[EpicDuel] F2P Beta Launched 6-13-09
epictuna
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
EpicDuel
www.epicduel.com
Trailer
Delta V. Once a picturesque boon of interstellar trade. Now a veritable wasteland, torn by war and ravaged by industrialization gone awry. You are an Exile. One of those sent to a realm between worlds to end an unprofitable war. Hastily banished by unstable means, no technology could hold back the flood. The Exiles are returning, and after twenty years of pacification by fear, Delta V is about to erupt in the fires of battle all over again. Because for you, Exile, the war never ended.
... so, yeah, that's just a taste of what is in-store for EpicDuel players.
EpicDuel is a browser based Flash MMO geared toward turn-based PvP combat. Clearly this sets it apart from most Flash MMO's right out of the blocks because, as I'm sure most of you already know, there really aren't any other turn-based Flash MMO's floating around the internet that allow PvP in any form. For the most part you're battling monsters and dragons or manga battle suits, etc., etc.
Press
freemmo.com
bbgsite.com
Valley24
TribToday
EpicDuel, at a glance:
• The art is significantly different from nearly every Flash MMO. You'll notice, instantly, that it is done in a unique style that does not follow the traditionally uniform manga-esque appearance of most browser-based MMO's.
The world and players are each very detailed and the animations are robust, with attacks, buffs, debuffs, and victory dances all having several variations to keep the visuals interesting.
• The world is an expansive one, offering plenty of places to explore and compete with other players. You can spend your time in the central hub of the train station, as many players tend to do, but you'd be missing out on so many interesting locales and NPC's to chat with.
Combat
As stated before, combat is turn based, with an intuitive interface designed to streamline duels and allow players to quickly perform attacks and buffs to keep the fights interesting. Below are a number of shots of duels in progress. As you can see, there are both 1v1 and 2v2 options. Eventually players will be able to select the teammate they want to enter 2v2 battles with.
AI Duels
New to the Beta release is an extremely intelligent bot AI that players can elect to challenge as opposed to only fighting other players. This is particularly good for entry level players who are just learning the interface and may find it difficult to win at the lower levels while adjusting to the PvP style.
• Below is one of the Boss NPC's known as Caden, a Tech Mage bot with several devastating abilities and passive buffs that make him particularly difficult for even the most seasoned players to defeat.
Player Classes
Mercenary
Tech Mage
Bounty Hunter
The World of Delta V
Delta V has a past as variegated as my section titles in this thread. From booming trade colony to war-torn hell, the story is one of greed and corruption sowing the seeds of rebellion. The Delta V new players find themselves wandering in EpicDuel is one of post-apocalyptic depression, the glimmer of hope materializing as blinks in the sky , the Exiles returning from the realms to which they were banished.
You may read more about Delta V's history here.
What you may have missed in Alpha...
The game was in its alpha stage for a little over 3 months, launching on February 28th with less than half the features and updates it has now. In the time between alpha launch and the release of the Beta on Saturday, June 13th, over 300,000 duels had been fought and almost 2 million chat messages were uttered. Mostly lawlz (and forms of "lawlz"), I'm sure :P
During the Alpha, players saw many changes and additions to the game take place in less than 3 months, for instance the inclusion of buddy lists, private chat, battle notifiers that let players know when duels were available, a solid matchmaker providing even and competitive matches between players of all levels, and a plethora of new weapons and armor.
Now, in Beta, players have nearly twice as many options and an infinite number of builds to choose from when leveling.
Major Beta Updates
Level cap increases to 30
40 new weapons / sidearms
Several new customizable armors
Several new styles for each character class
NPC Artificial Intelligence
Achievements system
Alpha Rewards
All EpicDuel ALPHA participants received an "Alpha Tester"
achievement as well as several limited edition items in their
inventories. These items included several weapons--some
class specific, others not--as a "thank you" from the devs
for their support in the initial stages of the game's existence.
The Elite Upgrade (One-Time Payment)
Players now have the option to become an “Elite". This is a one-time
upgrade that comes with a variety of exclusive benefits.
Players that upgrade their accounts to "Elite" status will receive:
A one-time credit bonus
Access to unique Elite styles to fully customize their characters
Access to powerful Elite weapons and Elite sidearms
Access to enhanced Elite armors
The important thing to note about the Elite upgrade is that the developers have managed to avoid the dreaded "Pay to Win" problem that many F2P games deal with regarding PvP. The upgrades, for the most part, only add slight combat benefits which, when pitted against the dreaded RNG, only grant a slight advantage, allowing free players to remain competitive.
The sheer volume of players on at any given time (and from all over the world) seems to be keeping the availability of duels, 1v1 or 2v2, at a consistent flow. The down time between battles is brief and if, for any reason, you find yourself in duel limbo there are now NPC's for players to challenge at ALL levels.
Well, that's that. Hope to see you guys in-game.
epictuna on
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just posting info on an f2p mmo like any other member would. it's been public for a while, there just hasn't been any mention of it here. but whatever. call it what you want to call it. my friends and i have been playing since day 1. we're from the same town as the devs. getting a look from the PA forums is win.
mutually beneficial? methinks yes.
that's the first impression a lot of people get from the way the battle engine is set up. that's about where the similarities end, though...
Get out of Town!
Oh wait
A thread all about Free mmo's
Yes, and occasionally people who are playing one of those free MMOs will make a thread about it.
When it picks up a crowd big enough to warrant a thread for these dime a dozen games
To weed out the bad seeds, we need order.
Yeah, hey, no.
Heh, yeah. Game over. Not even going to bother to try it after reading that.
Given the presentation so far (Trailer for the game appears to have been hosted on Newgrounds, bunch of shoddy sites giving previews/reviews, and the "pay for kickass armor/weapons!" thing.) my expectations are low.
Signed up on a brand new junk email address too. I'll be interested to see if it gets spammed in the coming days now that they have it.
Edit:
First impressions:
It's basically Adventurequest 2.0, with a Sci-Fi theme, and expanded options. That's not a bad thing, if you liked Adventurequest. It was basically a lunch-time MMO.
You start out making a character. You can't customize their face, as far as I can tell, but there's a fair number of hair options, and you can pretty much color your armor any way you want.
Once you're ingame you're set down in the gameworld with literally no explanation as to what to do. There might have been a tutorial around the starting point somewhere, but i'll be damned if I could find it.
The inferface is fairly bog standard MMO stuff. There's an inventory, a world map, settings, the works. The only notable exception is a PVP match-making option that you can utilize from anywhere in the gameworld. So far as I can see, the PVP is fairly arbitrary in whoever wins, since one person blocking your hit is enough to cost you the match (At least at low levels. Haven't had a chance to get to a high level, yet, obviously, and I doubt i'll bother.), and whoever has the better equipment wins.
The community is about as lucid, sane, and tolerable, as you'd expect a F2P browser-based MMO to be. PVP can be incredibly annoying, since there's no team-work amongst most people. This leads to a situation where you debuff, and set an enemy player up to get their shit absolutely wrecked, and the kid you're playing with decides to try and be rambo and use his turn to attack the enemies' team-mate in the 2V2 PVP matches.
There are no sound effects, except for menu effects, and they seem to be either broken, or partially implemented at this stage. The only time I recieved any sound from the game was when I bought a gun. I recieved a half-second long "click" noise, to confirm that I clicked purchase.
Player customization ingame seems to be fairly diverse, surprisingly enough. Every weapon seems to have a unique model, and just from visiting one zone's armor merchant, I saw vast number of armors on sale, that apparently modify your avatar. As can be expected, "Elite" subscribers get access to the "coolest" looking armor and weaponry. Just in the Central Station, I encountered a merchant that sold various weaponry, ranging from energy weapons, to physical weapons, to pistols, to a gold plated pistol, to an elite weapon, at the bottom, that was basically a giant, anime sized, blood covered techno-axe.
That axe threw me a bit, since it seemed a bit out of place, and obviously was meant to try and lure people into buying an elite subscription. So, I journeyed to "Fortune City".
It should be mentioned that the game doesn't use a system of "exploration" similar to Adventurequest. In AQ, last I played it, you would click on a destination from a map, and get an event. There was no exploring the "area". Epicduel puts your character down into the area, and you can explore it at will. Movement is done by clicking on an area of the field with a mouse. If your mouse goes over something that's interactable, a white outline will appear around that object or character. Some of the areas are in fact a fairly bit large. Though given how many times I was told I "couldn't pass, Exile!", it's fairly obvious that they're either restricting content for low-levels, or that content isn't done yet.
A fair number of the NPC's can be "challenged". I say fair, because so far, guards vastly out-number the other NPC's ingame. Pretty much any guard can be challenged, and depending on the guard, they will either kick your ass, or beat you to a finely made pulp before losing. Thankfully, health and MP are regenerated after each battle, so you don't have to worry about running for a healing station or some-such crap, after winning a fight.
As far as I can tell, there is no random encounter system, so if you want to level up, you have to constantly challenge guards to battles, or do PVP matches. Though, i've yet to win a PVP match, so I don't know if they give experience.
Overall, I don't feel a real compunction to play this. Especially since I have access to games like WoW, and hell, AdventureQuest, if I was so inclined to play that. Maybe someone else will disagree with me, though.
I may be wrong but I think that's the very definition of being a shill.
Also, given that I can't sign up on the forums and you lied to us about being involved with the game, I'm not really down with playing this now.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM