Faeria Friday: Enter the Crucible

Announcements
#1

This summer, we’re introducing a new match and tournament format. Learn all about it here.

New features incoming

We’ve mentioned our plans to continuously add monthly content for Faeria this summer, but we haven’t really talked too much about the new features we have in the works. Along with the release of the first new content will come some brand new additions to Faeria that we’re very excited about.

Today we’d like to share one of them.

Introducing: Crucible

One of our most favorite aspects of the Faeria community is the competitive scene we’ve built up over time. Not only do our top players help demonstrate the game at its highest level, they create an interesting spectacle for an audience to watch. We remain fully committed to supporting our esports scene and improving it as time goes on.

When we first introduced our integrated tournament system, we knew we wanted to expand upon it in the future. The first part of this expansion was the Faeria World Circuit which began earlier this year and is now in its second season.

This summer, we will introduce a new match format: Crucible.

###A new game & tournament format

The new Crucible format will join the currently existing Pantheon in our official tournaments. We’ve had a long time to watch and listen to our competitive community and have put together a format that we believe will elevate both playing and watching our tournament events to the next level. Not only that, but we plan to allow private lobbies to access this game mode at any time.

###What is Crucible?

As a refresher, here is a summary of the current Pantheon rules:

Match Format: Pantheon

  • Each player submits 3 decks
  • You cannot use more than 3 of any card (or 1 of any Legendary) across your entire set of decks.
  • The first deck submitted is the player’s starting deck.
  • When a deck wins, player’s must use that deck again in next game of the same match.
  • When a deck loses, it is eliminated.

While we like the Pantheon format, we recognize that it carries with it some complications. For one thing, players tend to go into matchups completely blind, unaware of what their opponent may be playing. This can make deck selection after the first game tricky or put players in a spot where they need to guess what might be coming their way. Nonetheless, the best of our players have found a way to consistently finish near the top demonstrating that careful deck construction and piloting skills still tend to win out overall.

In the Crucible format, we want to give players and spectators a bit more information beforehand. We also want to provide a bit more control over what players will be facing by allowing the banning of decks. To accomodate for the deck banning, we need to expand the deck restrictions in order to allow for more deck diversity.

Much like with our Pantheon format, players participating in an official tournament will register their decks in-game beforehand. Here is how it will work:

Match Format: Crucible

  • Each player submits 4 decks
  • Each deck cannot share more than 12 cards with any other deck in the lineup
  • Opponent decks appear before the match starts.
  • Each deck displays its average Faeria cost
  • Each deck displays the amount of cards in each color
  • Players choose one of their opponent’s decks to ban.
  • Players choose a deck to begin. If it wins, players must continue using it until it loses.

This “banning phase” will be visible to all spectators to allow for discussion and commentary on streams. Players won’t be able to see what their opponent’s ban is until after their own ban is complete.

We’ve observed a lot of great community tournaments over time, and here we are taking some inspiration from the Faeria Team League which took place near the middle of 2017. We thought it provided for some very interesting matches and decided to adapt it in a way that makes it more accessible on our client.

The end result should be a more engaging tournament lobby and match experience.

Private lobby enabled

Not only will official tournaments support this new game mode, but we will be adding the ability to access this feature in private lobbies at any time. This will allow easier practice for tournaments or even just playing the mode for fun.

Esports website improvements

In addition to all of this, we have an overhaul planned for our existing esports landing page to account for the recent changes to our competitive system and make relevant information generally more readily available. We aim to have these improvements in place by the release of the first new content this summer.

We hope you’re as excited as we are for all we have planned, and will continue to share more as we get closer to our final product.

As always, thank you for your continued feedback!

Ruunin Open #1 Recap

Speaking of esports, here’s the recap from our most recent official tournament, the first Ruunin Open of the season.

Minocaro sweeps the grand finals in a convincing 3-0 fashion piloting Cappuccino’s unique Tempo Yellow Flyer deck. Having placed 2nd in last season’s FWC point total and winning the Aurora Seasonal Cup, Minocaro appears to be on an unstoppable win streak lately.

Russian connectivity issues

We’re aware of a problem where some Russian players are unable to access Faeria. This is due to a recent government ban of certain foreign IP’s that some ISP’s have enforced. We have requested a whitelist of our specific servers from the appropriate authority. Unfortunately, we cannot estimate when this problem may be resolved.

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#2

I kinda like that format. It’s still a little confusing, but it adds a certain amount of bluffing to the deck selection process. Also, it encourages a wide variety of decks to be played and proficient with, just in case your opponent bans your best deck