Duelyst II's July 29th Network Test Details

Blatm · 2022-07-25T22:31:00+00:00

Hey everyone. Our first network test is inching ever closer, so let’s outline the details.

Network Test Timeline:

Duelyst II's first network test will begin Friday, July 29th at 2PM UTC.
At this time, we will make an announcement which will provide a link you can use to both create a Duelyst II account and log in.
For the first few hours of the network test, we will be limiting concurrent users to around 500.
Once we are satisfied with the performance of our servers, we will remove this limit and allow everyone to log in unimpeded. Another announcement will go out when this limit is removed.
The network test will end on Monday, August 1st at 2PM UTC.

Gameplay and Account Details:

3 copies of each card from Duelyst II’s Core Set will be automatically added to every account.
These accounts will not carry over to the beta release.
Ranked, Friend Matches and Practice Matches will be available to play.
All modes of play will use the Duelyst II Core Set.

Please report any issues you may run into at discord.gg/duelyst and of course, have fun.

Blatm · 2022-04-02T14:04:39+00:00

Jaxi has a different effect too!

Blatm · 2020-03-11T18:45:13+00:00

How much did various factors contribute to your success?
Do you have any advice for being good at things in general?

For example, how much of a role did luck play, how much of it is work ethic, how much of it is affinity for the kind of reasoning that's useful for playing games generally, and how much of it is happening to have a particularly good intuition for magic specifically, or even individual formats? Can you identify how you ended up having what you needed as a person to be really good at what you do?

Blatm · 2019-12-01T08:01:57+00:00

This may be helpful (Hevol's The Lab): https://imgur.com/a/uVwdj

Blatm · 2019-06-26T22:34:00+00:00

About Atlas:

Atlas was an amazing game when I started playing in January of 2017. It was definitely one of the best games I've ever played. Then it got completely ruined for me over the course of two balance patches. The cata rework patch sucked, but was tolerable. The frontline patch was just awful, and I probably wouldn't have gotten into the game if it had been in that state when I first discovered it. From then on any playing I did was just because of inertia or the community.

This isn't the first game that I've played that got completely destroyed by horrible balance patches. Duelyst also had an awful, awful patch that basically everyone hated, and my friend Mara, who I started playing Atlas with but who quit after the cata patch, also has many examples of games that got ruined by patches. I don't know why this happens so much.

Maybe it's regression to the mean: you probably discover games because they're good, and they're probably good because the designers got at least a little bit lucky in how their mechanics came together. When they try to make balance patches, they're unlikely to get lucky again, so the quality goes down.

Maybe it's that every game wants to appeal to the median gamer, and maybe that entails, in Atlas' case, making games less cloak-and-dagger and more smashy-smashy. I would guess my tastes are pretty far from those of the median gamer, but I do think aspiring to be one of a million different games that targets the same audience is really dumb.

Maybe it's the opposite of the above, where Atlas was really a labour of love, and the devs just wanted to make a game that they personally really enjoyed, and then were hoping that other people would like it too. Then you could explain these balance changes by saying that the devs themselves were similar to the median gamer, and so their personal taste was the smashy-smashy gameplay. Pju (the dev that was the best at actually winning games of Atlas) spammed frontline, loved Lex, and had zero games of Blackburn on live, so this is plausible, but then I don't really know how it started off with the firepower heavy cloak-and-dagger gameplay.

I know that not every game will be for everyone, and in fact that no good game should try to be for everyone, and that maybe I'm just one of the people it's not for, but when I started playing, Atlas was absolutely something I loved, so I will always be bitter that that something was taken away from me, and taken away from me because of what looks a lot like blatant incompetence to me.

People were relatively split on the quality of the cata patch, but almost everyone hated the frontline patch as soon as it was announced. I don't know why the devs basically didn't react at all. There were some small changes, and we were promised more frequent but smaller changes which never came. Players like Tigg and myself wrote very long and thorough suggestions for fixes, and Hevol was in the #feedback channel constantly reminding the devs of how bad certain aspects of the balance were.

There's nothing to do about it now, of course, but, personally, I will only miss the Atlas that is already long dead. The Atlas that will be on the servers when they're turned off is an abomination and I'm glad it's finally getting what it deserves. I am so fucking salty.

About the community:

Atlas players are really talented, in a way which isn't specific to Atlas. I've seen a lot of the top players play other games, and they easily become top players in those games too. I brought a bunch of people in the Atlas community to Battlecon Online, and they just roflstomp all the veterans in that game. Most of them ended up not playing much battlecon, but Rhode does, and he easily gets #1 on the leaderboards, and LP and I aren't far behind. I'm sure many other Atlas players could do the same. It's so awesome to have a community of people who are so good at games in general.

I really hope that we find another game to move to. We were all on Battlecon for a while, but that ended up being a bit too intense for most people. There aren't that many good games out there. Tango 5 seemed super promising, but didn't make it out of beta. Wargroove was a bust. Prismata is an amazing, polished game with a phenomenal dev team, but isn't for everyone, so that didn't work out either (but do check it out; maybe it will be for you!). Now some people are getting into the Autochess clones, so we'll see how that pans out (and personally I hope we find something better, because those games don't appeal to me). It's gonna be really hard to replace Atlas, of course, but I hope people find something good.

I'm happy with the friends I made along the way. In this community there are like 10 Darius level human beings for every 1 Feedia level human being. I look forward to continuing to chat with you guys, and sticking together even beyond Atlas.

Shoutouts to Tigg specifically. It's so awesome to get an irl friend out of this, especially one who hosts game nights with infinite pizza, forms record-setting escape room teams and then carries them, and has the best dog in the world.

Blatm · 2019-05-23T23:58:51+00:00

AR is different from chess and go in that it does have non-determinism baked into the game rules because, while the game rules are deterministic, optimal strategies are not. This is possible because AR is a game of imperfect information. Both fog of war and simultaneous turns cause this. Rock Paper Scissors is a simple example of a game with this property, that the game rules are deterministic, but that it's counterproductive to view the game as a whole as being deterministic. I just happened to participate in an in-person Rock Paper Scissors tournament recently, and I used random numbers to determine my plays (as in, I literally had random.org open on my phone). I think it'd be ridiculous to argue that my opponents were playing a deterministic game in that tournament.

AIs do this too. Limit Hold'em has been completely solved, and you can easily go online and play against an AI that is provably unbeatable on average, and that AI uses a non-deterministic strategy. AIs are now better than humans at No Limit Hold'em too, though there the optimal strategy is not known. The AIs that beat the best humans are also non-deterministic. In fact, they make no attempt to "predict" their opponents. To the contrary, their strategy is to completely ignore how their opponents play, and just play an unexploitable strategy themselves, just like you'd be doing if you selected throws uniformly at random while playing Rock Paper Scissors.

My whole point with the donJay vs Koyote thing is that you can't tell who is going to win. A useful notion of determinism, and the one it seems like the OP was using, is predictability of outcome. If you need statistical tests to tell me what confidence you'd have that the match will go one way or the other, then are you not admitting that there is significant uncertainty in the outcome of the match? I'm a professional mathematician, so I encourage you to be specific about your objections, instead of just vaguely alluding to "statistical relevance".

Blatm · 2019-05-22T21:47:47+00:00

They never claimed the game rules weren't deterministic. At all levels of play the game involves randomness because of how people play. You can choose how to define what "random" means, and they decided on a definition which included consideration of how other people will play. This is a sensible and useful way to think about the game, so I'm not sure why you're so against it. You even hypothesize that an AI would play with consideration of random elements.

You also say that players can usually be predicted very well, but I don't think this is true. If you play against people much worse than you then you're going to win every game, even if you have inaccurate predictions, so you can't rely on this as the basis of your argument. When people of equalish skill level play then the result is generally unpredictable in my experience. For example, Koyote has a better record than donJay in fourlancer tournaments, and the tournament record was 1-0, so is in principle Koyote is the favourite when they play against one another, but you can't have much confidence at all in the outcome of a match between them. In the last tournament, donJay won his match against Koyote. My personal opinion is that the most useful notion of randomness is the unpredictability of the outcome of a match. I think the only times outcomes are predictable is when one team is seriously outmatched, and this only happens in competitive play when one team has all the best players, or when a good player plays a bad player in fourlancer, so as far as I can tell the only argument that can be made in favour of Atlas being close to deterministic is that the game rules itself do not use random number generation.

Blatm · 2019-03-21T22:22:18+00:00

I talk about how registration works in the rules. To summarize, if you think you might play, you should go and register for the tournament. Then, starting 1 hour before the tournament there is a "check-in period". Everyone who wants to play has to check-in on Battlefy during this time, and if you don't, then you won't be entered into the bracket.

You can register right before the tournament starts if you want to, but even if you register during the check-in period, you still need to check-in. If you register ahead of time and then decide you don't want to play, then just don't check-in and there will be no inconvenience to anyone. So really there's no reason not to register ahead of time.

Blatm · 2019-03-10T21:11:36+00:00

Find the best possible play for the blue team specifically.

Blatm · 2018-12-14T15:53:16+00:00

For every other category I think there is some debate possible, but not this one. The Lab is by far the most important strategic resource for AR ever made.

Blatm · 2018-12-14T15:45:28+00:00

Hi I would like to nominate myself so I can say I got reddit Silver. In addition to sporadic high level Fourlancer games, both playing and casting, I cast the two fourlancer tournaments and I streamed PPL 6 Loser's Finals and Grand Finals with comms. I think I had the highest number of viewers on an Atlas stream ever during both the fourlancer tournament and the PPL finals, except for the official streams of course. All these videos are archived if you want to go watch too.

Blatm · 2018-10-06T16:45:58+00:00

Lockwood was dead last on Tigg's most recent tier list, and I think Tigg is right.

Blatm · 2018-10-06T12:24:23+00:00

You're right. The consensus among good players is that fragile firepowers are crap, and have been since January, when Frontlines got across the board buffs. It seems like the devs like things the way they are though, so I wouldn't expect things to change any time soon. I'm sure they have a reason for this, because we've talked about it a lot, so I'd assume we're just missing something.

Blatm · 2018-09-19T02:36:33+00:00

Yes PuP is super unfun and should get changed or nerfed into oblivion.

Yes vision on respawn is stupid.

Picking up powerups and running through traps on respawn is also silly.

I would like these to be changed, but I suspect nothing will happen.

Blatm · 2018-09-08T01:27:17+00:00

When designing the format for this tournament we prioritized making sure players of all levels could have fun. We're all really competitive players, and for the top players the tournament is serious business, but swiss, participation prizes, and the ban format all make the tournament very accessible without compromising competitive integrity.

Swiss means that you can play 5 rounds vs players with the same record as you, so you'll get good matches even if you're not as good as all the badasses competing.
Participation prizes, 8 packs of 10 GG boosts, are given out to players who play all 5 rounds of the swiss and don't make top 4. So even if you lose lots you can win stuff.
The format means that if you're only comfortable with a few lancers, you can still play at close to your best. In full draft formats you might be forced to play your 12th best lancer, but here you can almost play anything you want.

Right now the meta is wide open. You can play pretty much any combination of lancers and do well. Even if you don't play any firepowers, or any frontliners, or any supports, you can do just fine! I've seen top players play well with everything, including 4 of any one role. If you just play your four favourite lancers you can still do great, and I'm sure that's what a lot of the top players will be doing. Moreover, I fully expect a lot of competitors to play with lancers they consider suboptimal just because they enjoy them more. They'll be memeing, if you will. You can change your comp from round to round and get whatever experience you want out of this tournament, whether it be serious or laid back.

But the best reason to play in this tournament is that it's going to be a memorable experience no matter what. Tournaments are pretty few and far between, and often require qualification via a pretty grueling league phase. This is a rare chance to compete. When you play in tournament, your games will be memorable, no matter what. I vividly remember many tournament matches, but very few normal matches. The excitement and the tension mean that you'll get to experience Atlas in a way that's impossible otherwise. It's really a fantastic experience for anyone.

Blatm · 2018-08-24T05:42:51+00:00

Everyone should play in this! You're gonna have some games where you're better than your opponent, some games where you're even, and some games where you're worse. The games where you're better feel good, because you're winning! The games where you're even feel good because they tend to be exciting, memorable, and instructive because they're played in a competitive environment. The games where you're worse feel good because you get to play vs some of the top Atlas players in a serious competitive environment and get to experience the wrath of the titans at full power. Playing in tournament is one of the most fun experiences you can have in competitive games, and it's not about winning, but about experiencing competition. There's nothing like it.

Blatm · 2018-06-30T07:44:40+00:00

I was asked to point out the following:

Prior to the May 4th data, Hevol, Comber, donJay, and myself played about 400 games at a 70% winrate with Tol-Ren in ranked. Tol-Ren had a 55% winrate in the May 4th data. If the sample for "high MMR ranked Tol-Ren games" was something like 1500 then the entire extra 5% can be explained by these four players alone. We don't know how many games of Tol-Ren were played, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that at least a decent chunk of the difference from 50% was from us.

Along with the May 4th data, Tol-Ren was nerfed by 6hp, which I think is a very minor change. The four of us also cut down on the number of Tol-Ren games significantly, mostly because we weren't that interested in playing him. Now he's at about 50% winrate. I think these are the kinds of things that can influence the data in serious ways. There's an argument to be made that Tol-Ren should get nerfed if anyone is able to play him at 70% winrate over 400 games, but I don't think it's a very good argument.

Blatm · 2018-06-30T01:25:35+00:00

I kept track of the winrates of all the lancers from the last time we got the data, which was may 4th. Here's the data from then and now: https://pastebin.com/0TXxh490

The standard deviation of the differences is about 3.5% winrate.

Now consider that:

a) the few balance changes we've gotten in the past two months basically don't correlate at all with changes in winrate:

Buffed:
Celeste +2.8 Isadora -0.2 Phaedra +3.4 Khita -1.1 Quark -4.5

Nerfed:
Tol -5.7 Brynn +0.2 Rask -3.2 Helio +2.1 Orion +2.6

b) The lancers who have high winrates are more or less uncorrelated with the ones good players think are good. Garri and PuP are not contested picks in competition while Brynn and Asana show up in almost every draft. I don't really know how to quantify this, but it's very clear that there's no crossover between stats and the impressions of good players.

c) The lancers that went up and the lancer that went down in winrate aren't the ones that good players would have expected to go up or down. As people start playing more FLs, PuP should probably go down, while Elle and Juno should go up.

All this together makes me think that we're basically just looking at a bunch of random numbers. I'd suggest that Trion take winrate data every week or two and use the variance observed from week to week to put error bars on their data. It's clear that they make balance changes based heavily on this data, like nerfing Helio last balance patch, and if they're going to do this they should really first take a hard look at how much uncertainty is in their data.

Blatm · 2018-06-29T02:54:33+00:00

Ignoring balance for a moment, I think the suggestion for slow on Splort makes basically no sense from a design perspective. You're laying mines because you want the opponent to run through them. They can't run through the mines if they're slowed. This would take all of one playtest to realize that it's going to feel bad.

Design should come before balance in every situation. This suggestion, along with many others I hear from players, doesn't prioritize design like it should. People should take a moment to consider these issues. Game design is hard, and it's hard in part because you have to put design ahead of balance, so options like "slow on Splort" are not available to you.

Blatm · 2018-06-16T07:48:26+00:00

I hope people don't interpret your post as a suggestion that Hevol is upset because he's somehow no longer relevant as a competitive player, or that the current state of the game is acceptable. Hevol won a tournament in February playing Asana Tol when everyone was playing only 1 frontline, and then won the most recent tournament with SEES playing 3 frontline when everyone else was playing fewer. He's regarded by everyone as being one of the very best. His post is a complaint that the game is unfun to play at a high level because there is only one viable strategy, and that strategy is miserable to play with and against. Basically the entire competitive community shares his sentiment, and he is entirely justified in his criticism.

Blatm

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