Monthly Archives: May 2015

This week we take to the OMDU EU community to find out a bit more about Soundwave as part of our semi-regular Fan Friday interviews! So without further ado here is some information about the person behind the username. We learn that Soundwave is currently studying Audiology which is the study of human hearing. Interesting stuff and certainly a big change from his original career path! Read on to find out more!

The Basics

• Name: Dave
• Age: 30
• Home Town: London

Questions

• What do you do by day?

Currently a postgrad student studying Audiology. My original degree was in maths so its quite a departure for me but working in finance was just too boring!

 

• What are your hobbies and interests? 

A lot of my freetime is used on videogames but I also do a fair bit of painting. This came from playing tabletop games like warhammer 40k but these days I am more into the painting side of things than playing the games. I’ve backed the OMD tabletop game and looking forward to painting OMD models in the future.

 

• How would you describe your taste in music?

Eclectic

 

• What are some of your favourite websites that you visit often?

Well theres the usual like facebook and twitter. I get pretty much all my game news from Neogaf.

 

• Do you have any pets?

Yep! a dog and a parrot (african grey).

 

• Aside from OMDU, what other games do you like to play?

Recently I’ve started playing Heroes of the Storm and I’ve been enjoying it a lot more than I thought i would. I’ve played a huge amount of games in the past and there is far too much to list all of them – some of the games i’ve invested the most amount of time into though are probably RTS like starcraft 1+2, dawn of war 1&2.

 

I don’t play a lot of FPS these days as I’ve grown a little tired of the standard fomula they tend to adhere to, but I had a lot of fun with the classic styled arena shooters back in the day – Particularly Unreal tournament, which I spent quite a few years playing competitively.

 

I like single player RPGs as well, hoping to get round to trying out both witcher 3 and dragon age inquisition soon.

Are you based near Dallas? Have a keen eye for game balance issues? Have free time this summer? Robot might have the perfect summer job for you! The Game Balance team at Robot Entertainment are looking for 10x new recruits to join the team at the studio this summer to help with the game balance testing for Orcs Must Die! Unchained.

The position is full time, at the studio so you’ll need be relatively local to Robot HQ in Plano, Texas. If this ticks your boxes and you are interested in the gaming industry this is an excellent opportunity to work on-site with Robot Entertainment staffers to work on a ground-breaking new game. Certainly a fantastic experience for your CV.

Here’s what you need to know and do:

Robot Entertainment in Plano, TX is looking for 10 smart, dedicated, and hard-working Play Balance Testers to work on our new title Orcs Must Die! Unchained for two months this summer, starting June 1st. If you are an accomplished MOBA player (with a deep knowledge of games such as League of Legends, DOTA2, or Smite) and are looking for a full-time summer job, we’re interested in you! Any experience you have playing any of Robot’s previous Orcs Must Die! games is a bonus, but not a strict requirement to be considered for the position.

The 10 openings are hourly positions that will pay $10/hour, with overtime potential for any hours worked in a given week over 40. The Play Balance Testers will work on-site in our office in Plano, TX from 10AM to 6PM, Monday – Friday, and will report to the Game Balance Designer.

If you are 18 years of age or over, interested, and think you qualify, please email a summary of your gaming experience and other qualifications to Recruiting@RobotEntertainment.com with SUMMERTEST in the Subject line, along with your contact information and availability for working this summer.

Robot Entertainment are poised to release the next patch for Orcs Must Die! Unchained closed beta. Dubbed “Rifty Business” in the spirit of Cygnus getting his very own unique weaver tree. As always the patch is jam packed with changes. Here are some of the highlights.

Cygnus’s Weavers

Cygnus now joins the party having his own unique weaver upgrades, rather than “borrowing” some of the other heroes! Here is what’s got lined up for Cygnus in patch 2.2:

Additional Guardian for each lane on each map

Thats right, there are now three guardians on each lane of each map. The third guardian stands alone and does not have a glyph spot. He is also weaker than the current existing guardians so he will fall faster. The idea behind this is that the team on offense will now feel like they are making more progress on the earlier waves, rather than having to slowly bring down the current guardian, possibly only getting minor damage each wave. (Depending on the team, of course.) Now it should feel a whole lot better for offense when the first guardian falls and it should put the pressure on defense.

The guardian change has recently been covered on Insider Access. If you want to hear more about these changes, just hit the play button below.

Unchained Fortress gets more polish

The art bots have been hard at work improving the Unchained Fortress map with new art and lighting it looks even better than before. The map has also had quite a few geometry changes too. In similar vein to the escape route that was added to Clffside Clash there is now an escape route running down the middle of Unchained Fortress. Here is a capture from Insider Access showing the new escape route. You can check out the full Insider Access video below to see some of the great new lighting thats going into this map in patch 2.2. Hats off to the art bots!

Shiny new deck builder UI

The deck builder has been given a pretty extensive make-over too. Infact, its had quite a redesign and now works a whole lot better and more logically. The “My Decks” screen now lists all your decks along with a pretty smart preview of what cards are inside.

Delving into a deck there is now a handy preview on the left hand side so you can see more clearly what is in your deck. On the top navigation cards are split into categories allowing you to filter all your available cards that apply to that category as before, but the menu now looks cleaner and more obvious.

The improvements to the dashboard, I’m sure will be most welcome!

Hero health, range and leadership / coin changes.

Interestingly in this patch all of the heroes have had their health reduced by 10%, except for Ivy. Also instant ranged attacks will now deal lesser damage the further away the target is. The damage penalty applies from 5000 to 10000 range, scaling from 100% to 50%. This is to help balance cases where ranged heroes could camp out at certainly locations and deal un-due amounts of damage.

In other interesting news offense now gains experience 15% slower and defense now gains experience 35% faster and player kills are now worth 50% more leadership and coin, making killing other heroes more valuable.

Hero seekers and trap cap

Glory seekers are now known as “Hero seekers”, in most part to avoid players having the “Whats a Glory Seeker” question. The term “hero seeker” avoids the ambiguity of what the trap does. The damage of these traps will scale depending on the level of the owner, and the damage is flat, not based on percent.

Also the trap cap is now a set figure based per map. This means if a player drops out, the full trap cap is available to all players. Hoorah!

As always this is just a summary of the patch notes. To find out more about the changes in patch 2.2 you can sink your teeth into the full patch notes on the forums. The patch will be landing next Wednesday, 20th May for both North America and EU!

You may have come across last week a new tool that has been popular on social media, Microsoft’s new “How old do I look” robot. It’s quite a fun tool, you can upload a picture of yourself on the website and the tool will estimate your age and gender. It’s all a bit of fun.

We thought we might take this opportunity to find out a bit more about the OMDU heroes and see what the How Old bot has to say about their ages! Here’s what we have:

	Who knew?
	How delightful I’m sure she would say!
	Err… sorry Madam! I don’t think you’re human!
	Well they say elves do not age!
	She won’t be happy!

Obviously these aren’t their real ages. That remains a secret. If you do want to know more about the heroes on OMDU, check out the official Wiki which has detailed back story of most of the heroes and their past.

Hot on the heels of the 2.1 patch being released in NA, Gameforge and Robot Entertainment have been able to release the patch in the EU in less than 24 since it first landed in North America. This fast turnaround should put some of the concerns EU players have had about the delay for patches to arrive at ease. Commenting on the EU forums, Community Manager, Justin Korthof said:

There was a LOT of concern voiced about having to wait extended periods of time again for the 2.1 update to hit the EU servers. As was noted before, we’ll always do everything we can to reduce the time between the NA and EU releases, and I think you can see that in full effect today, when Gameforge has released the 2.1 patch to the EU servers less than 24 hours after it hit the NA servers.

 

Matchmaking changes

In other patch 2.1 related news, some players have been finding it more difficult to find PvP matches since the patch made adjustments to the grouping of PvP players by level into matchmaking “buckets” and the removal of the number of players searching counter. Robot who are attuned to community feedback have announced that they are making some further adjustments to the matchmaker taking place from now. There are now just two matchmaking buckets, one for Levels 1-6, and the other for all other levels 7+. This should help alleviate issues where players have been finding it tricky to get in games.

The final push

Its now just the last few hours until the Kickstarter campaign for the Orcs Must Die! Unchained the Board Game closes. Now sitting at over $260,000 at time of writing this has been an incredibly successful campaign. The community have spoken in volumes!

If you havn’t yet pledged, now is the time! Just head over to Kickstarter on the link below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816687860/orcs-must-die-the-boardgame