An Update from Game Director Jamie Stormbreaker
Over the last two weeks since we entered Early Access you have generated a lot of data for the One More Game team to pour over. We’ve used these last two weeks to interact with you in Discord, Steam forums, and read Steam reviews to help correlate the qualitative feedback (written) with quantitative feedback (metrics generated from play) to determine what our priorities are as we assemble our roadmap to launch.
We’ve been testing SWAPMEAT publicly for the last two years by opening the doors to testers for a few weeks every two to three months. Now that we’re in Early Access, we have no plans to close the doors and we’re going to increase our cadence to every two weeks.
[h3]Patch Tuesday[/h3]
Starting today, every other Tuesday you can expect an update to SWAPMEAT that includes improvements, new features, and bug fixes based on feedback from the community. We wanted to commit to this schedule so you know as a player that there’ll be something to play solo or your friends and discuss with each other or the team here at One More Game on a regular basis.
Our goal at this phase of Early Access is to ensure that players purchasing and joining us believe “This game is fun and promising but needs more content” and not “This game is buggy and unfinished”. The commitment we try to stand by is
“We can promise you that its not broken, but we can’t promise you that its fun until it is”. We will continue to release updates, sometimes daily, between these larger updates to fix crashes and address bugs.
[h3]Replacing the Temporary[/h3]
When we entered Early Access we knew that we would need to identify a new watermark for what is acceptable to ship to players. In play testing, we always fall back to the motto above – if it’s not broken and impenetrable to understand, we can test it with players for feedback.
We try to call out in the “known issues” section of our patch notes things in the game that are temporary. Usually these are bits of our UI, music, sound effects, voice overs, and cinematics because these are the things that typically get made last while you’re developing a game.
Some of the more critical feedback we’ve received has helped us identify what that watermark should be, so we’re going to endeavor to not ship components that have UI, music, sound effects, VO, or cinematics that are work in progress. Additionally, over the next few months these pieces will be replaced with their permanent pieces – we just wrapped our first VO session in the studio yesterday so you’ll have some more fun banter with Carl coming really soon.
On the same level of temporary audio, the UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) of a game stands out to most players when they’re incomplete. The former because it’s quite literally always in your face and the latter because, well, if you can’t understand something how are you supposed to interact with it? Here’s a message from OMG_DirigiblePlums, our Principal UI/UX designer:
I know that incremental changes can feel weird, so first I’d like to thank our community for your patience while we’re in early access! I read all the feedback and use it to inform decisions while designing features.
We update things as we go, which means that rather than completing a full UI overhaul in a single sweep, some things will be more polished than others. With that in mind, I’d like to keep everyone updated on some of the things that are in progress right now:
- Post stage (this entire flow is going through some major changes and I’d love to hear what you feel is most important info to display/compare here)
- Bolt Burger UI (a visual update to starting a run and selecting your load out)
- Meat Lockers (changing cosmetics, viewing employee rank details, and more!)
We’re also working to polish the areas that have received some UI updates already:
- Carl Quests and Upgrades
- Trader Mike
- System Select
- Weapon Terminal
– OMG_DirigiblePlums, Senior UI/UX Designer
We’ve still got a way to go to complete SWAPMEAT, but we’re thrilled to finally be at this stage of development. Today’s patch notes will contain some commentary of
why we decided to focus on some changes in addition to what has changed. We’ll be sharing a public roadmap with the community before our next update to more clearly outline where we are and where we’re going.
Thank you for playing SWAPMEAT. Please join us in Discord and let us know what you think about the changes!
– Jamie Stormbreaker, Game Director
Patch Notes
[h2]
Gameplay[/h2]
- Paired cave paths to pathdecks to improve navigation on Mount Dangus
- Eyeclops now take 80% extra damage to their eye weak point
- Eyeclops are now considered more difficult, so they will spawn on later difficulties/stages and in smaller numbers
- Reduced base health of Highbeam by one third
[h3]Difficulty Adjustments[/h3]
A lot of the feedback from Early Access has been around uneven difficulty even on the easiest difficulty level (casual). Getting this right will take a number of iterations, but today we’re pushing out a number of changes to try and make the easiest difficulty more manageable.
- Gobble Gazers call fewer dropships than before, and when they do it reduces the dropship population more than before
- Gobble gazers will now spawn in smaller groups, but spread out more frequently
- Disabled enemy scouts on Easy difficulty. Most noticeably, this disables Gobble Gazers
We found that scout type enemies, like the Gobble Gazer, were a bit too much to manage for stage one of solar system one on the easiest difficulty level. In SWAPMEAT every enemy has multiple “tiers” that have additional behaviours and stats that will spawn as you opt into higher difficulty levels. We’re going to continue to keep an eye on the behaviours of enemies on easy to ensure that things are more manageable as you ramp into the game.
In next week’s patch we’re aiming to add scaling difficulty for boss encounters by removing mechanics on easier difficulties and adding them in gradually over advancing difficulty levels. We want players to be able to “push a boss over” by ignoring mechanics on easier difficulties while needing to understand them as they begin to play on higher difficulties. This strategy should feel familiar to players from MMOs like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV.
It’s our goal that the majority of players can experience SWAPMEAT’s campaign on the easiest difficulty while providing a challenge to more experienced players and modes to keep you wanting to play for hundreds of hours. “Hardcore” mode in Diablo isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly is for some players (like me).
[h3]Weighted Random Meat Drops[/h3]
We’ve had a “true random” system for Meat Drops since the very beginning of internal testing – we would roll on a “loot table” for an enemy to determine which part, or no part, to drop when they were defeated. The problem with true random is that it “streaks” and can give the perception to the player that things are broken because we’re dropping too many things or not enough things.
The feedback that we’re trying to squash here is being “meat starved”, which often sounds like “I killed X enemies and got no drops and died”. This feeling was particularly present in new players that may take longer to kill enemies and take more damage, leading to less chances of meat to drop while they’re getting overwhelmed by enemies.
Today we’re shipping a “weighted random” system for Meat Drops. It basically works like this:
- The drop chance for a given meat type increases slightly over time since an enemy last dropped that type for you
- The drop chance for a given meat type increases drastically over time when you lack that meat type
So if the player hasn’t had a Head drop for them in a while, it’s more likely that it will on their next kill. If a player is missing a Meat part, over time it’s much more likely that will drop on their next kill.
With this change we’ve also removed the 45-second buff that you would receive that increased your chances of a drop after spawning.
[h3]Hunters[/h3]
One of the changes we made before going into Early Access was to spawn the Hunters towards the end of the Harvester Escape event (Stage 1 of Solar System 1). This felt bad to some players because we were removing time you earned by starting the Harvester event and also was too challenging during the Sattelite Smoker Harvester event (Stage 2 of Solar System 2).
Additionally, players could abuse the system by increasing their Hunter timer by completing other events while the Harvester Escape event was active. So we added difficulty and feel bad and didn’t actually accomplish what we wanted.
Today when you start the final event of a planet (eg. Harvester Escape), you will no longer be able to increase or decrease the time on your Hunter Threat Meter. For events with Bolt Burgers that you need to interact with, the Hunters will spawn after they have arrived in their enraged state.
The goal of these changes is to push the player off of the planet once they’ve completed the final event and allow players that earned a time buffer to use it.
[h3]Elemental Interactions[/h3]
If you’ve played with Ice Elemental weapons you may have discovered that enemies will eventually become Frozen when dealt enough Ice Damage and then they can be shattered by melee damage or abilities that deal melee damage (eg. Wheelie Legs, Squat Daddy Legs).
We’re aiming to add additional behaviours between elemental accumulations and damages, and today we’re adding a cross between Kinetic and Ice.
- Dealing Kinetic damage to a Frozen target will now trigger Shatter
We’ll roll out additional interactions in future updates. If you have some ideas on how, say, Slime and Fire interact with each other, join us in Discord and let us know!
[h3]Weapons[/h3]
There are 54 Elemental variations of the 9 different weapons in SWAPMEAT. When we launched into Early Access we had still been replacing the artwork and behaviours of many of these weapons, but weren’t able to finish the lot in time.
In today’s update a number of weapons have had their artwork replaced and behaviours updated. Rocket Launchers, Grenade Launchers, Plasma Guns, and SMGs now have updated versions. Below is an exhaustive list of those changes.
- Reworked the Kinetic SMG (Shredder) into a nail gun
- Increase speed and distance of Electric Grenade Launcher projectiles
- Reduced damage of Electric Grenade Launcher 55/60 -> 50/54
- Reduced Explosive Impulse of Electric Grenade Launcher projectiles making it easier to connect multiple projectiles on a group of targets
- Reduced damage of Fire Grenade Launcher 90/95 -> 85/90
- Reduced Muzzle Climb and Muzzle Wobble of Fire Grenade Launcher by 50%
- Reduced Explosive Impulse of Fire Grenade Launcher projectiles making it easier to connect multiple projectiles on a group of targets
- Fixed a bug where Ice Grenade Launcher projectiles were not having their speed scaled with Grenade Launcher unlock bonuses
- Reduced damage of Ice Grenade Launcher 35/40 -> 26/32
- Increased damage of Kinetic Grenade Launcher 110/115 -> 120/125
- Increased speed of Electric Plasma Gun projectiles 30 -> 40
- Increased damage of Electric Plasma Gun 32/36 -> 54/40
- Explode Electric Plasma Gun projectiles after 2s
- Reduced Attack Delay of Fire Plasma Gun 0.15s -> 0.1s
- Explode Fire Plasma Gun projectiles after 2s
- Increased damage of Fire Plasma Gun 22/26 -> 28/32
- Reduced damage of Ice Plasma Gun 22/26 -> 16/18
- Reduced explosion radius of Ice Plasma Gun projectiles 1 -> 0.5
- Increased elemental accumulation of Ice Plasma Gun 1.5 -> 2.5
- Reduced speed of Kinetic Plasma Gun projectiles 30 -> 10
- Increased size of Kinetic Plasma Gun projectiles 3x
- Explode Kinetic Plasma Gun projectiles after 2s
- Increased damage of Kinetic Plasma Gun 22/26 -> 36/40
- Increased radius of Kinetic Plasma Gun explosions 1 -> 1.25
- Increased damage of Plasma Gun 22/26 -> 28/32
- Reduced Max Spread of Rangus, Fire, Electric, and Slime SMGs from 2 -> 1.5
- Reduced Spread Decay Rate of Rangus, Fire, Electric, and Slime SMGs from 2 -> 1.5
- Reduced Muzzle Climb per shot of Rangus, Fire, Electric, and Slime SMGs from 0.6 -> 0.3
- Reduced Muzzle Wobble per shot of Rangus, Fire, Electric, and Slime SMGs from 0.3 -> 0.15
We’ll continue to roll out new weapons each update until we’ve run through the lot of them
[h2]
Meta Progression[/h2]
- Replacing UI and improving UX
- Players not aware that they can unlock additional difficulties
- Players not aware that they unlocked a new solar system
- New Lobby layout
- We’ve made some changes to how Difficulties and Ascension Ranks are unlocked:
- Ascension Ranks are now unlocked globally, instead of per-Solar System.
- Solar Systems now track and display the highest difficulty and ascension rank you have completed them on.
- Added new side quests at Carl for collecting one of each mineral, ancient tech, and fish.
[h2]
Art[/h2]
[h3]Updated ROX-1 Layout[/h3]
- We’ve updated the layout of ROX-1 (Lobby/Ship) to streamline the user experience of spawning, collecting and completing quests, unlocking new things, equipping costmetics, and then launching a mission. We’ll continue to update the visuals of ROX-1 but we’d love to hear feedback on the new layout
- Unlock terminals will now always be visible within ROX-1, but will be locked until the player has progressed their Quest Chain with Carl. Previously they were hidden which made the space feel empty and the unlock possibilities were invisible to new players
- Added exterior Mothership model into the lobby to help players understand this is the ship they see in the extraction event
[h2]
Animation[/h2]
- Added a new set of animations for Hair Force One when hitting him with the chair and when he is downed on the ground
[h2]
AI[/h2]
- Reduced Eyeclops AI’s preference for attacking structures over players, from 10x to 3x
[h2]
UI / UX[/h2]
- Added
cheat.ToggleUI
cheat to disable the UI for immersion or screen capture
- Critical Damage numbers will now always be grouped separately
[h2]
Bug Fixes[/h2]
- added platform for smaller events on Calypso map so they don’t hang over the edge
- Fixed bug that cursor wasn’t locked to game window after late-joining multiplayer game
- Fixed a bug where the player could interact with the “Cooked Meat Core” on the Satelite Smoker event
- Fixed an issue where some attributes of the Kinetic Pistol was not scaling with upgrades
[h2]
Known Issues[/h2]
- No significant performance tuning has been done yet. If you are graphics bound, you can try lowering the quality settings in the Esc menu via Options → Video, but systems with more constrained hardware may struggle
- Not all input buttons and keys have icons in the UI yet. Text descriptions (eg. “J”, or “Button West”) will show up for things that do not yet have an icon in the input glyph map
- When observing other players, some UI bits such as the reload HUD don’t show accurate information for the observed player
- All cutscenes and voiceover dialogue are WIP (and most lines aren’t in at all yet)