Jackpot Arena – Gamedesign interview

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Interview


Greetings Space Pilots,


The Jackpot Battle has been a companion to DarkOrbit for many years now, but it urgently needed an update to reflect the highly competitive nature of the game and its participants. This led us to create the Jackpot Arena (JPA) – a tournament of fierce one-on-one fights in which only one player can take home the grand prize!

This idea of course did not just come out of nowhere, but from our game designers. Today our game designer Beni will fill us in on the JPA.


1) So Beni, why change the old-school Jackpot Battle?

• Our reason for wanting to create a new jackpot system was that the old system was mainly dominated by large groups. As a result, players who were not part of large groups were left with a very small chance of winning. So we decided to set up a system that gives every player a chance to win based on their individual skills.


2) What is the advantage of the new JPA?

• The advantages of the new system are for one the previously mentioned chances of winning for individual players, but also much easier maintenance for us. Once we have collected some real Jackpot Arena experience, we will most likely be able to operate the US battle on local US time later this year. With the old system, this was simply not possible, because we had to closely monitor the battle, and therefore needed to operate both the EU and US battles simultaneously.


3) How will the JPA work in regards to matchmaking, fights and so on?

• The Jackpot Arena starts off like the old Jackpot Battle. All players who want to compete register for the arena via the Jackpot Arena pop-up. The matchmaking for the Jackpot Arena starts shortly before 2:00 p.m. Players scheduled for the first round are then shown who they will fight against in the Jackpot Arena window in their client. There they will also be able to see when they will be warped to their match.

The fight itself takes place on the Jackpot Arena map. Players are warped to this map, and after the 20-second countdown has expired, the match will begin. Matches last five minutes, but if there is no winner after four minutes, the radiation zone will close in in order to force a result. If that doesn’t do the job and both players survive the five-minute mark, the player who has the most hit points left over is then declared the winner of the match. These one-on-one matches continue in rounds until there is only one player left over. This last-surviving player is then declared the winner of the Jackpot Arena.


4) Will there be a new Jackpot currency?

• The Jackpot currency won’t change and can still be collected from bonus boxes. That way, players who already have jackpot currency collected will be able to hold onto it in the new system.


5) Any idea if the old-school Jackpot Battle will be used again in another form? Players are dying to have one huge battle across all servers ... or will we use the new JPA system?

• There are currently no plans to reuse the old Jackpot Battle system. Since it is very maintenance heavy, it would be difficult to integrate it as a standard game element. But the new one-on-one system can surely be applied to new events. Only time will tell.

Thank you to Energy for their assistance on this thread.