I won
Pictured: yours truly with my iconic methhead look
This last weekend has been a bit intense for many reasons, but I'm back! During Friday and Saturday I had a stand at the Guadalindie event, and I was also nominated for the Iris Games' Tech-XR category. And I won! Those 5k will be immediately re-invested into my addictive vices.
GUADALINDIE AND IRIS GAMES AWARDS
This was my first venture doing some public demo'ing and it was exhausting. There weren't many other VR games being showcased (I saw one under a videogame school stand but sadly didn't have time to check it out). I guess that made Mandrillia stand out for the crowd, but it also meant I had to explain the basics of VR to many players that had never put on a VR headset before.
Even the less experienced users got to have some fun at the firing range, with a surprising amount of people being able to play a good chunk of a Demo Preset match.
One thing that made me really happy was seeing the few people with previous VR shooter experience have a blast with it and get along with the controls intuitively. The gun feel and FX was also something people seemed to like, which makes it worth all the headache I went through to get it to its final state.
But the self horn-tooting stops here. I checked some friction points which combined with a recent negative review made me reconsider some things about Coop mode's difficulty level.
THE COOP BUFFING
As you might know, Coop was introduced quite late into the game's development. As such, a lot of its balancing was skewed towards a type of player that had been playing Versus for a while, while neglecting the very real possibility of players jumping on Mandrillia and only ever wanting to do Coop.
This was extremely evident on the first "Easy" Coop Challenge STARTING UP. It was pretty much designed to make an experienced Robot quite dependant on the Drones, but in the end the combination of 2 Mandrillians, single shotgun shell inventory management and general loot weirdness could really be off putting as a first experience. So I've made it way easier.
"STARTING UP" CHALLENGE TWEAKS
To begin with, the starting sidearm is no longer the two-shot Sawn Off Shotgun, being now the infinite-ammo Plasma Gun. The Plasma Gun is basically a reskin of the Handgun, so it can help new players get the hang of its functionality without worrying about hoarding ammo and also having extra free storage for other items and Drone stuff.
The yellow keycard crate progression has also been switched to Flamethrower > Automatic Shotgun > Carbine. The flamethrower is a very easy to understand longarm that also has interchangeable tanks with the Coop Drones, introducing the resource sharing mechanics. The Automatic Shotgun and Carbine are both powerful but simple to use and understand weapons that can be very versatile in many situations.
Finally, the initial headstart has been increased from 90 to 120 seconds.
DRONE BUFFS
Besides that, I've tweaked some global values for the Coop Drone repairs to make them easier.
The most important of them is increasing the Fire Extinguisher's capacity and its auto-recharge rate to 5x. I've also decreased the auto-recharge cooldown from 2 seconds to 1 second. It was too common to see players having a very good run and then making a mistake (like blowing up a nearby fire barrel) that caused both drones to be set on fire, then get stuck on a deathloop trying to extinguish those fires. The Fire Extinguisher buff, combined with an increased size of the fire's hitbox should make these situations way more manageable.
The second change has been increasing the structural weakpoint hitbox so it's easier to weld, especially when the Drones are swaying while critically damaged.
To finish the Drone buffs, I've increased their main gun damage from 25 to 30 when unsilenced, and from 20 to 25 when silenced. For reference, 25 is the base damage of the Robot's standard Handgun. This is not a very noticeable change, but should help the Drone's gun feel more consistent.
BIG GATE SAFE TIME INCREASE
I've also made a change regarding the time the "big gates" stay half-open after operating the purple keycard consoles. Until now, they took 50 seconds to fully open in Versus (so human-controlled Mandrillians wouldn't get bored), and 100 seconds in Coop (so the Robot can take some time to fix and reload the Drones). However, if said area was not locked (as in, the full warehouse/waste disposal/lab areas were available to explore), this time was halved. From now on, every one of those gates in Coop will take a full 2 minutes (120 seconds) to open, giving the players way more consistent breathing room.
MANDRILLIAN BOT TWEAKS
On the Mandrillian Bot side, there's been some small nerfs that will affect Solo and Coop.
The main change is on the SLOW wave style, that now has longer times between waves and longer respawn times when within a wave.
I've also slightly reduced the Mandrillian Bot sprint speed from 8m/s to a random 7-7.5m/s (I already use this method with the Insectoids so they don't look artificial running on the same direction at the same speed); their footstep loudness has also been slightly increased for the VR Player (this does not affect human-controlled Mandrillians)
MINOR FIXES AND ADDITIONS
I haven't touched much outside of the Coop balancing, but there's been some minor fixes like preventing a Neutronic Bomb spawn from clipping into a Lighter spawn, and adding some "sample" weaponry to the Firing Range scene when no challenge is active (so new players can jump right in and blast away without needing to use the Item Spawner).
Anyways, thanks for staying with me all these years. Have a nice summer!
CHANGELOG
- Mandrillian Bot sprinting speed changed from 14m/s to 13m/s while in vents, and from 8m/s to 7-7.5m/s outside of them
- Mandrillian Bot's SLOW wave mode made way more relaxed, with longer times between random waves and longer respawn times while in a wave
- Mandrillian Bot's footstep loudness slightly increased for the VR player
- Purple-keycard gates now will always stay "half open" for 2 full minutes in Coop (until now, they stayed like that for 100 seconds if the inside area was closed and 50 seconds if it was open)
- Coop Drone Gun damage increased from 25 to 30 when unsilenced, and from 20 to 25 when silenced
- Coop Drone fire extinguisher capacity increased by 5x
- Coop Drone fire extinguisher auto-recharge speed increased by 5x
- Coop Drone fire extinguisher auto-recharge cooldown decreased from 2 seconds to 1 second
- Coop Drone fire hitbox size increased
- Coop Drone structural damage hitbox size increased
- STARTING UP coop challenge's starting sidearm is now the Plasma Gun instead of the Sawn-Off Shotgun
- STARTING UP yellow keycard crate progression changed to Flamethrower > Automatic Shotgun > Carbine
- STARTING UP headstart increased from 90 seconds to 120 seconds
- Added a bunch of "sample" weaponry to the firing range's shooting area when a challenge is not active
- Fixed one Neutronic Bomb spawn point clipping with a Lighter spawn point