So, today's WIP update will be quite different from what we've been showing for the past few weeks. This time, we're involving balance changes into the news! While the upcoming 0.8.0 patch focuses on Energy Launchers rework, we cannot neglect other aspects of the game that still required work as well. This points to other combat systems. As we'd learn from some other games that our developers are looking forward to play in their free time, addressing things in a problem and solution style seems to explain much more of our thought process than traditional style, so here goes.
Overarching Problem: Melee is in a worse state that Range. Benchmarking from challenges, melee is weaker, runs at a much slower speed, and doesn't go as much waves as ranged unless using exploits.
Problem: Melee combo is inconsistent, there are "random kick-ins" in the game. I don't want to jump forward, I don't want to spin, I don't want to rising attack, I cannot hit things with these different moves that come in and I can't control my melee combo attacks.
Solution: As we'd mention in the AMA, these things aren't random at all. There are algorithms to each trigger of the combo. We know that our algorithm isn't perfect, but with how frustrating they make players feel, we are trying to do everything to fix this algorithm with the following methods.
- Adjust height check to determine if a player is on ground of jumping, This will allow objects on the ground to not trigger air combo start when players stand on them and have a more consistent ground combo control.
- Adjust the rush attacks tracking and area of effect to allow players to hit enemies instead of passing their side.
- Adjust the area of effect of rising attacks and the following combo to hit enemies on the ground as well so that larger enemies that cannot be raised into the air can still be hit.
- Recheck all enemies' state on death to have them get removed from the calculations immediately and attacks not count enemies in removal as a possible enemy, thus not triggering the algorithm.
Problem: Melee is designed as high risk high reward, but currently it's very high risk low reward, with attacks not that strong, players being forced to dodge, armors not working that much to mitigate damage.
Solution: We'll be adjusting a lot of status that affected melee play to make it as what we first envisioned it to be, a high risk high reward playstyle. Lower the too high risk, raise the rewards, add some more spice.
- Armor values will changed to be mostly mitigating flat amounts of damage from Quarks attack.
- Rebalance all parameters to have melee focused nodes innately have higher durability and armor with little investments.
- Adjust most Quarks to have multiple-hit attacks of lower power, thus investing in armor will mitigate even more damage from these attacks. ie. Before, Quarks might hit for 1000 damage and if you reduce them by flat 300 you'll take 700 damage. The current update will have some attacks hit for two instance of damage of 500 each and the flat 300 reduction will make you take only 400 damage instead.
- Adjust POWER and PHYSICAL DAMAGE to be a total of around 75% more than their ranged counterparts after calculated in final damage. This should allow the smaller gaps of attacks to be meaty enough to contest with ranged playstyle. Range "Glass Cannons" can still bring themselves to the same level of damage, but they will need to sacrifice a lot more defense to achieve it.
- And some other things we cannot reveal yet as they aren't finished and we're unsure if how we'll implement them such as a combo-stun system.
Sample status of a Melee tuning (Tier 5)
Sample status of a Ranged tuning (Tier 5)
Problem: Property damages doesn't have enough tech nodes to make them interesting to use over RAW damage.
Solution: Create more property damage nodes that changes playstyles. Increase the parameters for property damage nodes.
- ie. [Tier 5] Power Transference Unit III is changed into Tinkerer’s Blade: Close Combat Attack is down by 35%. On hitting enemy using Close Combat Attack, there is a 25% chance to deal 70% extra Heat, Freeze, or Shock damage. Each one has its own 1 second cooldown.
- Revenant Architecture is now 3 nodes (From tier 3 to 5) of similar power, one for general, one for melee based, and one for ranged based. This is done to provide access to ranged elemental playstyle to players faster.
That should be all for today that we can provide, as we're dealing with another internal rebalance of numbers as a result of removing weight effects off completely from armor. Yes, we're removing them. Stay tuned for more news next week about the upcoming 0.8.0 patch!