Gladiator Guild Manager News

We had so much amazing feedback lately as we are getting the game to it's final stage.
There are several very serious issues that can make or break the game. Here are the main ones:

• There is a lot of waiting in the game where you just watch time pass and wait for opportunity to do something.
  
• Optimal way of playing is to just build one small team of gladiators and make them as powerful as possible. We are losing a lot of strategic elements this way. What we intended in first place is that you'd build a larger group of gladiators and use them tactically. Have your top gladiators but also your less effective gladiators that are still useful.
  
• Now that you can assign stat points to gladiators as they level up, the stat balancing issues are more obvious than ever before.
  
• Game could use more depth. We want that "Easy to start, but hard to master" mentality in the game. But our "Hard to master" part of the formula could use some work.
  
• And more smaller things that could make gameplay more engaging.
  

Thanks to all your feedback, as well as ideas from discord, and watching streamers on Twitch like
Hillhome and especially form an amazing analysis video from TooTechnical on youtube we put together a list of things we believe will fix all these issues and make the game at least twice as good.

After putting all these together and thinking it through here is what we are planing to do:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Video is lengthy. But I go through most important things in first 30 minutes. We'd love to hear your opinion about any part of our plans for the game in order to make the game as good and enjoyable as possible.

You can join our Discord Community and chat with us about those or any other ideas. Or to follow up development closer and chat with other players.

Thank you all!

Here is another bigger update for Gladiator Guild Manager.
Join us on Discord and tell us what you think.

[h2]Ring of Death Progress[/h2]
Now each ring of death arena has 12 levels of progress. Each battle getting harder than the previous one. Finishing each 3rd battle brings the item reward.

Although at this point we are considering is we should keep this feature or go back to the way it was.
Just now before the update we realized some issues this feature might bring. For example, if you keep losing some arena, and you maxed out all ring of death modes there won't be much to do, but wait for championship. But for this update we’ll keep it to hear what you guys think and we'll consider what to do in next update.

[h2]Better Gladiator AI and Priority Points Panel[/h2]
Each gladiator now has their own priority setting.
Before we had some custom settings on some gladiators. Like Worg targeting back-line enemies. But it was limited and flawed. Now with each gladiator having their own setting they should behave a little bit smarter.
For example, all gladiators highly prioritize enemies that they can attack immediately. Making Worg stop to fight any enemy he comes across. But now this setting is turned off for him, so you can be sure that he’ll run past the front-line fighters and rush towards the back-line ranged and support enemies.

[h2]Priority Points Panel[/h2]
You can turn on Priority Points toggle during battle.

While it’s turned on, when you click on your gladiator, instead of Unit Info Panel, you will see the units priority points and be able to adjust them.

They all already have default setting that work the best in most scenarios as they are. But you can tweak them to make them behave differently in some situations.
Again with Worg example. If you don’t want him to rush towards back line, turn on the “Enemies In Reach” toggle and he’ll behave like he did before. Or even lower his priority of ranged and support enemies and he’ll behave like a Berserker and just fight whoever is nearest.

Rolling over each of those stats will give you some description of what they do.

These setting are saved. So in order to keep track of gladiators that have changed priority points there is a small asterisk mark on units whose points are changed.


Overall you are easily able to play the game without ever using this tool if you don’t prefer to go to deep into it. But it’s there to give you an extra thing to play with if you want to.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about this. This feature is still open to changes.
If you haven’t already, join our Discord and let’s talk about it.



[h2]Random Starting Buildings[/h2]
At start of the game you can turn on a toggle that will semi-randomize the starting gladiator buildings. Making each run a little bit more unique. While turned off, you will still start with default units: Knight, Berserker, and Archer.


[h2]Unique Units Shop[/h2]
Sometime between 3rd and 4th month, a quest will appear where bandits or peasants will offer you to hire some of them for your guild.

As we keep developing the game and adding new units, more random types of shops will appear.
At some later point of development, we’ll also make unique unit shops appear when you reach certain reputations with either of 3 factions.


[h2]New Soundtrack[/h2]
Ring of death now has a new soundtrack. Intensive version for fight, and passive version for battle preparation.

[h2]Visual[/h2]
-Units have easily noticeable level up animation when they gain level in battle.
-Opening inventory after battle where unit leveled up will make that units icon glow brightly for a moment. Also their icon has an upwards arrow while they have points to spend.
-Once unit revives there is a green cross animation, clearly indicating that the unit is back.
-Ring of death has updated borders art making the wall/floor transition look better. 1vs1 has has updated barackade art that fits better.
-Several other minor art improvements in UI.

[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
-Putting item on unit used to automatically open Unit Info Panel. This usually pretty annoying, especially in battle. Since in most cases you have to close it afterwards. Now this is removed.
-Gladiator Info and Priority Points toggles can be turned on and off by pressing “1” and “2” keyboard keys.


[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]
-Ring of death had 2 panels for clicking fight. Possibly causing some bugs for people who clicked fast twice.
-Selling item or unit while shop is open is now updating the red indications weather or not you can have enough gold for things in shop.
-Clicking on surrender after wining used to give additional rewards. This is now fixed.



[h2]Gladiator Changes[/h2]

[h3]Ideal Range[/h3]
Gladiators ideal range stat is now more effective.

Hunter used to be very problematic because he would move far away from the target and with his low accuracy it was left to luck if he’ll hit an enemy or not. Now ranged gladiators calculates their Ideal Range more accurately and will not move so far away from the enemy if their projectile precision is not good enough.



[h3]Necromancer Nerfed[/h3]
In right circumstances this gladiator is extremely powerful. He can raise so many high level undead that he’s OP for both player and enemy teams.
We did not yet nerf the level of undead he raises. So he can still be a great contribution to your team.
But his initial cooldown is raised from 4 seconds to 15 (can be decreased with agility)
And his execution speed from 0.1 seconds to 1 second (with minimum of 0.2 second with a lot of agility)

[h3]Invigorator Buffed[/h3]
His Divine Vigor is now giving about 20% higher stat boost.
In combination with his stamina regeneration ability he should be more useful.






[h3]Gladiator Stats[/h3]
Updating/balancing gladiator stats so that your point allocation matters more. For example we might make archers damage depend more on strength, while keeping her cooldown and execution speed with agility. This way you’ll decide if you want her to shoot faster or deal higher damage per arrow. This will come in even more handy with passive abilities from items that are also on our next list.

[h3]New items[/h3]
We intend to add a lot more items soon. We will separate them in two types:

-Common Items
Items that have certain level and give certain amount of stats (pretty much how most of the items are right now)

-Universal Items
Items that are tied to percentages and synergetic buffs. Like item that makes gladiator deal 30% higher damage to enemies that are frozen. Or item that makes gladiators melee attack freeze enemy.
Those will not have a level since they will stay consistently useful throughout the whole game. And will enable you to make creative synergetic teams for maximum efficiency.


[h3]Additional Quests[/h3]
More quests so that each playthrough feels more unique.


[h3]Feedback[/h3]
We’ve been listening to a lot of feedback and watching people play the game. You guys made a huge contribution to the game by telling us about your experience and about what you'd like to see in the game. But there are still things to change, improve and add.

Join us in our Discord Community to hang out, keep closer eye on development, and even better, tell us your thoughts about the game and help shape it into the best possible version that all of us will enjoy :)

Thank you!

[h2]Here's what new:[/h2]

• Gladiators and items in shops have red frame when you don't have enough gold to buy them.
  
• We started improving gladiators AI (Still long road ahead but we're restructuring code and they might behave a bit different in some situations already)
  
• Ring of Death gold inflation fixed (Now the further you get in the game, more gold it will provide).
  
  We're intending on further updating Ring of Death feature in the next patch. So each of the modes would have it's own rank and goal is to climb as high as possible. Getting better rewards at specific milestones:
  
  Eventually we'll also add boss fighting mode (4th panel). But this mode will come only after Early Access as it will take a lot of time to create different bosses.
  
  [h3]More Minor Updates:[/h3]
  
• Undead Yeti bugs and animation fixed
  
• Guild background replaced for a bit nicer one
  
• Map arena selection bugs fixed
  
• Tooltip over sell item and undo sell buttons
  
• Added end battle button in Editor
  
• Placing units in editor is now more smooth
  
• Worgs now have higher priority for selecting ranged units like Archers or Pyromancers
  
• Archers are nerfed. A bit lesser damage, minimum execution speed increased from 0.2 seconds to 0.3 seconds, and weaker push force (we are currently working on push force, freeze (stopping gladiators), and other movement features)
  
• And bunch of small things/fixes/improvements that we forgot to write down so now we don't know what they are ːsteamfacepalmː
  

Anyway, we're getting closer and closer to where getting the game in state we want it to be. Thank you for being with us on this journey of developing and shaping up the game!
If you have any feedback as always tell us here on steam community or even better join our Discord Community and chat with us there!

Thank you all!

Hey guys! Here is the newest progress of the game. We gathered your feedback from the last big closed beta update and from people following the development. Our main goal right now is to make the gameplay loop more fun, engaging, and with more things to play with.

Join our Discord Server to follow development more closely, talk with us and share your thoughts with the community.



[h2]New Timeline[/h2]
Timelines now consist of a full month with 30 days included, instead of 10.
Throughout the month, the timeline will move to the left, displaying info about things that are coming your way. Those include: gladiator/shop updates, shop discounts, current weather and upcoming weather, when you will have to pay your gladiator’s wages and when the championship is going to happen.


Gladiator wages are always at day 30 and are paid automatically (if you don’t have enough gold, the gold will go into negative value, but you will not lose your gladiators).
On the bottom right corner of the screen you’ll see text indicating how much gold was spent on gladiator wages.

Championships are always held on the first day of each month.
The activities you do throughout the month serve to prepare you for the most important part of progressing in the game: winning the championship.

There is now a weather system that affects gladiators in combat. This provides more strategy, as you know which gladiators are less effective during which weather so you can prepare accordingly.

Weather changes affect most arenas. But there are arenas like Ancient Temple or Hollow Mountain that always have the same weather buff so you know what to expect there.

From time to time a gladiator or item shop discount will appear on the timeline and you’ll be able to see how long the discounts last. It will discount random gladiators or items in shop with random discount percentages.



[h2]Ring of Death Arena[/h2]

While preparing for championship at start of the next month, between quests you’ll also be able to play the Ring of Death Arena. After playing this arena, it will become available again in 7 days.

In this arena you’ll be able to choose 3 different modes:

• Blind fight
  Choose your gladiators without seeing the enemy team.
  
• One VS One
  Choose a single gladiator to fight against an enemy champion.
  
• One VS Many
  Choose a single gladiator to fight against many enemies. Another difference here is that enemies can be positioned at any part of the arena and so can your gladiator (no left and right side like in other battles)
  

Each of these will unlock after finishing one championship.


[h2]Gladiator Level Up Points[/h2]
Previously, stat points were automatically allocated when gladiators levelled up. From now on, when gladiators level up, you’ll be able to choose which stats you want to put the points in and with that have more control over the progression of your gladiators.



You can mouse over gladiator abilities to see how stats affect the calculations of the ability (such as damage, cooldown, etc). We’ll try to explain this in the tutorial once the game is ready for Early Access.
(This was already in the game before. It’s just a reminder since we seen people asking what those stats actually do.)



[h2]More[/h2]
-In the championship, you will only face the types of gladiators that you can hire yourself (or if buildings of those gladiators are available for buying). This feature will shine more once there is a larger pool of gladiators to choose from, making each playthrough more unique.
-Small gladiator AI improvement that helps them target enemies who are dealing higher damage.
-Some bug fixes, visual improvements and other minor things.


[h3]Note:[/h3]
Keep in mind, now that the timeline lasts 30 days, if you stay longer on some championships you might run out of quests. This will be solved by adding more of them soon. But you’ll always have the option to play some of the Ring of Death Arena modes each 7 days. And eventually we’ll add even more things to do, to make the gameplay more dynamic, engaging and interesting (You can read about the new features we plan to add below).




-Next things we’re planning to focus on is collaboration with local businesses for passive income. There will be a few available businesses, like a small stone mine or woodcutting camp. They will call for your help and you will need to fight several waves of enemies to set them free. After that the local business will give you part of their income, but from time to time they will ask for your protection.
You’ll be able to see passive income indicators on the timeline.

-Synergy for gladiators with various buffs. Example: Item that makes the gladiator deal 30% higher damage to frozen targets, making this gladiator very efficient if paired with the Cryomancer, who can freeze enemies. And many, many other combinations increasing the tactical possibilities of the game.

-First parts of the Main Quest Chains.
Also more side quests, so there is higher variety in each playthrough and more things to do while preparing for the upcoming championship.

-Expeditions - this feature will probably come a bit later, as it needs a solid amount of work and we have many other things to finish before we get to this. But we started considering it so we want to hear your thoughts about it.
The idea is that you’d be able to buy a guild building that lets you use a caravan and send a number of gladiators on an expedition. You’d see a hand drawn map of a dangerous, uninhabited nearby region that you would explore and dwell deeper into.
There would be no actual battles to look at. You would only send a couple of gladiators and they would be unavailable for a certain amount of days, depending on how far you sent them.

When they return, they would bring the news of what happened. If they were successful, they would bring you some loot and resources. If not, you’ll need to consider sending stronger troops or a higher number of troops to conquer that part of the map.
The map would have caves, old buildings/towers occupied by bandits, forests and other locations with valuable loot. Sometimes abandoned, but more often occupied with various enemies that need to be defeated by your caravan party of gladiators.

We feel like this would be a pretty fun additional thing to do. Planning which gladiators to send, and when to send them to get the most out of them. That is also different from usual battles so it would add to variety in the gameplay and keep things more engaging.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about this idea.

If you haven’t already, join us in our Discord Community where you can follow up development more closely or chat with us about the direction that the game is going and help us with your feedback to make the best game that we can! :)


Thank you for your patience and all the valuable feedback! We’re working hard on getting the game fun and polished before Early Access, and we’re getting closer and closer.

Basic editor functions are now ready in beta!
You can put together friendly and enemy gladiator teams, set their levels, and watch them fight!



There is also an option to copy friendly or enemy team so you can send it to a friend or to our Discord Community to show others the teams that you've made.

Keep in mind that is is just a basic version of the editor and new features are coming. We’re planing on adding options to choose items and quirks for gladiators. And eventually additional abilities for each gladiator.

Another feature we're planing is Challenge Mode. Where you can create an enemy team, set amount of points player can use to create their team (for gladiators, items, etc) and then send the challenge to a friend.
We'd also have prepared Challenges that you can load in the game and test your skills.


This features is both something we need for development and a fun toy to play with and test how gladiators work (or don’t work ːsteamhappyː). This will be a huge help in figuring out when the gladiators behaviour breaks, or where they don’t act in the way they should.
But more importantly, a place for you to test out some strategies and combinations really quickly.

Here’s a quick tutorial about how to use the editor: https://youtu.be/lh9ATHRmsf0

All feedback about what you'd like to see or change in the Editor is more than welcome! Tell us here or in our Discord Community.

Also we have new channel on Discord called #share-editor-team where you can share your teams or try teams that others have made.

Thanks for following up on the development of the game!

Next feature that we’re planing to focus on is changing how timeline works and adding weather effects that will affect all the gladiators in the arena. As well as to update the editor with new features.