Gladiator Guild Manager News

Very small part of players were not able to open the game. Now we have new branch where you can open the game in new Unity Engine. Sadly this breaks game for some players. So only if you are unable to run the game, choose this branch and problem might be solved.

Select Gladiator Guild Manger in your Steam library. Select Manage button, then Betas, and choose "new_engine_for_those_who_cant_open_the_game". Here are the visual instructions too:



If you own beta and have this issue, please tell us if this update fixed the issue for you.

Thank you! :)

We have implemented over 20 new quests, and many of them branch into even more quests through dialogue choices. Also all the old quests have been updated.

We will now start working with actors to get voice over for all characters.

The Early Access release is getting very close! Join us on Discord to get the latest news and chat with us and the community, as we’re adding new content before the release.

Here’s what is new in the latest beta update:



-Now you are able to instruct your Gladiators on how much they should prioritize each individual enemy.


-General Gladiator AI instructions are now simplified. They still affect Gladiator behaviour but individual enemy priorities have much more weight over general setting.


-One very important setting can be found for support Gladiators like Priestess. This checkbox is instructing her to help out gladiators that are under attack and in need of her support.

It’s turned on by default. But if you plan to execute different tactics and want her to behave purely based on your instructions, you can turn it off.


-Here is an example of how gladiators instructions can be used to gain advantage
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


-There is also a feature allowing you to see priority sliders just by rolling over you gladiators.


-One of the most important things we had to do is change how gladiators send buffs to each other. Till now, one ability attack could only send one buff. For instance Berserker Orc can Kick an enemy and send them Knock Down buff. But the code did not allow us to also send another buff. For instance we could not send Burning buff as well. Preventing us from combining all kinds of fun things.

Now this code has been rewritten and we can send any amount of buffs we like in one attack. Meaning that if let’s say Cryomancer had certain items or learned some passive abilities he could: Knock Down an enemy, set them Burning and Freeze them all at the same time.


We don’t have those combinations in the game yet, but new gladiator abilities are coming some time after Early Access, many of which will be passive abilities that will upgrade their current abilities and make them send some of the synergetic buffs. And we’ll also add items that can do that. For now we already have an item called Knockdown Gloves. When given to a melee gladiator, that gladiator will Knockdown enemy with first attack.



[h2]Smarter Gladiators[/h2]
Aiming to improve gladiators behaviour we have few improved things.
Combining with gladiator instructions you can tell Cryomancer or Brigand if they should focus on protecting an ally. Freezing them or throwing a net.
In this example you can see that by default Cryomancer will throw freeze to protect the archer as she will benefit the most from being able to get away form melee enemies. But if you turn off the “Ally That is Under Attack” checkbox, Cryomancer will focus on the biggest group of enemies instead.


You can instruct Necromancer which enemy to Raise from death.. He will always raise the one who dies first. But after the battle continues if there are more dead enemies around, he will choose to raise exactly the one that you told him to raise.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Necromancer will by default choose to cast Terror ability to an enemy that is not going to get hit right away from some ally gladiator. Because Terror is making the enemy run in fear for X seconds. But if they get hit, it’s interrupted and wasted.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Of course, you can instruct him to throw Terror on any enemy you want if you change his priority points from default.


Ring of Death design was fairly flawed as you were able to play only Blind Fight until you finished the first arena championship. And for new players this was super confusing, not even knowing which enemy they will fight. And it wasn't the most interesting thing for a familiar players either.

Now it works very differently. You are given 4 random fights that you can choose from. After completing each you earn green coupon reward, and after completing 4th you’ll earn purple one as a big reward for finishing all 4.
Then you can press “Create New Battle Choices” and you’ll get a new set of battle type options.

Finishing each championship arena brings one new battle to the pool of possible random fights that can appear.

Now we have several new battle types (to addition to the ones we already had in the game):

• 2vs2
  
• 3vs3
  
• 1 vs few
  
• few vs 1
  
• many vs 1
  
• 10 vs 10
  

And we plan to add some more in future updates.


If quirk is not benefiting or harming a gladiator it will not appear on that gladiator anymore. For instance Berserker Orc, can’t get Brain Injury quirk that decreases his intelligence, because intelligence is of very little importance to him.

With this handled, we made quirks affect prices of gladiators significantly. Now your choices in the gladiator market carry much more weight. It’s no longer just about waiting to find a gladiator with the best quirk and ignoring the ones with negative quirks.

Gladiators with good quirks will be very expensive, and gladiators with bad quirks will be very cheap. And you will want both as you can’t afford only the ones with good quirks. Additionally to this we buffed some positive quirks to be even more effective. Now buying a gladiator with good quirks feels very rewarding, and getting ones with bad quirks is necessary to increase your team size and variety. And also doesn't feel bad, because their cost and wages are much lower.

Numbers of gladiators that you can put in a battle are increased as you go further through the game. Especially in championships. Pushing you to build bigger teams and letting you enjoy bigger battles.

Additional 20 quirks have been added to the game, increasing the variation of gladiators and adding new features to play around with.


After finishing the 3rd arena (Ancient Temple) a small amount of gladiators in the shop can appear with even 3 quirks. Now that we have such a huge fluctuation in prices and power of positive and negative quirks, many interesting combinations can be found.

We’d love to hear your feedback about this. Ether here in comments or even better in our Discord Community.

[h2]Championship Change[/h2]
Now you can lose up to two battles in championship and still complete that championship arena. You will lose one cup each time you lose a battle. But this will allow you to play less conservatively, to try fun and risky combinations, or harder battles, without being stifled by the fact that one lost battle will end whole championship and make you wait 30 days before you can try again.


[h2]Quests System Ready For Voice Acting[/h2]
Quest system in the game is now ready for implementing voice acting. We will try our best to get the recordings done by Early Access but we can’t promise anything. Since too many factors and people are involved and very little time is left. If we do release Early Access without voice acting, do not worry, they are coming very soon in one of the first updates.
We’ll keep you informed how this goes.
For now here is the video of how the characters will sound. We’d love to hear your thoughts about voice acting.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]Various[/h2]

• Universal items: Tusk Shield and Knockout Gloves are added to the game.
  
• Once two minutes of battle runs out, all gladiators will get “Taking Too Long” that is damaging them similarly like getting Burning buff on them. This is a system that is made for ending battles that can’t end on their own (situations with too many healers and tanks, or a situation where Knight chases Archer in a circle indefinitely).
  
• All undead units have “Undead” buff. Signifying that they can not be brought back to life as undead again by Necromancer.
  
• Bosses have “Boss” quirks. Marking them as dangerous units, and also explaining that they can’t be knocked down by gladiators.
  
• Now whenever you get back to the map menu, the game automatically pauses, letting you figure out what you want to do next. Problem before was that if you had Fast Speed setting on, entered a battle, and then went back to the map menu screen, a few days would fly by before you see what is happening.
  

[h2]Game Polish[/h2]

• Slider for battle speed now shows exact percentage of game speed while you’re sliding it.
  
• Once you have enough resources to update a building in the guild, a green arrow shows up.
  
• New frozen effect is added.
  
• If gladiators priority points are changed there is a warning when you roll over gladiator or their icon.
  
• Once you use a gladiator upgrade point on some stat, it used to automatically push you back to the first ability of the gladiator. Now the panel stays at the ability you’re currently looking at. This is useful for seeing how much the stat affected this ability.
  
• When rolling over a weather icon during battle now you can see what that weather does to gladiators. Before you could only see this in the map menu screen. It’s also very important because some arenas like Ancient Temple are not affected by weather but have their own unique Aura buff instead. And before you wouldn’t know what the buff does, until you start the battle.
  
• Ray casting lines for abilities used to be static. Gladiators would only add them once when they choose an enemy and if the enemy moves the line would stay in its original position. Now lines follow both your and enemy gladiator.
  
• Other small fixes and polishes.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Each time you open a quest panel, enemy gladiators would be created from scratch. Making their stats and quirks different as they were not saved with quests. Now this is fixed and can’t be abused.
  
• You used to be able to sell item rewards right from the quest panels (Items that you didn’t even earn yet). Now fixed.
  
• Tavern building had a weird bug showing gladiators earn -2400% XP. Now fixed.
  
• Various minor bugs all over the interface are fixed.
  
• Few level editor bugs fixed.
  

• Localizing game for all languages we had in Prologue version of the game.
  
• New types of battles where you have certain amount of seconds to win, or to survive in order to win. We’ll use these both in quests and new Ring of Death modes.
  
• Adding new units. Few gladiators, a bit more enemy type units, and two new bosses.
  
• Improve enemy team formations. Right now some teams are way to easy to defeat because of the randomness that doesn't always create very good teams.
  
• Updating current quests and adding new ones. Hopefully with voice acting if all our voice actors manage to record everything in time before Early Access. If not, it will come in one of the first Early Access patches.
  
• Options. Adding basic options that every game needs like resolution, vsync, graphic quality, and more.
  
• Polish things up a bit with new sounds effects and few graphical improvements.
  
• In game tutorial
  
• Updated start game screen where you can select more difficulty modes, as well as enable time limit if you want additional challenge.
  
• Meta progress. Hopefully we’ll manage to implement this into the game as well by the time of Early Access release. Once you finish the game, you will unlock new quirks, items or even gladiators for the next playthrough. The value of reward will increase as you increase the difficulty setting.
  

After Early Access is released we are planing to keep adding a lot of new content and features in the game. Main thing is to adding 6 more championship arenas. Each bringing new gladiators, quests, enemies, items and quirks.
But we also intent to extend guild features. At the moment only non-gladiator building is Temple of Revival. But we want to add more buildings that will affect the way you play. Like training areas where you can level up or even learn gladiators new quirks. And more.
Option to learn gladiators new abilities as they level up.
We’re considering even additional different game modes at some point.
Of course, we’re a small team and it will take time to get all this into the game. Also we’ll carefully listen to your feedback like we did so far and focus on things you guys want the most. So this list might change as we get lots of new feedback once the Early Access is out. So far your feedback made the game incomparably better, and we’ll keep the trend and work together with you guys to shape the game into the best version possible.



[h2]Early Access is Almost Here![/h2]
Thank you for reading and following the development of our game! We are super excited to release Early Access on Steam in the middle of October! If you haven’t already, we encourage you to join our Discord Community and chat with us, as we are finishing the last features before releasing the Early Access on Steam!

We are trying to decide which version of Baronesses voice fits better for her, and would like to know what you guys think. Here is the video with two versions:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

You can vote using our Discord Voting Pool:
https://discord.gg/rA4xy3z2N3

Or tell us in comments if you like Version 1 or Version 2 better.


Just to disclose this. We are not 100% sure we'll manage to get voice acting into Early Access release as there is a lot of work to be done and little time. But we'll try our best. If we don't make it, voice acting will arrive soon in one of the first updates.

And one last thing. Next game progress update is coming soon! ːsteamhappyː

Thank you!

First of all, we have a big news! We finally have official release date for Early Access: October 14th!

There is so much work to be done till then, but we’re giving it all we have. It’s been almost 1 year since the release of Demo-Prologue and game has grown a lot. Especially because of your suggestions and valuable feedback that made the game so much better!





We are planing to keep working full time on the game during Early Access and add all new features we want and lots of new content. But don’t worry, Early Access will already be fully playable and fun experience that will just keep growing ːsteamhappyː

Join our Discord Community, follow up progress closely and chat with us to help us make the game into something all of us will enjoy!



If you prefer video version of the update we have it on youtube, together with some in gameplay examples:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]Items[/h2]

[h3]Around 100 new items[/h3]
There are now about 100 items in the game. You’ll start with raggy and cheap items and as you grow you’ll be able to afford more and more powerful items.


[h3]Universal Items For Synergetic Strategies[/h3]
This is the new type of items called Universal Items. They do not have a level because they are based on percentages and are useful throughout the whole game.
Here is one example:
Spiked Chestplate
This item returns percentage of damage dealt to gladiator. (We had something similar but we moved it to Universal item type now)

Most of currently implemented Universal Items are focused on Synergy. Like:
Arrowhead of Frost
Item that make gladiator's projectiles deals 30% higher damage to frozen enemies. So you can combine this with Cryomancers freeze ability for maximum efficiency.

Each Universal item has Basic, Rare and Epic version. Each less frequent in shop, more expensive but stronger.
Eventually we plan to make a crafting system where you can combine 3 lower tier Universal items to craft one higher tier item.

[h3]Consumable Item Slots[/h3]
Finally we have a solution for consumable items that will make them useful. Now gladiators have one slot for consumable item so you can still have powerfully equipped gladiator and make them even stronger with consumable.

They are also now a bit cheaper and a bit stronger than before.



[h3]Item Shop[/h3]
In item shop you can find Regular, Consumable and Universal items. Till now shop used to provide tier of items that are the same as last championship arena you defeated. Now from time to time, there is a chance to get an more advanced item from tier above. As well as Universal items that also appear less frequently.


[h3]Item Panel[/h3]
Now with left click you can open Item Panel containing all information about item as well as buy/sell buttons.


[h2]Gladiator Total Rebalancing And AI Improvements[/h2]

[h3]Rebalancing[/h3]
First off, we were made aware of a big issue by community that levels are giving gladiators way too much power. So even if you have a gladiator that is being countered by enemy gladiator. If your gladiator is just a few levels higher they will not have issue defeating their counter. For this reason we decreased the amount of points each new level brings. Levels are still very important, but this allows game to be more strategic rather than promoting the brute force gameplay.
To follow up this rebalance, items stats are also reduced.

[h3]Gladiator Stats[/h3]
Second huge issue we had was that most gladiators had one stat that was most important and choosing to level up that stat would be the only viable option for some of them.
For example Archer would get damage, dodge, and attack speed all from agility. Making most of her other stats pretty superfluous.

So we took a step back and rebalanced the whole game.

• Now choosing between strength and agility would mean choosing between speed and damage.
  
• Intelligence is used for damage and other effects for spell-casters, but they still need other stats to decrease their cooldown or execution speed.
  
• Stamina used to be fairly useless for melee fighters as they could still attack without enough stamina but only dealing 20% less damage. Plus many gladiators had terrible stamina balancing. They would use very little and you did not need to put any thought into it.
  Now you’ll sometimes see gladiators just standing and waiting for their stamina to recover before they can swing another attack. In near future we are considering adding “Tired” animation so it’s clearer why they are just waiting.
  But this system is now pushing you to watch battle carefully and notice if some of your gladiators are losing their effectiveness and need more stamina points or items to stay active during battles.
  

[h3]Stamina[/h3]
Gladiators will also stop using defensive abilities if their stamina is lesser than 25%. Otherwise battle takes forever as they waste all their stamina on defending themselves instead of on attacking and finishing up the opponent.
Also gladiators used to use 25% of the stamina of total damage that was prevented. Now they use only 10%. To put it more simply, defensive actions cost less stamina and are more useful.

[h3]Speed of Battle[/h3]
Once gladiator reach certain levels their cooldowns and executions speeds would get extremely fast. Making battle really hard to follow. Now they tend to take longer to attack making it easier to see what is happening. But we always encourage you to slow down the time and take a close look at the battle to understand what is happening and improve your strategy.

Normal Speed:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Slowed Down:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Movement speed[/h3]
This stat was pretty much broken. After gladiators would get level 4-5 they would already have maximum movement speed. Now their speed is gradually increasing and if your gladiator needs to move fast across the arena it is worthwhile putting points into it or getting movement speed items.

[h3]More Strategy[/h3]
Overall strategy of choosing points for each gladiators is now very important. You can even build different kinds of gladiators based on it. Do you want super tanky Knight? Give him lots of health and strength. Do you want him to be fast and deal high damage, so he can rush into back line enemies and take them down? Give him agility and movement speed points.

You’ll find even more interesting variations in different gladiators but we’ll let you explore that. Just be sure to check gladiator ability stats and how they are calculated to understand what each does:



[h2]Gladiator AI Improvements[/h2]

[h3]Archer (and other ranged gladiators)[/h3]
Her projectile would sometimes go through the targeted enemy if the enemy get very near and enters her minimum range for shooting. Now this is fixed. If she targets the enemy in front of her, her arrow will hit the enemy.

Before fixing this:

After fixing this:

Unless the enemy enters her minimum range and she decided to target an enemy that is further away. In that case, arrow would go thought the enemy near her, and will go towards the far away enemy. We need this too, because if she is engaged in melee fight with an enemy, she still needs to be able to shoot far away enemies with arrows as well.



[h3]Brigand [/h3]
Brigand used to shoot her spear first and only after that, throw her net that would stop the enemy. This was because at the moment the battle starts she could not tell what the enemy team is about to do. Now this is fixed, and if she is being attacked by melee unit she will make sure to stop the unit with her net first.


Despite being a bandit, she can be very generous too. If her ally ranged gladiator is attacked/chased by melee gladiator she will help her out by throwing a net on that enemy to keep her ally safe.


[h3]Hunter[/h3]
Our first dwarf in the game got a little smarter as well. He will no longer put traps unless he’s being chased by a melee gladiators. Traps are also bigger so they have higher chance for enemy to fall into them.

There was a bug where trap would not stop enemy movement. Now it’s fixed.
He can still sometimes stupidly mess up and move in opposite direction of his trap. But we’ll work more on that.

[h2]Synergy Buffs[/h2]

• Priestess now has ability to cast Blessed buff. Again visible on gladiator. It increases Primary Stat of friendly gladiator like Invigorator does but less efficient. But it is one of the few synergetic buffs, so in shop you’ll be able to find items that make her heal stronger if she has casted this buff on an ally.
  
• Cryomancer has Frozen buff (he used to have something similar but now items can recognize this and use it for synergetic effects).
  
• Pyromancer now has Burning buff instead of knockdown. You can see gladiators burning while the buff is active.
  

[h3]Other Buffs[/h3]
Movement Preventing Resistance
“After being stopped from moving 2 times, unit is unable to be stopped from moving during next 12 seconds.”
This is necessary so you can’t perpetually keep somebody in place (especially boss) with Cryomancer and other Movement Preventing gladiators.


[h2]Minor Improvements or Polishes[/h2]

• In Ring of Death - Blind Fight, there were situation where you'd get to put 5 gladiators for fight. And since you just started the game you might only have 3 or 4. Now this is fixed and until you finish first championship you will never get Blind Fight with this many gladiators to place.
  
• Gladiator health bars color are now same as gladiator team color. So ally and enemy gladiators are more easily distinguished during chaotic battles.
  
• When you click on bank you can see “Coming Soon” screen for Loan mechanic. It was unclear what that empty space was and why it was called a Bank when you could only trade resources there.
  
• In Bank when you roll over button to buy/sell resources it’s clear what left and right click do:
  
• In Ring of Death - Blind Fight. When you roll over Lock Team button you will see this explanation:
  “After Locking your team, you can still reposition gladiators and give them items from inventory. But you can no longer access other gladiators.”
  
• When you click on Gladiators button “Sell”, now there is pop up screen asking you if you are sure.
  
• Rolling over Ability Stats like Execution Speed or Cooldown show how the stat is calculated (even though the numbers are fairly small).
  
• Rolling over wages icon in Timeline will show the total amount of wages that you need to pay this month.
  
• Various other polishes that will make game feel smoother and more intuitive.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Graveyard Championship bug where epic and rare coupon fights have same difficulty is fixed.
  
• Several Level Editor bugs are fixed.
  
• Gladiators on discount used to show full price when their panel is open. Now it’s fixed.
  
• Gladiator building upgrades were about to increase the XP rate of that gladiator. And this feature was not working at all. Now it’s fixed. It can be even combined with quirk that let’s gladiator gain more XP.
  
• Selling equipped item directly from gladiator then pressing Undo Button would cause bug.
  Also if you sell just an item. And then move it’s position the Undo Sell Button for item would stop working. Now fixed.
  
• And many other various small bug are fixed.
  

Wow! This was the longest update post we ever made ːsteamhappyːːsteamthumbsupː
So I’ll try to wrap this up quickly.
Here is what we are planing to work on next:

[h3]Fatigue/Rest Time[/h3]
We want to implement fatigue feature for gladiators and test out this design that would push you towards making bigger teams and using more strategy, rather than levelling up only a few powerful gladiators and pushing through game with raw force.
We also want to remove cooldown on Ring of Death. But then we'd use gladiator fatigue to limit you from repeatedly playing it and at the same time this would push you towards using different gladiators as well, while your A-Team is resting.

[h3]Priority Points[/h3]
We want to play around with gladiator priority system. Idea is that we let you tell each gladiator who to focus before the battle starts. Allowing for more strategic gameplay.
(Game will be playable without this too. But for harder challenges having extra tactics could be what some players are looking for)

[h3]More[/h3]
More content, improved enemy formations, polishing and bug fixing.

[h2]Thank you![/h2]
As we said. Release Date for Early Access is set to October 14th! Less than 3 months from now!

Join us on our Discord Community as we’re doing final changes and adding features before the release. Let’s talk about the game!

Talking with you guys is what affected more than half of the changes and new contend that you’ll see once Early Access is out!

Cheers! ːsteamhappyː