We are super excited to present you update 14! This patch is the foundation of our RPG system, that will be "feature complete" with upcoming updates featuring the leveling/belief system. With this update we wanted to finalize the core of our RPG rules and make them more intuitive and interesting. This is why we redesigned our game stats, made our items modular, redesigned much of the in-game interface and made the inventory shared between players. So, without further ado, let's see what's new!

Redesigned stat system

Our previous system was convoluted, with a hierarchy where primary stats influenced both secondary stats and item damage/efficiency. This created a complicated balance that was mostly unecessary and did not add anything fun to our RPG layer. Understanding complex systems can be really fun in an RPG game, but the puzzle should be optional, based on the discovery of interesting synergies and not from hidden math and cryptic interfaces. So we went for a more straightforward approach and removed all stats dependencies, cryptic icons and changed our stats so that they have a very specific purpose and effect in game.

New Stats overview

PRIMARY STATS

• Max Health Hit points represent the damage you can take before losing a life
• Max Mana Mana is used for special abilities and the activation of some items
• Warriorness The ability to be mean like a warrior. Influences the effectiveness of some items based on their damage ratings
• Rogueness The ability to be sneaky as a rogue. Influences the effectiveness of some items based on their damage ratings
• Wizardness The ability to act fabulous like a real wizard. Influences the effectiveness of some items based on their damage ratings
• Ego The ability to be overly self-confident. Influences the effectiveness of your special power
• Speed Defines your movement speed

DEFENSES

• Rainbow Armor Reduces all kind of damage
• Physical Armor Reduces physical damage
• Fire Armor Reduces fire damage
• Ice Armor Reduces ice damage
• Poison Armor Reduces poison damage
• Energy Armor Reduces energy damage

SECONDARY STATS

• Throw Damage Influences the damage of thrown items.
• Throw Range Influences your throwing range
• Critical Influences your chance to land a critical strike
• Critical Damage Influences your critical strikes damage
• Dodge Influences your chance to dodge an attack
• Hit Chance Your attacks ignore points of enemy dodge
• Aim Influences your accuracy when throwing items
• Recovery Defines your ability to recover from stun by button mashing
• Detect Hidden Influences your ability to spot hidden things meters away
• Extra Salami Influences how much lott you receive
• Body Mass The mass of your character. Influences damage when you are thrown by other players
• Attract Enemies Influences how much your actions attract enemies
• Incoming Healing Influences the intensity of healing you receive
• Mana Regeneration How much mana you regenerate per minute
• Action Speed Influences your action speed (attacks,item use)

Mana

The new mana bar has replaced the old charge system we were using for characters special abilities. The old charge system was clumsy to explain with a GUI, allowed poor character progression and most importantly did not encourage players to use their special powers as having limited charges created a scarcity of "power" availability. The mana bar is easily recognized by many players and upgrading the mana pool works really well with our RPG system. In addition, characters Mana slowly replenish over time and allows us to balance special powers more precisely by changing the mana costs, mana regeneration an mana pools for every character.

New modular items

The previous game itemization was based on a large amount of items with pre-defined stats that scaled matematically based on their "tier level". As the player progressed trough the game each item had a pre-defined rarity and was basically always the same item with higher numbers. The scaling was matematically ok but the game was too predictable and it required us to create an huge amount of different items to generate enough combinations to make dungeon crawling interesting. So a couple of months ago we went back to the drawing board and studied some good ARPG classics to design a new itemization that would be both fun for you to play and manageable for us to maintain. What we created is our own take of the classic ARPG "modular items" in addition to our old item system. Modular items are now the standard items you find the the game, while 100% authored items are unique, powerful and usually come with some weird ability. Modular items are created by a fixed "root" item that can have up to 3 affixes: [prefix] ROOT [suffix] (trait)

• The ROOT contains the basic function of an item (ability/damage for weapons and tools, defenses for shields and armors, etc.)
• The Prefix usually contains primary and other very important stats
• The Suffix contains mostly defenses and secondary stats
• The Traits are rare, and usally bring a scripted special ability or a super rare stat like extra critical damage

Every items becomes more rare with each additional affix. An item with just the ROOT is a "common" item, an item with 1 affix is an "uncommon" item, 2 affixes is "rare", 3 affixes is "epic". Unique items are considered like an item with 4 affixes, so they are very, very rare drop, or found in a very specific location of the game in the upcoming story mode. Each Affix scales in power with the item tier, so you can still get the same (or a very similar) item you have at tier 2, but more powerful, at tier 10.

New Gear Slot "off hand"

We added a new item slot for shield and utility gear. Off Hand gear usually adds extra defenses or mana.

New Gear Slots "quick slots"

We added 4 quick slots where you can store 4 extra "items" (weapons/tools). You can cycle between these items using the mouse wheel or the directional pad left/right buttons.

Interface Improvements

Our interface has always been very rough, so we improved it a bit. It's still not final, but you should find it much better than before. With all the improvements and upgrades on the RPG system, we needed a GUI that was able communicate all the new details in the game rules.

• Health is now visualized with a numeric bar, this was an hard decision. Both you guys and us at Studio Evil really loved the old Zelda-like hearts we were using to display characters health. But as with all the other things we improved on this update, we needed a scalable interface that showed character status and progression more precisely. This is why we think the health bar, showing exactly how much health your character has, is a step in the right direction.
• Stats are now displayed in plain text with colored highlights, we removed most of the icons.
• Every enemy has now a small health bar, minibosses and bosses have their usual huge health bar. Displaying the remaining health of your opponents is an important information and allows a more interesting tactical combat.
• We completely revamped our advanced stats sheet in the character status. Each stat has now a proper tooltip that explains function and effectiveness. We also finally added an in-depth description of each character special power. To access the advanced stat sheet just open your inventory (I) and press spacebar. To access the tooltip just mouse over or navigate the gamepad cursor over the stat name.

Redesigned Inventory

During several testing sessions we noticed a few issues with our previous inventory system. [olist]

It was impossible to share items between your unlocked characters by playing single player

It was very cumbersome to share items between players in co-op games

Accessing the inventory screen in co-op games stopped the action [/olist] We needed a solution that reduced the necessity to open the inventory and pausing the game and also allowed items to be shared easily both in single and local multiplayer games. So we removed the old system and added a new shared inventory. Now everything that you pick up and is not equipped by a character is accessible from every other characters, any time during the game.

Inventory Wipe

Unfortunately, with all the new stuff we introduced, it was impossible to keep your old items consistent and we had to reset all your inventories. We are getting very close to the point where this is not necessay, but please keep in mind that this will happen at least one more time before we get to 1.0. We hope you will enjoy this new update and forgive us for this small inconvenience!

Balance and Tweaks

• With a whole new stat system in place the game balance has been reworked. Damage and health values have been multiplied approximately x10 to have more readable numbers.
• Wall slam damage has been decreased to: 70% max health on small enemies, 25% max health on standard humanoids, 10% max health on big enemies. Previously was 100% small, 50% standard, 15% big. This still makes wall slams a major damage output, but increases the relevance of other combat options, like throwing items and standard weapons.
• We added some variety to enemy spawns and rebalanced miniboss encounters to make them more challenging

[ 2016-04-04 18:36:38 CET ] [ Original post ]