August Report
We spent the majority of August working on implementing requested changes based on the feedback we have been gathering. While we weren't able to accommodate all of the requests, we did try to address the most common complaints. There will be more improvements to come but for now, we felt like we had a big enough group of changes to warrant an update. The following are some of the highlights.
Vendor Item Carousel Improvements
Our vendor UI (the UI that players use to interact with the turrets, soul doctor, and armory merchant) has long been one of the biggest sources of complaints for players. We definitely admit it has been an awkward interface and we have tried to address some of the most common frustrations.
Vendor UI can now accommodate one or two item vendors. When I originally built the vendor UI, I did not consider the possibility of vendors who offered less than three items. This caused very confusing and awkward interactions for players since one item vendors would essentially just display the same item three times. Now vendors can display the exact number of items they offer, even if it's one or two.
Tooltips now appear when hovering over vendor items during the dawn phase. We got a lot of feedback from frustrated players who were confused over what the items you can buy actually do. Originally my thinking was I didn't want annoying tooltips to pop up during the heat of combat, potentially blocking your aim. However, the need for players to know what they are buying is a very valid request. The compromise is that tooltips now appear on hover of the Vendor Item's icon. However, the tooltips will only appear during the dawn phase (the non combat phase)
New Art and Animations
New run cycle for the Sheriff character.
New vampire coffins to indicate vampire spawning locations.
Coffin animations will now notify players which spawn points are about to spawn vampires, giving players more heads up.
Improved UX for Boss Hint System
Did you know that our game has boss hint diagrams for each of the phases? Probably not! Because we did a terrible job of making this feature visible to our players. Now if a player dies during a boss phase they will explicitly be presented with a screen asking if they want to see some hints or not. This way, players are presented with the boss hint system in a way that makes it nearly impossible to miss. Whereas before it was very easy to miss this feature.
Improved Visual Hints During Gameplay
The visual hints that show up during combat gave players a really sour taste in their mouth. To help alleviate the feels bad nature of this, we developed a new type of pause state in the game where the vampires, player, and score timer are paused during visual hints that occur during combat. That way, players won't die to a vampire they didn't see because the hint was covering them up. We hope this will lead to a less frustrating onboarding experience for new players.
Fixed Some Cheap Deaths in Boss Fight
In phase one of the Armory Boss fight, there were some unlucky players who found that the Boss was spawning on top of them after reappearing. This created a lot of understandable angst and anger. I now have a safety mechanism in the game that checks if the Armory Boss reappearing would happen right on top of the player and if this is going to be the case we move the boss to a position where the player won't have the boss spawn right on top of them.
End of Round Rewards
Last update we introduced rewards that could appear for the player at the end of waves 3 and 5. While the rewards themselves were well received, the delivery system for those rewards (the ravens) were largely reviled. Players pointed out that it was easy to miss the raven's dropping their notes. Also, since this system is designed to help newer players, it was a design mistake to make the delivery system of those rewards so cryptic. We have retreated from our original implementation and simplified the system so that players simply receive the rewards outright at the end of waves 3 and 5.
There are more subtle changes that you may notice as you play the new version of the game but for now I think I've spilled enough ink on the matter.
Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback and support!
Eric, Andy, and Brian