Stamina, Enemies, QOL, Other Big Changes!
Game Version: 0.7.300
[h2]The Feedback[/h2]
We have gotten a ton of feedback. And we've taken it to heart. In fact, I have read every single Discord message, Review, Steam Discussion, etc.
We're super happy with how this demo has gone. We did not expect to get this much attention. And it seems like most people really like where the game is going & want a few major points addressed. So, lets hop right into what we've done to improve things!
[h2]Stamina[/h2]
We hear you! This was the number one point brought up by players, so we were happy to take a stab at it. We tried out many solutions, balancing combat & exploration & combat. Ultimately we landed on a few big changes that make things feel much much better.
[h2]New Goblin Behavior[/h2]
One of the big feedbacks is how aggressive the goblins were. We completely agree! So we decided to change their NPC behavior, and it has ended up making them more interesting & less punishing.
How it used to work:
Goblins would frequently spawn & immediately go attack the player. At night, they would spawn more frequently & in larger numbers.
Now how it works:
Goblins during the day now use a patrol system to wander around the forest. These day-time patrolling goblins no longer immediately know where the player is. At night, they become more aggressive & will seek the player, except if the player is inside their house.
The result of this change is that goblin attacks during the day are far less frequent & you don't get attacked like clockwork. You also have the opportunity to see them in-advance. Goblins during the day are more alive rather than just wave spawning. This makes combat encounters during the day happen a lot less.
Since they still remain aggressive at night, this makes night dangerous to venture around the island, rather than all of the time. Although even at night, they're still less aggressive than they were before. It'll be mentioned later in the notes but you can now also sleep a couple of hours earlier than night starts & sleep in beds that are being used by companions.
To put a fine point on it
The old system was "They spawn waves like clockwork, and spawn more at night.". The new system is a more peaceful day with patrols & then aggressive at night which makes the game more interesting, fun, and less frustrating. Also keep in mind all of the other changes in this update that improve this experience.
[h2]More Cool Enemy Changes[/h2]
[h2]NEW: Bones![/h2]
As mentioned, goblins now drop loot. Including a new game item: Bone!
Bone has a max stack of 30, is now used to create farm plots, and can be used to craft another new item: Bone arrow. Bone arrows deal the same damage as stone arrows and are meant as another resource choice for making arrows if you prefer to gather slain goblins rather than rocks.
[h2]Sleeping & Beds[/h2]
[h2]Food, Hunger, Cooking[/h2]
[h2]Quality Of Life[/h2]
[h2]Other Changes[/h2]
[h2]The Future[/h2]
Thanks for all of the support & letting us know what direction you want us to take the game in. We've read everything anyone has said that we could get our hands on. Its blown our minds how much attention we ended up getting.
I wanted to let you guys know some cool long-term things we're looking to work on to make the game even better.
A lot of players want different playstyles. Some want a more survival experience & some want a more chill/relaxed atmosphere. (For example, you don't lose anything when you die which was done because we didn't want the game to be too punishing). I think this update goes a long way towards that. But in the future, I think adding world settings with a few presets like "Peaceful, Survival, Hardcore" might help provide players with something more suited to them that they can enjoy. That's a more long-term feature to work out but it's something I definitely want to get to.
We're also working on adding a lot more to the base building. We are looking into adding a jog like Valheim but since that requires new animations & stat rebalancing (How this effects hunting/combat/etc.) that's also a more long-term goal.
We're a very small team but everyone here is super passionate at what they do.
After this update, we're going to discuss more what we want future updates to look like. This nextfest demo will be closed in a couple of weeks or so from now. (We don't have a date right now but we'll let you know in-advance). So we're also considering a 2nd demo, like a 2-week demo launch to do another round of testing. Also once the game goes into Early Access, we'll make the demo permanently live. It's a lot of questions up in the air right now as we work on something bigger than any of us have ever attempted before, but I'm confident we're going to make great stuff.
Many people really enjoyed the game, and there have been a few good points that we have addressed.
Thank you everyone and we're really looking forward to hearing what you think about these changes, play the game, and give us your feedback!
Sincerely,
~Captain Cake
Join us on 18+ Discord (New art, Updates, Chat) :)
[h3]The Demo[/h3]
(Wishlist the game!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3414600/Tropical_Monster_Girls_Demo?utm_source=Nxt300News
[h2]The Feedback[/h2]
We have gotten a ton of feedback. And we've taken it to heart. In fact, I have read every single Discord message, Review, Steam Discussion, etc.
We're super happy with how this demo has gone. We did not expect to get this much attention. And it seems like most people really like where the game is going & want a few major points addressed. So, lets hop right into what we've done to improve things!
[h2]Stamina[/h2]
We hear you! This was the number one point brought up by players, so we were happy to take a stab at it. We tried out many solutions, balancing combat & exploration & combat. Ultimately we landed on a few big changes that make things feel much much better.
- Massively raised the player's max stamina, this lets you do all stamina actions much more without running out (Such as fighting, chopping, etc.)
- You can now run for 43% longer.
- Increased player walk speed by 16%.
- Slightly increased player run speed.
- Player now starts recovering stamina 33% faster.
[h2]New Goblin Behavior[/h2]
One of the big feedbacks is how aggressive the goblins were. We completely agree! So we decided to change their NPC behavior, and it has ended up making them more interesting & less punishing.
How it used to work:
Goblins would frequently spawn & immediately go attack the player. At night, they would spawn more frequently & in larger numbers.
Now how it works:
Goblins during the day now use a patrol system to wander around the forest. These day-time patrolling goblins no longer immediately know where the player is. At night, they become more aggressive & will seek the player, except if the player is inside their house.
The result of this change is that goblin attacks during the day are far less frequent & you don't get attacked like clockwork. You also have the opportunity to see them in-advance. Goblins during the day are more alive rather than just wave spawning. This makes combat encounters during the day happen a lot less.
Since they still remain aggressive at night, this makes night dangerous to venture around the island, rather than all of the time. Although even at night, they're still less aggressive than they were before. It'll be mentioned later in the notes but you can now also sleep a couple of hours earlier than night starts & sleep in beds that are being used by companions.
To put a fine point on it
The old system was "They spawn waves like clockwork, and spawn more at night.". The new system is a more peaceful day with patrols & then aggressive at night which makes the game more interesting, fun, and less frustrating. Also keep in mind all of the other changes in this update that improve this experience.
[h2]More Cool Enemy Changes[/h2]
- +All of these changes mentioned in 'New Goblin Behavior'
- Goblins now drop loot (50% Leather, 10% Bowl, 70% Bone). Yes, bone. More on that later.
- Goblins during day & night now spawn on average 2x further away from the player.
- Enemy raid/hunt cooldown timer is now paused for 50 seconds when the player dies.
- The game no longer destroys old enemies as aggressively (They used to get cleaned up like a single hill distance away from you).
- In the Enchanted Forest (the first biome), every cooldown, the game used to spawn 1~4 goblin groups at night. Cooldown now spawns 1~2 groups.
[h2]NEW: Bones![/h2]
As mentioned, goblins now drop loot. Including a new game item: Bone!
Bone has a max stack of 30, is now used to create farm plots, and can be used to craft another new item: Bone arrow. Bone arrows deal the same damage as stone arrows and are meant as another resource choice for making arrows if you prefer to gather slain goblins rather than rocks.
[h2]Sleeping & Beds[/h2]
- You can now sleep in a bed even if a companion is assigned to it.
- Beds now let you sleep a couple of hours before night starts instead of having to wait for night exactly.
- You can now use the bed menu even if a companion is sleeping in the bed. This lets you initiate fun time or sleep in the bed, even if it's already occupied. (Note: A bed can't be reassigned if someone is currently sleeping in it).
- You can now call over companions who are sleeping to initiate fun time.
- Beds can now be placed a bit closer together (5->4m)
[h2]Food, Hunger, Cooking[/h2]
- Most food items have had their max stack increased from 10 to 20. Crafted food items like soups remain at 10 max stack.
- All crafted food items now provide the player some health. This means food now also serves a healing purpose instead of just relieving hunger.
- Bowls now only require 1 wood to craft instead of 4, but some food recipes now require more raw ingredients (i.e 3 onions instead of 2 for soup).
- It was never explained to the player, if you have low food you no longer regenerate health. There is now a line & indicator on the hunger bar showing the player where they will stop regenerating health if they get too hungry.
- Added bowl x3 recipe to more quickly craft soups.
- Raw meat hurts less to eat, dealing 14 damage instead of 20.
[h2]Quality Of Life[/h2]
- You can now build multiple objects with the build hammer without needing to open the build menu again. It will only stop you from building if you don't have enough materials.
- Dialogue now instant-completes instead of skipping if you click while it's still appearing.
- Added 3 new settings to the game: Mouse Sensitivity X, Mouse Sensitivity Y, Invert Look Y.
- The settings screen has been made larger & now features scrollbars to allow room for more settings.
[h2]Other Changes[/h2]
- Added a text popup when it becomes night.
- Fixed the player's hair clipping into your forehead when running.
- Decreased fiber needed to craft leaf chest armor (15->12)
- Decreased fiber needed to craft leaf head armor (7->6)
- Made so the player now has to be a little bit closer to the demo border for the screen overlay to show up letting them know.
- Updated gatherer loot tables. Higher levels now gain items rather than just adjusting percentages. So for example, level 2 gatherer may start gathering an ore. Then a level 3 gatherer will gather that ore + the next one, etc. Higher level gatherers are also no longer excluded from gathering common items (For example a level 3 used to never gather a stack of twigs or fiber even though you might want them to). The thinking here is that I'd rather my companions be able to handle gathering common items so I don't need to focus on it, but still also able to get rare items like ore.
- Fixed a rare bug where companion would stay in 'sleep state' if the player forcefully interrupted it (Like calling them for fun time while they were already asleep).
- Created a new UI texture for the hunger & health bar, which reduces stretching & also looks better.
[h2]The Future[/h2]
Thanks for all of the support & letting us know what direction you want us to take the game in. We've read everything anyone has said that we could get our hands on. Its blown our minds how much attention we ended up getting.
I wanted to let you guys know some cool long-term things we're looking to work on to make the game even better.
A lot of players want different playstyles. Some want a more survival experience & some want a more chill/relaxed atmosphere. (For example, you don't lose anything when you die which was done because we didn't want the game to be too punishing). I think this update goes a long way towards that. But in the future, I think adding world settings with a few presets like "Peaceful, Survival, Hardcore" might help provide players with something more suited to them that they can enjoy. That's a more long-term feature to work out but it's something I definitely want to get to.
We're also working on adding a lot more to the base building. We are looking into adding a jog like Valheim but since that requires new animations & stat rebalancing (How this effects hunting/combat/etc.) that's also a more long-term goal.
We're a very small team but everyone here is super passionate at what they do.
After this update, we're going to discuss more what we want future updates to look like. This nextfest demo will be closed in a couple of weeks or so from now. (We don't have a date right now but we'll let you know in-advance). So we're also considering a 2nd demo, like a 2-week demo launch to do another round of testing. Also once the game goes into Early Access, we'll make the demo permanently live. It's a lot of questions up in the air right now as we work on something bigger than any of us have ever attempted before, but I'm confident we're going to make great stuff.
Many people really enjoyed the game, and there have been a few good points that we have addressed.
Thank you everyone and we're really looking forward to hearing what you think about these changes, play the game, and give us your feedback!
Sincerely,
~Captain Cake
Join us on 18+ Discord (New art, Updates, Chat) :)
[h3]The Demo[/h3]
(Wishlist the game!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3414600/Tropical_Monster_Girls_Demo?utm_source=Nxt300News