Howdy!
Balance Changes:
Sandstorm:
- Normalized Sandstorm Tornado's pushing and effects. Basically, Pardners and Items should behave more consistently when being affected by the tornado. Previously you may have been thrown halfway across the map OR just a few feet depending on how the physics calculated.
- Fixed the Tornado not affecting Pardners who entered the AOE while it was still growing.
Tar Wall:
- Tar Wall duration reduced to 12 seconds (was 18)
Design Insight: Tar Wall has always been a lesser picked ability, so I was basically buffing it until it was actually picked - but I may have overdone it recently. Slowly over the development of Wormtown I've removed a handful of what I refer to as "stalling abilities" (old Sandstorm and Scorching Sands, as examples). They seem to be the biggest point of frustration for Parders as *waiting isn't very much fun*, despite the clear strategic advantages it has for the Worm. Tar Wall will still remain as the only stalling focused ability, but with that said the previous 18 second timer *was* a bit harsh.
Gilbert's Safe/Puzzle Map:
- Puzzle Maps now share their recorded symbols/numbers with all other maps.
While I originally thought this would trivialize the objective, it's clearly a divisive objective and wasn't much of a "team" objective, as one Pardner would usually take it on by themselves. This should make it easier and less daunting overall!
- Removed the red diamond symbols from the playing cards, since it was needlessly confusing
Misc Balance Changes:
- Worms can no longer push Heart Jars with their body. (because EMPIREVSREBLES was mad about it :p) Heart Jars can still be affected by AOE abilities like Body Slam, but can no longer be pushed across the map by Worms easily.
- Necronomicon self-burn on use now does 35 damage over 1 seconds (previously was 3.5 damage over 10 seconds). The total damage remains the same, but this should fix Pardners at low health reviving multiple Pardners in the 10 second window before dying.
- Drastically reduced the fuel values required for "Worm Food" difficulty. They were pretty ridiculous before, my bad!
- Added a "Recent" panel to the Lobby Browser that has clickable buttons to rejoin lobbies you were in recently. There's currently a bug where if you leave a lobby it will no longer show that lobby on the Lobby Browser (until the lobby is remade). We're working on a fix for that currently, but until then, this should be a decent work around!
Tutorializing and Player Onboarding
Design Insight: One of the biggest struggles with designing Wormtown has been teaching players the various, and sometimes, complex mechanics well. Recently I've discovered many players weren't even aware there were tutorials, and the guidebook information wasn't as straight forward as I thought. Because of this, I've taken a few steps to hopefully put the relevant information front and center to players.
- Rewrote multiple Objective pages in the Guidebook with step-by-step instructions to complete them
- Added "Hold H for Help" prompt next to the Objectives on the HUD. Doing so will bring you directly to the Guidebook page for the various objectives
- Added a first-launch pop up that will direct players to the Tutorial page (playing them is still optional!)
- Renamed "How to Play" button to "Tutorials" for more clarity
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed Health Gain at Sundown display text showing a bunch of decimal places
- Fixed Public Lobbies saying they were Private when restarting a match. (This was just a visual bug, the Lobbies were still Public)
- Modified the chat filter to not include some accidental cencoring
- Fixed the "Remaining Objectives" Spectator UI not updating during a match as intended
Stay safe out there Pardners!