We've passed the half a year mark and the game has been going through a lot of improvements in the meantime!
I'll quickly recap everything that we have done.
Movement and Controller
We have increased the character rotation speed, fixed floaty movement, fixed a ton of jank in the movement animations as well as removed transitional animations between two movement states,
which in turn gave us far more responsive movement. Increased character rotation speed also greatly improved the control over the character for controller users.
Two new settings under General & UI now affect movement greatly and those are an option to disable strafing movement while there is no Lock-On target and for attacks to follow directional input instead of camera input.
Another thing we greatly improved on was controller support. We added several new presets, as well as the option to bind multiple keys to single action if a modifier action is used.
HUD has been reworked to be more controller friendly, and several options under General & UI have been added to modify the player's HUD.
Camera and Lock-On
We took the opportunity to add several QoL to the Camera as well, the most important one is that the camera will now rotate in the characters direction, making it easy to navigate the Omnistructure with only movement input and without camera input.
This new option can be disabled in the settings under Gamepad by simply moving the Auto Camera Sensitivity slider to 0. This camera QoL however is only for the controller users.
Previous Lock-On system was completely scrapped and the new system was written from the ground up. Soft Lock-On can now be enabled in the settings, and the speed at which camera corrects itself can now be adjusted via settings.
We have also added a dynamic Lock-On system which can be disabled in the settings. The Dynamic system will automatically target the closest engaged enemy in range upon losing the current Lock-On target. The distance from the enemy at which Lock-On will stop working can also be adjusted in the settings!
Overhauled AI Behavior
Majority of the stronger enemies have received new attack patterns and abilities. Another thing we added was improvement to their behavior, instead of previously mindlessly chaining attacks they will now be taking minor breaks in between the attacks in order to give the player some breathing room.
We are also aware most players were unhappy with the sudden difficulty spike once Vermillion Knights started appearing as they were late game enemies. They now scale the same way the bosses do. But don't be worried, they are still a menace the first time you encounter them!
But they are no longer killing the player in a single blow and taking 20 hits to kill!
There are also 8 new enemies added in the game spread across all areas!
Illusions and Elementals also benefited greatly from these AI Behavior overhauls. They are now far more aggressive and bosses/stronger enemies will now focus on them instead of the player. It's also possible to somewhat command them now, as they will always prioritize the lock-on target.
Another important overhaul was to all the bosses. I won't go into the details as that would be considered a spoiler but the most noticeable overhaul will be in the final boss encounter. Humanoid bosses are now parryable as their difficulty increased recently as we felt it was necessary to add this feature to them.
We however did not nerf the enemies and bosses but instead gave them more tools to react to the player. As you can read below, the player received several improvements.
Combat Improvements
We went over all the feedback from our community and made some much needed changes in the combat section of the game. Most noticable is the new combo system which now rewards players with increased damage.
Previously, failed combos punished players with slower animations which made combat feel a lot slower then it should be. This has been removed, in favor of rewarding the player for successful combo instead of punishing them for failed combo.
Fluidity of combat has also been improved by allowing players to chain abilities, dashes, dodge rolls, blocks, parry and switching weapons before the current animation finishes.
Another thing we overhauled was the encumbrance system. Players' total weight now affects the stagger chance which made Greatweapons, such as really heavy hammers, viable. The player does not get staggered as often in heavy armor. Stagger animations for Greatweapons have also been sped up.
Most of the weapons received new movesets, which contain more forward momentum, allowing for easier closing of the distance. We made sure to make attack animations feel a lot more weighty by adding some rotation control to them.
Weapon damage and perks have received major balancing after reading all the community feedback, making a lot more builds viable.
New Equipment, Consumables, Abilities and Map Changes
Four new armor sets and four new weapons have been added to the game, and these can mostly be found on the new enemies. With these new weapons also come new abilities.
Along with these we added new consumables, such as regenerative fluids and improved diver's lungs. Most of the concoctions have also been greatly buffed. As the usefulness of consumables have been increased we also unlocked all 4 belt slots from the start of the playthrough.
The belt slot limit however has been increased in the same manner as before.
Most of the maps have also seen some visual touch ups, new shortcuts and more fodder enemies! While we were improving the maps we also closed a lot of out of bounds areas.
Patch Notes
Changes:
- New Setting under General & UI : Directional Swimming; Default: ON
- Swim toward camera direction.
- New Setting under General & UI : General Slot Position; Default: Consumables Left
- To which side of the screen are Consumables displayed, abilities take the other position.
- HUD now stays on for a minimum of 8 seconds if the Dynamic HUD is enabled.
- Doubled the speed of HUD appearing/disappearing animations.
- Taking any damage will now cause HUD to appear.
- Scrolling in the settings panel now properly displays the next setting as well.
- New Recipe: Improved Diver's Lung Concoction
- 60 seconds extra total oxygen for 600 seconds.
- Some minor map upgrades in Machinarium, Upper Blocks and Deluge.
- Ring of Serpent and Ring of Brilliance loot locations have been moved due to map changes.
- Further improved menu navigations with controller.
- Giants will now interrupt their animation to drop to their knees once their legs have been damaged enough.
- Two new enemies!
- New and improved behavior logic for several stronger enemies.
- All Vermillion Knights are now scaling the same way bosses do, to prevent them one shooting players early on.
- Last visited zone in the "Continue" panel now displays the last visited Homunculus instead of the zone name.
- Updated SFX for the subway transport.
- New short dialogue with one of the sick NPCs in Blok6147.
- New consumables:
- Lesser Regenerative Fluids: Restores 30% of total health over 10 seconds. Non Craftable.
- Regenerative Fluids: Restores 50% of total health over 10 seconds. Non Craftable.
- Greater Regenerative Fluids: Restores 50% of total health over 6 seconds. Non Craftable.
- Character now remembers last used weapon after respawn instead of defaulting to the primary weapon set.
- Concoctions: Aberrant's Blood, Zealot's Tears, Berserker's Tenacity had their description updated to explain that they restore the amount added.
- Several gates in the game received new visuals.
- New additional zone added to Deluge.
- New shortcut added in Blok6147.
- Machinarium boss gate is now openable from the other side as well.
Balancing:
- Reduced maximum health of Ratagan enemies in the Monastery by 20%.
- Reduced Archinquisitor Belisarius' maximum health by 20%.
- Given more weight to attack animations of Aberrant Knight.
- Aberrant Knights stomps now cause shockwaves, requiring players to jump over them.
- Aberrant Knights' weapons now glow yellow to indicate these attacks.
- Aberrant Knights weak points now have a steeper scaling curve.
- All regular enemies had their stagger resistance tweaked.
- Reduced the spam of Vermillion Knights abilities.
- Greatly increased drop rate of gear improvement items from stronger enemies.
- Greatly increased drop rate of Concoctions from stronger enemies.
- Halved the duration of players stagger while having Greatweapons equipped.
- Increased the speed at which a player can switch weapons after an attack.
- Doubled the speed of Titan Slayer/Divine Greataxe perfect parry animation.
- All weapon leech effects had their values tweaked to be similar to Vampirism perk.
- These values as well as benefits from Vampirism perk can now be seen in the details panel.
- Ring of Lifesteal now adds an additional 3 agility.
- The Amulet of Fluxleech now adds an additional 3 intelligence.
- It's no longer possible to block while crouching.
- Archery and Technomancy remain unchanged.
- All 4 belt slots are now unlocked from the start of the game. Belt carry limit is still based on game progression.
- Concoction: Stamina Recovery renamed to Concoction: Vitality
- New Stat: Doubles your stamina recovery rate and reduces delay before stamina regen by half a second.
- Concoction: Mighty Regen now also has the effect of Concoction: Vitality.
- Attribute Concoctions (Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence) now add an additional 10% of said total attribute on top of regular +5 bonus.
- Dash forward now has increased range.
Fixes:
- Fixed incorrect sway of certain weapons while holstered.
- Fixed incorrect hald position during certain parry/block animations.
- Oxygen bar no longer disappears while diving.
- Fixed losing control of your character while certain swimming animations are being played.
- Fixed being able to use abilities of the weapons that previously got unequipped.
- It's no longer possible to soft lock giants if more than one of their weak spots are destroyed at same time.
- Fixed incorrect movement of character if one of the movement inputs are being spammed instead of held.
- Fixed odd arm movement during left dodge animation.
- Fixed incorrect icon for Marrow weapon.
- Fixed enemies being able to heal dead enemies.
- Fixed Homunculus not playing stabilised animation on game load.
- Fixed autosave not remembering last visited Homunculus after fast travel.
- Fixed having control of your character before the game properly fades in.
- Fixed sometimes missing FX of Restorative Fluids.
- Character is no longer stuck in repeatable animation if the switch weapon keybind is being spammed.
- Distanced camera during sprint no longer happens until character has reached full sprint speed.
- Fixed an issue where sometimes an attack animation wouldn't be the first in the moveset.
- Fixed an issue where dodge/roll would only be possible in cardinal directions during certain attacks.
- Fixed an issue where the character would stop mid air for a few frames if previously rolled off the ledge.
- Fixed an issue where quickslots wouldn't be properly set after respawn.
- Removed "floaty" movement while weapons are holstered.
- Fixed incorrect movement speed while weapons are holstered that was caused by playing above 60 FPS.
- Fixed an issue where sprinting while holstered sometimes cost stamina.
- Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to attack until the weapon is un-holstered manually.
- Fixed climbing animation issue if climb input was pressed while jumping on Giants.
- Crouching will no longer interrupt aiming with ranged weapons.
