Difficulty Adjustment
Over the past week we've heard a lot of concern that the current game is a bit too difficult and the gameplay was too hectic once it ramped up. This update is the first attempt at turning difficulty knobs to affect both of these issues.
Enemy Speed
One of the biggest concerns we've heard is that enemies at latter stages of the game move too quickly. This was intentional as a better alternative to giving enemies much more health (as I and many others really dislike damage sponges), but obviously the settings we used to adjust speed based on difficulty were too steep. To help fix this I've made two changes to enemy speed increasing based on difficulty
- Enemy speed increase cut 50% (was 2x at difficulty 100, now 2x at 200)
- Enemy maximum speed clamped to 1.75x base speed
I think these two changes will still give a bit of a gradient for difficulty, but it will be much more gradual, and won't continue rising forever as you reach higher difficulties.
Spawn Density
A few updates ago I introduced a 'break' system to the enemy spawning, so that every 45 seconds of regular (hectic) spawning there would be 20 seconds of lighter (25% rate) spawning. While I think it may have helped somewhat, it hasn't gotten the response I had hoped for, so I'm adjusting that system slightly.
- Non-cave areas have 30 second hectic spawn and 45 second light spawn
- Cave has 45 second hectic spawn and 30 second light spawn
- Light spawn rates reduced to 20% in multiplayer and 30% in singleplayer
- Starting a 'hectic' period instantly spawns an enemy to reset the spawn cooldown
- 'Final-Stand' area spawn rate reduce by 15% for both spawn periods
With this first round of changes (and the addition of some statistic tracking from yesterday's patch), I think we're in a good position to start adjusting more knobs in the difficulty setup. The question for this patch simply asks if the changes that were made improve the experience, and we'll know which way to move with the results.
Other Changes
- Attempted fix for (rare?) crash in tutorial
- Added sound effects for hectic-spawn activation and losing game
- Added arrow indicator for second gate to help new players