It’ll also means the end of Nananea’s #Gated twitch stream animation – travesty! Levelling
It will be interesting to see how the new barriers work out in testing, they represent quite a major change. The barriers have fewer hitpoints than the old gates, but they can be repaired when destroyed by channeling at them (if a repairing player takes damage, it interrupts the repair).
The new barriers are simple: allies can move through them, enemies cannot. It also means the barriers are more useful for the duration of the game, as opposed to gates that could not be repaired once destroyed. This helps give defenders something to think about during wave spawns. The barriers can still be destroyed like gates, but they can now be repaired. These barriers allow allied players to pass through freely, whilst stopping enemy units and heroes.
In patch 2.4 gates have been completely re-worked and they are now “barriers”. Gates have long been a discussion on the OMDU forums with alot of people taking issue of their usefulness and confusion they present for new players. This means enemies won’t be visible on the map unless they are in the line of sight of allied heroes, guardians or barriers (gates).This has just been added to PvP for the moment. In order to make resource cache collecting more interesting and to increase more random encounters, Fog of War has been added in patch 2.4. The new caches add extra depth for defenders who will now also need to think about defending these resources in addition to guardians and barriers (gates). Once destroyed the cache will be re-spawned in 70 seconds. This will be called pillaging. Picking up pillaged items splits 100 XP amongst nearby allied heroes (making the heroes level faster) and sends 250 leadership to the war camp associated with the lane (making it level faster). The resource caches will currently be pots that have been placed on each map and when broken allow players to help level up their war camps. Now in 2.4 the war camps level up automatically, simply by escorting minions or pillaging resource caches. By removing the need to spend leadership also means players don’t have to keep thinking about going back to spend their leadership at the war camp, disturbing their focus. The main driving factor behind this is to reduce the complexity of the war camps which player feedback continued to suggest were confusing for new players. This is quite a significant change and re-designs alot of how war camps work. In 2.4 Robot will be removing Leadership as a resource.
Here are his details from the patch notes: The Soul Harvest now has alot more depth, allowing him to get stronger as the game progresses for players who can harvest souls well. His abilities have been adjusted from the Ancestor and he retains many of the same underlying abilities such as his life steal (now Vampiric Burst). His tagline is the “Soul Thief” and he is of the Unchained alignment compared to Ancestor who was fighting for the Order. Oziel replaces the Ancestor from the earlier OMDU patches. To help you digest the patch notes we’ve picked out some headline changes. Well we can’t say we wernt forewarned that the upcoming 2.4 patch for Orcs Must Die! Unchained was to be a biggie, the patch notes are now available online, and wow, are they long! The sheer length of the patch notes is also an indicator of just how many changes even with the core game play are coming with 2.4.