Hello everyone!
The game was just updated with version 0.32a
In this update I've implemented a number of pretty huge changes, in an effort to make the combat better, fluid and more responsive overall. It's still not final, ofcourse, and will require some testing, I am really interested in your opinions.
Melee combat
The biggest change with melee is reworking of the stamina system. Originally, I intended stamina to throttle combat, preventing player to infinitely stunlocking enemies wiht melee attacks, but there was a number of problems with that approach, the biggest one is stamina starving preventing you to effectively use of your combat abilities.
Now you won't use stamina for simple attacks, you will only use it for melee abilities like powerful strike or whirlwind. Consequently, the enemies stagger reactions were reworked, now you will knockback them at the end of the combo, giving them a chance to attack back. Enemies are now also more aggressive, they are quicker to attack after stagger, and also a lot of them have improved effects before attacking. Stamina will restore slower, you will have lesser stamina overall, running will consume less stamina, and your basic melee damage was reduced by about 30%.
Some of the abilities can now be performing in the middle of the attack, and the input queue was smoothed out to make the combat more responsive. For example you can use warscream when you are attacking, and it will not break your attack sequence, it will just apply an effect.
There were also a number of additional impact effects added in melee to improve audio-visual feedback.
Abilities trees changes
I've added a bunch of changes to the abilities, mainly streamlining and focusing a lot of them into certain playstyles. All the talents are now divided into categories, to make it easier to choose what you want to focus on.
Ferocity:
Most of the main abilities in ferocity tree were improved in damage, and got cooldowns removed, so you can use them freely while you have stamina. Biggest change for this tree is execute, which was reworked into passive, which would allow you to perform cool executions on enemies. The implementation of this still could be somewhat clunky, and I will polish it more in the future, also would glad to hear your feedback.
Combat mastery:
Combat mastery was changed the most out of all ability trees. Since the beginning the tree was a little confusing in regards of its purpose. I tried to streamline it, and focus it into 3 small groups: Improving your basic combo attacks, a couple of defesive and control abilities, and magic-melee abilities. There is a lot of cool stuff there, and I'm really interested in your opinions.
Elemental magic:
Elemental magic was changed a lot. Previously, you could cast spells while on the run, and you had a lot of abilities that can only be casted at close distance. To balance this, none of the magic had any knockdown impact. While this made mage a very dynamic playstyle, it also made magic feel floaty and non-impactful and it was also very dangerous to run around in close range with enemies, seeing how mages couldn't really take huge hits.
Now all of the elemental spells will root you in place with animation, they were redesigned to be casted at huge distance and they will apply a huge stagger effects on enemies. Also a lot of cool casting effects were added. So elemental magic is now about engaging enemies at long long distance and keeping them there.
Also most of the spells with other elements were streamlined into raw damage, so you could viably make build like raw dark magic caster, or raw holy damage caster. So, now, if you want to go nature magic for example, you can learn more of the nature tree abilities and get summons/buffs/heals, or you can learn more elemental tree abilities and use it with nature element to get raw nature caster. Same goes for dark and light.
Nature magic:
Nature magic was changed a lot too, mainly focusing it into two playstyles - werewolf one and plant summons. Now you will be able to use most of the nature spells in werewolf form, things like drain water or bark and thorns. Absorb element spell was replaced with cool beast style attack spell instead, and fill the earth spell was reworked.
Dark magic:
The biggest change with dark magic was to make summons dynamically scale their damage/health with your current dark magic and overall magic power, so you can't just summon minions with dark magic armor and then change it to melee armor for example, your minions will become weaker. This also makes minions scale with your magic power buffs nly when they are active. And also... I've replaced useless dark scream spell with summoning HUGE AWESOME BONE DRAGON instead (Seriously, this thing is really cool)
Holy magic:
Holy magic was buffed a lot with a bunch of damage increases, cool new abilities and passives. Mainly paladin seal was improved a lot.
Archery:
Archery was a little bit nerfed in terms of raw damage, and slo-mo in the air now requires stamina to do. I've also streamlined enchant arrow into one type of arrow - frozen one, and it is more effective now.
Improved grass shading
I've also finally added a change I wanted to add a long time ago - improved grass shading. This should make grass look better and moore performant, add cool new effects like reactions of player walking around, better wind wavering and weather reactions.
Other changes:
- Basic attributes are now more infuential on your damage
- An option to disable screen shake was added
- Changes to keybinds change process
- You can now rename your companions (And your dog, yes)
- Traning dummy was added to the house building, which will show your DPS when you attack it
- New effects of player damage and voicelines when you have no mana/stamina
- Added new guardian armor to warrior faction merchant
- A bunch of new interface improvements
- A lot of small bug fixes
Check out my youtube channel (I might post previews of new updates there, or might not):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMfMlahJzjpMeLrrfRvL05A
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