TT2 DEVLOG #10: First look into v.2.0 ⚔

August 25, 2017

Originally published on the official Tap Titans 2 subreddit.

We’re marchin’ our way to Tap Titans 2(.0)!

If you’re just getting caught up on what’s been going on in for TT2, today’s (lengthy) DevLog is where you can find out about the good, the bad (persistent bugs) and the new (lots to come)!

Update v2.0 (i.e. Tap Titans 2.0) is going the biggest update made to TT2 so far, with multiple new features to be played, balance & journey to tap through and more items to be collected. As you may already know know, in the past couple months we have been balancing the game for a “future expansion” that we have continued to mention (Soon™). Well this is it — the beginning of the transformation we’ve been working on. The first little teaser was posted yesterday… and that’s just a small preview!

Before we get into the overview of the enhancements that will be made, we wanted to also note the server fix made earlier this week, in case you missed the in-game announcement. The changes addressed artifact salvaging and Titan HP.

The HP of Titan Bosses has been reduced for all current clan levels, with a much greater reduction given for brand new clans.
Already salvaged artifacts are now unable to be rediscovered until all other artifacts are discovered.

Note: These changes were updated on the game server – no new download was required.

These changes, along with all the tweaks and balancing so far (ie. read the latest notes), have all been in anticipation of v2.0. Taking into account all the feedback over the past few months, whether it be from DevLogs, monthly Q&As or our discord channel, update 2.0 is, needless to say, a huge revisal on gameplay (+ with some sweet new items to check out as well). Currently we are getting the beta for 2.0 ready for playing. We will keep our online community here posted on the ETA for the official launch of v2.0.

Some of the most significant changes you’ll notice in Tap Titans 2.0 include the following:

New Skill Tree

As you can see from the teasers posted, the skill tree has been revamped to create more gameplay options for players to choose from. We wanted to develop more content and customization options for players, without changing the core meta of the game. With this idea in mind, we revised the skill tree by creating multiple options of gameplay “branches” to choose from, without one specific way being distinctively more overpowering than others. Hence the new paths your Sword Master can take:

Knight (Tap and Pet focus)
Warlord (Heroes and Clan Ship focus)
Sorcerer (Active Skills with a heavy Shadow Clone focus)
Rogue (Inactive Advancement focus)

Your Sword Master is also not restricted to just one path! For example, you can assume the roles and use the skills of a Knight and Rogue; Sorcerer and Rogue; Warlord and Knight… etc. With the new skill tree, we open up several new ways of gameplay for you to explore. And don’t worry!… In v2.0, all players will be given a free skill tree respec.! On top of this, we will also be reducing the diamond costs to reset your skill tree, meaning that it will be much easier to try out all sorts of different combinations!

Stage Cap and New Content

In v2.0, you’ll be able to enjoy a new stage cap increase, along with new Titans to defeat, new stage backgrounds to play through, and new artifacts and equipment to collect.

New Equipment Bonus Types

Armor: Boss Gold
Helmet: Sword Master Damage
Aura: Multi-spawn Chance (reskinned from Titan Hit Point auras)
Slash: Clan Ship Damage, Shadow Clone Damage (re-skinned from Tap Damage slash)

Aura Changes: We decided to reskin the previously used Titan Hit Point reduction aura into a Multi-Spawn Chance aura. With the rebalancing work we did on Ambush (which gives Multi-spawn Chance), this bonus will now work during inactive play during Silent March. Additionally, each additional spawn during a multi-spawn will increase the amount of gold earned from that titan as well as mana earned from a Manni Monster spawn!

Slash Changes: Even though tap damage will now be a powerful damage option in v2.0, we decided to reskin the Tap Damage Bonus slash into A. Clan Ship Damage and B. Shadow Clone Damage slashes (these are two separate slashes). The reason for this is that the Tap Damage slash did not thematically fit into the overall new structure and vision v2.0, so it ultimately had to be reworked. With these changes made here, there will be one slash type corresponding to each of the three active skill tree branches (ie. Knight, Warlord, and Sorcerer).

New Artifacts

Clan Ship Damage

A Clan Ship Damage artifact has been added to balance out the Pet Damage and Shadow Clone damage artifacts that are already available in the game. We may possibly be adding additional artifacts as well, so stay tuned for more news!

Tournament System Rework

Starting in v2.0, tournament buckets will be determined by the maximum possible stage of a player (as determined by our server algorithms), as opposed to a player’s maximum prestige stage. This means that there is no longer any incentive to remain at a lower maximum stage, so you are now free to push as high as possible! In addition to this change, we’ll be reducing the number of players per tournament in the highest tournament brackets, in order to keep tournaments more competitive and ensure that everyone is guaranteed a higher final placing. Moreover, we’ve also put several measures in on the server to ensure that this new bucket system cannot be exploited. For example, we are now saving everyone’s maximum clan level bonus ever obtained to avoid having a system where players leave their clan right before a tournament starts in order to join a weaker tournament bucket.

Intimidating Presence Change

As mentioned previously, Intimidating Presence is now a passive bonus based on the total amount of skill points you’ve collected. Since this is an automatic bonus that no longer consumes skill points, the skill point to Intimidating Presence effect conversion will not be as efficient as it was in all previous game versions. One of our design goals with v2.0 was to increase the average time to reach max stage a bit and add more play along the way – This does notmean that your individual progression rates will be reduced! To compensate the increased amount of time to reach your max stage, we’ve greatly bumped up the relics earned at higher stages, and have given equipment a much stronger boost as well. Additionally, all of your newly available skill points you’ll have can be used to offset this change by upgrading the several new increased splash effect skills, monster kill rate skills, as well as the newly buffed Ambush (formally Titan Family) skill.

Clan Damage Bonus

We know that this question has been asked a lot recently, and now that we are closer to releasing v2.0, we are finally ready to address it. The clan damage bonus has been the most broken bonus in the game since launch, and we’ve decided to greatly reduce and redistribute its effect to other bonus sources. This means that while the clan damage bonus won’t be as powerful in v2.0, we are making hero weapon sets, skill tree upgrades, equipment, and artifacts much stronger to compensate. Our goal with this change was not to hamper the progression or max stage potential of any players but to simply balance and put more play back into the game. For example, it wasn’t possible to make the new skill tree interesting and meaningful when the clan damage bonus was so outrageously high. We’ll be working as hard as we can over the next few weeks to balance this change properly so that the vast majority of players can at least reach their same max stage in v2.0 as they already can now in v1.9. In practice though, we expect that most players will experience a slight bump in max stage potential after all of the rebalancing is complete.

Advanced Start Stage

To help compensate the reduced effectiveness of the clan damage bonus, we’ve increased the effectiveness of the advanced start stage that clans provide, and greatly increased the maximum values that can be obtained. Currently the advanced start bonus maxes out for clans that have reached clan level 800, but in v2.0 this bonus will continue to increase all the way up until clan level 5000!

Cheater Detection Rework

With the upcoming stage cap increase, there has been much concern about how effectively cheaters will be handled. We are currently in the process of rewriting our cheater detection algorithms to make the detection process much tighter than it currently is, ensuring a fair gameplay environment for everyone who is playing by the rules. Additionally, we have been and will continue to permanently ban players who have been caught using scripts or other forms of automated gameplay. The integrity of our game environment is something that is very important to us, and we continue to work on our systems to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to progress throughout the game!

TT2.0 Stream

We’re live! With so much anticipation for Tap Titans 2.0, and to launch our brand new Twitch channel, we’re streaming the beta whenever we can. Please remember that this is the beta that we are streaming in real-time, as we tune up the game. Therefore it is highly likely that a lot of the gameplay (e.g. balancing) you see may be altered as we polish the game with our team of beta players.

Videos will be archived and uploaded on to our YouTube channel periodically, in case you missed the live stream.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that all images and gameplay are property of Game Hive corporation and its creators of content on Twitch. All content can and may be changed at anytime. Images that appear may or may not be in the final release of v2.0.

Bugs Investigating