Next up: Combat and VFX improvements
Hi all,
Will try to start more regular habit of sharing here as small news on the plans we have and what is currently going on.
The first major content update is now done and dusted, and seems to be stable enough to not have need for bigger patch updates, so it is time to be working on something to add on the game. The big learning point with that content update was that making bigger updates can become extremely long process when working on the spare time, so better focus now on bit smaller increments. Therefore it is currently likely that we will be sharing smaller updates in about update per two months interval. Sometimes they might take less and sometimes more time.
So, what are we working on currently?
There are multiple things to polish and add, but two of the major ones we are currently working on are VFX and combat system improvements. VFX improvements are especially important for some enemy skills missing VFX totally, but also for things like adding VFX for aura effects. It is after all nice to know when you step into that Death Aura of Juurukko instead of just trying if you'd be lucky.
Some work for aura VFX has already been done and can be seen in attached image.
How about combat system?
The combat is quite fun in many places already, but there is still things to improve. Some of the things in combat and character development that we would like to improve, include:
- Variety between weapons is very small. It does not matter that much if it is sword or axe of same size. We would like them to give some tactical difference.
- Variety between weapon sizes (including unarmed combat) is something we would also want to improve. Unarmed combat has been pretty useless so far and usually it has been most valuable to just invest the biggest weapons. However, we are looking at things like adding weapon speeds into the game that will affect AP costs of the weapon based skills and then planning possible some other adjustments as well to see that you can build for very different combat styles.
- Equipment progression is bit flat for our taste at the moment. For example, you will pretty quickly get quite high level mundane armor. We would like to increase the steps on that path, starting with lower level equipment and steadily moving to higher. This does not mean any level restrictions or such for equipment, but providing more variety and adjusting their availability.
- Make full-armored build be only one option. Currently the game plays in a way that best tactic is usually to pile up all of your characters with as much armor as possible. We have some plans on adjusting this so that unarmored or lightly armored builds would also have their advantages. We have some ideas how we could better utilize dodge as well as ability point bonuses in a way that would make it viable to have that fully armored tank, or lightly armored berserker.
In that sense, quite a lots of things we want to do. But in a way lots of those are balancing things with small additions and changes to combat logic, which already works nicely on its core.
Currently the work has already been started with implementing different weapon speeds and at that phase there will likely also be some work to do with damage ranges and such.
If you have any questions, thoughts you want to share or just want to have a chat, give us a word either here or in our Discord community.
