Neocolours

It looks fantastic - I love the comicbook-themed artwork and text, that's a great concept for the whole thing. And it's much more visual than the old Battledome while retaining what appears to be roughly the same functionality. I'm not sure what the pros/cons of being offered 'rewards' (shown as a small amount of NP on the JN screenshots) after a successful fight would be for the neo-economy.

Wow! It does look amazing! I seem to somewhat have faith.

I was really worried when they were talking about taking the battledome offline "for a little while" they meant a few years and neoschools 2.0 was inevitable. The fact that they intelligently only took it down when they had a mostly usable beta product (since you can't code something like THAT in two weeks, I'm sure) makes me happy they're professional and stuff.

I wonder if we'll have the new BD by christmas?

:O It looks amazing! I'm so excited about this. *dances*

Madge wrote:I was really worried when they were talking about taking the battledome offline "for a little while" they meant a few years and neoschools 2.0 was inevitable.

Totally this. I figured it'd be March before we got any sort of update. I'm really excited to see that's not the case!

Though, seeing the screenshots where the opponent get's to have multiple poses while your pet is it's little static, eye/mouth movement only self, is pretty sad. I would've loved to see the old battle poses involved here, the layering effect looks awesome otherwise!

Agreed on the old battle poses - you wouldn't wear your froo-froo outfits to the battledome, would you?

Then again, Sail is a royalgirl lupe with the pirate clothes so I can only imagine her battledome pictures would show her in a dress and crown. I wonder if they just made battledome poses for each pets "naked"? It would also mean less work, and we know how TNT loves that

That'd be too much work anyway, though. They'll keep the static outfits.

Update from the news sites:

IDB's coverage now has a video of the battledome gameplay. Lots of animation, could it be too much?

Sunnyneo's coverage has much more pictures and information on the item prizes.

It's all shiny and new style, but the substance doesn't seem to have changed at all. You still have 8 weapons, 2 per turn, and it's still point-click-wait. Even if the animation is done with html5, I can't imagine it being faster than the old system when fighting a single opponent hundreds of times in a row. So, meh from me.

Well, it looks nice, sure. And I do like how they're making the different arenas actually matter, with different opponents and various rewards depending where you battle.

But I can't help but wonder what's going to happen with plot-related battles once this goes live. Even with souped-up servers or whatever it would take, I can't imagine trying to keep all those little animated bits and bobs going during a plot.

Looks nicer and all, but I thought the whole problem everyone had with the battledome was the battle mechanics? I mean, you win automatically if you can afford the better weapon and half the stats serve no purpose. I assumed that was what they were focusing on fixing - giving players a legitimate battle system on par with a real game, and not a "battle" mode that's practically just for show :p

I'm also concerned about load time per turn, as not everyone is on high speed internet with awesome computers. Fancy graphics are pretty, but one problem with the old Battledome was that it was a little cumbersome. This doesn't seem to help that - might actually make it worse in that respect.

It's a nice update, though I agree that the graphics are a bit much. There are also two concerns that I'm seeing mentioned on the boards:

-You no longer auto-heal after a battle. With Neo's lack of affordable quality healers, it could keep casual battlers away. But, if they do add in cheaper good healers, it could really devalue some of the priciest items in most people's weapons set (BoHD, Jade SS, LEV).

-Opponents no longer get more difficult after every win. And the 3-tiered difficulty system is a bit insane, with the Qasalan Mummy having something like 15k hp on its hardest version. Maybe a glitch, but I hope both things are reconsidered.

And, I hope missing faerie abilities are only a temporary thing; I didn't read all the notes yet to see if it's been mentioned.

It's open to everyone now. I fought a couple of opponents in each dome. The domes are gorgeous, and the animation is neat; I didn't feel like the animation itself slowed anything down at all. However, waiting for the attack animation every turn got very annoying very fast. This seems to only be a cosmetic change, too. Movement is still useless and nothing else seems to have changed. The rewards are nice -- I won some useful stuff, including a book, a couple of vux codestones and a main codestone. I really can't see myself getting back into battling because of this, though.

Screenies of a few opponents/domes, although you really have to go play it to see the animation:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... stlupe.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... tlupe2.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... sabrex.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... kpteri.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... owager.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... grarrl.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... walein.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/ ... arrior.png

Edited to add: Argh, 750 is the new str (and def?) boost! No! I was DONE!

I hate that you don't heal after winning a battle. I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea that this was implemented. I guess what I hate is that there is no healer type place to go. The healing springs are too random. I want a feature like Subeta has. You get a full on heal by paying for it.

Yeah, the healing thing irked me as well. I just bought a Greater Healing Scroll and fight really easy challengers between 'proper' challengers to regain HP.

I did have a play around, but it was pretty tedious. The animation is cool, sure, but it got very old very fast. I gave up after my third battle. Also very disappointed that there wasn't an effort made to fix the actual problems with the dome and that it seems like mainly an aesthetic change.

Also, colour me unimpressed that the Battledome already has an NC add-in. Sure, they're wearables and not weapons, but it didn't really fill me with confidence.