Here’s the complete list of changes for the Summer update public playtest.
Please note that this list also includes most of the changes that were coming into the Rogue’n’Roll update.
• You may now search for brobots directly in the multiplayer menu of the game using the ‘quick play’ button
• You may now invite brobots from other platforms to your game by sending them your session ID (which you can find in the multiplayer menu)
• Doubled both the player’s health and the enemies’ damage to diminish the occurrences of rounded numbers and to make them comparable with the enemies’ health values
• ‘Headbonk’ damage increased from 25 to 45
• ‘Lucky Critical’ is now called ‘Auto-Critical’ (while less funky, it should be clearer)
• ‘Resistance’ is now called ‘Armor’
• ‘Cooling Weapons’ are now called ‘Energy Weapons’, ‘Heat Cost’ is called ‘Energy Cost’ and other subsequent name have been updated as well, ‘Overheating’ still refers to the action of reaching the maximum of your energy gauge
• Fully frozen enemies no longer automatically take critical damage
Developer's Note: That was making Cryo the best element right-on and was creating a must-have synergy between critical and Cryo which was limiting the viable builds as well as reducing the effectiveness and viability of the Auto-Critical stat.
• Added a new Melee damage type (such as Burn or Explosive). Various gameplay elements such as Affixes, Perks or Gadgets now directly reference ‘Melee’ damage (for example: Increases Melee damage)
• Some gameplay elements such as the Recon’s ‘Slash’, the Guardian’s ‘Bash’ or the ‘Chainsaw’ now deal ‘Melee’ damage
• ‘Melee Attacks’ are now called and considered as ‘Secondary Abilities’, not all secondary abilities deal Melee damage
• When your guardian is deactivated in multiplayer, you know get to spectate what your brobot is doing in third person view
• ‘Mark’ damage amplification decreased from 70% to 50%
• ‘Mark’ now lasts as long on Bosses as it does on common enemies (5 seconds)
Health Flow Update
• 60% of the damage you take is stored into the ‘scratch damage bar’ (gray bar), the rest is taken as regular damage
• Only 40% of Bosses’ damage are stored into the scratch damage bar
• The scratch damage bar does not fade over time
• Enemies loot health pickups which quickly disappear
• Health pickups are more effective at repairing your scratch damage than restoring your health
• Pickups are independant for each player in multiplayer
• Scoping no longer gathers pickups from afar
• Deployed minions (such as Drone and Sentries) do not gather pickups from afar
Developer's Note: We’re explaining this change in details in the patch highlights.
Experience Update
• Destroying enemies now automatically grants experience
• As a result, experience cells have been replaced by healing cells
Developer's Note: We’re explaining this change in details in the patch highlights.
• Experience gains have been smoothed across different runs, leading to less differences in terms of XP values between each run
Commando
Frenzy
• Passive renamed to ‘Frenzy’ (instead of ‘Fury’), but still stacks points of Fury
• Frenzy no longer increases damage and resistance but instead firerate, reload speed and other speeds related to animation time
Rocket
• Cooldown decreased from 12.0 to 9.0
• Rocket is homing again
Developer's Note: Haha. See you in the next update with a rollback of this change. Yo-yo design we call it.
Engineer
Drone
• ‘Drone’ base health increased from 50 to 60
Scrap Blaster
• Damage decreased from 65.0 to 55.0
• Cooldown increased from 4.0 to 5.0
Guardian
Bash
• Now drops healing cells on takedowns or when hitting Bosses
Top Quality
• Now called ‘Top Quality’
• Now increases the damage of the first 33% ammo or energy gauge and no longer grants a shield
Developer's Note: While Shield is an interesting mechanic on paper, it was always hard to integrate it to Roboquest both in terms of health regeneration flow and mechanic clarity. In addition, it was a bit redundant with the new ‘scratch damage’ mechanic. The Guardian is one of the hardest classes to design because of its simplicity. Being the first class in the game, it had to be somewhat simple for the player to pick-up, but that makes consequently harder to create interesting or funny perks for it. The new passive should give us more room to give it such interesting perks. Regarding the other classes, we’re starting to be quite happy with their current design.
New Weapons
• 3 new weapons have been added: ‘Pulse Blaster’, ‘Mortar’ and ‘Torpedo Gun’
Pulse Blaster
An energy weapon hurling bursts of delayed explosive blasts.
Mortar
A powerful artillery weapon.
Torpedo Gun
A quick-to-reload rocket-propelling shotgun.
General
• Weapon categories have been removed
Developer's Note: We’re explaining this change in details in the patch highlights.
• ‘Power Gloves’ has been fully reworked and now only has a melee-punch as primary fire
• ‘Laser Saw’ has been reworked and now shoots sticking projectiles that deals damage over time rather than piercing projectiles
• ‘Cryo Launcher’ has been modified: projectiles no longer have gravity and it deals increased damage against fully frozen enemies
• ‘Dual Guns’ has been modified and now shoots in a burst fashion
• ‘Unreal Gun’ is now called ‘Cyclone’
• ‘Cyclone’ alt-fire now sticks to walls and enemies
Developer's Note: Regardless of how fan we are of the original weapon from Unreal Tournament, we felt like it was a bit too hard for players to properly aim and shoot the orb with its primary fire, making the weapon less viable for a vast majority of players. Making the orb stick to its target makes it much more enjoyable for everyone and we hope it will increase its pick-rate.
• Weapon ‘Mods’ are now called ‘Alt-Fire’ (which seems to be more intuitive for most players)
• Weapons that already have an alt-fire (such as the ‘Scratch Rifle’) now have a chance to spawn with alt-fire variations
• We increased alt-fires overall damage and tweaked their cooldown and amount of charges to make them feel more like a powerful utility or damage ability rather than a secondary fire you can spam
• Enemies no longer drop weapons
Developer's Note: We’re trying to get rid of the mechanics hurting the combat flow. Having to stop in the middle of the fight to compare weapons whereas the game timer is still running or when your brobot is going ham in the next corridor is one of those hurtful mechanics. We relocated weapon drops in other parts of the levels where you actually have the time (and presence of mind) to check out those juicy loot.
• Weapons rarity (number of affixes) is now displayed by a color-code (White, Green, Blue, Purple and Orange)
• Based on basecamp upgrades you have more chances to encounter weapons of higher rarity than before
• Weapon levels are now directly related to player level in terms of numerical values (you should be looting level 1 and 2 weapons when you’re level 1 and 2)
• Weapons you find now have a chance to be of 1 level higher than what you’re supposed to find at a specific game level
• Fantastic weapons always have an alt-fire
• We’re re-introducing the ‘Elemental Cannon’ under two different forms: the ‘Ice Cannon’ and the ‘Shock Cannon’
Developer's Note: The ‘Elemental Cannon’ did not fit in the alt-fire systems we implemented in one of our previous updates and that’s why we removed it back then. Now that it’s splitted into two different weapons, we can randomly plug alt-fire into it. Though we’re not currently certain of the current implementation of each of them and we’d be glad to hear your feedback about them.
Affixes
• Removed the ‘Affinity’ affix (considering weapon categories no longer exist)
Developer's Note: An interesting part of this affix was to increase the efficiency of gun weapons that are often a bit weak compared to other types of weapons. We’ll try to think of other ways to promote equipping guns.
• New weapon affix: ‘Lively’ - Increases weapon charge speed (for primary fires that needs charging)
• New weapon affix: ‘Deft’ - Increases critical damage while scoping
• New weapon affix: ‘Armored’ - Increases armor while in hand (for Melee and Heavy weapons mostly)
• ‘Crash’ has been removed from the game
Developer's Note: It was just way too strong for an affix and therefore we removed it and added it as an item instead.
• ‘Hitscan’ should work better with multiple-projectile weapons
• ‘Explosive’ now triggers an explosion every X shots instead of having a chance to trigger
• Removed the ‘Bang’ affix as a result (‘Explosive’ became a better version of it)
• ‘Surprise’ chance to auto-critical set to 10%
• ‘Lucky’ chance to auto-critical set to 20%
• ‘Buckshot’ damage increased by 10%
• ‘Neat’ range increase reduced from 25% to 20%
• ‘Heavy’ movement penalty increased from 20% to 25%
• ‘Ion Lance’ damage reduced from 50% to 25% of weapon base damage
• ‘Megaboom’ radius bonus decreased from 50% to 30%
• ‘Warmup’ firerate bonus decreased from 30% to 20%
• ‘Solar’ energy gauge bonus decreases from 15% to 10%
• ‘Quickload’ reload speed bonus reduced from 20% to 15%
• ‘Carbon’ movement speed penalty reduction increased from 10% to 15%
• ‘Puncture’ damage increase per target pierced increased from 30% to 50%
Alternative Fire
• You can now use Alt-Fires with energy weapons while they are overheating
• ‘Can-Opener’ modified: it now simply deals melee damage and heals on takedown instead of executing
Balance Changes
Dual Uzis
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 6.0 to 7.5
Windmill Rifle
• Ammo in clip increased from 45 to 60
Tommy Gun
Primary Fire
• Firerate decreased from 12.5/s to 12.04/s
Light Machine Gun
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 12.0 to 13.0
• Firerate increased from 9.09/s to 10.0/s
Blast SMG
• The Blast Ball has been renamed Blast SMG
Scratch Rifle
Alternative Fire
• Damage increased from 50.0 to 60.0
• Impact force increased from 60.0 to 80.0
• Radius increased from 1.5m to 1.6m
• Cooldown increased from 4.0 to 6.0
• Stack amount decreased from 2 to 1
Pumping Shotgun
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 12.0
Grandma's Shotgun
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 13.0 to 12.0
Thumper
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 40.0 to 55.0
• Impact force increased from 50.0 to 64.0
• Radius decreased from 1.9m to 1.2m
Graviton Launcher
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 48.0 to 50.0
• Radius decreased from 1.2m to 1.0m
Throwing Knife
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 24.0 to 25.0
Revolver
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 42.0 to 46.0
Dual Crossbows
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 28.0 to 30.0
• Critical ratio increased from 2.0 to 2.25
Scout Sniper
Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 2.0 to 2.25
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Arquebus
Primary Fire
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Sheriff's Carbine
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 48.0 to 53.0
• Firerate increased from 1.66/s to 1.88/s
Longbow
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 68.0 to 70.0
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Shock Rifle
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 20.0 to 8.0
• Firerate increased from 5.0/s to 10.0/s
• Range increased from 12.0 to 16.0
• Heat per shot decreased from 5.0 to 3.0
Junk Beam
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 20.0 to 19.0
Assault Rifle
• Ammo in clip increased from 30 to 35
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 10.0 to 10.5
• Impact force increased from 9.0 to 9.5
• Firerate increased from 11.11/s to 11.76/s
Blast Minigun
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 7.5 to 7.0
• Firerate decreased from 16.66/s to 14.28/s
• Heat per shot increased from 1.25 to 1.5
Assault Shotgun
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 7.0 to 6.0
• Firerate decreased from 3.7/s to 3.57/s
Triple Shotgun
Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 16.0 to 19.0
Barrel Cannon
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 56.0 to 66.0
• Impact force increased from 78.0 to 80.0
• Radius decreased from 1.5m to 1.0m
• Projectile speed increased from 7000 to 12500
Flak Cannon
Alternative Fire
• Damage increased from 58.0 to 70.0
• Firerate increased from 2.22/s to 2.5/s
• Cooldown increased from 3.0 to 6.0
• Stack amount decreased from 2 to 1
Long Rifle
Primary Fire
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Assault Pistol
• Ammo in clip decreased from 10 to 7
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 38.0 to 46.0
• Impact force increased from 48.0 to 50.0
Blast Sniper
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 47.0 to 44.0
• Firerate decreased from 2.7/s to 2.56/s
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Elite Sniper
Primary Fire
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Elite Crossbow
Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 1.75
• Range increased from 22.5 to 23.0
Blast Palms
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 21.0 to 18.0
Assault Sentry
Primary Fire
• Range increased from 12.5 to 16.0
Cyclone
• The Unreal Gun has been renamed Cyclone
Primary Fire
• Range decreased from 22.5 to 16.0
• Heat per shot decreased from 16.0 to 10.0
Alternative Fire
• Radius increased from 0.8m to 0.9m
• Projectile speed increased from 3200 to 6400
• Now sticks to hit surface and enemies
• We updated most perk and upgrades in the game but all of their visual icons are temporary (and made by our game design team)
• There are neutral perks (available to all classes) and class-specific perks (that you can only choose with certain classes)
• Reduced the amount of upgrades per perk from 3 to 2
• Items are no longer available as simple rewards but are instead part of the ‘Shop’ system (read the section below or the patch highlights for more information)
• Items no longer improve weapon category stats (since categories have been removed), instead they grant various bonuses that can complement your build or provide funky effects
• Added several types of ‘Shops’ where you can purchase various game elements (such as weapon, items or reroll affixes)
• Added a new in-game currency called ‘Powercells’ to purchase items from shops
• You can loot Powercells from enemies, find them in chests or receive them as a rank reward at the end of the levels
• Powercells dropping off enemies quickly disappear
• Shops aren’t all available at the beginning of the game and unlocking specific basecamp upgrades will increases the amount and variety of shops you encounter
• Removed all consoles as a result
• Updated many basecamp upgrades
• Added some basecamp upgrades
Developer's Note: Those changes are simply temporary to follow the other game system changes. The basecamp will be overhauled later down the road as you might have read in our previous devblogs.
• ‘Soccer Shoes’ gadget removed
Developer's Note: Following the base headbonk damage increase.
• ‘Hero’s Cape’ required height to reach max damage increased by 2m
• ‘Sunglasses’ now reduces your health instead of your armor
• ‘Safety Helmet’ now grants 10% bonus health instead of reducing damage from traps
• ‘Fancy Pins’ now increases the chance for weapons to spawn with an alt-fire and reduces alt-fire cooldowns instead of buffing cooldown and damage of alt-fires
• New gadget: ‘Cooking Gloves’ - Reduces the cost to reroll weapon affixes by 1
• New gadget: ‘Sheriff Star’ - Increases your chance to have higher level weapons and more affixes
• New gadget: ‘Business Briefcase’ - Grants you 2 powercells when leveling-up
• Return of the gadget: ‘Metal Detector’ - Enemies have a chance to drop weapons when destroyed
• Arenas now open when all enemies are vanquished instead of when reaching 10% of enemies remaining
• Reduced the delay between two enemy spawns in arenas from 1.5s to 0.5s
Developer's Note: This makes sure the intensity of the combat remains high throughout the entirety of the arena fight despite the change above.
• Enemy projectiles are faster
• Enemies are faster
• Enemies move more often
• Enemies shoot a bit less often when in large groups
• Enemies load up their attack a little faster (5% in average)
• Updated enemy line across the Act 1
Developer's Note: This is only the continuation of the work we’re doing on enemy line ups and we’ll continue in that direction with the implementation of new enemies.
• Rail bots’ sprint speed reduced by 10%
• Most enemy projectiles no longer pass through enemies and instead simply disappear
Developer's Note: This should remove some of the frustration of being shot by an enemy through another one despite not being able to see the incoming projectile.
• Guardbots impact resistance increased by 10%
• Boombot, Boomfly and Rocketpawn explosion radius increased by 30%
• Icebots now trigger a cryo explosion when being destroyed
• Exploding boombots now apply impact to nearby enemies
• Shockpod base damage reduced from 10 to 2
• Smallbots tend to move more often when nearby the player
• Boombot, Boomfly and Rocketpawn no longer take double damage against burn
Developer's Note: This was a change that we thought was implemented in the game for a long time now, but apparently it wasn’t, so we’re fixing that. Right now, there is no valid reason to implement a “weakness” or “damage type” system and even less if it only works with one element out of three.
• Enemies have less health in average in higher difficulties (starting from Heroes+1)
Developer's Note: Time-to-kill is a very important metric that should always remain relatively low, because that’s how it’s fun to smash robots in Roboquest.
Bosses
• Added a system to have a better random boss rotation (and avoid encountering the same boss several runs in a row)
• Bosses’ aggro system has been changed and Bosses should more often switch target instead of targeting the same one over and over again
• Time needed for the lava to cover the ‘Sir Catercoaster’ arena’s ground decreased from 20s to 13s (total time to fully cover the arena remains at 80s)
• ‘Lady Bug’ name reverted to ‘Beetle Royale’
• ‘Dr. Turret’ rotating laser speed reduced by 20%
• ‘Billy Boom’ health increased by 5%
• ‘Billy Boom’ back-plate can no longer be destroyed (and only opens up when ‘Billy Boom’ gets down)
• ‘Sir Catercoaster’ health decreased by 10%
• ‘Beetle Royale’ health decreased by 10%
• ‘Judgeball’ health decreased by 10%
• Improved rail positioning in all levels
• Updated rail system to retain your momentum when hopping on and off of it
• Lava floors now propel you in a vertical fashion when dealing damage to you
• Added 5 new challenge rooms in Act 1
• Updated certain challenge rooms visuals
• Added transparent projectile-blocking walls to all doors, entrances and other safe areas to prevent enemies from shooting you and vice-versa
• Locked doors now have a color-code corresponding to their key color
• Quickly updated the tutorial to include all current mechanics
Developer's Note: The tutorial is something we’ll be overhauling later down the road. Considering the heavy changes the game is ongoing, it would be a waste to update it now. Though, there were (and still are) a number of mechanics that weren’t explained or were outdated so we had to make this change.
• Goliaths in ‘Haven City’ now loot many healing cells
• The ‘Junkyard’ in ‘Road’ now provides better upgrades
• ‘Road’ visuals updated
• ‘Energy Center’ visuals updated
• Challenge rooms’ visuals updated in certain levels
• Added a visual indicator nearby the experience bar to indicate how much XP you’ve gained when destroying a badbot
• Updated the tooltips for several game settings
• Updated perk selection UI
• Added user interface feedback to several perks
• Your perks are now displayed as icons in the top-left corner of your screen
• Perk icons at the bottom of the screen have been removed
• Added other interface feedback for some perks
• Added a UI indicator to display the maximum amount of armor and movement speed you can cumulate
• Added new and updated loading tips to better reflect various game mechanic changes
• Weapon level is now displayed over the weapon pickup
• All allied deployed minions now have a floating health bar (alike enemies but green)
• Minions deployed from primary abilities now have their health bar also displayed nearby the ability icon
• You can change the game language without restarting the game
• The tab overlay now displays player’ stat tied to damage scaling per level
• Map area color changed: challenge rooms (purple), safe area (green) and special areas (orange)
• Updated weapon tooltip critical ratio display: now displayed in ratio rather than percentage (1.25 instead of 125%)
• Updated weapon tooltip range display
• Removed ‘Radius’ and ‘Range’ from melee weapons
• Updated weapon tooltip for multiple projectile weapons: now displays 5x10 instead of 50 (for instance)
• Slightly updated the visual around the player health bar and class icon
• Slightly updated the visual of your brobot’s health bar
• Updated the visuals of the player’s status effects
• Added placeholder icons for weapon alt-fires
• Updated icons for Wrenches, Powercells, Keys and Data-Logs
• Added an icon to display your current Armor value nearby your health bar
• You now see a progress bar when being rebooted by your brobot
• Dealing damage with elemental effects out of your weapon range is now displayed in gray numbers instead of coloured numbers to better indicate that you’re too far from the enemy
• Added a visual effect on weapons when under the effects of various bonuses
• Updated waterfall visuals
• Updated Recon’s stealth and decoy visual
• Bosses now have a proper visual effect when affected by elemental statuses
• ‘Judgeball’ visual effects updated
• Added a new player animation when you’re being stunned
• Updated most weapon impact visual effects
• Updated most surface impact visual effects (for example when shooting grass or dirt)
• Updated the rendering and position of the burning status on all enemies
• Added a visual effect when sentries are destroyed
• Updated the laser visuals of the ‘Laser Saw’ and the Recon’s ‘Dagger’ and added color variations depending on their element
• Added new or updated old visual effects for explosion emanating from the player (alike ‘Hero’s Cape’)
• Added missing overheat visual effects on certain energy weapons
• Added a thruster visual effects to ‘Judgeball’ charge attack
• Added a shield visual effect to ‘Judgeball’ shielding beacons
• Added a ‘despawn’ visual effect to some projectiles
• Updated the visual effect when fully freezing an enemy
• Updated ‘Dr. Turret’ fire area visual effect
• Added a visual effect cue above ‘Rail Bots’ head when they start sprinting
• Updated enemy laser beams impact visual effect
• Updated ‘Mark’ visual effect
• Updated the visuals for all lava floors
• Started implementing some environment visual effects in specific levels
Developer's Note: This is just the first steps of what we would like to do regarding environmental ambient and mood. We’d like to add or adjust lighting, post-process, sounds and other visual effects for all of them.
• Added specific sounds for almost all Alt-Fires
• Added a sound for ‘Dr. Turret’ area of effect
• Added a new sound for Commando’s ‘Shorty’
• Updated ‘Shock Rifle’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Graviton Launcher’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Tactical Shotgun’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Blunderbuss’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Grenade Launcher’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Revolver’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Cyclone’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Blast SMG’ shoot sound
• Updated ‘Longbow’ shoot and charge sound
• Updated ‘Scratch Rifle’ reload sound
• Updated Weapon Equip sound
• Updated Jumpad sound
• Hugely improved performance related to text display
• Updated performance of most visual effects in the game
• Updated user interface rendering performance
• Updated the performance cost of a lot of game systems
• Overall CPU performances should be better
• Fixed multiple undocumented bugs and issues
• Fixed an issue causing bouncing projectiles to hit bosses several times in a row
• Rotating the map will no longer hide certain elements
• The game systems will no-longer fail to register Goliath’s death in ‘Haven-City’ when destroyed by the client robot (leaving you unable to progress into the game)