Monthly Archives: June 2015

Time for a summer BREACH PARTY! 1

This entry was posted in News Strategy on by

Hi everyone!

Tomorrow is the 3-month anniversary of our April Fool’s event, where we added 10 crazy new units to the ladder for a 24-hour period. Well, get ready to call in sick tomorrow, because we’re doing it again. Only better.

a

No, this will not be a new skin.

This time, we’re throwing a 24-hour BREACH PARTY on the Prismata ladder, in celebration of the release of 3 new Prismata units with one thing in common—they all help provide ways to execute the unusual Prismata strategy of not buying Walls.

 

At midnight EDT tonight, the BREACH PARTY will begin.

Here’s what we’ll happen:

  • At midnight, the server will briefly go down for a mini-update in which BREACH PARTY MODE WILL BE ENABLED FOR 24 HOURS.
  • The following three new units will be added: [Borehole Patroller, Tantalum Ray, Thorium Dynamo]. See below for their stats.
  • During BREACH PARTY MODE, Prismata’s arena will temporarily undergo the following rule changes:
    • The following 3 units will be 10 times as likely to appear in arena games: Borehole Patroller, Tantalum Ray, Thorium Dynamo.
    • The following 10 units will be 3 times as likely to appear in arena games: Trinity Drone, Venge Cannon, Gauss Fabricator, Cluster Bolt, Iso Kronus, Wild Drone, Shredder, Ebb Turbine, Militia, Iceblade Golem.
    • Embargoes will be applied after the above changes. For example, if Thorium Dynamo is embargoed by one player, it will show up with 3.33x its usual frequency instead of 10x its usual frequency.
  • Custom games will not be affected.
  • A balance patch will also be deployed at midnight. See here for details. Yes, Frostbite is getting nerfed. 😛

 

Announcing three new Prismata units:

(more…)

Let’s talk COLLECTIBLES! 1

This entry was posted in Game Features News on by

Hello everyone!

Until now, there have been only two types of unlockable content in Prismata: badges—given to our crowdfunding supporters, ambassadors, and tourney winners—and equippable emotes, the tool of choice for congratulating (or BMing) your opponent after a game. However, we’ll soon be massively expanding the availability of unlockable (and collectible!) items in Prismata. Today, I’m going to outline some of our plans.

The eventual plan is to have five different kinds of unlockable collectibles in Prismata:

  1. Skins – equippable alternate art for each Prismata unit
  2. Emotes – both graphical and text-based in-game emotes
  3. Badges – to display status or commemorate outstanding in-game achievements
  4. Avatars – selectable display portraits
  5. ****** – (something secret that we have not announced yet)

Details on each of these are provided below. As usual, none of our plans are completely final, but we’d love to hear your feedback on what we have in mind!

(more…)

Balancing Prismata Openings Through Unit Design – part 3: Variable Rush Timings

This entry was posted in Insight Strategy on by

Hi everyone!

Continuing from where we left off last time, we’re going to talk about one of my favourite Prismata topics—rush timings. Every Prismata player has been in a situation where they’ve been caught off guard and lost to their opponent’s early Redeemer, Shadowfangs, or Tia Thurnax. But when do these rushes work, when do they fail, and how do we modify our unit designs to ensure that that they don’t lead to autowins?

Redeemer's new look.

Sick of fighting, this Redeemer took up a new career.

The answer is a bit complex, and requires a deep understanding of when rushes themselves are strongest. Get ready for a somewhat theoretical (but fun) discussion!

 

(more…)

Welcome David! Thanks for making Prismata run 7x faster! Here’s how he did it.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

Hi everyone!

This is a bit of a cop-out of a blog article, because I’m ridiculously sleep-deprived and have been way too busy over the last few days to do a satisfactory job with part 3 of the “Balancing Prismata Openings Through Unit Design” series. So it will have to go up a little later.

I hope you’ll forgive me, especially considering that you folks got a bonus article last week when I discussed Prismata’s performance rating formula (incidentally, if you’ve been following that discussion, it seems we’ll be going with the “Netzero” system, which was both my personal favourite solution, as well as the most popular on reddit.)

In any case, today’s article will focus on some of the amazing work that one of our devs has been doing to improve Prismata’s performance.

Centrifuge_BlueGlow_300

 

 

(more…)