Development Notes - Version 0.4
Hello guys,
It's been a while since I posted news about the next patch. I am now very happy to share that the next patch is very close to being completed and moving into testing. Now that what's been changed is more or less developed, I am super excited to share some of the development notes for the next patch!
Patch 0.4 will probably be the biggest patch up to date and also one of the patches that changes the game fundamentally(not too much). For this patch I will recommend even for people who has finished the game to do a restart to experience the changes.
[h2]Movement[/h2]
The biggest change that patch 0.4 brings is the ability to move the Healer(or yourself) during battle, that's right, no strings attached anymore.
Below is a quick demonstration on how movement works during battle
Q: Why did you decide to add in movement?
Q: There are already many things that we need to keep track of, wouldn't adding in movement be too much to handle?
For sure there are already many things to keep an eye on during the battle such as health bars, enemy debuffs, enemy buffs, environmental effects...etc. Adding in movement on top of those will be very frantic if not done properly. I would say the approach that I took would be to limit the amount of mechanics per boss to be manageable. For example, a boss that has dangerous movement based mechanics will probably not have dangerous debuffs so you won't need to focus on everything at once. This adds to the fun of investigating and figuring out what is the most dangerous ability a boss has and focus on that ability.
[h2]Bosses[/h2]
Nearly 50-60% of the bosses in 0.3 has received changes, from minor tweaks to gaining new ability to completely reworked. This is to reinforce the ability to move all the way from Bone Knight, but the focus here is actually the Outer/Inner Courtyards, currently there are many feedback that some courtyard bosses are a bit unfair and uninteresting (Sid, Volkan, Thogg & Mhogg ...etc). So, Patch 0.4 will completely rework 7/11 of the Ourter/Inner Courtyard bosses, they are essentially new bosses! That's also the reason why a restart of the game will also feel fresh!
Below are some of the new abilities that the old bosses gained and new bosses have.
[h2]Story, Quests, and Dialogs[/h2]
Yes! An ARPG will need a story along with quests and dialogs. Patch 0.4 will bring a super super simple story into the game, along with NPCs, quest systems, and dialogs. Those will be very simple as I believe story is needed but not overly important.
Adding in quests and dialogs systems also allow me to rework other systems easily such as the trio rework mentioned below
[h2]Orra, Mevor, and Edwin (The Trio)[/h2]
I don't mind the current trio system the game has, but it's a bit repetitive as going from level 1-9 are basically the same mechanics with just a stats boost. I like the flavor of you only need to do them once, in which the quest system above can fullfill just that. Now they each have their own questlines and each quest will be different so they will feel less repetitive!
[h2]Skills[/h2]
A lot of people voiced that Dispel and Negate are too much of a hassle to put in/take out every fight. Patch 0.4 will now lock Dispel and Negate onto the cast bar so that you won't be able to take them off, as a result of that, the cast slots will now be increase to 8 (Pog)!
It is not over yet! Patch 0.4 will also rework and bring a total of 4 new skills to the table each with different dynamics and interaction. I will show case 2 of them below.
- Cleansing Ray - A channeling heal ability
- Restoration Totem - A zone based healing ability
[h2]Talents[/h2]
Of course with the new skills there will be new talents that support it. The patch will also rework some of the talents that are weak and can't really scale into the late game that well. But overall I would say talents are already in a good place so there won't be too much changes to the existing talents
[h2]Artifacts[/h2]
I have to thank the community for this one first, the discord community noted down the discussion for each artifact that was discussed and the proposal of its changes. I read through all of them and agreed with 80-85% of the proposals. So now some of the old and not popular items have been reworked based on the suggestions. Below are a few spoilers!
Of course there are also my own tweaking and balancing as well as new items to support the new skills.
[h2]Healing? Or Damage?[/h2]
There are a couple of feedback where people were saying the game doesn't feel like healing towards the mid to late game. I agree and this would be a tough one to solve for sure. But the approach here would be to be more open to both worlds as there are people who wants to go for DPS and people who wants more healing. I am planning to follow these directions -
During the early to mid game there shouldn't be items that once you get it you can breeze through the content without having to heal, either due to way superior damage or superior passive healing. So early items that do those will be changed a bit, but the late game version of them will stay the same.
Again during the early to mid to game you also shouldn't feel like you need to focus on DPS in order to beat a boss. Of course there are DPS checks but those will be relatively low for the early bosses.
As for the end game, I would keep it more open as if you want to keep optimize for healing you can, if you want to build a passive healing build you can, and if you want to build a pure DPS bloodlust machine you also can. So late game damaging items will mostly stay the game.
[h2]Other good things[/h2]
There are many other changes in Patch 0.4 but this should summarize all the big ones. Thank you for reading all the way to here and supporting the game/providing valuable feedback! As you can see the patch is bigger than the usual big patches so the testing might take a bit longer. I would expect the patch to go live in about 3-4 weeks!
Thanks,
Sad Doge
It's been a while since I posted news about the next patch. I am now very happy to share that the next patch is very close to being completed and moving into testing. Now that what's been changed is more or less developed, I am super excited to share some of the development notes for the next patch!
Patch 0.4 will probably be the biggest patch up to date and also one of the patches that changes the game fundamentally(not too much). For this patch I will recommend even for people who has finished the game to do a restart to experience the changes.
[h2]Movement[/h2]
The biggest change that patch 0.4 brings is the ability to move the Healer(or yourself) during battle, that's right, no strings attached anymore.
Below is a quick demonstration on how movement works during battle
Q: Why did you decide to add in movement?
- The last boss of patch 0.3 received very good feedback on the design of its mechanic, but players also feels a bit weird that you need to use the button to move instead of exposing it as hotkeys. Problem with just exposing it as hotkeys would be too confusing for new players who see the move hotkeys but haven't seen the boss yet. Making it so that you can move across all bosses will make it more consistent and justify showing the keybindings of the movement in the settings right from the start of the game
- Movement can increase the immersion of the battle as well as open more doors into movement based new skills/talents in the future.
- Movement can also open up a lot of doors to new boss mechanics and design. I will talk about that more in the next section
Q: There are already many things that we need to keep track of, wouldn't adding in movement be too much to handle?
For sure there are already many things to keep an eye on during the battle such as health bars, enemy debuffs, enemy buffs, environmental effects...etc. Adding in movement on top of those will be very frantic if not done properly. I would say the approach that I took would be to limit the amount of mechanics per boss to be manageable. For example, a boss that has dangerous movement based mechanics will probably not have dangerous debuffs so you won't need to focus on everything at once. This adds to the fun of investigating and figuring out what is the most dangerous ability a boss has and focus on that ability.
[h2]Bosses[/h2]
Nearly 50-60% of the bosses in 0.3 has received changes, from minor tweaks to gaining new ability to completely reworked. This is to reinforce the ability to move all the way from Bone Knight, but the focus here is actually the Outer/Inner Courtyards, currently there are many feedback that some courtyard bosses are a bit unfair and uninteresting (Sid, Volkan, Thogg & Mhogg ...etc). So, Patch 0.4 will completely rework 7/11 of the Ourter/Inner Courtyard bosses, they are essentially new bosses! That's also the reason why a restart of the game will also feel fresh!
Below are some of the new abilities that the old bosses gained and new bosses have.
[h2]Story, Quests, and Dialogs[/h2]
Yes! An ARPG will need a story along with quests and dialogs. Patch 0.4 will bring a super super simple story into the game, along with NPCs, quest systems, and dialogs. Those will be very simple as I believe story is needed but not overly important.
Adding in quests and dialogs systems also allow me to rework other systems easily such as the trio rework mentioned below
[h2]Orra, Mevor, and Edwin (The Trio)[/h2]
I don't mind the current trio system the game has, but it's a bit repetitive as going from level 1-9 are basically the same mechanics with just a stats boost. I like the flavor of you only need to do them once, in which the quest system above can fullfill just that. Now they each have their own questlines and each quest will be different so they will feel less repetitive!
[h2]Skills[/h2]
A lot of people voiced that Dispel and Negate are too much of a hassle to put in/take out every fight. Patch 0.4 will now lock Dispel and Negate onto the cast bar so that you won't be able to take them off, as a result of that, the cast slots will now be increase to 8 (Pog)!
It is not over yet! Patch 0.4 will also rework and bring a total of 4 new skills to the table each with different dynamics and interaction. I will show case 2 of them below.
- Cleansing Ray - A channeling heal ability
- Restoration Totem - A zone based healing ability
[h2]Talents[/h2]
Of course with the new skills there will be new talents that support it. The patch will also rework some of the talents that are weak and can't really scale into the late game that well. But overall I would say talents are already in a good place so there won't be too much changes to the existing talents
[h2]Artifacts[/h2]
I have to thank the community for this one first, the discord community noted down the discussion for each artifact that was discussed and the proposal of its changes. I read through all of them and agreed with 80-85% of the proposals. So now some of the old and not popular items have been reworked based on the suggestions. Below are a few spoilers!
Of course there are also my own tweaking and balancing as well as new items to support the new skills.
[h2]Healing? Or Damage?[/h2]
There are a couple of feedback where people were saying the game doesn't feel like healing towards the mid to late game. I agree and this would be a tough one to solve for sure. But the approach here would be to be more open to both worlds as there are people who wants to go for DPS and people who wants more healing. I am planning to follow these directions -
During the early to mid game there shouldn't be items that once you get it you can breeze through the content without having to heal, either due to way superior damage or superior passive healing. So early items that do those will be changed a bit, but the late game version of them will stay the same.
Again during the early to mid to game you also shouldn't feel like you need to focus on DPS in order to beat a boss. Of course there are DPS checks but those will be relatively low for the early bosses.
As for the end game, I would keep it more open as if you want to keep optimize for healing you can, if you want to build a passive healing build you can, and if you want to build a pure DPS bloodlust machine you also can. So late game damaging items will mostly stay the game.
[h2]Other good things[/h2]
- Steam Cloud Save - Patch 0.4 will enable Steam Cloud Save :hype:. But I would still save a copy of the save code before it is live (just in case)
- Quality of life/Bug fixes - Patch 0.4 will also bring many QoLs and bug fixes such as the ability to rename save slots as well as hovering onto things like Vigor Aura on items will show you want that is instead of you going into combat and figuring it out
- Localization - I know there are many international friends who want to try out the game. Patch 0.4 will bring the localization system to about 40% done. I am aiming for it to be 100% done and can start localization in patch 0.5
There are many other changes in Patch 0.4 but this should summarize all the big ones. Thank you for reading all the way to here and supporting the game/providing valuable feedback! As you can see the patch is bigger than the usual big patches so the testing might take a bit longer. I would expect the patch to go live in about 3-4 weeks!
Thanks,
Sad Doge