Developer commentary:
We are genuinely at the point where I think Clairvoyance could reasonably be released as a 1.0, if only for a handful of static art assets. This update is focused on improving the new player experience. We had a lot of brand new players play and record their experience so we can watch what they did naturally, all the way to the nuances of mouse movement. This small sample size of close analysis was incredibly useful for sussing out which parts of the game were truly problem areas for new players and which were fine to keep as is, as it was not important for new players to fully engage in some systems yet (for example, creating custom move maps for their martial style).
In the coming months, 1.0 will likely be either the next major update or the one after. I expect updates to become smaller and smaller as we prepare to bring this game to its conclusion and start our next game. Afterwards, we will still release content for Clairvoyance, but at a slower rate.
I don't have much else to say for this update. It's huge, it's had an unbelievable amount of effort put into it. I don't know how to explain how tired I am, both in general and in this moment at 4am after making some finishing touches to Beta 11.
-Dan
New feature: Combo meter
-The combo meter fills up on as many quantifiable metrics of skill as we could think of:
-Hit percent accuracy
-Hit speed
-Kills
-Killing strike damage
-Parrying
-Varied attack usage
-These actions drain the combo meter: taking damage, missing attacks, playing passively
General gameplay adjustments
-Moves with multiple attacks now count each attack as being distinct from each other (so you can get clarity from expression with them)
-Laminar dermal plating nerfed from 2/4/6 to 1/2/3 shields
-Parries now completely negate damage instead of only blocking 95%
-All parries recovery window increased slightly
-ATP Burst bonus damage nerfed from 40%/80%/150% to 30%/60%/100%
-Venom glands damage per tick is capped at 50 (capped to 250 total damage over its 5 ticks)
-Roundhouse kick removed from amateur style default move map, since it was too confusing for new players to turn around
-Enemies will spawn outside map boundaries and walk into bounds, but will not be able to go out of bounds again after entering
-Enemy has more accurate targeting regarding predicted position of both player and other AI controlled fighters
-Adjusted Steam achievemnts "Enlightenment" and "Death Touch" to be more in line with current game balancing
-Removed Neurospec: Crowd Control
-Tutorial is once again a requirement to play Breakout and Arcade mode. This should be the final decision, since Clairvoyance does not have pre-existing games that share its control scheme. No player is to be expected to understand how to play without the basic tutorial.
Breakout (story) mode
-Routing enemies is no longer chance based; replaced with filling up the combo meter
-Expression clarity changed from last hits landed to last moves started, so player does not have to track which hits landed and only has to remember moves started
-Allied map tokens now spawn, which will help you in fights if you start one at their location
-To compensate for increased difficulty from new enemy predictive targeting AI:
-Breakout mode enemy spawn patterns have been slightly decreased in number
-Breakout mode enemy group spawn intervals have been lengthened
-Map generation has more dead ends but more also fewer sectors that are split in half
-Difficulty no longer scales clarity gained, but rather starting clarity.
-Further adjustments to enemy spawn patterns to attempt to mitigate extremely unfair enemy encounters
-Added dialogue to play at the start of the level under some conditions. Expect more to come!
-Added virtue descriptions in the clarity meter tooltip
-Routed enemies now run past the level border
-Added a short animation for the "Meditate" action
Arcade mode
-Score per kill decreased
-Combo meter multiplies score
-You now gain score upon hitting enemies
Trials mode
-New trial challenge: "Basic Instructions" acts as the new basic tutorial for players.
-Added new intro dialogues to most trials
-General UI, visuals, QOL
-Added new cosmetic: Bandit Mask
-Story mode renamed to Breakout mode, because players kept thinking it was intended as the first thing to play when it was meant to be the hardest game mode
-Updated pause menu artwork
-Adjusted main menu layout
-Laminar dermal plates now displays over enemy health bars
-Moved permanent overlay version text
-Added tutorial button to immediately bring the player to the tutorial challenge
-Added "hover to view controls" in the settings page, next to the rebind controls button
-Tooltip colors reversed so that the header is more noticeable than the body
-Added tiny delay before tooltip appears so it doesn't annoyingly pop in and out so quickly
-Adjusted most UI elements such that the most important text is brighter in color than the finer details
-Gene mod rarity colors show up in the background glow
-Consumables reward card color turned to red to not be confused with common gene mods
-Improved in-game overlay text so that it's a proper text box
-Added (TEMPORARY) to all consumables summaries so it's clearer the effect is temporary
-Controller virtual mouse now is able to navigate with the dpad
-Added movement control setting to always face the direction you move, unless you hold the face direction button to strafe
-Heavily reduced light bloom effect on attack warning circle, while making the incoming circle more visible so it's easier to visually time parries
-Parry visual effect no longer appears if the attack was not parry-able
Bugfixes
-Fixed final room not being revealed after beating a security room in sector 3
-Staggered animation is less extreme when arms are fully extended
-Fixed text being far too tiny on upgrade descriptions on smaller resolutions or higher display scale values (common default setting on laptops)
-Removed "butt cheeks" from character model (much to a certain someone's dismay)
-Fixed bug with controller where pressing jump would first do a punch if you did not rebind attack1
-When spatial sense is near 0, the camera adjusts upward so the move selection grid does not get hidden by the health bar UI
-Fixed mutant attacks being affected by knockback when they shouldn't have
-Fixed pressing "play again" too quickly after dying would start the game with time frozen
-Fixed finishers mistakenly being enabled in the knife tutorial trial
-Fixed trial buttons not sorting correctly
-Made top middle text scale with resolution so it would never go off screen
-Fixed enemy jittering left and right
-Enemies are more accurate with staff stab attack
-Fixed issue with physics based cosmetics sometimes getting the player temporarily stuck while ragdolled
-The dummy enemy stands up tall instead of crouching
-Fixed floating weapon graphic at the end of an enemy's staggered state
-Fixed clarity not being disabled in Trials mode
-Fixed multiple minor animation issues
-Fixed not tracking specific body parts hits taken