Updates in this patch:
- Added "Easy" difficulty that sits between "Story Mode" and "Normal."
- Added "Low" option to "Team Proficiency" for people who felt like AI teammates are doing too much.
- Team Proficiency now affects aggression as well as skill.
- Improved VR-Gaze input for power management so the yoke will no longer jump around under certain conditions.
- Tweaked tractor beam code to ignore player momentum and draw player in more decisively.
- Added icons to the power controllers to make it clearer what each node represents.
- Removed VR grip-toggle from Throttle/Joystick (if anyone actually liked this, let me know and I'll add it back as an option)
- Added throttle mode selector for "Throttle/Stick" behaviour (explanation for this below*).
- Fixed bug where planetary gravity would still be applied after death/restarting
- Fixed bug that would occasionally not fire the player "landed" trigger and prevented post-mission conversations from working.
- Fixed AI teammates shooting at nothing at the end of "Prison Break."
- Removed pause menu head-rotation matching. The menu will now remain at the "centered" position.
- Main menu will automatically recenter (once) if it detects the player is too far from the ideal position.
*The default throttle behaviour expects a throttle with a central detent and treats everything above the center as 0 to 1 and everything below as 0 to -1 (negative values are treated as reverse thrust). This is fine for most throttles, but in cases where people were using a stick as their throttle, the centered position was being treated as full reverse thrust. This is pretty bad and I'm sorry it took so long to address this issue. There is now a "Throttle Type" selector under "Controls" in the settings menu. If you're using a standard throttle with central detent you don't need to change anything, but if you're using a stick/thumbstick as a throttle then setting this to "Stick" will treat the center position as zero thrust, with forward/back acting as forward/reverse thrust. This setting might also be desirable for throttles with no natural center position.
I'm hoping the tweaks over the last few patches has addressed most concerns about difficulty. The line between "too easy" and "too hard" falls differently for everyone and balancing the game has been a challenge. I'm open to adding more options to tweak difficulty, so if you have specific concerns or suggestions please feel free to contact me at [email protected].