We're three months in after the early access release of M.A.S.S. Builder! As you may have read a few weeks ago about our adjustments, we are now almost ready to release the additions and adjustments to the game. First, let us admit that we might have not been able to finish all the things we've promised, there are some last minute changes that made us reworked many of the patch parts (looking at you, level design). We're still aiming for another January update with lots and lots more content to come. The updates should be coming to everyone SOON.
Additions to the game
New Firing Types
As promised, we are ready to let players try out more firing types that have been shown throughout the weeks. For now there's only the two that was shown before but we're continuing our work on more of them!. If you haven't seen them yet, check them out below along a short description:
- Spread (Bullet Shooters): A short-ranged cone firing pattern, the "spread" fire will allow players to dish out heavy damage through multiple pellets from a single button press. The closer an enemy is, the chance for them to get hit by multiple pellets increases. When used in conjunction with damage properties, the spread fire will be able to add great utility to their damage.
- Ray (Energy Shooters): A mid-ranged narrow stream of energy burst forth! The "ray" shooter fires at an extremely fast rate with piercing rays through, delivering streams of energy to a large group of enemies with ease. With how fast these shooters can fire, players can utilize them with damage properties to deliver a constant stream of conditional ailments!
New Armor Set
We are also adding in the Kaiser armor set. The set is themed around a more rounded and curvy design.
Photography Mode
Another promised addition, the Photography mode is here to help everyone take screenshots of their creation to show it off. The feature currently allows players to pose their M.A.S.S. in various poses, alongside their crafted weapons, in the various backgrounds that we have. We do plan to update this feature alongside the game when we create more missions and tilesets that can be added to the backgrounds. For now, please have fun and show us what you can create with the feature!
Story and missions
- Added 2 new story missions with an epic boss fight at the end of mission 8. So, the ending of Chapter 1 which is just introduction has come, mission 8 will feature an extremely difficult boss fight against one of the first epic boss Quark. Please have fun with it, we do hope we lived up to the hype of having a great boss fight. We're also updating new level designs into the game through the newly added missions. With how well they were received during our WIP previews, we've decided to work on them immediately (shifting some of the things backwards) and implemented them into the game in this patch.
Adjustments
Defensive Focus adjustments
Reworked how defensive focus M.A.S.S. functions: With these adjustments, we hope to help brawlers playstyle that can make players feel better when fighting in close combat without having to worry much about their durability. If damage to a point, they can quickly step out of combat to regenerate most of their shields before rushing back into battle. Please let us know how these changes affect you and how you feel about it.
- Increased shields on Architectures tree, shields recovery, and armor across the board by a significant amount while lowering Durability or shifting it into some other units instead so players can have a better focus on each units. This meant the Effective Durability of a player stays the same, but now half of it can be regenerated quickly out of combat via Shield Recovery tuning. Techs that have conditions relating to Durability should also be more effective and easier to use.
- Reworked techs that focus on defensive prowess of a M.A.S.S. and also change their placements on the development nodes. This should make it more focused and less confusing for our players.
- Adjusted the numbers of Armor status increment and application to compensate for every part that has lowered Durability. This should complement well into the playstyle with our shield changes if players decide to go full defensive units.
Close Combat adjustments
We've been secretly reading through discussions and noticed that players doesn't have the greatest feeling when using close combat weapons. As a response to that, we have adjusted a lot of things relating to them as well as add some new things to the playstyle. We believe this alongside the shield changes could bring brawling up to a higher level and bring more fun to players in preparation for the January major update.
- Reworked some development nodes for the Power tech tree to give them a better feeling earlier in the game.
- Shortened levels of the POWER techs from 3 to 2 without removing their efficiency and add more POWER techs into the game.
- Move POWER techs around (some up the tree, some down) to dispel the clutter and allow players to reach new strengths quicker in the game. For what's important right now, Tempo Preserver is now a tier 1/2, Pressurized Gears now tier 3/4. Higher tiers are also being adjusted accordingly.
- Added in 3 more movesets for Close Combat attacks. These will trigger upon attack transitions and will make the combat flow much better with methods to pounce onto enemies afar or flying around in the air.
Weight adjustments
We have seen players speaking of optimal methods to play and didn't like how it sounded as our game prioritizes customization and we want everyone to be able to play with the appearances they like as it is the core concept of our game.
- Rebalanced weight correction on Fuel Burn Rate as well as adjusted Fuel Burn Rate and Recharge on various modules as well as weight scaling on the status. This should allow players to both use boosters more than before as well as easier tuning in the related status.
- Rebalanced weight correction on attack speed. Weight will now have a lower effect on the attack speed of a M.A.S.S. allowing heavier M.A.S.S. to be able to swing much faster and more in-line with our concept of the game to allow separation of aesthetics and gameplay itself.
Status and Units adjustments
In addition to others mentioned above, we have also adjusted other status of various units all over the board as following.
- Change some architectures' name to reduce confusion as well as some of the default texts in a continuous plan to polish language in the game. Looking at you, Regrower Frame development line.
- Adjujsted Enhancement and Fuel Save Modules to have negative Fuel Burn Rate value instead to further help with the issue of low-mobility M.A.S.S. units. Now players can further customize a longer lasting M.A.S.S. that can move around the mission area (which will be updated to new level designs later down the line).
Other adjustments
- Reworded some texts in the HELP function of the game. This will be a continual update alongside adding new topics into the HELP function.
- Hangar improvement. You can now have a much more zoomed out camera and we've remade the whole thing to give it a livelier and larger feeling.
- Adjusted some default items given to players so that they can try to develop a node during the development tutorial. Thanks for the suggestion kind soul of the community.
- Reworked mission 1 (tutorial) for a better flow of game mechanics introduction.
- Fixed game icon to show M.A.S.S. Builder Icon instead of Unreal Engine icon correctly. We did not noticed this until the community pointed it out so thanks once again!
- Adjusted a lot of sound effects. We've replaced most of the bullet shooter sounds as well as update on many other parts of the game, adding some depths and variations of sound effects.
- Tier 3 nodes are being unlocked this patch. Players will now be able to develop their M.A.S.S. to a higher level and face off against more difficult enemies to come.
- We've added an option to limit FPS and fix a lot of bugs that are currently in the game. When the patch is out, please don't hesitate to send us report of bugs that are still found in the game.