Wow - what a patch this one is. There's a lot that's gone on over the last week, so much so that keeping notes of all the changes became a task in and of itself. I'll keep things brief here with a quick rundown :
Card Changes
One of the biggest changes yet. When Vault first started, cards were all contained within a "Global Card Pool", and each class just had a Artifact which would change the way they interacted with stuff.
As time has progressed, despite my reluctance at first to move to a full "Class Card" pool, I've begun to embrace the idea. With some amazing help from some of the community members (Gradiusic, Jinsaku, Knockout and PROPH37 in particular!), the massive task of reworking the card list, upgrades etc has been completed for The Hidden. The Hidden now, most importantly, feels great to play.
- Two distinct "builds", Bleed or Blade. Choose to use Bleed to debilitate your enemies, or use fast, low cost Blade cycle with Hidden Blades and Switchblades to cycle cards and apply damage.
- Bleed has now been moved over to a Class specific skill, unique to The Hidden.
- The Global Card Pool has been cut down, and all cards left have been tweaked in someway or another to make the generalised, and appealing.
- Upgrading cards should feel hard now, as all upgrades have been tinkered to suit better.
- Strength play has been massively reduced.
- Hunted and Leech have been removed
- Card Unlocks has changed, it's an automatic process based on your Void Points. The rewards shown aren't super tailored right now, and will be getting a pass in the next update.
The best part is, the second class, Daughter of the Void, is already in testing and will be released to the Beta hopefully this coming week. Expect a completely different play style as you master the art of Corruption!
Difficulty
There has been some concerns re: difficulty. Whilst we had some players playing on Impossible and asking to make it harder, we also have some players (me included sometimes!) playing on Normal and struggling. Finding that balance is hard, and that's the main goal of this Closed Beta. A few things have been addressed here:
- Continued monitoring of data from fights, and many adjustments have been made. The curve has been tightened, and I feel like it's pretty close to a good spot.
- The "inbetween" issue. Sometimes, Easy is too easy, and Normal is too hard. Or Hard is too easy, but Impossible is stomp mode. I want players to feel challenged, so I implemented a Modifier system (again, thanks Gradiusic from the Discord channel for the idea!). Now, on each difficulty you'll be able to set "Peaceful" or "Enraged" as optional modifiers, tweaking the difficulty just a touch each way.
New Event System
The event system has been overhauled. No longer do we have "Good Events" and "Bad Events", but it's been rolled into 1 "Event Tile". Lots of choices, lots of side effects. Now that system is in place, I'll be expanding the Events in the days to come, adding lots more!
Optimisation
There has been a few reports of some performance issues. I've made a bunch of optimsation changes, so looking for feedback to see if thats helped some players - let me know!
Stances
In for a few patches now, but just a reminder of the Stance system. Feedback has been great, so we're going to keep going with this in place.
There is a lot more than what's above, including new Creatures and Guardians!
Thanks again to all the players, and if you would like to join the Closed Beta feel free to get in touch, or join the Discord!
Till next time!
- Josh