A big new gameplay focused update has been released for BlastZone 2! (v1.28.3.0) I have recently received a few game balance suggestions from the community, so I’ve taken a lot of time to go through every game mode in the game to improve gameplay balance. The biggest part of this update makes a number of changes to Mission Mode stat upgrades. These upgrades are now 33% more potent per pickup, but to balance that out, the drop rates have been reduced, and starting stat levels are slightly lower to prevent the player from becoming overpowered. Along with this, the Mission Mode HUD has been updated to add icons to associate item pickups with each stat. Some users have been confused as to which pickup upgrades which stat, so this clears that up.
More gameplay balance changes include reducing the vertical hitboxes for player beams and projectiles. This will increase the skill needed to hit enemies, but to balance this out, enemy bullet hit boxes have been significantly reduced as well, making it easier to dodge them. This will make the recently more bullet focused Survival and Blitz modes more fun to play. Also, the number of points drops in Survival and Mission mode have been increased to improve the number of bonus multipliers in Survival Mode and Hyper power boosts in Blitz Mode. From testing, this helps Blitz Mode in particular, as strategic play rewards the player more to better maintain Hyper Mode to fight back against the more intense later waves of enemies.
A few other tweaks and bug fixes round out the update. For more details on all the balance changes and other changes included in this update, check out the full release notes below:
- Added new stat icons to the Mission mode hud to show which powerup affects which stat
- Rebalanced all stat upgrades in Mission mode so stat management has a greater affect on gameplay -Reduced the baseline power of all stats for all ships in Mission mode (doesn't affect other game modes) -Reduced starting stats by 5% -Increased the potency of all stat powerups -Increased stat increase potency by 33% -Reduced the occurrence of stat powerup drops from enemies -Reduced proportional powerup drops from 60% to 40% -Increased proportional points drops from 10% to 30% -Increased the stat reduction penalty for losing a life -Training difficulty - 2 -> 3 -Pilot difficulty - 4 -> 5 -Verteran difficulty - 6 -> 7
- Tightened up enemy bullet hit boxes to make them easier to dodge -Cut enemy bullet hit box size by 50% -This makes a bigger difference for larger enemy bullets
- Reduced the vertical hitbox size for player bullets and beams -The wide beam hitbox size has been reduced by 28% -The omega cannon hitbox size has been reduced by 19% -Bullet projectiles hitbox size has been reduced by 25%
- Adjusted the proportional drop rates in Survival and Blitz modes for more points drops and fewer health drops -Increased proportional points drops from 50% to 60% -Reduced proportional health drops from 50% to 40%
- Enemy bullets now stay the gameplay color for longer when passing through the gameplay plane in Z space
- Enemy tracking bullets outside the gameplay plane now have an adjusted color to differentiate them better
- Fixed shaking player ship bug during the wave outro animation
- Updated the mission mode help screen
As usual, to make sure you have the latest update, launch the game and check the lower left corner of the title screen for “v1.28.3.0” or higher. Enjoy the new gameplay improvements!