Today saw a major overhaul in our development build for EXODE Factions where we added 280 skill trees to your Agents.
It is part of our development version. We are so eager to come forward with our release!
So what are these so called 'powers'?
What are Agents?
And how does it make REFIT packs even more powerful than before?
Read and find out!
Agents in EXODE Factions
- What is EXODE Factions?
EXODE Factions is a new gameplay mode accessible right after logging in, currently in demo status since its February release.
It is one of the two daily game loops we want deployed: the colonization game loop, and the Factions game loop. This in addition to the scenes gameplay available in EXODE, such as Evacuation and Scanning.
- What are Agents?
You have cards in your collection.
In Factions you can see all your cards, and decide to ACTIVATE some of them and transform them into Agents.
Many players have a lot more cards than the characters settled in their colony!
This means they need to find some more utility, which they will do in Factions.
Activation and EXODE Credits
We covered that previously here on HIVE blogs.
EXOFUEL will be the currency of colonization, and EXODE Credits a currency about "staking" in EXODE (which is the Factions gameplay).
Activation requires you to have some EXODE Credits - a currency we have spoken about, which will increase price every month - so you should get a currency pack from our shop while you still can! Aside from our currency packs, you can get it from Hive Engine.
You don't need to take any to play any phase of the demo releases. However next demo steps will allow to use your reserve of real credits and find it back once you close the demo! so you can deepen more use of your EXODE Credits during the next demo steps.
You will be able to use Agents in missions and gain rewards - currencies and so on - in a gameplay we are releasing. We are working on it, it's still cooking!
280 skill trees added!
While working and refining our system we hit - and destroyed - some obstacles.
One of these is complexity or rather "progression complexity"; the fact that EXODE Characters always had far too many "skills" mentioned on their card. All of these skills have meaning and purpose and can interact with mission content in Factions; but this does not mean it is easy to set them as objectives.
Let's review the process:
1) We have designed a system where you assign Agents to a mission.
2) You can keep them with their default role which they automatically receive when you assign them.
3) You are also free to change the role of some Agents ino something different. For instance, have an Agent as team leader, another as Scout, etc.
When changing their role you will immediately see a simple value about how good they are into this role and what bonuses they will give.
4) When happy with your team, you validate the mission and then wait for its completion.
Some roles can boost the speed of all other agents, others reduce the difficulty of the mission, and so on.
With all this work we were trying to "hide" some of the super detailed number of skills and have it "automatically managed" thanks to a sweet display. Also packaged into something called a role, and mission effects.
But players were still lacking clear progression objectives.
Your progression objectives are normally toward completing "more or harder missions", or beating an enemy competitor. So if skills are abstracted this actually was making it harder to identify progression.
And we want progression to have a strong identity.
This was one of our challenges this early May. Although actually we were not working on this, as to be honest we were working on the front client code instead. (and are still)
But while working and thinking about all this - progression objectives and their display - we achieved a major milestone. The progression puzzle came together and formed a refined gameplay.
Factions Skills
Yesterday we have added major skill references to all EXODE character models:
all 212 of them (106 base models and 106 elite characters or passengers).
For 106 base models we already have provided 280 different skill trees. Many of them are not unique though: but some of them are only specific to a card or exotic faction.
When you will level up an Agent in EXODE you will be able to pick one of these skill trees.
This will show a proposal of powers related to this tree.
You will pick and validate one of these proposed powers.
This power will be forever active on your Agent. It will give a specific bonus according to the number of stars you have on this character.
In addition, we have finalized a feature in Factions to display all these power slots; in a simple, global layout, so that you get an overview of all of them, for all your Agents, on a simple screen!
To do so, you can click on the "Powers" tab and then you'll see keywords appear on all cards mentioning their "power slots". This is from our development build but you will have it in our next update for you to use as much as you would like.
This interface is very basic, obviously, but priorities beng priorities, we won't refine it much before our next update.
So now when determining your progression you actually want to level up your character and pick a power for each of the character skill tree acting as a "power slot".
Once customized with your decision, your character model will be even more unique.
This makes Collection Levels closer and better: Collection Levels will be acquired by burning duplicates to gain experience, and they act as bonuses for colonization, but will also act as bonus levels for Factions!
This does not limit sale options for this card: if you sell it the player receiving it will receive it with all its 'Collection Levels'. If this unlocks a power pick, the power will not be set, so the new player will be able be able to choose its power as he sees fit.
Your Agent can also gain experience and bonus Agent levels in missions. These bonus Agent levels cannot be traded or sold and are an account-based progression.
You will also be allowed to reset a decision you made about an Agent power. But we would like a long cooldown implied by one such action.
REFIT Packs also add a power slot to your cards!
Every card that has been refit will also display a "TALENT+" slot on its Agent in Factions.
This is an additional slot.
Common cards usually have one power slot. Rare cards have two. Epic cards usually have three, and legendaries have four or five. Some cards also receive a bonus slot for their exotic faction.
All Refit card models will have +1 slot specifically mentioning "TALENT+", and this is actually something. Remember REFITs are optional: but they deepen the lore of a card and reveal one of its unique aspects.
We think refits are fun, they are creative ways to expand the lore and the value and uniqueness of your card, but now they also gain even more value thanks to Factions, our new staking model.
This post is already long! :D
so we will give you a lot more details about REFITs in a new blog article coming soon!
Mark Twain: (one of my favorite quotes)
"I did not have the time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
xD
EXODE is a science fiction game played on HIVE.
Feel free to try it here or to join our Discord if you have any question!
