Build 66

[tim]

Hello all. Welcome to Build 66! Here are the changes for this week:

* Fixed a display error with the minute display of short-term items
* Added a new Region Boss: Omicron Complex
* Spawn an additional region boss when region is 75% cleared
* Fixed some broken vehicle radii
* Changed Module Slot unlock levels to 15, 25, 40, 60
* Modules now generate with randomized properties
* Module properties display in the popup menu for an item in the inventory

This week, we have more changes to introduce module items. Modules now generate and display properties, and these can be viewed in the inventory menu, although right now, we just have placeholders in for each tank. We also rescaled the levels at which module slots unlock. This may mean that some previously unlocked slots are now locked.

This week also adds a new region boss, the Omicron Complex. This boss spawns as an alternative to the Zeta, and we hope you enjoy the challenge of figuring out how best to take down this enemy. Furthermore, we are now spawning a second region boss when regions are just 75% cleared, so this should give you more chances to get a crack at these bosses.

Next up for modules will be the ability to actually install them into your tank.

Please report any bugs in this thread, as well as any other reactions or thoughts. Thanks again for helping to test the game.

Tim

[quicklite]

Cool!

Though out of interest, does this apply to all module items, or just new ones? Because I have a lot of level 3 mods in my inventory, and I'd hate to see all the effort melding those took go to waste.

[tim]

Sept 4, 2013 11:48:45 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Cool!

Though out of interest, does this apply to all module items, or just new ones? Because I have a lot of level 3 mods in my inventory, and I'd hate to see all the effort melding those took go to waste.

We added properties to existing modules, but they were not randomized. Whenever you meld a module (new or old), it randomizes new properties for the resulting module. When we actually add real properties, we may need to rerandomizing everything again, so don't get attached to any distributions you have right now.

[tarbomb]

Aren't region bosses supposed to spawn away from enemies?

[tim]

Sept 4, 2013 16:58:25 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

Aren't region bosses supposed to spawn away from enemies?

They're supposed to spawn away from players, not enemies.

[quicklite]

Alright, I've tried out the omicron complex, and this is my feedback. First of all, without doubt, this is the most fun encounter in the game so far. The constant stream of things from behind keep the fight interesting and keep you on your feet, while the sheer firepower of the complex itself is quite the challenge to deal with. The minions are also a nice touch, it adds another fun layer of difficulty as you reach the second part of the fight. But I have 3 problems with it nonetheless. I'll list them in order of importance imo.

1) Minions feel underused. The massive minion zerg rush at the end is great fun, but what if the omicron complex sent out lesser minion swarms every minute or whenever 2 outer structures die? That would keep minions as a constant threat as well as another factor in the fight, not to mention finally giving kraken a use. I love the whole massive minion outburst when you finally reach the fortress, but nonetheless, I think this can still be pulled off perfectly fine with smaller minion attacks throughout the fight.


2) Flanking death machines could be played on a bit more. I love these things. They keep you constantly moving and constantly aware of your surroundings. Or you die. But I feel like some variety could be done, and I don't like how they are all just simply targetted. My idea would be for another bomb through completely seperate from the big killing machine bomb throw to occur. This one, however, would throw 3 smaller machines in 3 random directions a slightly faster rate than the other bomb thrower. These ones would have a considerably shorter range, but a high RoF and either the same or slightly less DPS than the bigger gunship. These would move back to the omicron in exactly the same way, except being slightly faster than the big ones. This adds a bit of randomness to the machine's attack patterns, and it would also mean that stragglers who don't get targetted by the big one would still have these little ones to deal with.


And last but most importantly...

3) Please make these a longer fight. As I said, these are the funnest encounters in game. But like zetas, they are insanely hard to get, and usually take a lot of effort to trigger. Most people spend large amounts of time trying to get these, so please give us a slightly longer fight than 5 minutes. When the thing transwarped away when it did, I felt pretty let down. I mean, we all had worked pretty hard for that. I was having fun there. And now I wasn't. I understand the point of the time limit, and how it keeps a sense of urgency to things, but it would be great if we could get a slightly longer experience for something so rare and hard to get. Just triple the time to 15 minutes, and then make the complex twice (or 3 times) as wide. Maybe even scatter some more powerful mini-segments in there to keep things interesting, such as one that can spawn minions/trap squares. What I'm saying is that no matter how you choose to do so, I would really appreciate it if at least one of the region bosses was made into a longer fight, and that it is very much possible to do so while keeping the same action and urgency of a time constraint.


Oh, and as an afternote, please buff, or at least re-design the kraken. In clearing, it is heavily outclassed by the hercules and the hurricane for clearing out minions, and it is completely outclassed by the cutlass when it comes to fighting convoys. It currently has no particular use, which is a total downer for the rarest tank in the entire game. So please, either give it some land capabilities to make it useful for clearing, or give it something to use against convoys that doesn't render the cutlass useless in turn.

And I'm done.

[Kelsoo]

Sept 7, 2013 14:54:23 GMT -5 quicklite said:

3) Please make these a longer fight. As I said, these are the funnest encounters in game. But like zetas, they are insanely hard to get, and usually take a lot of effort to trigger. Most people spend large amounts of time trying to get these, so please give us a slightly longer fight than 5 minutes. When the thing transwarped away when it did, I felt pretty let down. I mean, we all had worked pretty hard for that. I was having fun there. And now I wasn't.

And buff current content besides this as well, when the only fun encounters (or challenging, also my opinion) in the game are the two endgame bosses, (which appear so rarely and unreliably) and the new convoy, it makes for a pretty colorless and dull experience once you get far enough into the game.

Players shouldn't have to just be idling and waiting and praying just to get that one ~5 minute encounter to play with and spend the rest of the time with endless unchallenging grinding.

I should also add, something should be done about Delta's. They are cherry picked out of control, due to them dropping such high loot but being faster to take out then drills. Much faster and the chance at double pulches if you are unmaxed.

I would suggest adding walls around them that regenerate every ~10 seconds once you break one. I would be at a state of consternation if that happened and I mistimed it, being trapped inside a Delta fort. And I would be happy. I think it would be an interesting concept at least.

Then maybe making it only drop one pulch, but maybe make it guaranteed?

[kable]

Sept 7, 2013 20:30:03 GMT -5 Kelsoo said:

And buff current content besides this as well, when the only fun encounters (or challenging, also my opinion) in the game are the two endgame bosses, (which appear so rarely and unreliably) and the new convoy, it makes for a pretty colorless and dull experience once you get far enough into the game.

Players shouldn't have to just be idling and waiting and praying just to get that one ~5 minute encounter to play with and spend the rest of the time with endless unchallenging grinding.

I should also add, something should be done about Delta's. They are cherry picked out of control, due to them dropping such high loot but being faster to take out then drills. Much faster and the chance at double pulches if you are unmaxed.

I would suggest adding walls around them that regenerate every ~10 seconds once you break one. I would be at a state of consternation if that happened and I mistimed it, being trapped inside a Delta fort. And I would be happy. I think it would be an interesting concept at least.

Then maybe making it only drop one pulch, but maybe make it guaranteed?

That's the issue with a game like this -- Any person is supposed to pick it up and go. Buffing current content would make newer players wonder why they're dying so easily. In other words, the issue is there's no distinction between easier and harder content. If you can kill things, it's hardly a rewarding experience to do so. If you can't kill things, you stick with a pack of players until you learn how to kill things, and soon after, it's hardly a rewarding experience to do so.

I'll take this moment to say, that's why I liked Victory Points. It gave purpose to fortresses other than "steamroll this to activate a boss you won't be able to kill". And since the discussion about gridshards dropping from convoys became reality, fortresses lost all functionality with the exception of those that drop pulchs:

- Watchtowers (Ignored anyway unless region clearing)
- Novas (Ignored anyway unless region clearing)
- Drills (Ignored anyway unless region clearing)
- Deltas (Prioritized over just about everything except convoys/complexes, steamrolled immediately)

I think fortresses need to drop more useful items. Make those lightning things do something asides making restoratives that sit in the corner, forgotten.
I think gridshards shouldn't be dropped from convoys. I saw the discussion about making tanks gain levels off of strengths, and I'd like to point out that no tank is good at convoys while being bad at killing everything else. (Well, the Trailblazer can't kill anything well, but that's besides the point)
I think deltas should have their pulch drops nerfed as per what kelsoo suggested.

I think I covered everything I wanted to type. For now.

[rob]

Sept 9, 2013 19:46:27 GMT -5 kable said:

I'll take this moment to say, that's why I liked Victory Points. It gave purpose to fortresses other than "steamroll this to activate a boss you won't be able to kill".

Although the functionality is not all there yet, we are hoping that per-tank XP will fill the role once handled by VP. The idea is that XP unlocks slots into which you can put modules which give you bonuses.

[Duco]

I still think the phantom should be nerfed back to the way it was in build 64... It's really just too tanky now. And I don't like the invisible.

EDIT: Losing X levels on death and lower level requirements make it less time-consuming to level up, and more punishing to die.

[fire]

Sept 10, 2013 9:30:27 GMT -5 Duco said:

I still think the phantom should be nerfed back to the way it was in build 64... It's really just too tanky now. And I don't like the invisible.

EDIT: Losing X levels on death and lower level requirements make it less time-consuming to level up, and more punishing to die.

I Feel we already lose enough from dieing. If you lose some of everything when you die, this game may as well be close to permadeath. And the levels honestly do not take that long, 30 hours to be "maxed" is nothing. you can achieve that in a few weeks if you only play 1-2 hours a day.

[quicklite]

Sept 10, 2013 9:30:27 GMT -5 Duco said:

I still think the phantom should be nerfed back to the way it was in build 64... It's really just too tanky now. And I don't like the invisible.

EDIT: Losing X levels on death and lower level requirements make it less time-consuming to level up, and more punishing to die.

Well, even with the overdrive, the phantom's still pretty pathetic in terms of raw damage. I'd pick the hurricane or the Hercules over it any day. Besides, having a 'really tacky tank' around is great for not only newbies, but for high-dps events as well. Any fool can help the group by soaking up damage, meaning that someone who just isn't very good at grid could use the phantom to be a real team player at events they otherwise couldn't really do, such as zeta/omicron complexes.

As for the edit, please no. First-off, no matter how much you nerf level requirements, due to level exp increasing there will always be a certain point where levels will be seriously hard to get, and thus losing levels on death would be maddening. Imagine dying on level 90. Do you have any idea how long it would take to get those X levels back? Secondly, what about module slots? If you have a level 15 slot open, and you have an item in said slot, what happens to said item if you fall below level 15? Would it get destroyed? Given how rare modules, let alone good ones, are, this feels like it's inching a little too close to permadeath.

[Duco]

Sept 10, 2013 12:03:50 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Sept 10, 2013 9:30:27 GMT -5 Duco said:

I still think the phantom should be nerfed back to the way it was in build 64... It's really just too tanky now. And I don't like the invisible.

EDIT: Losing X levels on death and lower level requirements make it less time-consuming to level up, and more punishing to die.

Well, even with the overdrive, the phantom's still pretty pathetic in terms of raw damage. I'd pick the hurricane or the Hercules over it any day. Besides, having a 'really tacky tank' around is great for not only newbies, but for high-dps events as well. Any fool can help the group by soaking up damage, meaning that someone who just isn't very good at grid could use the phantom to be a real team player at events they otherwise couldn't really do, such as zeta/omicron complexes.

As for the edit, please no. First-off, no matter how much you nerf level requirements, due to level exp increasing there will always be a certain point where levels will be seriously hard to get, and thus losing levels on death would be maddening. Imagine dying on level 90. Do you have any idea how long it would take to get those X levels back? Secondly, what about module slots? If you have a level 15 slot open, and you have an item in said slot, what happens to said item if you fall below level 15? Would it get destroyed? Given how rare modules, let alone good ones, are, this feels like it's inching a little too close to permadeath.

I guess you're right, losing levels would require too much tweaking.