https://youtu.be/7B1lDhNs-KM
Well fuck, it finally happened.
Please, humor me for a moment while I talk about the last update - kind of a "short" post mortem on my thoughts on it. You can skip this by looking for where the patch notes actually start.
PREVIOUS UPDATE POST MORTEM
Over the last 6 months I have been working day in and day out trying to craft a better version of the game. With the last update, I think I had a vision for what I wanted, but didn't start on that vision early enough or with a clear enough roadmap forward to fully pull it off. There were a lot of good things in the last update that needed to happen. The new arms and rig for the weapons made it possible to craft higher quality animation and really dig in deep on what makes GTTOD's guns some of the best indie guns out there. The world of The Shatter got fleshed out enough that I could pull out some pretty cool mechanics, like the Shrine of the Summit. The Artstyle became more consistent and easier to look at, making running around actually pleasing to the eye. The sound effects got a lot of attention, and really helps to give that sense of weight to what you are doing - especially when it comes to weapons.
I had a vision for a GTTOD that is the perfect "pick up, put down, pick it up later when I feel like it" arcade shooter. I never wanted to make a game that demands your attention. I wanted to make something that you go to and say "Hey, that sounds like a nice little breather from my other main shooters, I'll play that for a few hours, unlock some cards, and maybe pick it back up a few weeks or months from now again". For that, I wanted to make the game as replayable as I possibly could - but not so much that it becomes frustrating. Obviously when talking about replayability, the first place a lot of developer's minds go to is a rogue like. And, you know, GTTOD was never a stranger to rogue mechanics. The weapons and equipment have always been random, and there have been a few iterations of a rogue mode that have popped up there and again in GTTOD from time to time as I toyed with the idea.
But, I think I went too far down that rabbit hole. I got lost somewhere between "Yeah let's make a challenging video game with replayability" and "Yeah I love CBT - the video game". I had just finished Halo 2 on Legendary when I was making that last update, and I feel like I got sucked into that loop of dying and trying again without really understanding why that worked for Halo 2. As inspired as I am by games like Halo and DOOM, GTTOD is a different beast altogether, and I wasn't looking at that last update from the lens of "What is GTTOD", but rather from a "What is my pipedream FPS game?".
When the last update wasn't received well, I really couldn't understand it at first. By that time, after so many months of development, I had played the game so much that I had become an unkillable cheeser, and so the game posed no difficulty to me. I would use that reasoning to pump up the difficulty and make it more and more challenging, since my sights were focused on making a challenging video game for players like me. There's a reason I put so much time into reworking the death effects and animations - it's because I wanted to emphasize it. That, in turn, led me to want to focus a lot on the things around death as well. I wanted to slow the game down to focus more on the combat in the movement, but I did it prematurely since I hadn't quite figured out how to make fun combat yet. The slowing down of the player was a bandaid on my issue of not rewarding players enough for engaging in combat and instead deciding to skip the entire level.
But it goes further than that. Even with slower players, people still just wanted to run. Who knew people wanted to move fast in a parkour game based on Titanfall? Not me, apparently. So I decided to force the issue even more. I implemented a key system for the "teleporter" (not the door, since I was wanting to make the door seem more ethereal and put it in a realm of its own, which is its own stupid side tangent) and locked players into the level. They HAD to fight. I want them to see all my pretty guns and to die to try again and see MORE guns!
Long story short, what I thought I wanted wasn't actually what I wanted, and even had it been what I wanted, I was no where near the point where I could have pulled it off.
The combat was not good enough, the movement was not stable enough, the visuals were not pretty enough, the polish was not shiny enough, and the playerbase was not willing enough.
So, back to the drawing board.
The Excessively Late Update Patch Notes:
- Expansions on the things that the last update did right, like visuals, audio, and animation
- Lots of reworked and completely new weapons to help fill roles in the sandbox
- More enemies that move and fight in different ways to increase variety
- Blanket rebalances across the board to influence players to WANT to fight, rather than to force them to
- A completely new door system that is more forgiving of player error and has more options on how to progress through it, with or without combat
- Levels that are longer, more expansive, and filled with more things to do
- Removed the upgrade totem in favor of upgrade pick-ups. Faster, less confusing, not random - fair
- A new equipment system with equipment more designed to deal damage and assist the player
- A new equipment slot so you can carry more than one
- An ultimate ability - TIME STOP - that you can charge by engaging in the combat systems
- An XP system so you can unlock Starter Cards no matter what mode you're playing in
- New starter cards, many of which completely change up how you play the game (try Gunzerker when you unlock it, it's really fun)
- A re-emphasis on movement. Speed has increased by a shitload across the board, and using your movement abilities now directly influence how proficient you are in combat
- An endless mode with a separate progression system than the main game
- New menus and options, which are still in the process of getting reworked (the keybinds is a good example of how I want the other menus to look)
- A new level management system that shuffles levels around each time you play, and allows for things like looping runs and levels
- Added other level events like ambushes, cargo bunkers, and cycle stones
- New, faster level loading that doesn't require a separate loading area
- A new, bigger (but very empty) HUB where I have enough room to add cool new things and interactables in later updates
- Grab-A-Gun adjustments to turn it into more of a reward for progressing and exploring rather than just a bunch of cheap guns that aren't that good
- Bug fixes out the wazoo
- HUGE optimizations with regards to performance and stuttering
All in all, is this update really that big of a deal? Yeah, I actually think so. I am refocused, and determined to bring you guys the game you want. This is that first step that I have always been trying to make, but never knowing how. This is the foundation for a game I have been looking for, and hopefully for one you've been wanting. It's a stepping stone to further expansion on a, what I think, is a good base. Is it full of content? It's alright. But what's most important is that it's fun, it plays well, it runs well, and there's PLENTY of open space to just add add add add add content left and right.
If you run around The Shatter or the HUB, you can see where I am planning on adding those expansions first. If you beat the Blade Sentinel and look at the world that The Tavern level exists in, you can see where we're going. I really do hope you guys like this update, because this is what I'm doing now. This is the direction I'm heading in, and I'm not slowing down anytime soon. I think this is what is right for the game, and progressing with more levels, more events, more enemies, more guns, more mechanics, and more overall game content is what I'm going to be doing from here on out.
Anyway, toodles! I'll see all of you in the next big GTTOD update slated for mid-August, Sticks and Stones!
