NEW CLASS SYSTEM

Choose your champion! This version adds a long awaited class system. There are currently 4 classes, but more will be added next version. On the loading screen you can choose to play as Assault, Sniper, Heavy or Caster. Each class has 3 powerful perks, which creates a unique playstyle that combos best with the various skills and weapons in the game. Everyone's class icon is shown above their heads, allowing us to see what others are playing and counter them. There is a subtle rock, paper, scissors mechanic amongst the classes too. For example, the Sniper class deal extremely high damage bullets - but only at range. So charge up close to counter them! The Assault class moves extra fast and can close the gap easily, making Assault a natural counter to Sniper. However Assault is countered by Heavy, because Heavy has a shield perk that reduces all enemy bullet damage by 3, which really harms the high ROF guns that the Assault likes to use. Sniper rifles however blast right through this shield, and so Heavy is countered by Sniper. And then there's Caster doing his own thing, spamming active skills all over the place.

4 NEW CLASSES

These classes replace the old Perk system. The old perk system had solid perks in it, but the system itself was too confusing and static. It was too much effort to think up a new combo between matches, and so we mostly just stuck with the same old perks game after game. Classes take the best of the old perks, tweak them a bit, buff them a lot, and make it extremely convenient to change classes between matches. With a single click you can try a whole new playstyle each game! Here are the perks of the new classes.
ASSAULT PERKS (Movement & Aggression) - Super Shifts: You can fire your weapon while shifting, and your shift distance is +20%. - Run & Gun: Move +15% faster. You also won't slow down as much when firing your guns. - Death Fueled: Gain +10hp/s for 10s whenever you kill an enemy player civ or cop. SNIPER PERKS (High Damage at Range) - Rifle Range: Bullets gain damage the further they travel, dealing up to +25% damage at 70m. Also gives +5m range. - Black Market: You can purchase tier 2 and 3 guns 1 round earlier. - Backup Bomb: Whenever you throw an explosive you'll throw another one for free shortly after. HEAVY PERKS (Huge DPS, but Immobile) - Crisis Cover: Enemy bullets deal -3 damage to you whenever your health goes below 50%. - Final Focus: Gain +30% rate of fire and +30% bullet speed whenever your health goes below 50%. - Beaten Heart: Gives a 15% chance to drop a +20hp health kit whenever you're hit by an enemy bullet. CASTER PERKS (Yer a Wizard Harry!) - Active Healing: Active skills have -30% cooldown time and instantly heal you +30 health when cast. - Skill Lottery: At level 1 you will see 2 Epic skills in the draft. - Flashy Finish: Gain +$500 and +50xp from each kill. This is doubled if you kill with non-bullet damage.

LEVEL UP CLASSES & GET SKINS

We can level up our classes too. Whenever you earn trophies at the end of the match (based on your placement) you'll make progress towards your chosen class. When you get enough trophies you can level it up, which gives you some currency but more importantly unlocks new gun skins. There are 35 new cosmetics added to the game. This includes a "Silver" skin for every gun, and a few "Golden" skins for the most popular ones. As your total class level increases you'll gain access to new skins, until every gun is shimmering in either silver or gold. Due to the camera angle, characters appear quite small in GSA, and the guns appear even smaller. To solve this, every gun skin has a huge bright glow, simulating the blue moonlight reflecting off the gun's barrel - or the "sunlight" if you have a golden skin.

REROLLING SKILL DRAFTS

Another huge change - there is now a REROLL button in the skill draft. Whenever you level up you'll see 2 new skills. But you now have a 3rd option to spend $1000 to reroll the draft and see 2 other skills instead. You can keep clicking this until you find a skill that works with your build. This gives cash an interesting new use, and if you're trying to create the perfect skill build you might spend MOST of your cash on rerolling. But if you're more versatile and can make any skill work, then you can save your money to buy bigger guns instead. This system subtly rewards players who have mastered all the skills in the game, and are able to adapt to anything they're given.

NO MORE SKILL DISABLING

It is no longer possible to disable skills in the skill tree. This feature had good and bad points. The good: It was fun to be able to create a unique build by disabling skills, and it was also nice to avoid skills that you didn't like. The bad: It was a fairly tedious requirement to do this if you wanted to play competitively, because you just had to copy the meta skills and play nothing else. Not only was it a pain to have to manually disable all of the other skills, but it just made the game stale where all the top players were using the same 18 skills over and over again. GSA is a PvP roguelite, and 18 skills just doesn't provide enough variety to do "roguelite" justice. Now that rerolling exists we have a way to skip the skills we don't like. And now that classes exist, we have a way to choose our playstyle between matches too. So disabling skills is gone, and with everyone now using all 54 skills the game feels more fresh and roguelitey than ever before!

PROGRESSION CHANGES & WHAT'S NEXT

Our account level is now calculated in a different way, which means that your level number might be a bit higher or lower than before. It is now exactly 10,000 xp per level. Also, Skill Coins have been renamed to ACID. This is in preparation for a complete progression rework that will come out next version. This rework will capture the fun of skill build creation in a far more intutive way, and without the staleness of the old build system. For a sneak peak at what's to come, next version we will earn "Flasks" whenever we level up our account, and combine that with ACID (skill coins) to earn DNA on our skills. With enough DNA we will be able to equip our skills to our skill build, in either the Rare, Epic or Legendary slots. This will become the main progression system and there's a lot more to it, but the details can wait till next version when it's actually released. If you're curious though come ask in discord! Anyway, come online to try out the new classes, and have a great Xmas! Ben.

FULL CHANGELOG

[DELUXE EDITION DLC CHANGES] - Getting the DLC now gives you an instant +10,000 ACID. All existing DLC owners have had this added to their accounts. - Daily Challenges now give 2x XP as well as ACID for DLC owners. - 17 of the 35 new gun skins are exclusively reserved for DLC owners. - The Supporter's medallion is no longer shown next to DLC owner's health bars in-game (as that shows the class icon now instead). [OTHER GENERAL CHANGES] - Removed the Trophy Challenge for now (The +200 ACID from class level ups does this better). - We no longer earn ACID at the end of each match (Again, class levels ups do this better, as more trophies = faster class level ups). - Tweaked the ACID values from daily challenges, to offset the extra ACID earned from weeklys and class level ups. - Improved the graphics in the map, making it night time. - Your most actively played class now shows next to your name in the leaderboards. - At the start of each month, you'll now earn ACID based on your previous months rating (50% of the rating, rounded down to the nearest 250). [GAMEPLAY CHANGES] - Added more jump pads to the map. - Removed the ability to guarantee skills and disable skills. Instead we can now reroll skills for $1000. - If you reroll a rare or epic draft, you might not see boosted skills after you reroll. But the game WILL remember that you are "owed" that epic and will try give it to you later. - Removed the perks system entirely. All players now have access to all 4 classes (which don't have to be unlocked like perks did). [SKILL CHANGES] - Regeneration healing rate is improved, but it is now disabled for 1s after firing your gun. - Rambulance now heals you for 3s after you exit a vehicle. Healing ranges from 5 to 35 hp/s. [SKILL BUFFS] - Force Field no longer makes you move faster. Instead it will bounce enemy bullets back at them for 10/20/30/40/50/60/70% damage - Venom cooldown is faster at low levels and deals +5 hp damage. - Shockwave restores +1 hp per bullet at all levels. - Blade Fury can once again hit the same enemy up to 3 times instead of 2 times. - Invis reveal range is only 10m instead of 15m, and damage penalty 70% instead of 50%. - Skill Shots non-bullet damage ranges from +5 to +35% instead of +4 to +22%. - Energy Vortex has +4 hp/s lifesteal for all levels. - Armed Robbery has a higher chance of dropping hearts and upgrades (+5% for all levels). - Soul Drop trigger height is now 5m and cooldown only 5s instead of 6m and 6s. - Radiate duration now ranges from 2 to 5 instead of fixed at 3. - Mirror Image clones do +5% damage across all levels, but cooldown is now 15s instead of 12s. - Beefcake now gives +12 instead of +10 max hp per level. - Shrapnel damage now ranges from +15% to +105% instead of +10% to 70%. - Arcane Power damage now increased by 8 instead of 7 per level. - Proximity Rounds charge time now ranges from 4.5 to 1.5 instead of 4.0 to 1.0s, but has a 40m charging radius instead of 30m. - BackTrack health restored is now 40 to 100% instead of 15 to 100%. - Shift Supply now also increases shift distance by +10/15/20/25/30/35/40%. - XRay Vision range is now 100 to 600 instead of 50 to 350. [SKILL NERFS] - Clip Magnet seeking now ranges from 8 to 20 degrees instead of being fixed at 20, but the recharge time is a bit faster to compensate. - Executioner damage now increases by 6% instead of 8% per level. - Self Repair takes 3s instead of 2.5s to fully heal. - Blade Mail protection now ranges from -6% to -42% instead of -10% to -50%. - Bullet Time cooldown is now 20 to 14s instead of 20 to 8s.

[ 2023-12-22 18:52:22 CET ] [ Original post ]