Announcement Annihilation 2.0 Patch Preview

We are almost done! I present to you a preview of what to expect from Annihilation 2.0.

Gameplay tweaks / Balance Changes

- Small tweaks/nerfs to some classes (Succubus, Scout).
- Slight Civilian buff.
- Tinkerers now get a vertical launch pad.
- New item “Recall Stone” added to the shop. Has a 10 second warmup and cannot be used in enemy bases. Cancels on being hit or moving. Teleports a player back to his base (where you spawn, not in nexus room). This item was added to allow more offensive play while granting the ability to teleport home if your team scouts incoming enemies.
- Scout grapple no longer hits players.
- Riftwalkers can now use /rift <playername> instead of the GUI, if desired.
- Double jump glitch has been fixed.
- Four new pieces of armor that can only be obtained from the Wither buff:

• Helmet of Extinguishment
• Chestplate of Fortitude
• Leggings of Swiftness
• Boots of Grace

- Six new classes, all directly or indirectly inspired by community submissions. Two of these will be unlocked via the new ranking system (see below), the remaining four will be in the XP shop.

• Dasher (credit to CaptLejar)
• Alchemist by Creativion
• Sniper by moikka434
• Barbarian by Canadian_moose
• Spider by Rikkiee

*drum roll* And the final class is...

• Wizard (credit to Creativion). I have a feeling I would get murdered by you guys if we didn't implement this class.

**Note that new class abilities are subject to buff, nerf, change, and complete scrap based on community feedback. We will not introduce a class into Annihilation that the community does not like, even if it means releasing with less than six classes.

Interface Changes

- Class menu organized with unlocked classes at top, locked classes at bottom.
- Three classes per week are randomly selected to be unlocked for all users.
- New Annihilation lobby to facilitate match making for the new sub modes and let you hang with your buds.
- Streamlined death messages with abbreviated class names. You can hover over abbreviations to see the full class name. Death messages, in a standard chat window, should not exceed one line of text.
- New ranking system. Players earn points by mining resources, killing players, and any other action that would normally earn you Shotbow XP. Ranks are now used to unlock classes, meaning new players can play the way they want to play rather than being forced into doing certain stats. Two of the new classes are added to the rank system to be unlocked. (We may require players to reach a certain rank before being able to play competitive matches)
- Hovering over a player’s name in chat show last killed by and last kill, as well as that player’s rank.
- New preferences menu before you spawn in the game. Can permanently save your preferences for the following:

• [All / Team / Own / Off] death messages.
• [All / Team / Own / Off] nexus alerts.
• [Enable / Disable] spawning with a compass
• [All / Team / Off] chat messages
• Change particle effect and sound effects (premium feature)
• Customize Hotbar. Can organize the default spawning layout for all classes. You select where you want the sword, bow, axe, pickaxe, shovel, class item, and compass to be on respawn.
• [Show / Hide] rank promotion messages.

- Map voting is now done via a GUI selection.
- Removed team signs in favor of the team selector icons.
- New clan system:

• Can create clans with a full name and abbreviation, promote officers, give custom titles, and more.
• Clan tag abbreviation is shown to the right of a user’s name.
• Hovering over the abbreviation will show the user’s clan name, rank, and title.

Back End Changes

- Full class selection logging. We now log all class selections, what phase they were picked in, how long they were used, and a number of other metrics. We plan to present this data to the community and use it along side community feedback to supplement decisions for class balance. (Note: This sounds like a small feature, but is actually one of the most awesome features of this update in terms of preparing for future updates.)

Introducing 8v8 Competitive Matches

In the spirit of moving Annihilation to a more competitive experience, we will be introducing competitive 8v8 matches which consist of two teams with eight players per team. Additionally, the rule set is tweaked slightly from standard Annihilation with the goal of making matches end no later than 30-40 minutes. This mode will run alongside standard Annihilation, which basic rules will remain largely unchanged.

Why faster paced?

Glad you asked! The faster paced nature of a competitive match is extremely important because we will be introducing an ELO system. Since your success depends highly on your teammates, we will be implementing a match making ban if you leave a match early or go AFK during a match. Don't worry, if you disconnect from lag we will give you some time to reconnect. This will be structured very similarly to other popular competitive games, ensuring that if you want to do a competitive match you are prepared to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to a match for the sake of your teammates.

How will it be faster?

While all of this is subject to change while in testing, here are the fundamental differences between a standard Annihilation match and a competitive Annihilation match:

• • Reduced Nexus Health from 75 to 50. Lowering Nexus health is a simple step in keeping maps shorter, but also making sure early phase attacks are effective.
  • Custom maps designed around two teams. Our first custom map will be a special version of Coastal. We will be looking for community feedback during testing on how many resources in the map and total travel time required from Nexus to Nexus.
  • Only one of each class per team (Civilian is unlimited). Similar to a traditional MOBA, the idea here is that players will need to find synergies between the classes to create new strategies.
  • Shorter phase times. It currently takes 40 minutes to reach phase 5 (10 minutes per phase), which is appropriate for large 40v40v40v40 games. However, with only two teams and a smaller number of people phase times will be reduced. We will begin our testing at 5 minutes per phase at first, but may tweak this up based on feedback.
  • A new phase 6 that will introduce a slow nexus bleed. Every 30 seconds both teams will lose one nexus health. The bleed stops at one nexus health, meaning you cannot lose from the bleed alone. The final hit must be dealt by the opposing team.

Again, the design here is for the competitive 8v8 matches. We will have a separate private clan match system that will adhere to the specific rules that our clan community determines. However, it is our hope that we can get the clan community involved as much as possible to ensure that competitive matches reflect clan play as close as possible, while maintaining the shorter match requirement.

What if I don't like the shorter changes?

Don’t worry. While we have high hopes for all of the changes we’ve made, this update has been built around your desires as a community. If you, as a community, speak out against a certain element of this we will be happy to make changes or revert something entirely. We feel the future of Annihilation should be guided by the community, not solely by our own design choices. And while we are happy to flex our design muscles to add new classes and modes from time to time, your voice will be heard. Our promise is to embrace our competitive Annihilation community and give it a voice in our design process.

Introducing Private Clan Matches

Players in clans can initiate a private clan match against other clans. All users of the same clan in the hub can then queue up for the match. Once the clans are ready, they can initiate the match. Clan matches are not limited to 8v8 and can be any number of players. Clans can choose to recruit non-clan “ringers” to help fill spots in the event they don’t have a full 8 man team and want to challenge another clan.

Private clan matches will have a number of custom options, allowing you to go for a more standard Annihilation feel, something closer to competitive Annihilation, or somewhere in-between. We will have the option to put in “tournament” options for official Shotbow tournaments, but also allow clans to practice on those tournament options. We plan to grow this feature extensively after release.

COMING SOON!

We look forward to building Annihilation into the best mode it possibly can be and look forward to your feedback. Everything you read has already been finished. At this point we are at the polish phase, working through bugs and other issues. We will begin testing the 8v8 competitive mode and private clan matches in the next week. Full release, pending no show stopping issues, should come in early April.

Hype!

Yesss....?