This last Thursday we had our usual Dev Stream, with a special guest; we were joined by Spoony, that has been supporting us since CBT weekend. With more than 400h played, a Lego Ectype created by his son (you remember our post about it?) and loads of questions for us, we were very excited to have him, and had loads of fun playing together.
Watch the Highlights video here (including most of the questions we answered during the stream):
[previewyoutube=74faskxUxnU;full][/previewyoutube]
If you want to watch the full stream, you can do that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfv81_Lxe_Y
We're also adding a written version of the questions that were answered during the stream, to make the information more accessible for everyone!
Why can't we just upgrade the guns, or build tier 2 crates on the Fabricator without having to relay on loot?
You can't see it, but under the hood the fabricator has received sort of a data structure update which will also allow it to be responsive to perk choices. The idea was that some of the perk choices will give you the ability of fabricating better stuff right out of the gate (while still keeping the sense of progression during the game).
Gene Tree/Perks rework
When we do the perk tree rework, things like the above will make your choice of perks a more conscious decision. This rework isn't coming next patch, but we've been talking a lot about how we want to rework perks into you having a limited amount of points, but being able to spend those points in all classes the way you want. That's something we want to do.
Insane difficulty
We've heard that Insane difficulty was much harder before we changed it; we looked at the completion rates for the current Insane difficulty and found them too high for what we intend. So we're actually looking at making Insane... insane again!
Wormholes/Blackholes... how is that going to be implement and how will they affect the game?
The Astral Map got a bit of an overhaul - we laid objectives secuentially from left to right to give more of a sense of where you are going during your Pilgrimage. With the addition of the wormholes, after you pass a certain amount of jumps you'll be able to get to a wormhole. It will appear a bit like optional objectives, but it will somehow indicate that it's maybe a time-limited thing, or maybe something you have to "earn access" to unlock.
The original idea for the shards that go into the Astral Map was always that they'd be like navigation data, but then we ended up doing a lot of different things with them, because it made sense. But we really want to look into introducing this concept of actually unlocking a place that you haven't had on the map up until that point. The data shards will potentially be the thing that unlocks the jump coordinates for the wormhole.
And then, once you get into the wormhole, you'll face a boss or some kind of encounter - something that is at least as intense as an interdiction. Something that has stages and requires some degree of cooperation. It's an opt-in challenge that will be very difficult, so you might want to save it for when your run is going very good, or at least you've gone through a few objectives and have the ship well-equipped (and the hull not totally hammered!). We're looking at all the classics for how to design a good boss encounter! We want to see if we want to challenge our players.
Have you thought about increasing crew player limit?
We have, and we have not. We obviously talk about it internally, but the moment we are balancing for bigger numbers we're also taking on the responsibility of making the game function for that many players.
So we're keeping it to 2-4 players for the co-op experience, and then solo players also get a bit of separate balancing love - with The Lone Sentry loadout, but also actually the spawn rules are quite different when you play the game solo. There's actually things that simply cannot happen if you're playing as a solo player.
Can the game handle it? Well, going by what the modding community is achieving, it seems that superficially it definitely can. But gameplay-wise, the game at all times assumes there's not more than 4 players in a session.
Will there be different designs of ships?
Yes! We don't have a third ship planned yet, so it's not "in sight" at the moment, but we know that we want to do more ships. Our data structure is intact for that, so we consider it part of our content pipeline for the future.
Lore-wise... who are the good guys?
On the next patch we'll be expanding on the lore! You'll be able to find lore shards that you can insert in the Astral Map, and they'll unlock hidden entries in the Codex. That should shine a light on what's going on both in terms of the history of the universe, and Metem fixing the whole thing.
When is Controller Support coming?
It's literally being worked on at the moment. We don't have a date yet, but we're on it!
When are the next updates more likely to come?
That's always a risky question! We're closing in the next update, so while we can't give specific dates... it shouldn't be too long!
Lootboxes: Legendary Lootboxes not giving special stuff, duplicates, etc.
Right now, the current Legendary Lootboxes are called "legendary" because their loot pool extended into the epic and legendary items. You can't get those items from a common lootbox, but you can get common items from Legendary boxes.
The new lootboxes (coming next patch) will be more in line with how Overwatch 1 lootboxes worked: the box can sample from an entire loot pool, and depending on how the roll was it will try to give you something of that rarity. And if you already have that, it will try harder to not give you a duplicate inside that rarity. It also has this thing where if you roll an epic item and you already own every epic item from that loot pool, it will go down to rare items and check if there's something there you don't own yet. After running some simulations, this system seems to be quite efficient at filling out your cosmetic's collection.
We're dicussing several improvements to lootboxes. At the end of the day, they should be a "feel good" element, so we have to get them to a point where they feel good. And everyone, including us, agree that duplicates don't really feel good.
And that's all for today
Thanks to those that offered feedback about the streams and how they'd like both the streams and the highlights videos to be more about discussing the future of the game. We want to keep improving for the community!
Have a great weekend, and as always...
Metem preserve you!
With love,
The Hutlihut Games team
