Greetings everyone!
It’s been a month since we released
the first Early Access content update for GRAVEN and now is a good time to give you a peek into what we’ve been working on during the past weeks, without of course spoiling too much!
But before we do that, we’d like to thank each one of you for supporting the game by sharing feedback with our team. It really means a lot to us since not only does it help us identify and fix potential issues, but also it helps us understand the different ways you interact with the game so we can make GRAVEN the best that it can be.
And now, without further ado, here are some of the new features and changes you can expect from GRAVEN in the future!
[h3]Difficulty[/h3]
A challenge in game development is satisfying the needs of different skill levels among developers. Some team members have found GRAVEN too easy, others too hard. Content Update 2 will bring difficulty settings to the game, but they will function a touch differently from the now typical damage and health scalers. Most gameplay values will remain untouched between difficulty levels, rather the overall composition of encounters will change.
With the current experience being roughly Normal, the Easy player will find slightly fewer enemies, positioned in less complex arrangements, and with fewer combinations. The Hard player however will not simply find more enemies, but nastier combinations and in more demanding positions, expecting the player to not simply be more skilled at FPS combat, but also to learn the smaller details of GRAVEN to maximize their opportunities.
As can be seen in these shots, the count and composition can vary a fair bit. Easy steers the player toward the best path through a threat, while Normal also steers but provides complications. Hard however adds the Undecaying cult in, places the largest threat on the main path, and provides two different angles for ranged attacks. Though not trying to be unfair, Hard is definitely more adversarial in regards to the player.
Difficulty however is not a fixed value, it can be changed for the next session so you needn’t worry about committing to a poor match for your level. Simply change the value in Options, exit to the main menu, and then resume your game. On that same note, most loose items you find in the world will have respawned following the same logic as the current enemy respawns.
Some players have observed that they can simply try-try-again with a hard encounter, respawning and rushing in with little regard for danger, whittling down their opponents. We are introducing gold penalties on death, as well as healing of the enemy that killed you and others nearby, both of which scale based on the difficulty value. The healing also applies in cooperative play, so going down can heal enemies being fought by your friends in that moment.
[h3]Writ of Subjugation[/h3]
The Writ of Subjugation is a new and optional weapon which can be acquired through a side quest from the Tax Collector. A not quite legal tool, he kept it in his office for emergencies and now is offering it to you as payment for fetching a ledger he needs. Inaccurate, it excels at dealing with hordes and can be upgraded to have knockback functionality, as well as letting projectiles slow to a stop, waiting to be picked up to restore mana, or as a free floating mine for enemies to wander into. Fully upgraded, it is a fire and forget but then remember once again weapon that is ideal for engaging multiple fronts and large numbers of weaker enemies.
[h3]Side Quests[/h3]
We’re hard at work on a side quest system to increase replayability and provide avenues for new content instead of placing it on the main path. This system aims to enable designers to come up with new quest content without intruding on the main plot and provide interesting engagements while also not bothering the Engineering team so much. Expect several side quests in Content Update 2, and many more throughout the full game!
Thank you for reading and don’t forget to follow GRAVEN on Steam and/or
@3DRealms on Twitter to stay up-to-day with the latest info about the game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371690/GRAVEN/
