Oops, all improvements!
This time we’ve made improvements to Shielding, Dodging, Dash Attacks, AI, and performance! For the Slyphur mains, there’s a new ability to try out called Counter. To top it off we’ve made balance changes to account for the Dodge rework, and fixed several notable bugs.
Gameplay Changes
General Improvements
- Shield is no longer an ability! It is now a dedicated button just like Dodge. It’s bound to the Ctrl key by default.
- You can now enter the practice room while offline.
- Attacks have received an optimization pass! In local testing, our frame rate went from around 10 while fighting all 7 NPCs in the practice room to over 60. In PvP, you can expect to see improvements while fighting against other players while lots of attacks are happening at the same time.
Dash Attack Improvements
- Dash Attacks are now frame rate independent and more smoothly move the character.
- Dash Attacks no long travel through objects and instead travel along the surface of the obstacle if the angle is shallow enough. They can also travel along upwards slopes without the length of the dash being reduced.
- Improvements have been made to Bounce so it is more usable from the ground. Players can now aim lower while using Bounce and not stop on the ground prematurely.
AI Improvements
- Added path finding so NPCs can chase the player around obstacles/fight in tight spaces.
- Removed the 6 second AI startup timer so NPCs are now active as soon as they respawn.
- Increased the speed at which NPCs enter combat after being attacked by the player.
- NPCs now use line of sight with the player to determine their behavior. Upon losing sight of the player for a short duration, NPCs will now move to the last place they saw the player, until either line of sight is recovered or until their aggro timer times out.
- Fixed a bug on Slyphur that was causing all of the NPCs to become unresponsive, which forced the player to restart the practice arena to reset the NPCs.
- AI now illustrates its behavior more clearly by always showing a yellow question mark above its head when it is suspicious, and showing a red exclamation point upon entering combat with the player.
Balance Changes
All Kinfolk
- Dodge speeds, lengths, and i-frames have all been completely reworked.
Shovlet
- Basic attack speed increased by 50%.
Slyphur
- Slyphur dodge stamina cost increased from 30 to 35.
Skulken
- Skulken Dodge stamina cost reduced from 40 to 35.
- Skulken Sp DEF reduced from 100 to 95.
New Ability: Counter
Description
Null Type. Base Power ??? x 2, Physical.
The user assumes a defensive stance for 1 second. If they are hit by either a Physical or Special attack during this time, the user absorbs the attack’s energy and channels it back toward the source with a vicious slash. The slash’s power is equal to 2 x the power of the original attack.
Usable by Slyphur.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the visual effect signifying whether a buffing ability has successfully applied the buff to the character always played, regardless of whether or not the Kinfolk attempting to buff themself was interrupted and prevented from receiving the buff!
- Fixed a bug that caused AI to respawn with a smaller awareness radius.
- Fixed a bug that allowed players to use Fling while stunned.
- Fixed most instances of an issue that allowed Slyphur to turn while using Swipes and hit opponents they would have otherwise missed.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Embear AI to stun themself very frequently while using Shield.
- Fixed an issue where Heal, Revive, and Damage beacons weren’t functioning properly in the Practice Room.
- Fixed an issue where Shovlet’s AI had no name.
Known Issues
- Currently, there is no visualization to display how much a Kinfolk’s stats have been raised or lowered during combat. We plan to add visualizations to address this in a future patch.
- When your party is revived after they all die in the Practice Room, the Kinfolk in your first slot is not revived.
- Some of the visual effects for Crush are not properly displayed in the Practice Room.
- The damage descriptions for several abilities that do not have Tick Damage, show a total Tick Damage amount.
- Occasionally, players with low ping do not return to the current starting position between rounds.
- Large AoE attacks currently only damage one minion at a time.
- On rare occasions, one team member begins the second round with abilities locked.
- Occasionally, attempting to cancel searching for a game results in the matchmaker locking up.
- Often times teams can not be edited while searching for a game.