Hello everyone!
If you've been following the Road Map, you are well aware that the next update is the release of The Great Forge, a new endgame mode.
In this Chronicle, we'll talk a bit more about the mode itself, why we can't give a release date yet and what went wrong during development (nothing to worry about, just a few stepbacks).
The Great Forge
When we first thought about The Great Forge, the most important thing we wanted it to be was some form of "Endless Waves" type of challenge. Something that looked a bit like some of the Wave-based missions that you can find in the story coupled with the pace of Chaos Breaches.
That hasn't changed, so you can definitely expect a Wave-based mode out of The Great Forge.
However, we've been trying to add our own touch to the mode, and that's were things went wrong. We've tried a few concepts and different approaches regarding rewards or progression that were not working the way we wanted to.
To understand how we try to design an endgame mode, we try to offer:
- A different gameplay loop. Something that moves away from what you can see in Battlefield expeditions, which is the default "Clear Breaches->Clear Floor->Repeat" gameplay loop.
- A form of Progression inside the mode, so you can see yourself progress and unlock new things.
- A form of "Meta-Progression" which should be a new layer a progression that makes you stronger even in other modes. So besides just fun, it should be the one good reason for players to play that mode.
For The Slorm Temple, the different gameplay would be the different environment, the fact that you're playing against a timer and against The Temple Keeper and the various Traps waiting for you inside.
The Progression would be to reach the latest floor and defeat the final Temple Keeper while unlocking upgrades that makes your life easier. As for the Meta-Progression, it would be to unlock Ultimatums and purchase Pure Stats related upgrades.
A wild screenshot appears. What's a Great Forge without Lava ?
Just for fun, I'll talk about some of the design ideas we had for The Great Forge.
Please note that they were discarded for the time being at this very moment in development but they may come back later down the road if we find a better approach to implement them.
- The Tower Defense Hybrid: At first, we tried to mix a Wave-based mode with Tower Defenses mechanics. So basically, you had one large arena with various paths where enemies would come in to try and destroy the Forge you had to defend. And you had various towers you could drop on the battefield to help you out. This is the VERY basic idea and I'm not going to detail everything that was involved but basically the main issue was that in the current state, most endgame players would simply not need the help of towers to clear what we could throw at them, regardless of number or scaling. The pace was also pretty slow and involved the player going back and forth between the various lanes. We came up with solutions for these issues but they also came up with their own problems which is why we dropped it. We had super cool ideas for upgrades related to Towers and a very nice Talent Tree that came with it though. :(
- The Reaper Runes: We've tried our best to implement this one, and it may very well come into the game later once we figure out how to make it work. Basically, we wanted to give the player the ability to extract effects from Slorm Reapers in the form of Runes that could then be equipped without using the Reaper itself.
Let's say you wanted to extract effects from Adam Nostrus' Reaper: after a bit of farming inside The Great Forge, you would end up with a Reaper Rune with the effect "Whenever you open a Breach, you gain Adam's Blessing, granting you +20% Attack Speed for the next 5 seconds" and/or another Rune with the "+21 Raw Damage" or with the "+15% Attack Speed" from it.
The player would have 3 Rune Slots where he could equip either Minor Runes (containing "Minor" simple effects and taking up 1 Rune Slot) or Major Runes (containing "Major" effects such as new Ancestral Skills or Synergies and taking up 2 Rune Slots).
What's cool about this idea is that disregarded effects from Reapers deemed too weak could very combine very well with another.
We were not happy with our integration with The Great Forge and couldn't find a proper way to balance the whole thing, so we discarded the idea for now.
What's important is that we came to the conclusion that both ideas (besides the fact that they were flawed and that we still had to fix many blanks) were potentially adding a great number of balance issues that we would later have to fix. And of these, we already have more than enough.
So we're going the other way around: instead of adding fancy things that may very well break the game even more, we're instead looking at some of the issues that needs to be adressed and use the Great Forge as a way to fix them.
This means we're shifting toward a lighter mode, and we will probably go easy on new mechanics, but we really feel like our ideas went too far for where we currently are in development and what our goals currently are, which is to deliver a top-notch 1.0, with a balanced experience, within a respectable timeframe.
The Great Forge, HyonD, 2022. Work in progress
Slorm Reapers Issues
Besides The Great Forge, the next update will also contain a number of fixes and changes regarding Slorm Reapers.
As I've mentioned above, The Great Forge will offer various solutions to some issues we're facing with Slorm Reapers.
Below is the list of issues but the solution for those is still a work in progress. :)
- We want to ease how regular Slorm Reapers are unlocked with other classes. Basically, if you find a super cool Reaper with your Knight and want to try it out with your Mage, then it should be easier than the classic "pray and farm" technique.
- We also want to ease how Primordial Slorm Reapers are unlocked. The very first Primordial Slorm Reaper you get should remain quite a feat. However, subsequent Primordial Slorm Reapers should be easier to obtain.
- Unlocking Primordial Slorm Reapers should also be drastically easier when you are trying to unlock it for the second or third time on a different class.
- Primordial Slorm Reapers should be much more fun to unlock. Right now the feeling once you unlock a Primordial Slorm Reaper is negative since you know you have to farm from scratch again. Basically, there's an abysmal difference between what's required to get the Primordial Slorm Reaper and what you actually feel once you get it. And this has to change.
- We're also looking at reducing the difference of damage between the different Reapers in order to emphasize the mechanics and not only their damage.
We're also considering adding a new option from Professor Geranium where you would leave a Slorm Reaper to him and he would work on unlocking its Primordial form while you do your own stuff, just like "Pokemon daycare" if you're familiar with the idea.
This would be on top of other solutions we plan to bring to ease the whole Primordial process but I thought I'd mention it.
The Mighty Knight Mk.II
Besides Slorm Reapers and Great Forges, we're also reworking a couple of skills from The Mighty Knight for the next update. Right now, we've only changed the "mechanic/feeling" of said skills which should be enough to make them enjoyable.
- Ascension has been reworked so that it is an actual Movement Skill. It's basically much faster and with a smoother jump that doesn't interrupt your rhythm.
- Whirlwind has been reworked to feel much better. Most changes were minor but completely changed the feeling: Whirlwind no longer "ticks" every few frames but immediately hits enemies that come within its range. The range is slightly larger and the Cooldown is slightly shorter. Oh, and the Knockback has been removed.
- Crest Shield has been reworked so that you are no longer locked in a "Cast" state. So you can now move normally and cast other Skills (or other Crest Shields even) while a Shield is moving.
Well, it seems like I had a lot of things I wanted to say, even though we've been struggling with progress lately. And as you can see, development is not a linear process.
We hope you had fun reading it.
That's about it for now!
Have a nice day!