Hello everyone!
I’m Lloyd from PDX Arc! Last month we asked the Mechabellum Community Discord what their most pressing questions are regarding the development of Mechabellum and they did not disappoint! Here are Developer Game River’s responses!
Q: Are there any plans to further improve 2v2 maps to make the gameplay more cooperative? Compact was a small step towards that with a somewhat shared middle, but overall is still lacking any proper cooperation from the two players.
A: Currently, there is no plan for a more cooperative 2v2, as we are focusing on developing the new 4-player free-for-all mode. With that being said, we definitely will try to improve the 2v2 experience in future patches.
Q: What is in your opinion the biggest balance issue you see in the game right now? Doesn't have to be "X is overpowered", just anything you feel that is in the hardest spot to properly balance at the moment.
A: The hardest part of balance is balance for different skill levels. Certain units or tactics are stronger in lower skill levels, but weaker in higher skill levels. At certain skill levels, a big chunk of players just can't find a tool to solve some problems they are facing. Our goal is to provide as many as possible tools for players to solve every strategic puzzle. If players can find an obvious problem-solving tool for most of the situations they face, then I think we achieved a good balance state.
Q: Why is there a random delay on unit attack which makes 2 units in sync start desync making one win over the other for no reason?
A: This mechanic is mainly used to prevent lots of units from constantly attacking and killing the same targets. And lots of units all attack at the same time is ugly to look at too. With that being said, I think we may change this mechanic in the future.
Q: Will there be more units? How many are planned? How often would new units be added to the game?
A: Yes, there will be more units. We have added 2 new units since the EA launch, and we think we will add 1 more unit this December. We are still finding more opportunities to add more units, for core units, we will only add them when there is a role missing. Aside from core units, we are also making boss units to the PvE modes, and we may move some of the units into PvP modes in the future.
Q: Would it be possible to customize mechs? Like paints/effects?
A: We will add skins for all mechs.
Q: Are there plans on having a more comprehensive replay system, namely I (and many others) would love to see the ability to re-play parts of a replay, to allow for better analysis of 'what could have been done better' at different stages of the game.
A: We do plan to make the replay system better in the future.
Q: Any plans for referral programs? Say, I invite a friend and we both get something good at some point.
A: We don't have a plan for this for now. But we will consider this kind of mechanic in the future.
Q: Are there plans for unit skins?
A: Yes, unit skins will come very soon.
Q: Will there be more balance changes for 2vs2? I feel like HP is way too low, if both people win their round its over way too fast
A: There will be more balance changes for 2vs2. We will also add options for players to set HP(and other stats) in lobby games.
Q: The shop rewards seem to be imbalanced. The star 'rarity' doesn't seem to correlate with how awesome or complicated or shiny or whatever the reward is. Are there plans to balance that? And if so, refund any 'extra' points spent on some of these items.
A: We may change the price of items in the future. And if we do change the price of any items, we will refund the extra points spent on them.
Q: Has it been considered that adding expensive units isn't as interesting as adding lots more cheap units? The cheap units are more frequently played and thus impact more games on average. War Factory is cool but it was a lot of dev work for not as much impact as a super simple 100 or 200 cost unit.
A: When adding new units, we will always want to add new units to fulfill empty roles. We do think the game lacks 100-cost units(for example, a 100-tank unit), so there will be more low-cost units We think units like War Factory do fulfill an empty role in the game, so we will add morhigh-cost units too.
Q: Could unranked private lobbies have custom parameters they it can be more casual? Like if we want to start with 5k supply and 50k health and fuck around with war factories or whatever it would bring some low-stress option for vibing with friends.
A: Yes, we will add more options to private lobbies.
Q: Hello! Has the dev team considered disabling Mustangs from equipping any items? Mustangs without items don't seem to be a huge problem at high-level play but their ability to hit both air & ground as well as hold offense/support items better than any other unit in most situations seems to be a core issue with their balance.
A: Currently, we do not plan to disable Mustang from equipment items. But we are aware of the issue, we are exploring different options to solve the problem.
Q: Are there any plans to balance the aggro style? At the moment tower tagging (just rush one tower) has zero downside, but the benefit is that you will sweep the opponent's army while debuff is active. You can also box the defending player with flanking units + you get to snowball with unit upgrades. Players can just place sentry on both flanks to defend their own towers to make sure they gets the opposition tower first. And usually defending player has his hands tied with defending own tower, so can't commit more than one unit for flanking (first to soak the missile and 2nd to go for tower)
A: Yes, we plan to balance aggro style and defense style. Currently, we are trying to add more units to balance this, if units are not enough, we will consider changing the map a little.
Q: Are there plans to add a personal "showcase" (for example in the Collection menu) where achievements, like badges from past tournaments, are displayed?
A: We do want to add these kinds of features, but it is not high-priority task for us.
Q: Are there plans to add in-game and Steam achievements?
A: We do not have plans to add achievements right now, as we do not want to add a tagged-on achievement system. But this may change in the future.
Q: Will more user statistics be added? Data like win rate (total, past month, etc), top-three deployed units, most frequently selected specialist, MMR curve, etc.
A: We do want to add these kinds of features in the future.
Q: Is there a possibility to get match data in a machine-readable format for match analysis and data tracking?
A: Yeah, we may open some data APIs in the future, we just do not have time for something like this.
Q: Are there immediate plans to improve the replay player, like rewinding, jumping forward, etc?
A: Yes.
Q: Any plans for an UNDO button?
A: Yes, but it is a kind of complicated feature, so it will not be added any time in the near future.
And that about wraps it all up! Look forward to seeing a monthly Q&A update starting in December and proceeding up until our launch out of Early Access! If you want to submit a question for the Developers to answer please join our Discord here!
-Lloyd