations; updated UI mesh; reworked lightmapping on lairs; and worked on the shield generator.
The design team redesigned cards; revised cards for balance; and revised the tutorial slightly.
The audio team added minion sounds.
Week 67 Progress
Development
We are still working toward the next major update in a few weeks, just starting internal playtests this week. The other tasks the team completed this past week include:
The Engineering Team in an effort to optimize for mobile removed the mask from the UI; reduced drawcalls from offense HUD; worked on migration system; implemented backer rewards; fixed timeline elements; improved Deck Builder; fixed slow health animation; improved deck builder; gold earning from special card; worked on Ranked mode end of season; and refactored tag data and caching.
The Art Team combined minion meshes; made a low poly Zombie and textured it; skinned Pirate and Mine Securitron; worked on idle animations for menus; and created animations for Queen's Attendant.
The Design Team worked on card design and balance.
The Audio Team added sounds for Serpent; Aspect of Zha; Battlefield Lurker; Blizzard Golem; animation events for minions; and missing hero sounds.
Balance
We are aware of the balance issues many players are struggling with. In order to work towards a more balanced card set, we created some tools to visualize the data we have collected from player decks. We decided to share some of the aggregated data today, even though we realize that it may shift the meta for the next few weeks. In the next major update we will be making significant changes to the card set, so strategies you use now may become ineffective.
We are well aware of how popular Radaghar is. It may seem like everyone is running him, but less than 40% of players are right now. The graph below shows how popular Radaghar is, mainly because he has a high win rate, in relation to the other bosses that under perform.
We also analyzed party composition. The Korghan, Lavella, Renna combination is the most played, but the Korghan, Lavella, Rohin tends to win the most. In addition, most combinations that include Renna seem to be worse off.
The above graphs isolate the heroes or the bosses by themselves. The chart below shows the relationship between the two in terms of Win/Loss ratio from the perspective of the heroes. To make the chart easier to read, the values have been color coded. The more red a value is, the more the heroes are winning; and the more blue a value is, the more the boss is winning. This chart shows who is strong or weak against their opponent.
Going a few steps further, we analyzed the actual cards played and in which decks, in several different ways. In summary, what we mentioned in the last update still holds:
Players should not ignore common cards, especially those that do not have numbers on them. There are many useful utility cards that do not appear great at first, but the best players are using them to defeat hard boss setups. There is a tendency among most players to select the biggest damage dealing cards and the highest rarity cards for their decks. With the current card set, this is not the optimum strategy in many cases.
To make that a little more concrete, the table below shows the 10 most used offense cards by players who win a lot but are ignored by players who usually lose, versus the 10 most used offense cards by players who tend to lose but are not usually in the best players' decks. This is not necessarily a list of powerful vs. weak cards or good vs. bad cards, but just a measure of frequency of how often the cards appear in decks. They might not even get played a lot, or they may require other cards in combination to be effective. Obviously, this is not the end-all-be-all for determining what a good card is, but it might help you craft some more interesting decks.
Furthermore, we created a tool that will measure the balance of cards used on a day to day basis, so after the next update, if we see a card starting to dominate the meta, we may be able to release a quick patch, so we don't end up with a situation like Pale Rider again.
Review
Valve has changed how ratings are calculated again, so if you haven't already, could you please write a review on Steam.
Week 66 Progress
Game Developer Conference
Labyrinth was showcased Monday afternoon in the Intel booth at GDC last week. It was selected since it works great on the new Intel graphics chipset.
We also met with Playfab senior management since they had a booth at GDC. We reiterating the need for inventory store improvements, so that we can add bulk card pack opening and mass disenchant features to Labyrinth.
Development
The focus of the next major update includes adding a Hero Store, a balancing pass for cards, and features to fulfill Backer rewards. Mobile optimization is also underway and Labyrinth currently maintains a frame rate of 30+ fps on Android. We are working to hit 60 fps this week. That has required optimization changes to coding and art, many of which will be included in the upcoming PC update. Mobile will be released sometime in a future update.
More detail on what the individual teams have been working on for the past two weeks.
Engineering Team - The engineering team worked on backer rewards including backer badges, extra gold/stardust; hero store functionality and UI; enhancements to the Announcement system; Skybound Insiders integration; profiling and optimization for mobile, including scripts, HUD, shell, controls, materials, card engine equations, and fixed bugs caused by optimization; serialization for migration; fixed game logic threading issues; and improved the build system.
Art Team - The Art team worked on effects for Aether blast, Annul Spell, Stone Rain, and others; sculpted models for the low poly Pirate, Securitron, Zombie, and Wastelander hero; concepts were created for a boss and hero skin; art optimizations for mobile were done for Celestial Giant, Giant Queen and Minotaur levels, Defender and other minions, rebuilt prefabs to reduce drawcalls, and created a single drawcall room; and skinned mine worker (that's not as gruesome as it sounds).
Audio Team - The Audio team did a sound pass on minions.
Design Team - The Design team worked on card design, including card fixes, adding more cards including a few more Legendaries, and design work on the Queen's attendant.
Deck Building & Balance
Since the New Years Update on January 5, we have been collecting data on every card played in every encounter. That has created millions of records in our database in the last 2 months. Recently we finished building a tool that allows our designers to visualize this massive amount of data for heroes, sorting cards by frequency of being played, opened in card packs, crafted, disenchanted, "discrafted" (disenchanted and then later crafted), added and removed from decks--over disciplines and levels for all players. We plan to expand this tool to visualize boss deck cards too.
One major insight is: players should not ignore common cards, especially those that do not have numbers on them. There are many useful utility cards that do not appear great at first, but the best players are using them to defeat hard boss setups. There is a tendency among most players to select the biggest damage dealing cards and the highest rarity cards for their decks. With the current card set, this is not the optimum strategy in many cases.
The next update(s) will have extensive shuffling and recategorization of cards, as well as some rule changes.
Next Major Update
The next major update will be in a few weeks. Accounts will be reset then. All card packs purchased with gold will be returned as gold and those purchased with Tokens will be returned as Tokens. Any card packs purchased with real money will be returned as Tokens. Gold on balance will remain and earned Stardust will be returned as well. Stardust from disenchanting will not be returned. This is the method we used last time with the addition of Tokens and real money.
In a future progress report, we will address how the Hero Store will impact unlocking heroes and bosses going forward.
Discord
Join us on the official Labyrinth Discord server to chat about Labyrinth and get tips on how to play from other players: https://discord.gg/labyrinth
Week 64 Progress
Development
Over the last 2 weeks our teams have been working on new content and features for Labyrinth. Below is a list of what our teams are currently working on or have completed.
The Engineering Team worked on the Hero Store, Skybound Insider integration, game optimization for mobile, and migration system.
The Design Team worked on card designs and new card revisions.
The Art Team worked on Waste Land character; Pirate sculpting; Hero textures; Defender skinning; Clan Shieldmate skinning; alternate Landing Screen animations; Dialog art; and Death Harvester texturing.
The Audio Team worked on Arcane Anomaly FX; Voice Over editing; Goon Voice Overs; and Structure FX.
