WHAT THE HELL?!
[h2]HELLO, HORDE![/h2]
The update launch week is nearly over, but that doesn’t mean we’re kicking back on the beach just yet. As much as we’d love to, Moriana wouldn’t allow it… and we are obedient little minions.
We’re still carefully reviewing your feedback and preparing the next round of patches. Once again, a huge thank-you for all your reviews, messages, and notes. You’ve done an excellent job pointing out the flaws in the new update, and thanks to your input, Be My Horde will soon be a more enjoyable and better-balanced experience.
So… what does that actually mean? Let’s dive into what’s coming next!
[h2]DIFFICULT AS HELL[/h2]
Currently, the jump in difficulty between Kingdom and Hell is massive, resulting in many players not having a fun experience. When we were designing and balancing the new level, we underestimated how much better players get over time. Despite its simplicity, Be My Horde has a surprising amount of depth and a very high skill ceiling. The level of challenge the game needs to offer a player to stay engaging is very different for someone who has just started playing, played for a few hours, or for dozens of hours, or even hundreds of hours.
In our previous announcement, we already mentioned the reason behind our mistake - we’ve simply balanced the Hell around ourselves, and we have played the game for hundreds of hours. We not only learned all the tricks and strategies that allow us to snowball very effectively, but they have also become a second nature, allowing us to perform well on high difficulties.
To be clear, we aren't trying to be smug or condescending about our skill level. We are certain that if you've played the game as much as we have, you would be on an equal skill level and probably even better! And we are not saying that the current balance is okay. Clearly, it's not.
[h2]NEW DIFFICULTY LEVELS[/h2]
So, how do we solve this problem? We don't want to completely remove the challenge the current Hell level offers. For us personally, playing the current Hell, even before the nerfs, was honestly one of the most fun times we've had playing Be My Horde! And we have feedback from some players, especially the ones who have played previous versions for dozens of hours, that they've enjoyed a significantly harder take on the game.
But the majority of players didn't enjoy it. To ensure everyone is having fun, we are going to introduce two difficulties for each level, Normal and Hard. The current Kingdom will become Kingdom Normal, and the current Hell will become Hell Hard. Between them, we will introduce new levels to bridge the gap in difficulty: Hell Normal and Kingdom Hard.
Why not make the baseline Hell level easier and use the current Hard Mode system for players who want a challenge? Well, the Hard Mode is a simple system that allows infinite scaling difficulty by just increasing enemy damage and health. But by changing simple numbers like this, we won't achieve the experience we want to. Instead, we will be rebalancing many things like the density of enemies, how soon high-tier units start appearing, difficulty and number of events, number of environmental hazards, etc. We want to make sure that playing two difficulties of the same level will be a unique and fresh experience.
We will make both Normal and Hard difficulties completely optional, so everyone gets the desired experience. We won't be forcing Normal players to play Hard and Hard players to play Normal. You can freely change the difficulty before each run, and you don't need to beat the game on Normal to play it on Hard.
We understand that many players love Be My Horde because they can relax, zone out, and just grow their army, get cool perks, and watch their enemies get absolutely slaughtered by their massive horde. And we want to provide that experience.
This is why we are planning to let you experience all of the content and complete all the achievements in Normal difficulty. However, we expect that most players who beat the game on Normal will enjoy dipping their toes into Hard, if the difficulty curve is gradual and fair.
We are working hard to prepare these new difficulties as quickly as possible. We already have very promising internal prototypes, but it's not something that can be done in one day. But it's coming sooner rather than later.
[h2]WE LOVE YOUR FEEDBACK[/h2]
We have read every single review on Steam, every comment on Steam discussions, and each message on Discord. We are extremely thankful for taking your time to share it with us. Thanks to your feedback, we will be able to create a far superior game than we would be able to on our own.
This is why we decided to participate in Early Access. To not only make the game you want us to make, but to make it with you. So please keep the feedback coming
There are a lot of common issues that arise from your feedback, so now would be a good time and place to address some of them.
Perks are not impactful enough, and Spells don't deal enough damage
We want to have more impactful perks, but it's challenging to do so while keeping the game balanced. Due to the main game mechanic allowing you to get the power of each enemy you defeat, our game snowballs much faster and harder than other similar games. Even small numbers like 5% result in a significant power gain, while 5% can be unnoticeable in different games. But we are getting a lot better at balancing the game, and we are confident we will be able to make each Perk and Spell feel more impactful in the future.
There aren't enough Perk synergies
Yup. There aren't. Both in terms of Tier 5 synergy Perks, like the Aura of Rot, and synergies between regular Perks. We will introduce many new Tier 5 synergy Perks in future updates. Also, when we are designing new Perks now, the main question we ask ourselves is how well will it synergize with existing Perks.
Leveling is too slow, I don't get enough Perks
We've discovered in the early testing that Be My Horde works best when you don't get interrupted as often by the game pausing on the Perk selection screen, as in other Roguelite Survivors games. However, the current rate of getting perks is too slow in the mid and end-game, and especially on bosses. Right now, we are experimenting with bosses giving a significant boost to experience when you are damaging them, and with other tweaks to the leveling curve, so stay tuned!
There aren't enough Perks that improve minions
Completely agree. While we will still be introducing new Spells, the majority of the new Perks will be focused on minions.
Mages and Kettles are annoying to kill
Yes, they are. We don't have a great solution at the moment, we can't just make them easily swarmable, as that results in a very boring experience. But we are experimenting with various solutions for this problem, and we should have it soon.
Various issues related to minion and enemy movement
Minion and enemy unit movement can be, at times, clunky, janky, and simply annoying. It can be especially frustrating when your minions do not behave in a way you want them to. The unit movement system in this game is quite complex, way more than it may appear at first glance, and is quite delicate to any changes and has a profound effect on the game's balance. Usually, when we try to fix one thing here, we break ten others. Improving the movement system will take time and many iterations, but we have enough time scheduled for it to be able to fix most of these issues.
There is too much Area of Effect damage constantly destroying my horde
We agree that the horde is too often quickly destroyed, be that by Mages, high-tier Hell units, or Hell environmental hazards. We will improve upon this.
Boss fights could be improved
We have received tons of valuable feedback from you about both bosses, and we will be iterating and improving on them in the near future.
There is a bug!
Then it will be fixed. We have zero tolerance for bugs here at Polished Games. We plan to exterminate them all. No mercy for the bugs!
Improving on all of these issues will require some time and iteration, so we kindly ask for your patience and feedback. But we will get these done. We have a name to live up to, after all. ;)
[h2]FINAL WORDS[/h2]
That was quite the wall of text—but we believe in being an open book when it comes to communication.
As you can see, we’ll be busy in the coming days working to shape Hell into the experience we truly want it to be. Once we've tackled the current issues, we’ll begin active development of the final Be My Horde level, alongside a plethora of improvements and new features that will be available at full launch.
We know. We've been in literal hell together in those last few days. Thankfully, this time, what comes next may be a walk in the park. Or maybe… a peaceful flight through the clouds. Wink, wink.
PRAISE BE MORIANA!
The Polished Games Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2499520/Be_My_Horde/
The Polished Games team in the last couple days