Intro
I’ve had the opportunity now to watch quite a bit of footage of various skill-level players attempt one or more runs in Gunlocked 2, and this patch is about massaging certain pain points in everything from balance to usability.
Getting to actually watch players engage with the game is something I don’t have access to before Early Access, being a solo dev without a QA team. So this is always a huge part of my focus in the first weeks of my newest game's availability.
As I continue to settle into a more regular work cadence, expect fewer polish patches, and a larger focus on content patches, ideally spread out by a week or two. There is still one more big-ish patch coming for the Simulator to get it into a more user-friendly state though. Then MORE CONTENT!
Patch 0.13.00
Quality of Life Improvements
Hazards: The elite cosmic storm event that creates electricity on the battlefield has been visually updated to be larger and brighter (but the hitbox has not been changed).
UI: Sped up the Mission Menu startup a bit
UI: Changed Electric and Plasmic damage to Chain Shock and Plasmic Burn damage post-game for clarity. Note: These categories were not counting electric-type or plasmic-type upgrade damage, but just the actual elemental damage bonuses when they proc.
Tutorial: Updated the text for the Data Disk tutorial to also explain the inventory/items tracking\[/p]
Tutorial: CRT’s portrait will now animate in the tutorial
Text: Updated the Improb Drive text to more clearly state that it is currently disabled
Text: Particloner now states the base amount of hits it can take before being destroyed
Upgrades: You can no longer banish locked upgrades. Note: this was correctly removing the utility from the pool, but allowing you to keep the upgrade until it was unlocked.
Balance Updates
Notes:
The focus on these balance changes is three-fold:
To give certain chance-based abilities more up-front oomph, while requiring more supplementary help to scale into absurd power levels.
Reducing some of the craziest power-points for bullet weapons, which players seem to universally agree is the most powerful archetype in the game
Prepare for the upcoming content patch coming late next week
The goal going forward will be to buff under-performing upgrades more than nerf over-performing ones, but getting bullets down to a more realistic level first gives me a better bar to aim for with the other abilities (and making enemies feel consistently balanced).
Balance changes to enemies, difficulty scaling, and items drops, should also lift every build up a little more, today.
Changes:
Bosses: Now always drop at least 2 Hull Repairs
Enemies: A special zone that spawns a lot of the “egg” type enemies, that drop down on the battlefield, should now spawn fewer eggs
Enemies: Scarabs always drop at least one hull repair if you kill them
Enemies: Enemy spawn density has been slightly decreased from warp zones 11-15
Hazards: The elite cosmic storm hazard has been rebalanced to create electricity less frequently later in the game
Weapons: The Big Shot has had its base damage reduced by 5, base range reduced by 12%, and its total charge time increased by 20%. Note: This is all less impactful than it sounds.
Weapons: The reload time on Pulse Cannon has been ever so slightly increased, and the base damage per bullet reduced to 15 from 20.
Utilities: Auto-Clip is now a rare upgrade
Utilities: Refractor now grants double the base chance to trigger (24%), but no longer gains chance on additional copies. Instead, chance boosting utilities will be required. Note: There will be additional ways to improve proc-chance beyond the few in the game now with next week's patch
Utilities: Afterglow now grants double the base chance to trigger (20%), but no longer gains chance on additional copies.
Items: Warp reroll tokens drop more often from enemies, banish tokens drop less often
Bug Fixes
Save/Load: Your synergy counts will properly be restored when resuming from a saved game
Save/Load: Signal Dongle, Banish Bounty, and Bug Bait will no longer grant extra copies each time you resume from a saved game
Save/Load: Fixed an issue where your total unique utilities might not be properly counted when resuming a save. It was only an issue if you exceeded 24 unique utilities.
Utilities: Fixed an issue causing Gas Generator to give the maximum cooldown benefit at all times
Data Beacons: Completing a beacon when it reaches 0 seconds should now properly grant the upgrade. Tie goes to the runner, as we ‘Muricans say.
Keyboard: The Banish menu shortcut key is now binding correctly
Keyboard: Rebinding controls will properly update glyphs without needing to exit and return to settings
Keyboard: Binding the cancel button will no longer also cancel you out of the keybinding menu
Misc: Fixed a bug that could, in very rare instances, cause Phase Shift invulnerability to become stuck on, even though the animation is no longer playing
UI: Fixed an issue where you could change the selected upgrade while confirming a banish
Text: Rooster no longer indicates he has the Laser synergy in the pilot select icons. This was from an old build of Vulcanorb.