Howdy Guardians!
The 0.1.2 update is now out.
While we initially planned to do a small update, we had so many things to pack in that we've decided to release it as a major update.
We're still hard at work to bring you new content to experience and our plan remains the same to release this content in the Autumn update.
For now, we're here with a large set of system changes and experimental features that will improve the gameplay experience. As always you can discuss these changes on Discord or the Steam community forums.
Here are a few highlights of this update:
Powerslide
You've been asking for new movement mechanics for a while now, and here it is!
We decided to opt in for a slide rather than a dash because we needed a lateral dodge which could not be performed mid-air. We already had a very agile (and complex) mid-air movement and we did not want to add more complexity on top of that.
The polish level is low for now, we want to see how this mechanic unfolds before diving further into its implementation.
Weapon Affixes
We pushed the first iteration of the system. It gives random bonuses to weapons you loot. There are over 15 different affixes for now and we plan to add more. We initially wanted to wait a little bit before releasing this feature but we figured out that you'd love to try it out and we'd be glad to hear your impressions and suggestions about it.
Gameplay Changes
We implemented many modifications to existing systems: reworked Recon ability, cooldown-based ability, attribute rework, scope rework and health flow changes being the most important.
You can find a full list of changes below.
Localization
As usual, the localization process has been supported by kind members of the community. This time around, we kindly thank Flo, Tryyton (German translation) and Ria (Chinese translation) for their work!
Patch Notes v0.1.2
🍉 Community Suggestion: These features have been asked or suggested by the community.
🚧 Experimental Features: These features are either a work-in-progress or something we would need your feedback about. They might be reworked or removed from the game over the course of the EA.
Menu and UI
• Added a landing menu before going in the basecamp where you can modify your settings, view news, latest patch notes, incoming updates and reset your profile
🍉 Added new resolution and widescreen support (4/3, 16/10, 21/9, 32/9)
🍉 Added a field of view slider in the graphic settings
🍉 You can now press space to continue in the end and score screens
🍉 Added an option to remove onomatopoeia visual effects nearby the weapon when shooting and reloading
🍉 Added an option to remove camera shakes for people suffering from motion sickness
🍉 Alt Tabbing now pauses the game (in soloplayer) and disable sounds
🍉 An option has been added to enable sounds in background
• The game is automatically paused if you unplug your gamepad or if you open the Steam overlay (in soloplayer)
• Locked loadouts are now displayed and a tooltip explains how to unlock them
• The settings for mouse and gamepad have been split up and reworked
• Weapon tooltips now clearly display affixes and bonuses
• Added a "Reset Profile" button in the settings but you can only use it in the landing menu
• Several settings tooltip and validation window texts have been revisited
• Several Basecamp texts have been revisited
• Added an extra text font to properly display Cyrillic characters (please report any missing character)
Powerslide
🍉🚧 A powerslide has been added to the character movement tools
• You can press "crouch" while moving to trigger it
• It's available from the start (but it's not highlighted in the tutorial)
General Gameplay
• Health pickup frequency increased by 50%
• Health restored from pickups reduced to 12% down from 15%
🍉 Cells last 1.5 seconds longer
• Burn damage calculation has been reworked. Instead of accumulating "stacks" of burn on the same target, you now deal burn damage depending on the base damage of the tool you're using to apply it
• Cryo effect has been reworked. You now accumulate cryo "stacks" on the same target up until it's completely frozen (and unable to move)
• Shock calculation have been modified and while you shouldn't perceive much changes, the shock power of the different weapons should feel more logical
• Homing projectiles now tries to prioritize the target you were looking at when shooting
• You can now reload while sprinting, consequently we've removed the option "sprint cancels reload"
• Arenas now have "invisible walls" on their doors, effectively preventing you and the enemies from shooting through (this means you now have to enter the arena to fight the enemies)
• New "toe snapping" system to better snap to edges when trying to jump on them
• Ruins key is now acquired by beating the first boss, in multiplayer both players must have the key to open the door
Developer’s Notes: Keys were a little bit too hard to retrieve (or understand what they were about) which resulted in players never finding the Ruins. This was never our intent so we're easing the finding process for that specific key. We'll be monitoring the others as well.
Character & Progression
Abilities
• Abilities are now cooldown based instead of regenerating when you gather cells (they now recharge over time)
• Skill for Dummies (artefact): Now reduces ability cooldown by 15% (it was previously reducing ability cost by 25%)
Developer’s Notes: While "cell-recharging" was initially one of the ways to promote forward combat, it was really tough to build a sense of "ability rhythm" as the regeneration rate could sometimes be quite irregular. We think this change won't hurt forward combat, will help create that mental rhythm and will make "long-range" playstyles more viable.
Attributes
• Assault attribute points now also increase Melee Damage by 2%
• Precision attribute points now also increase Critical Damage by 2%
• Demolition attribute points now also increase Firerate by 2%
• Technology attribute points now also increase Explosion Radius by 2%
Developer’s Notes: The attribute system was all about maxing out one stat. We expect these changes to make players think about what type of secondary stat they want.
Upgrades
• Polished Core now also decreases your ability cooldown
• Weapon Mastery has been removed and split into 6 other upgrades
• Each of these new upgrades increases a combo of 2 attributes
• When you'd have the choice to pick Weapon Mastery, you now have a random one of these upgrades as a choice instead
Developer’s Notes: Considering the attribute changes, "Weapon Mastery" became far too powerful (granting one attribute of each) and had to be split down into several smaller bonuses.
Loadouts
Mark (Recon)
• "Mark" has been removed and replaced by “Stealth”
• Stealth: Instantly stealths you and creates a decoy in front of you. Stealth automatically ends after 6 seconds or upon dealing damage. All enemies you looked at while stealthed are marked when exiting stealth
• Marked enemies now take 30% additional damage from all sources instead of taking critical damage from all sources
Developer’s Notes: Mark had many issues, starting with the fact that it wasn't that much fun to use. Also, it was only enabling "longrange playstyle" if you were playing Recon. Finally, it was not really synergizing with critical hits (it wasn't buffing their damage in the end). We shifted the "longrange playstyle" enabler directly on Scopes, modified Mark debuff so that it can scales with Precision weapons and finally tried to find a funnier implementation of the Recon skill.
Taser (Engineer)
• No longer requires charging, now instantly releases a pulse dealing shock damage in front of you
• Has a 3 seconds cooldown
• Added placeholder sound
Developer’s Notes: In addition to lacking proper feedback, this melee attack was kind of tedious to use because of its charge time. We decided to make it way simpler to use and to counterbalance its power with a built-in cooldown.
Drone (Engineer)
🍉 Drones now properly follow you, teleporting to you if needed (that’s how much they love you)
• They shoot energy projectiles instead of bullet hitscan
• They persist even when switching levels
Weapons
General
• Many weapons have received small gameplay and value tweaks to follow the new system update and metrics. Considering the amount of micro changes, we won't go over the details this time around, rest assured that we'll be providing more details as the EA progresses and the systems settle
• Most area of effect radius have been reduced by 10% (they were scaling too hard with the new technology area size bonus)
• Graviton Launcher: Now has its unique 3D model and animation set
• Grandma's Shotgun: Replaced secondary fire by Dual Rockets, it shoots two explosive rockets
• Heavy Crossbow: Added secondary fire Marking Blast, it shoots one explosive arrow marking all enemies around the impact point
• Heavy Crossbow: Primary firerate highly increased
• Handgun: Added an equip animation played in the tutorial, at the basecamp and in the Canyons
Affixes
🚧 Weapons can spawn with random additional affixes
• You’ll have to craft a specific upgrade at the basecamp to unlock them
• Fixed a bug where Swift would apply its bonus twice
• Swift no longer grants 5% Speed, instead it grants 7% Movement Speed
Developer’s Notes: Like you, we felt like 5% Movement Speed was too small to notice, but with the previous iteration, buffing the value would also buff Firerate and Reload Speed, which we did not want. Making Swift only buff Movement Speed, makes us able to increase the value without risking to break anything else.
Scopes
• Scope weapons critical ratio reduced by 25%
• Scopes now increase critical damage by 30% (when scoping)
• Scopes now automatically gather cells if you kill an enemy with a critical shot (when scoping)
Developer’s Notes: Balancing weapons is a continuous process and we’re carefully following your feedback on that side. And while there were (surprisingly) no clear under or over powered categories, we felt like Precision weapons could feel a bit underwhelming to use at times. With the changes on attributes and cell fade time we expect most precision weapons to already feel better without other changes. Though, scopes still clearly needed some love so we take this opportunity to revisit them a bit.
Enemies
• Average enemy damage increased by 20%
• Flying enemies can no longer be staggered mid-air (and therefore will no longer fall and explode), stunning them with shock damage still works though
• The rate at which enemies spawn in arena has been increased overall
• Stunning bosses will effectively stop and stun them for a short duration (but no longer deals extra damage)
• Bosses should no longer chain the same pattern more times than intended
• Diggy Mole: Now has a slight delay before going underground after using Shockwave
• Sniper Pod (Fields): Projectile speed modified to be dodgeable with a powerslide
• Gatling Pod (Fields): Damage increased but projectiles slowed down
• Guard Pawn (Fields): His melee attack now targets the player rather than an area (should make him less likely to randomly stun you from behind or upward)
Basecamp
New Upgrades
• Weapon Affixes (4 levels): Unlocks or increases the amount of affixes weapons can get
• Healbot (3 levels): Increases the amount of health restored by the Healbot by 5%
Audio
General
🍉 General volume reduced by 40%
• Your brobot sounds are 30% quieter than before
• Fixed a bug where some weapon sounds playing in first person view would spatialize, resulting in hearing the weapon shooting “from the side” if you were moving while shooting
🍉 Jetpack overall volume reduced
• Cryo Explosion accumulated sounds nuisance reduced
Music
• “Metal Hero” (landing screen music) now fades in and its general volume has been reduced
🍉 Fixed an issue where musics would fail to loop correctly when transitioning from one state to another
Added Sounds
• Assault Sentry - Secondary Fire
• Engineer - Drone - Shoot & Rocket Perk
Reworked / Replaced Sounds
• Enemy Arena Spawn
• Ride Spline
• Chest Open
• Recon - Slash
• Assault Rifle - Primary Fire
• Grenade Launcher - Primary Fire
• Fire Flower - Primary Fire
• Junk Sniper - Primary Fire
• Mine Gun - Primary / Secondary Fire
Bug Fixes
(in multiplayer, the 'host' refers to the player inviting his friend to join his game, the 'client' refers to the player joining his friend's game)
• Potential Fix: Clients should no longer spawn outside of the map when switching levels
• Potential Fix: Clients should no longer see invisible enemies after exiting a safe zone
• Potential Fix: Clients should no longer be stuck in the boss safe zone after the boss cut-scene has played
• Potential Fix: You should no longer be stuck in a white screen when trying to play the after-boss cinematic
• Potential Fix: You should no longer be stuck in an arena without any enemy spawning
• Reduced the amount of crashes when restarting a game in multiplayer
• Fixed a bug which would prevent players with non-Latin characters in their nickname to create or join multiplayer games
• Both players now have the same rank calculation at the end of a level (previously, there was a chance for the client to earn a lesser rank)
• You will no longer be stuck in a black screen when opening the perk selector while switching levels
• Enemies can no longer be permanently shielded, even when the enemy providing the shield is dead
• Fixed an issue where the FPS Limitation setting would override the VSync setting (effectively applying a FPS cap lower than your screen refresh rate)
• You will no longer hear an interface sound popping at the end of the loading screen
• Optimisation: traps and other interactive items are now properly unloaded when out of sight
• The 'Difficulty Unlocked' text no longer appears if you already unlocked that difficulty
• Fixed various level design holes and get-out-of-map spots