Greetings once again, Survivors!
Last week, we introduced three New Characters to the game: the Shadow Sister, the Inquisitor, and the Jester.
Along with the addition of these new characters, we're also making some big changes to the system that defines who they are in the game and today, we're going to introduce these Systemic Changes.
Changes to the Stat System
In the original EA version, the Stats attached to the "Characters" themselves were fairly simple. Health (HP), Crit Chance and Damage, Armor and Evasion, and the actual "Default" differences between those Stats weren't that significant - it was a decision to weigh additional factors, such as perks and weapon characteristics, that would be acquired later.
But now that we've chosen to increase the number of Characters, we naturally need a way to make the "Differences between Characters" a little more pronounced - unlike before, when we had a fixed set of three Characters and only had to choose Perks or Weapons to use, we now need a way to decide "which Character to bring with us into battle".
Of course, as I mentioned last week, there is a big difference in the basic Skill composition, but in the context of the Memory Bonding system we introduced earlier, we felt that the difference in Skills alone was not enough. If a character with 2 Skills is given an additional 4 Skills through Memory Bonding, then their innate uniqueness is lessened...
In addition to Health, we're introducing a system of four "Primary Stats," which we've labeled Strength / Dexterity / Fortitude / Agility.
- [Strength] Increases the damage of weapons with the 'heavy and strong' concept, such as blunt weapons or two-handed axes, and offsets any damage reduction from enemies due to the [Fortitude] Stat.
- [Dexterity] Increases the damage of weapons with the "agility attack" concept, such as swords and spears, and offsets the effect of increased enemy evasion due to the [Agility] Stat.
- [Fortitude] Reduces the damage you take when attacked, while the [Agility] Stat increases your dodge rate.
With the introduction of these Stats, we've differentiated between which Stats each character specializes in, whether it's a “Starting Stat” or a “Leveling Stat.”
For example, Diurmuid who is powerful, specializes in the [Strength] Stat, while the Shadow Sister, who specializes in ambushes and assassinations, is a damage dealer who specializes in the [Dexterity] Stat.
The Jester has a lower [Dexterity] than the Shadow Sister, but a higher [Agility] instead, which makes a difference in the way that a "Dodge and then Counterattack" type of Memory can be more effective when bonded. If you choose Willam (Royal Guard), who specializes in the [Fortitude] Stat, you might want to play him with a Shield and stand firm in the middle of the enemy hoards.
In this way, the stat system was introduced with the goal of having different play styles depending on which stats you specialize in, and each weapon was given attributes like Strength-based damage, Dexterity -based damage, and so on.
You'll see how these Stats are distributed, and then choose which Memories you want to bind, which combinations you want to build, and then go onto the stage.
We're still in early development and the UI still needs a lot of work, but based on internal test feedback, we think we’ve done a good job of "conveying each character's personality" through the four basic Stats. The next challenge is to refine this Stat structure to make it easier to understand, and how to "differentiate between characters with similar Stat allocations" when we have more characters in the future.
Differentiating between “Skills” and “Traits”
As I mentioned in my notes on the UI redesign, we've separated the location of Weapon Skills and Character Skills in the UI to some extent, because we didn't want the slots for Weapon Skills to change every time you swap Weapons, and we didn't want the icon locations and Hotkeys for the Character Skills you use to always change.
We ended up capping the number of Character Skills at 6 (with a maximum of 2 Weapon Skills, for a total of 8 Active Skills), which led us to a problem with the Memory Bonding system.
- First of all, the number of active Skills per character (up to 8) is still quite high compared to other games in the genre. You can “get used to it”, but it's not easy to “get it all at once.”
- However, keeping this UI puts a relative limit on the number of skills that can be added through Memory Bonds.
- Once we excluded the two Weapon Skills, we realized that each Character would need at least two Unique Skills, and possibly three Passive Skills, to flesh out their personality, such as Stealth for the Shadow Sister.
- That leaves us with only three Skills that can be added through Memory Bonds,
- which is far too few for the "room for build customization" we're trying to achieve with the Memory Bond system,
- Having an infinite number of Skills would have been difficult to manage and recognize in combat.
- In Early Access, Perks like Edwin's “Flanking Stab” and Diurmuid's “Healing Boost” were unique Perks that didn't take up space in the Skill pool, so we thought, "What if we made a lot of Memories that are bonded in this way?”
- However, even at that time, there was a lot of feedback that it was difficult to recognize the existence of such Perks due to the UI.
- The Perk types were already fixed for each character, but we knew that allowing Players to "freely set their own Perks" like Memory Bonds would exacerbate this problem.
As a result, we created the concept of "Traits" to separate from "Skills" and represent them separately in the UI.
On the left-hand side of the UI, you'll find "Traits" that correspond to the "Perks" in the original Early Access version.
Unlike Skills that directly cost WP or TP to "use" or "trigger", they tend to consist of additional effects that synergize with the Skill's activation, such as "Increase Skill power on a successful Surprise" or "Inflict 2 additional Pain on Collision", or simple but powerful Stat boosts like "+1 WP" or "+4 TP".
Meanwhile, on the right side of the UI, "Weaknesses" are placed. These are basically used to create “Drawbacks” for your characters, which in turn reinforce their “Traits,”
For example, I mentioned that the Shadow Sister who specializes in ambushes has a "Stage Fright" weakness that makes her weak in frontal combat, while the Jester has a "Sarcasm" weakness that triggers when an ally's attack misses, angering (?) and debuffing them.
We'll also use the Weakness UI as a guide for how to deal with enemies. We want features like Blister's "Instant Death on Collision" effect, or Orman's "Stun on Armor Break" in EA, to be clearly labeled as Weaknesses in the UI so that when you encounter a new enemy, you can easily remember how to deal with it based on the description of the Weakness.
It was a challenge to balance the two conflicting design goals of keeping each character unique while still allowing for the freedom of customization that comes with the "Memory Bonding" system, but fortunately, test feedback on the current version has been very good.
So, while we're keeping the broad outlines of this system, we'll continue to add new Characters and expand the types of Dead Memories that can be bonded, while maintaining a design direction that reinforces the fun of customizing "the Character you want, the Party you want."
There's a lot more to talk about, such as the changes brought about by the introduction of permanent death and the concept of "Corruption" that aligns with the new narrative, but we're running out of space, so we’ll leave it there for now!
We'll be back next week with another look at new System Changes!
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