Update 6 Status Report
Hello everyone! This is the first month that we wouldn't have any significant milestone update. This is because our next milestone is pretty huge. We're finally introducing player progression system into the game. We're hoping to release it by end of March but there is also some chance that it may be delayed in case we need to refine it further.
As we haven't implemented a progressions system yet, the current version of the game simply allowed the players to choose an initial loadout - and this is the only ability set they will have access to all throughout that game. Aside from the Biolab progression, this makes playthroughs fairly static experiences all throughout.
With the upcoming progression system, players should now expect to start off significantly weaker - with a fewer subset of abilities, and a slower early game pace. But as the game continues on, expect to have access to multiple avenues of progression - unlocking new abilities, upgrading existing ones, expanding your minion capacities, obtaining new lesser demons and structures, and amassing various player resources. The progression system is expected to slow down the game's pace but it also makes it longer and more varied.
Below are some of the details regarding what's coming. We'll give out some more details by mid March.
We've split player resources into three different types: Mana, Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy.
Mana is used to unlock new abilities, cast spells and afflictions and summon minions. The player gains Mana every hour. The amount gained can be increased by builiding more Mana Pit structures. This is a resource that you should have a steady and consistent supply of as long as you have a pretty stable base.
Chaotic Energy is gained through various interactions with the world. Cultists can produce it for you through prayers. The damage dealt by your spells and minions also generate Chaotic Energy. Certain Plague symptoms may also create more of these. Mental breaks also generate a huge amount of Chaotic Energy. The player may then use Chaotic Energy to upgrade abilities as well expand abilities provided by special structures such as the Biolab and the Meddler. This is a resource that you should be able to get by interacting with the world. We're giving you multiple options to get this so that different playstyles can be viable.
Spirit Energy is gained by draining the life essence of imprisoned monsters and villagers. This special resource will be used for lesser demons, passives and demonic structures. This is a resource that forces you to be 'evil' to obtain it.
The additional resources are necessary components that should provide some depth to the new player progression systems that we are about to add.
The player will now begin with a smaller starting fixed loadout based on the chosen Archetype. New abilities are instead unlocked by spending Mana at the Portal. You may unlock a new ability once every 24 hours. You will be given a set of three random choices. Some have prerequisite abilities before they show up.
This is one core of the player's progression system. It is intended to make sessions lengthier and more varied. While abilities closely linked to your Archetype are more likely to appear, you will also occasionally be given choices coming from other Archetypes. You start out significantly weaker and limited compared to current versions, but expect to have a much wider repertoire by end-game.
We have introduced Piercing and Resistances as both player and villager progressions. All characters have different Resistance values for all the elements. There are also Resistance values related to Mental and Physical effects. Higher Resistance reduces damage from the related element. It also reduces the success rate of various effects. For example, someone with a high Physical Resistance is now more likely to resist the player's Seize action.
Piercing is a direct counter to Resistances. To completely negate a target's Resistance, your ability must have an equal or higher Piercing value.
All player abilities can now be further upgraded through the new Spire structure. Once Villager progression is introduced, expect the Villagers to continually improve their various Resistances. The player must be able to keep up by obtaining enough Chaotic Energy to be able to upgrade their abilities. Typically, the ability's Piercing value is increased, as well as some various small improvements in cooldown, charges or base damage.
Perhaps this will be the most controversial game change. Currently, depending on their type, a Lesser Demon or monster has a specific fixed behavior. Players typically breed a "charge" of a monster, and then summon it anywhere in the map.
The minion behaviors we give for bred monsters are different and limited compared to the wild monster behaviors. At the same time, the way the player can currently just store many charges of monsters and then summon them nearly anywhere is quite hard to balance. We're not quite happy with this system as it's quite exploitable. The changes we intend to make are:
- Certain structures should instead provide the player varying monster type Capacity. Capacity is the amount of that monster type that can be summoned in the world at the same time. Each Crypt for example gives the player up a small amount of Skeleton capacity. Each Kennel now also provides capacity for the one monster type that the player managed to imprison there.
- Instead of summoning monsters anywhere, we're introducing new structures that the player must use to spawn these monsters in small groups or parties. The structure provides the Monsters the "instruction" on what to do. For example, monsters spawned by a Defense Point structure will defend the area around it. Another structure called the Maraud allows the player to form Raid or Snatch parties led by a Lesser Demon. The player's active minion count is limited by their Capacity as determined by their Kennel, Crypt and other capacity increasing structures.
While certain monsters will be more effective at doing certain assigned jobs, this change does mean that most monsters can be used for various roles, instead of each monster type having its own fixed behavior. In a way, expect to lose some of the variety that different bred monster types currently have.
That loss, as well as being unable to summon them anywhere immediately, may turn off existing players. To make up for that, we will instead introduce another future feature that will allow players to more strongly influence and/or spawn wild monsters (in a future monster-related milestone) - so the things you typically do using bred monsters, you should be able to do using wild monsters in a slightly limited way.
In exchange for the reduced bred monster behavior variety, we feel that this new minion mechanic makes minion roles more focused and predictable. We also prefer the concept of the evil overlord sending out parties of monsters led by a lesser demon to harass and invade villages - rather than just spawning them out of thin air.
Demonic Structures have now been redesigned to be much smaller. They also no longer occupy an entire area. The player also must build them on or adjacent to corrupted tiles.
This means that the player typically expands outwards from their Portal instead of being able to build anywhere in the map. Also, since the player can no longer quickly someone minions anywhere, proper Defense Point placement and early summoning of defensive minions are important in case Villagers decide to attack you.
In the future, the player will also be able to further customize and decorate their base.
We'd love to hear your input and concerns regarding our planned changes. Please do know that we of course intend to test everything seriously first to confirm that all elements work together soundly. Expect features to still change as we playtest the new systems.
Tune in on another status update this March for some more details regarding new Demonic Structures, changes to the Eye and other mechanic changes we have been working on!
As we haven't implemented a progressions system yet, the current version of the game simply allowed the players to choose an initial loadout - and this is the only ability set they will have access to all throughout that game. Aside from the Biolab progression, this makes playthroughs fairly static experiences all throughout.
With the upcoming progression system, players should now expect to start off significantly weaker - with a fewer subset of abilities, and a slower early game pace. But as the game continues on, expect to have access to multiple avenues of progression - unlocking new abilities, upgrading existing ones, expanding your minion capacities, obtaining new lesser demons and structures, and amassing various player resources. The progression system is expected to slow down the game's pace but it also makes it longer and more varied.
Below are some of the details regarding what's coming. We'll give out some more details by mid March.
Player Resources
We've split player resources into three different types: Mana, Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy.
Mana is used to unlock new abilities, cast spells and afflictions and summon minions. The player gains Mana every hour. The amount gained can be increased by builiding more Mana Pit structures. This is a resource that you should have a steady and consistent supply of as long as you have a pretty stable base.
Chaotic Energy is gained through various interactions with the world. Cultists can produce it for you through prayers. The damage dealt by your spells and minions also generate Chaotic Energy. Certain Plague symptoms may also create more of these. Mental breaks also generate a huge amount of Chaotic Energy. The player may then use Chaotic Energy to upgrade abilities as well expand abilities provided by special structures such as the Biolab and the Meddler. This is a resource that you should be able to get by interacting with the world. We're giving you multiple options to get this so that different playstyles can be viable.
Spirit Energy is gained by draining the life essence of imprisoned monsters and villagers. This special resource will be used for lesser demons, passives and demonic structures. This is a resource that forces you to be 'evil' to obtain it.
The additional resources are necessary components that should provide some depth to the new player progression systems that we are about to add.
Unlock System
The player will now begin with a smaller starting fixed loadout based on the chosen Archetype. New abilities are instead unlocked by spending Mana at the Portal. You may unlock a new ability once every 24 hours. You will be given a set of three random choices. Some have prerequisite abilities before they show up.
This is one core of the player's progression system. It is intended to make sessions lengthier and more varied. While abilities closely linked to your Archetype are more likely to appear, you will also occasionally be given choices coming from other Archetypes. You start out significantly weaker and limited compared to current versions, but expect to have a much wider repertoire by end-game.
Piercing and Resistance
We have introduced Piercing and Resistances as both player and villager progressions. All characters have different Resistance values for all the elements. There are also Resistance values related to Mental and Physical effects. Higher Resistance reduces damage from the related element. It also reduces the success rate of various effects. For example, someone with a high Physical Resistance is now more likely to resist the player's Seize action.
Piercing is a direct counter to Resistances. To completely negate a target's Resistance, your ability must have an equal or higher Piercing value.
Upgrade System
All player abilities can now be further upgraded through the new Spire structure. Once Villager progression is introduced, expect the Villagers to continually improve their various Resistances. The player must be able to keep up by obtaining enough Chaotic Energy to be able to upgrade their abilities. Typically, the ability's Piercing value is increased, as well as some various small improvements in cooldown, charges or base damage.
Minions Rework
Perhaps this will be the most controversial game change. Currently, depending on their type, a Lesser Demon or monster has a specific fixed behavior. Players typically breed a "charge" of a monster, and then summon it anywhere in the map.
The minion behaviors we give for bred monsters are different and limited compared to the wild monster behaviors. At the same time, the way the player can currently just store many charges of monsters and then summon them nearly anywhere is quite hard to balance. We're not quite happy with this system as it's quite exploitable. The changes we intend to make are:
- Certain structures should instead provide the player varying monster type Capacity. Capacity is the amount of that monster type that can be summoned in the world at the same time. Each Crypt for example gives the player up a small amount of Skeleton capacity. Each Kennel now also provides capacity for the one monster type that the player managed to imprison there.
- Instead of summoning monsters anywhere, we're introducing new structures that the player must use to spawn these monsters in small groups or parties. The structure provides the Monsters the "instruction" on what to do. For example, monsters spawned by a Defense Point structure will defend the area around it. Another structure called the Maraud allows the player to form Raid or Snatch parties led by a Lesser Demon. The player's active minion count is limited by their Capacity as determined by their Kennel, Crypt and other capacity increasing structures.
While certain monsters will be more effective at doing certain assigned jobs, this change does mean that most monsters can be used for various roles, instead of each monster type having its own fixed behavior. In a way, expect to lose some of the variety that different bred monster types currently have.
That loss, as well as being unable to summon them anywhere immediately, may turn off existing players. To make up for that, we will instead introduce another future feature that will allow players to more strongly influence and/or spawn wild monsters (in a future monster-related milestone) - so the things you typically do using bred monsters, you should be able to do using wild monsters in a slightly limited way.
In exchange for the reduced bred monster behavior variety, we feel that this new minion mechanic makes minion roles more focused and predictable. We also prefer the concept of the evil overlord sending out parties of monsters led by a lesser demon to harass and invade villages - rather than just spawning them out of thin air.
Base Building
Demonic Structures have now been redesigned to be much smaller. They also no longer occupy an entire area. The player also must build them on or adjacent to corrupted tiles.
This means that the player typically expands outwards from their Portal instead of being able to build anywhere in the map. Also, since the player can no longer quickly someone minions anywhere, proper Defense Point placement and early summoning of defensive minions are important in case Villagers decide to attack you.
In the future, the player will also be able to further customize and decorate their base.
Thoughts?
We'd love to hear your input and concerns regarding our planned changes. Please do know that we of course intend to test everything seriously first to confirm that all elements work together soundly. Expect features to still change as we playtest the new systems.
Tune in on another status update this March for some more details regarding new Demonic Structures, changes to the Eye and other mechanic changes we have been working on!