Illusive Domain News

• [p]Added slow time effect upon parrying, stance break, and death.[/p]
• [p]Fixed bugs relating to on-parry effects occurring more times than intended.[/p]
• [p]Some visual tweaks.[/p]
• [p]Parrying now makes enemies “forget” some of your moves. (This does not apply to parry response actions.) Additionally, stance break completely wipes their learning rate.[/p]

[p]Restructured how parry interactions work:[/p]

• [p]There are 5 categories: Always Lose < Light < Medium < Heavy < Never Lose[/p]
• [p]Most player attacks will only be interrupted upon losing a clash, while most enemy attacks will be interrupted upon draw or loss.[/p]
• [p]Regardless of win or loss, stance damage and stance regeneration is still applied.[/p]
• [p]“Always Lose” attacks, like the name implies, will always lose against any parry.[/p]
• [p]“Never Lose” attacks are the highest possible strength, and cannot lose against any parry interaction. Enemy parry actions typically fall under this category and have no interruption.[/p]
• [p]Uniquely coloured VFX has been added on each character upon parry. The effect varies for the player depending on the outcome of the clash, and so the enemy effect becomes more prominent when losing a clash and having the less flashy VFX show up.[/p]

[p]Some examples:[/p][p]Please note that not all attacks have been reviewed yet, as there are plans to overhaul some bosses.[/p][p](You might also notice that Louise has new weapon models now. Since it's been over a year since I made her, it's time to revisit and touch her up now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing. )[/p]

• [p]Added a screen shake intensity setting. This defaults to 1x, and ranges from 0-10x, so please feel free to give yourself as much juice as you feel is necessary (this will probably be changed back to 0-1x with a default 0.5x in future xd)[/p]
• [p]Increased screen shake intensity in general.[/p]
• [p]Added an additional hitbox that is only active while blocking. (Note that grabs that go through blocks can also interact with this hitbox.)[/p]
• [p]Reworked how stance regen works. Previously, there would be a delay before having the full regeneration rate. With the rework, regeneration now follows a curve over some duration before returning to the maximum regen rate. This results in an overall lower regeneration rate, but this works in the player's favour since you can recover most of your stance through parrying. [/p]

[p][/p][p]Because this uses curves, each boss regenerates a little differently. [/p][p][/p][p]Of course, none of this really matters if you're aggressive enough that they never get to regenerate, but this should make it a little less punishing overall. [/p][p](By the way, a lategame boss I'm already working on will fully recover her stance in about 6-7 seconds or so if you don't try and interrupt her, so you should get used to throwing the occasional projectile to interrupt their recovery.) [/p][p]For now, these values are still WIP and will be refined later on based on more feedback. [/p][p][/p]

• [p]Tweaked movement code and configuration. The transition between directions should feel smoother now.[/p]
• [p]Remade all running animations. (Walking animations and weapon-specific variants will have to wait for now. )[/p]
• [p]Changed Mist Form — Leaves behind a clone that deflects attacks temporarily. If this substitute is attacked, restores some MP to you.[/p]
• [p]Reduced Mist Form’s movement distance.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where Mist Form would not clear stance break or knockdown.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where Mist Form could be cancelled almost immediately by blocking.[/p]
• [p]Rebalanced MP — Deflecting attacks now also restores some MP.[/p]
• [p]Adrenaline (Parry Bonus Effect) — Duration has been reduced, but now grants stance damage reduction and restores more MP.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a misconfiguration where Louise would spam her Excalibur attack.[/p]
• [p]Added a short cooldown to Nia’s parry. (Don’t worry, I’ll make sure every boss after her parries everything even harder. Enjoy this mercy in the demo. )[/p]
• [p]Removed Story Mode from the Demo. For the time being, this can be accessed again by enabling the setting in the Settings menu.[/p]
• [p]Easy Mode has been added to Demo Mode by default. You can talk to the mysterious tutorial lady (now also in the demo hub) to turn it off or on. It simply reduces your damage taken by half. But she’ll be very disappointed in you if you leave it on.[/p]

[p]For now, the main story and hub area will remain as a secondary game mode/hidden option.[/p]

• [p]This may be removed in future temporarily if there are breaking changes or major overhauls to be done.[/p]
• [p]The demo hub area is a lot smaller, so you REALLY can’t miss the level select stone. If I still see someone have no idea where to go after loading into the map then I will really be at a loss for words.[/p]
• [p]This is mostly just an experiment in trying to address some potential drop-off points in the demo. Having it still be available via a setting is just the middle ground in letting everyone still experience the full early-game, if they choose to. [/p]
• [p]Finally, this allows easy mode to be implemented without having to decide if it affects the story yet. Save data for this mode is separate from the main game's save data, so it won't affect any progression in story mode. [/p]

[p][/p][p][/p]

[p]Balance Changes:[/p]

• [p]Reduced the stance regen delay across all bosses.[/p]
• [p]Reduced stance regen across all characters in varying amounts.[/p]
• [p]Greatly reduced player passive stance regen.[/p]
• [p]Increased player stance regen from parrying.[/p]
• [p]Parry damage has been slightly increased.[/p]
• [p]The parry damage multiplier for winning/drawing/losing in parry strength has been adjusted. Previously, this was 0.5/1/1.5x of a set parry damage depending on whether the user won/drew/lost in parry strength against the other attack. This has been changed to 0.8/1/1.2x to avoid having some parry situations feel ineffective.[/p]
• [p]Stance damage return from player attacks has been increased. This is the stance damage that is returned upon being deflected.[/p]
• [p]Increased player stance break duration from 1.5 → 2.[/p]
• [p]Increased player maximum knockdown duration. (However, you can always dodge/jump out of knockdowns at any time. )[/p]
• [p]Reduced knockdown/break recovery dodge invulnerability. (~40f → 15f, used to be almost the entire animation).[/p]
• [p]Changed counter kick to have a longer animation. This is now possible to be parried or blocked rather than being a free attack. It should also have a more reliable hitbox and movement now.[/p]
• [p]Increased some enemy weapon hitbox sizes.[/p]
• [p]Shatter has been reworked. (This is the effect that appears after deflection or parry that increases stance damage taken.) Before, this was +5% x 9 stacks to a total of +45%, but now it follows a curve with ~10% at 1 stack and tapering off at around 30% at the new maximum of 5 stacks. Stack duration has been reduced, but it will refresh the duration of the effect upon stack count change. Overall, this is to be more effective against low-frequency attacks and less OP against high-frequency attacks.[/p]

[p]Behaviour Changes:[/p]

• [p]Enforced cooldowns for some grabs. (Previously, this would just de-prioritize it during the cooldown, but would still be possible to run, just unlikely).[/p]
• [p]Increased cooldown of the witch’s ice orb. [/p]

[p][/p][p]The current direction intent is for:[/p]

• [p]Parrying to be primarily for resource management and dealing stance damage rather than just being defensive.[/p]
• [p]Low regen delays mean keeping up aggression and using other options becomes more important. (Reminder that Frost effect reduces stance regen too.)[/p]
• [p]Overusing the same attacks will cause your attacks to be deflected or parried more often, which puts pressure on you to either tank the stance break or try and parry to recover from it.[/p]
• [p]Getting stance broken yourself will be punished much more heavily, especially if you do not have enough MP for Mist Form to cancel out of it.[/p]

[p][/p]