Greetings Titan Corp. Auditors
I wanted to let you in on what has been going on behind the scenes with the new upcoming content update.
The game lacks gameplay. It is a Roguelite at its core, where's the constant dying and pushing through more difficult levels?
That's the question I'm working on to answer.
All of the decisions you will read about will be worked on in the following weeks.
Robotics vs Atomics
I've found out that players quite enjoy a lot more the whole process of killing enemies and going through rooms, clearing them out, as opposed to having to do tasks.
Which is understandable, because when you have to stop to insert a fuel cell in a cooling-unit it breaks the flow of combat, which sucks. But thanks to all of you now I know this, and can ajust my game's core design around that!
Which is why the next update will focus entirely on Robotics.
I know I said I'd focus on atomics, but I had to readjust my strategy, which is always to follow player feedback.
Unlocks and Progression
Before, you had two currencies:
Titan Tokens (for meta progression, player upgrades, etc...)
Corporation Coins (for in-game purchases, attachments, weapons, etc...)
Now, in an exercise of simplification I've found it that It's just better to have a single currency: COINS
(yeah I know, very inovative.)
If the way I design economy is simpler, the chances of it being unfair/unbalanced is smaller.
I'm new to the whole game-design schtick, so I have to keep things simple to ensure players have fun.
How do coins work? How much of them do I get?
Simple: You kill stuff, perform tasks and maybe refrain from dying.
As a rule of thumb, when you die, you can keep 25% of all current run-coins collected. This is important, because in Roguelites you die. A lot. (don't worry there's always Cry Baby difficulty!)
For example, a Clanker (tiny one-eyed robot) can drop 2-5 coins. A Centurion can drop between 8 to 15.
These coins show up, a lot. They can also be spotted in chests, or in special complementary objectives. I really upped the quantity of coins you pick up so players feel like collecting these suckers, and so that they feel good to collect.
Where do I spend my coins on?
The usual, in vendors. Which will also be redesigned to be simplified.
In the Armory: If you unlocked a weapon (more on that below), you are able to purchase it at a steep price, to bring it with you when the run starts. This includes other gear, upgrades and attachments.
How do I unlock weapons now?
Weapons will no longer be easily unlocked, you will have to work for it. There is a new Recycle Station that spawns mid-run that allows you to recycle (destroy) a weapon. Only then does it tell you, what you have to do in order to unlock it. (IE: Kill 15 centurions with a shotgun)
After you unlock it, you are able to play with it in the Armory but also purchase it before a run.
And in the future, bring it to the Arena/Closed Map mode.
Difficulty (Re)Balancing
In the famous words of Sid Meier: "Either double it or cut it in half."
(Sid Meier is a well known Game designer for working on games such as Civilizations and Railroads Tycoon)
What this means is that, in order to balance something out that feels off, such as enemy health, instead of giving it some points, you literally double an enemy's health or halve it, until if feels okay.
I tried this with most enemies in the game and oh man did It work wonders.
Obviously for many of you that bought the game early on, you will feel a huge difference. But it was necessary.
Enemies are simply too easy to kill.
My thought was: "How hard is it to defeat most enemies, with the most basic of weapons." and the answer was "It's not hard, it's actually too easy."
What I want to tell you by this is that, all enemies will be constantly rebalanced and fine-tuned BUT if you change difficulty, enemy health will not change much, but enough to make a difference.
But this also affects the coin drop rate as well. On easy difficulty, you make less money.
Vendors
Current arcade vendors pose two problems:
Difficult to scale
Severe performance issues on Quest 2
Which is why I'll get rid of them temporarily, including the meta-upgrades vendor which will become without purpose.
All of the vendors will be very simplified to lean in more into the rogue-style.
Weapon customization will feel the same, instead of seeing the weapon on a 2D CRT Screen, you will place it on a pedestal and see holograms of the upgrades/attachments.
Vendors themselves will show you limited options of what you can buy, at a fixed price. Similar to games like Roboquest, Gunfire Rebord and Dungreed.
This includes player upgrades, consumables, weapons, gadgets, etc...
So what is true meta-progression?
Before you had an upgrade-tree, that will be gone and transplanted into run-specific upgrades.
Now you will simply:
Unlock weapons (right of access to buy them before a run)
Unlock vendors (perform special tasks in a run, these vendors spawn in the armory and more often in the game, same way you rescue NPCs in most roguelites)
Demo Overhaul
The demo is seriously behind of the main EA release. It will also get updated, but content will be seriously capped.
That's it for now. All of these game-design decisions are Work In Progress.
If you have any thoughts, suggestions or requests, let me know.
Cheers!