WIP: Introducing Weak Point System

Hello and welcome to another WIP update, this week, introducing a new system we've been planning to implement for a good while, the Weak Point System. You might've seen us mention it in the AMA when in reality, we've been working on it long before that.



The weak point system is a just like its name, a system where players can attack some parts of a boss level Quark to dish out a ton more damage onto them. It is designed to reward players who are able to utilize, increases depth of combat against bosses, and raises the skill ceiling. They won't be shown until you finally score a hit onto the weak point, and their notifications will only show for a few seconds. Now we know there are concerns with how easy they can be targeted by ranged builds while not being able to be used to an effect by close combat builds. To that, let us explain further some of the balance that will be made with the introduction of this feature.

First, all weak points are not lockable, that means ranged players must aim at those points manually. Your attacks will count as a weak point hit IF it hits near the center of the hitbox, though they are quite large, so ranged AoE weapons like detonators will need to be fired directly at the weak point to score a HIT. You'll see a yellow number instead of the normal white as indication of that.



Second, status balancing has occured once again, this time with this system in mind. Close combat players do not need to hit at weak points to hit hard but will hit much higher if they can hit the weak point. Ranged players have receive a slightly lower damage balancing, but with the ease of access to weakpoints at all times, they can consistently do good damage.

Third, weakpoints are easily accessible when bosses deplete their stamina. This means close combat players that can hit bosses to the ground will have windows where they can delete bosses' health bar (in conjunction with the new QB update). We'll keep an eye on these factors and see if we'll need to perform any balancing before the final patch of 0.9.0 kicks in a week later.

And on another note, we'll be disabling all special movement openers (rise, leap, etc.) in 0.9.0. We know this is controversial as players who played with "no-locks" (or challenge themselves to not use it) hate the system so much due to how our algorithm calculates which move to use while players who utilized "locks" skillfully on and off at the correct moment loved the system and had a great time using to to follow enemies, especially bosses, around with ease. We've disabled them this time as we wanted the first group of players to have an easier game to play in this higher skill ceiling. Until we find a good way to bring them back in the future, we'll keep it disabled.

To close out, the weak point system and the disabling of these was only possible with how late we are and how long we took to get this update out. We do have a date in mind now and everything is looking good. See you next week!

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