Build 38

[rob]

Hi everyone! It's time for build 38!

* Add triggers for Spectre: blink back, standard shotgun, refill left shield, gun buff
* Add triggers for Hurricane: remove target limit, 360 disarm, 360 immobilize, refill weakest shield
* Add triggers for Silver: 360 explosion, refill all shields, heal up, cloak
* Mustang disarm changed to narrow cone with no target limit
* Remove Hurricane reload
* Nerf Trailblazer HP, speed, shields
* Display Phantom triggers on other players' screens
* Create shockwave blast and use it for some graphical effects
* Fix lootbag alpha bug
* Fix Bore Auger's loot drop
* Introduce facilities, arranged in four trees per town; purely decorative for now

Facilities are embedded into the grid matrix, and thus can be driven on and can't be destroyed by enemies. They are incomplete in this build; they don't do anything except suck down 1000 of your gridshards. You need to build them in order from the center of the city outward. They will eventually be like a tech tree, with more valuable and expensive facilities at the edges of the cities. Also I'm hoping we'll have a lot of tech trees, with each city getting four random ones. The strategic gameplay will involve finding and building facility combos that maximize effectiveness given the foes in the region.

We continue to build out the triggers. Some of the abilities don't show up on other people's screens, but we'll get to that.

Please let us know what you think.

Rob & Tim

[linkshot]

This seems like it's gonna be a big day. Didn't expect this to pop up, too!

[amitp]

Woah! I like the idea of facilities. :-)

[rob]

I think I like the idea of facilities. But I thought I'd like photonite & omnium, labs & extractors, resonators and a zillion other ideas that didn't pan out. Sometimes the only way to evaluate an idea is to build it and play. Thanks for coming along on this journey with me.

[rob]

Feb 13, 2013 11:11:47 GMT -5 linkshot said:

This seems like it's gonna be a big day. Didn't expect this to pop up, too!

What else happened today?

[tarbomb]

So far, seems pretty good.

One problem though: the position of the building sockets means that every time I TP to a town without a building in the socket directly below the town socket, I lose 1000 shards since they're automatically dumped into that socket.

[linkshot]

Kabam decided to start selling high-tier (10) items in RotMG, there's a second (or even third!) announcement on Wild Shadow to come, and I had to convert some music to a looping format (OST for a jump-and-shoot I'm helping with)

Anyway, relevant talk time. Mustang feels pretty good now. I can solo some of the bigger enemies with confidence (but not without injury). Trailblazer doesn't seem too nerfed but I didn't use it much before. In terms of towns, this generation seems to be pretty barren.

[tarbomb]

A bit more feedback now:

The new triggers are pretty good. The ones for the spectre are practically the same as the current ones (read: useful for general-purpose fighting) and I can see the spec becoming a favorite if other tanks' triggers are changed. The hurricane is great too, but remove target limit causes a lot of lag, even on my relatively new machine - what's needed is a particle effects toggle. The silver triggers are decent - great for a newb. Still, the silver remains strictly a newb class - once you have access to other classes, there's no appeal left to the silver.

Mustang disarm changes are great. Haven't tried it on a drill station (the enemy it would be most useful against) yet, but based on my testing on smaller enemies it's quite handy.

The removal of hurricane reload is a welcome change, and the triggers make it playable again. Still, I'd think it needs a slight buff - an increase of targetable enemies to 4 or 5.

Trailblazer is less trivial to rush with now. At least there's some challenge again.

The nerf in bore auger loot drops makes it more balanced, but I can't exactly say I'm happy - I just died and I need those pulchs! /end qq

The facilities are promising - return of the resonators! However, I would like them to be targetable by enemies, including armadas - what's the fun in building a city if you don't have to defend it?

Also, a major pet peeve: blink backwards has the same icon as blink forwards. It's confusing, especially when you're switching from a tank with the default trigger set to the spectre, which has the blink icon in slot 2 as well.

[sven]

Whoa, the extended purpose of facilities is ecstatic like. Willingly to looking forward to.

At first glance, the four different roots bring me back to the electronic Simon device by the scheme of the color. Nostalgic decoration yet, same with enemies icon on the map. (They resemble to variety of asteroids, best representation of opposing force)

Erm, disposing gridshards in towns are somewhat uncontrollable after the leveling up upgrade. The vacuum doesn't stop there for few second cool-down when the user react away from the point. The quickest way to get away of the position is to teleport at the home position. Inconvenient as it seems, will there be friendly method to depositing gridshards at town? it's not like we're being ambush by foes, still adore the haste.

[rob]

Yes, I noticed that sockets are acting a little weird. I'll put it on the list.