We’re working on the first big patch for City of the Shroud while Moira writes Chapter 2, so I wanted to take some time to go over what’s coming:
Major Updates:
Revamped AI:
- The AI is getting an overhaul to make it more interesting, more challenging, and to let it better highlight what makes CotS’ combat unique. When the new patch releases, enemy characters will:
- Enemies will be more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos. Enemies will be better at picking out vulnerable targets and hitting them with clever combos. This will speed up combat and make timing and anticipation much more critical.
- Personalities: enemies will have “personality traits.” Each class will have a base setup (prefers being aggressive / defensive / using support abilities, etc.), and these can vary across individual units.
- Ability-specific decision making: the classes in CotS are designed to be deep, with variety within each class coming from the types of Link Gems they have equipped. The AI will have a better understanding of how it can use the abilities it has equipped on a character to torment you more effectively, and rewarding you for keeping track of and responding to them.
Other Additions:
- Combat Details Display: pressing the new “Combat Details” button during combat will display a variety of useful information on screen. This includes:
- Range Preview: when you press the Combat Details button, yellow range indicators will appear on the tile you are currently hovering over, showing you what your range would be on that tile before moving there.
- Player Character Shortcut Numbers: the shortcut number for each of your characters will be displayed over their head so you can quickly pinpoint where everyone is relative to the UI on the side of the screen.
- Enemy Location Arrows: all (conscious) enemies will get a red arrow specifying their positions.
Minor Updates & Bug Fixes:
- Update: We have made additional NPC character art for characters who are not important to the story to avoid repetition.
- Update: The game now prompts you to select a difficulty when starting a new game.
- Update: The AP cost of moving to a highlighted tile is displayed on that tile before moving.
- Update: Shortcuts for Wait Mode / Combat Details are now displayed on-screen during combat during tutorial battles.
- Update: Wait Mode can now be set to toggle by holding the button or tapping the button to turn it ON/OFF in Gameplay options.
- Update: Improvements to flow when connecting to another player for an Online VS battle.
- Bug Fix: Tile Targeting arrow for controller now gets drawn on top of Machinist’s backpack geometry.
- Bug Fix: Fixed hidden tiles acting as pits in the Market Gate map in the Refugee Quarter.
- Bug Fix: Fixed location and portrait of an NPC who should have been a refugee in the Refugee Quarter but appeared as an regular Citizen in Old Town.
- Bug Fix: Long quest names in the Quest Tracker should no longer bleed out into the border graphic.
- Bug Fix: Return To Game button on the pause menu no longer enters the “selection” sprite state when pausing even if the player is using mouse/keyboard.
The team has been under the weather with colds and whatnot for the last few weeks, so it’s taken us longer to get this done than we would have liked, but we’re slowly recovering. The patch will need some more time to thoroughly test it before we can release into the wild, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’ve been working on since launch.
We’ve also been following the responses to the game and seeing where players are having fun and where they’re not. We’re working on ideas to address these pain points - some will be harder and take more time than others (especially because we want to prioritize working on new chapters), but we want everyone to know that we’re seeing the feedback and will aim to address whatever we can.
Of course, if you’ve got any feedback on what you’d like to see improved, please feel free to share it with us in the forums.
In the meantime, Chapter 1’s influence period wrapped up recently, so if you haven’t read about what went down, you can do so here!
