Weapons Update Hotfix 6 - Reducing Difficulty and Deadzone Settings - v0.7.15.8
Over the week since we launched the Weapons Update, we have been monitoring which modules and status effects may be too powerful or too weak, and one thing that stood out is that the Corrosion status effect is vastly more powerful than we originally intended. For that reason we are bringing it in line with the other effects, at the same time as we are buffing some of the weaked effects and the base weapon damage of on foot weapons.
Deadzone settings for controllers have been added, we know many players have been waiting for this.
Thank you for leaving your feedback on combat difficulty after the Weapons update dropped, we will continue to monitor but we hope this improves your experience during objectives that spawn waves of ground enemies.
For those who feel Ingots should be refunded when an older, already upgraded blueprint is abandoned for something better - we are working on some kind of refund mechanic so stay tuned for that.
We are aware of Engines not being affected by their Modules and the math of stat Modules not lining up perfectly - we will have a patch for this early next week
Features
Added individual deadzone settings for the left and right sticks in the gamepad options menu
Improvements
Sear & Corrosion Balance: Sear and Corrosion status effects have been brought more in line with each other. Proc chance and Damage for Corrosion has been lowered. Corrosion base duration increased by 1 second to compensate for its damage reduction. Sear has had damage increased across all tiers and now ticks damage as often as Corrosion does.
Weapon Scaling: Damage scaling improved across multiple weapons to be higher when fully upgraded.
Improved Damage Module: We have reduced the effectiveness of this Module, compensating with the above Weapon Scaling change. This is to make damage stay the same, but prevent weapons without "Improved Damage %" from feeling useless due to dealing way less damage.
Slightly Reduced Magasize Size: To keep guns feeling distinct, all guns got reduced magazine size in different capacity. One example being, the LMG should have the largest mag by far. This was compensated by the damage change.
Ship Modules: Several components can now access additional damage affinity Modules simultaneously
Targeting Module: The Targeting Module component will now only drop at Green rarity, due to lacking any stats and unique Modifiers.
Buddy Bot projectile damage increased by 33% (15 > 20)
Rocket Drone missile speed reduced (29 > 23) and explosion radius reduced (6 > 5) for better balance
Reduced the amount of Drone spawns in waves
Bug Fixes
Fixed a soft lock that could occur at Wave 20 in Data Center
Fixed an issue where object outlines would incorrectly remain visible during cinematics
Fixed Rocket Drones and Sniper Drones not properly resetting their wind-up animations when they stopped firing
Laser ship weapons can no longer spawn with multishot Module
The design team who have all worked a ton on crafting the Modules has a few words on these changes:
"Hello! Let's talk about some ideas and thoughts around two of our status effects, namely Corrosion and Sear. Corrosion is currently very powerful, to the point of making everything else kind of irrelevant.
So to make it easier to balance the rest of the effects, it is being hit with a reduction in damage and proc chance. BUT, it is gaining a slightly longer lifetime to make it a little easier to still keep a decent stack number up.
Corrosion is meant to be an effective single-target killer, but in its current configuration it does that, and everything else. I understand that many have seen Corrosion as the gold standard for weapons now, and there might be some disappointment with its nerf. But hopefully the other changes made will mitigate it a bit.
Speaking of other changes, we've upped how much damage that weapons gain from just being leveled up, going from 2.5 to 4.5 percent. This comes in tandem with a reduction in effectiveness of the improved damage module, but from testing we've gathered that the effective damage loss is matched by the gain in damage from the level buff.
Another smaller change coming along with this is Sear being buffed. We're working on more changes to it, but this is what we have for now. Besides a damage boost across the board, both its shown damage and how often it ticks this damage is increased. It is getting a fixed lifetime across levels and tiers; with this it will provide much more reliable damage.
Our intention with Sear is for it to be a thing to handle multiple enemies vs. corrosion's single-target damage. Spraying down a horde to light them on fire so you can focus on other ways of staying alive while the fire does its job, while corrosion stacks up damage on the bigger targets. With these changes, we hope to give more defining roles for these two effects. The other status effects will get more love as well, but it will be easier to focus on a few at a time to give them attention.
Now, early on in this update there will probably be some bigger swings in balance as we make a more interesting balance curve for everything, but we will be observant and look at how these effects impact the larger statistics over the weekend and be ready to address issues next week!
Thanks for helping us make this as great a game as possible."