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Back to another work in progress preview for M.A.S.S. Builder. We're still working on the next update during these times and we hope you all are alright, for now, have a look at the new missions design that are coming for the next update!
M.A.S.S. Builder News
New Development Roadmap
Hello everyone, today we're presenting to you our new development roadmap. Let's have a look at it first, then we'll talk about it.
New Roadmap - End of May or Early June (0.4.0)
- Story Mission 10 - 13 (End of Chapter 2)
- Hunting Grounds +2
- Development Nodes tier 4 unlocked
- Enemies' AI and Stats rebalancing
- 1 New armor set
- Lots of new shields
- Some other reworks and rebalances
End of August or Early September (0.5.0)
- Story Mission 14 - 15
- Development Nodes tier 5 unlocked
- 1 New armor set
- Energy Launchers Rework
As you can see, it only covers update 0.4.0 and 0.5.0. This is due to our decision on shorter term works as we incorporate reworks of systems that are less popular while working to create new contents, in example the close combat system and the unknown yet upcoming energy launchers rework. Now, let's talk about each update invidually on what we're trying to achieve with each update.
With 0.3.0 being focused on close combat reworks fully, we weren't able to complete as much content production as we had wanted in the first place, thus 0.4.0 will solely be based on content production and less new system/features work. So what's in there for the contents we are looking forward to?
Missions: We are aiming to release more story missions than in other updates, the number we can finish is still unknown but at least 2 must be completed alongside more hunting grounds. This is because most progression are locked behind story progress, thus by working on more story missions, tier 4 nodes will be unlocked, more parts can be created and unlocked through newer missions, and many more things can be introduced.
Enemies: Well this is something that has been much requested by our players and agreed by our developers that we will need a better enemy, both in mechanics and numbers factor. We have seen complaints on how the new boss behaved and its numbers being too over the top. As the problem tends to continue further if left alone, we have decided this update is where we'll start working on it.
So, in this first phase of the rebalancing, we will try to introduce some kind of mechanics to create more attack gaps and attack patterns (formerly they are calculated through an AI system to decide which attacks they'll use, we'll add a pattern into play on that to make it more predictable and less chaotic mess). We will also shift balance base more towards a fun boss fight instead of the whole mission being deadly, but we cannot disclose any changes being made in specifics yet.
New armor set and shields: Since we did not release any new armors in the last update, we are sure to work on one this time. The idea this time, and going forward, is to be more extreme in our designs. We have already established standard looking ones before, thus we decided we should shift in some extreme looking designs into the fray for a more distinctive look for customizations. With that said, the first phase of shields have been finished and we decided to add in a few more just so you all would have more choices to create from.
Roundup Rebalancing: This is the UNSURE part, but we'd like to put a word out that we are going to look at some aspects that have received complaints and suggestions throughout the last patches. Since a lot is going to be done on contents, we might be able to perform some changes in regards to established features and systems within the timeframe. Things like Magazine Cap and Energy Cap status being too negligible in early levels, things that are unclear or low clarity. Expect a lot of things to change for the better, and if we are sure about each aspect that we are able to finish it, we'll be sure to show them during our weekly Saturday WIP update!
That should be all for 0.4.0 and we will talk more about 0.5.0 when time comes. For now, you'll only have the topics to wonder upon, and we hope to deliver as soon as possible. Expect 0.4.0 to drop end of May or early June. As always, if there are any concerns or if you'd like to talk to us directly, feel free to join our official discord channel set up by Sekai Project!
New Roadmap - End of May or Early June (0.4.0)
- Story Mission 10 - 13 (End of Chapter 2)
- Hunting Grounds +2
- Development Nodes tier 4 unlocked
- Enemies' AI and Stats rebalancing
- 1 New armor set
- Lots of new shields
- Some other reworks and rebalances
End of August or Early September (0.5.0)
- Story Mission 14 - 15
- Development Nodes tier 5 unlocked
- 1 New armor set
- Energy Launchers Rework
As you can see, it only covers update 0.4.0 and 0.5.0. This is due to our decision on shorter term works as we incorporate reworks of systems that are less popular while working to create new contents, in example the close combat system and the unknown yet upcoming energy launchers rework. Now, let's talk about each update invidually on what we're trying to achieve with each update.
With 0.3.0 being focused on close combat reworks fully, we weren't able to complete as much content production as we had wanted in the first place, thus 0.4.0 will solely be based on content production and less new system/features work. So what's in there for the contents we are looking forward to?
Missions: We are aiming to release more story missions than in other updates, the number we can finish is still unknown but at least 2 must be completed alongside more hunting grounds. This is because most progression are locked behind story progress, thus by working on more story missions, tier 4 nodes will be unlocked, more parts can be created and unlocked through newer missions, and many more things can be introduced.
Enemies: Well this is something that has been much requested by our players and agreed by our developers that we will need a better enemy, both in mechanics and numbers factor. We have seen complaints on how the new boss behaved and its numbers being too over the top. As the problem tends to continue further if left alone, we have decided this update is where we'll start working on it.
So, in this first phase of the rebalancing, we will try to introduce some kind of mechanics to create more attack gaps and attack patterns (formerly they are calculated through an AI system to decide which attacks they'll use, we'll add a pattern into play on that to make it more predictable and less chaotic mess). We will also shift balance base more towards a fun boss fight instead of the whole mission being deadly, but we cannot disclose any changes being made in specifics yet.
New armor set and shields: Since we did not release any new armors in the last update, we are sure to work on one this time. The idea this time, and going forward, is to be more extreme in our designs. We have already established standard looking ones before, thus we decided we should shift in some extreme looking designs into the fray for a more distinctive look for customizations. With that said, the first phase of shields have been finished and we decided to add in a few more just so you all would have more choices to create from.
Roundup Rebalancing: This is the UNSURE part, but we'd like to put a word out that we are going to look at some aspects that have received complaints and suggestions throughout the last patches. Since a lot is going to be done on contents, we might be able to perform some changes in regards to established features and systems within the timeframe. Things like Magazine Cap and Energy Cap status being too negligible in early levels, things that are unclear or low clarity. Expect a lot of things to change for the better, and if we are sure about each aspect that we are able to finish it, we'll be sure to show them during our weekly Saturday WIP update!
That should be all for 0.4.0 and we will talk more about 0.5.0 when time comes. For now, you'll only have the topics to wonder upon, and we hope to deliver as soon as possible. Expect 0.4.0 to drop end of May or early June. As always, if there are any concerns or if you'd like to talk to us directly, feel free to join our official discord channel set up by Sekai Project!
Post-Patch 0.3.0 Manifesto
Welcome back to another post-update manifesto. We've decided this is where we explain our thought process behind the major changes we have done to the game after a patch, instead of a "what's next" thing so expect a wall of text! That will be discussed later when we finish our new roadmap in a week or two. Again, we do apologize for all the delays and bugs that have happened, there weren't enough testings that we were able to do to reproduce everything and fix it in time. Now, here's to some long readings.
- On changes to close combat controls and its attack patterns, we've first thought that a few combos, chaining from one combo into another was enough for the time and it could transition well into the new rework. It was not, we accept that mistake. For that, we decided to move on to giving full controls (as players have been expressing their frustration on they cannot control the combos and it made the game needlessly difficult alongside some nodes that required end of combo attacks) towards the combo system, allowing players to transition into a longer or stronger combo with a one-button press system.
Now, why would we not give just another "heavy attack" button instead of this? We gave some thought on it but due to the lack of buttons available with all the systems like guarding, dashing, jumping, quantum breaking, and etc., we think this combo alternate button is the easiest to understand and get familiar with, while still giving players full controls over the M.A.S.S. unit movements (that's why we did not put it on a button that usually uses the index or the ring finger on default even though some of us instantly changes the button).
Another thing we'd like to answer on the reworked close combat controls are things like "why don't you give it more depth?" or "why not give it things like attack skills where players can equip into their skillset?" As much as we'd like to do so, it is impossible. We allow players to equip various types of weapons onto their M.A.S.S. which uses a lot of buttons already and if we added another depth to weapons like giving it skills like in MMORPGs, there would be a serious case of limitations like "how each skills behave with each weapon" since a weapon skill that behaves like a chain wouldn't work while holding lances-thing right? It would also turn the game into a skillfest with no use of normal attacks after we thought about it thus we can't do things like that. Then how about turning each press of an attack into a sequence of skill itself? That would be extremely disorienting and unresponsive when we factor in combination of attacks. Aside from that, we also have the problem of growing our animation and weapon set since if we'd like to grow the amount of weapons, we sacrifice the skills part, if we grow the skillsets and animations, then we sacrifice the weapons part. It is something that we cannot do, and we hope that you would understand.
- Now to Quantum Break, a system that we decided to add much later down the line of the reworks. We first thought of giving close combat reworks some kind of "ultimate move" but if we just do that, the amount of works and animations for each type of weapons will be huge, thus we looked towards things like "ultimate mode" or what can be called "over the limit" or things like that and came up with an extreme power-up instead.
At first, there was only one form that does everything, then we felt this is too good, but reducing the numbers down while also giving special buffs did not feel right to us. So we decided to break it into three forms and add one base form with all the numbers there. The basic enhanced form provides great number increments, the accelerate form is extremely fast and potent, the devastate form has a very large AoE (fun fact: at first all form has that AoE but we decided to give other forms a smaller area instead), and the armored form gives ultimate defense and constant regeneration.
- Guarding was a very controversial feature to think of, as many of us has differing ideas. There were opinions on things like 100% guard, with delays before and/or after. How about making it have charges that regenerate over time? How about having a bar that would constantly go down as you hold guard?
In our opinion, M.A.S.S. builder is a fast paced game, and having delays of holding the guard up or lowering it would contradict this pace and disrupt the player experience we'd like to have. Even though it might make the shields more powerful, we thought that disruption would not be healthy to the experience itself thus we did not put any delays on guarding or lowering guards. With that, there will need to be a gating mechanism that would not allow it to be too overpowered, but having charges or bars is not a good choice. Reasons are because players would need to track another thing on their character and there'll be a UI mess as well. We wanted the UI to be as clean as possible and not want some bars to spring up in the middle of the screen notifying how much charges you have left to guard, and when can you guard again, thus we decided to cap damage reduction to 75% and make it a bit more dynamic and active with directional guarding to reward skilled activation.
- Dual Weapons are something that was a much-requested feature, as well as something we had planned for a long time already. We first thought of its functionalities and how will they behave in integration with the game, and how do we make it different, or do we need to make it different? As the philosophy of the game aims to bring in aesthetics with as little effect to true gameplay as possible, we were thinking that maybe we should not make it that much different from using a single hand + shield or both-handed weapons.
We'd also like to repeat once more that this is only the first phase of the dual-wielding system and we'd grow it into something much better given time. This includes using different weapons in combination, ranged weapon dual wielding, and such other things. This is one of the core system and we hope you can wait for us to improve it.
That should be all for this post-patch manifesto. We hope we have addressed all important decisions and answer some questions behind our development thoughts. If there are still concerns on the topics, or some other things, feel free to send a message to us on the discord and we'll answer them accordingly.
- On changes to close combat controls and its attack patterns, we've first thought that a few combos, chaining from one combo into another was enough for the time and it could transition well into the new rework. It was not, we accept that mistake. For that, we decided to move on to giving full controls (as players have been expressing their frustration on they cannot control the combos and it made the game needlessly difficult alongside some nodes that required end of combo attacks) towards the combo system, allowing players to transition into a longer or stronger combo with a one-button press system.
Now, why would we not give just another "heavy attack" button instead of this? We gave some thought on it but due to the lack of buttons available with all the systems like guarding, dashing, jumping, quantum breaking, and etc., we think this combo alternate button is the easiest to understand and get familiar with, while still giving players full controls over the M.A.S.S. unit movements (that's why we did not put it on a button that usually uses the index or the ring finger on default even though some of us instantly changes the button).
Another thing we'd like to answer on the reworked close combat controls are things like "why don't you give it more depth?" or "why not give it things like attack skills where players can equip into their skillset?" As much as we'd like to do so, it is impossible. We allow players to equip various types of weapons onto their M.A.S.S. which uses a lot of buttons already and if we added another depth to weapons like giving it skills like in MMORPGs, there would be a serious case of limitations like "how each skills behave with each weapon" since a weapon skill that behaves like a chain wouldn't work while holding lances-thing right? It would also turn the game into a skillfest with no use of normal attacks after we thought about it thus we can't do things like that. Then how about turning each press of an attack into a sequence of skill itself? That would be extremely disorienting and unresponsive when we factor in combination of attacks. Aside from that, we also have the problem of growing our animation and weapon set since if we'd like to grow the amount of weapons, we sacrifice the skills part, if we grow the skillsets and animations, then we sacrifice the weapons part. It is something that we cannot do, and we hope that you would understand.
- Now to Quantum Break, a system that we decided to add much later down the line of the reworks. We first thought of giving close combat reworks some kind of "ultimate move" but if we just do that, the amount of works and animations for each type of weapons will be huge, thus we looked towards things like "ultimate mode" or what can be called "over the limit" or things like that and came up with an extreme power-up instead.
At first, there was only one form that does everything, then we felt this is too good, but reducing the numbers down while also giving special buffs did not feel right to us. So we decided to break it into three forms and add one base form with all the numbers there. The basic enhanced form provides great number increments, the accelerate form is extremely fast and potent, the devastate form has a very large AoE (fun fact: at first all form has that AoE but we decided to give other forms a smaller area instead), and the armored form gives ultimate defense and constant regeneration.
- Guarding was a very controversial feature to think of, as many of us has differing ideas. There were opinions on things like 100% guard, with delays before and/or after. How about making it have charges that regenerate over time? How about having a bar that would constantly go down as you hold guard?
In our opinion, M.A.S.S. builder is a fast paced game, and having delays of holding the guard up or lowering it would contradict this pace and disrupt the player experience we'd like to have. Even though it might make the shields more powerful, we thought that disruption would not be healthy to the experience itself thus we did not put any delays on guarding or lowering guards. With that, there will need to be a gating mechanism that would not allow it to be too overpowered, but having charges or bars is not a good choice. Reasons are because players would need to track another thing on their character and there'll be a UI mess as well. We wanted the UI to be as clean as possible and not want some bars to spring up in the middle of the screen notifying how much charges you have left to guard, and when can you guard again, thus we decided to cap damage reduction to 75% and make it a bit more dynamic and active with directional guarding to reward skilled activation.
- Dual Weapons are something that was a much-requested feature, as well as something we had planned for a long time already. We first thought of its functionalities and how will they behave in integration with the game, and how do we make it different, or do we need to make it different? As the philosophy of the game aims to bring in aesthetics with as little effect to true gameplay as possible, we were thinking that maybe we should not make it that much different from using a single hand + shield or both-handed weapons.
We'd also like to repeat once more that this is only the first phase of the dual-wielding system and we'd grow it into something much better given time. This includes using different weapons in combination, ranged weapon dual wielding, and such other things. This is one of the core system and we hope you can wait for us to improve it.
That should be all for this post-patch manifesto. We hope we have addressed all important decisions and answer some questions behind our development thoughts. If there are still concerns on the topics, or some other things, feel free to send a message to us on the discord and we'll answer them accordingly.
Updated Demo 0.3.6 Released
As we have entered into a newer version accomodating great number of changes from where we started out, we have decided to update the demo to reflect the gameplay of version 0.3.6 with all the close combat changes, enemy behavior changes, bug fixes, and everything. The demo still caps at 2 missions and a few armor pieces unlocked, but players in consideration of the game can now get a feel of what's the updated game is like.
Patch 0.3.0 Release + Full Patch Notes + (0.3.5 hotfix notes)
Hello everyone, we have updated the game into the 0.3.0 version. While last week we talked about the patch and its changes, we have added a few more things and thought we should clarify more on the numbers changes of the things we did.
Please enjoy the game in its updated form and if there's any concerns, please don't hesitate to tell us or report any bugs to us through the bug-report channel in our discord! On that note, we'll be monitoring every channel of communication if there are any critical bugs (that we have not found) and apply hotfixes if required.
Once again, thank you very much for your support in our early access game, we do hope to deliver more things as soon as possible. Also, the new roadmap and post-patch manifesto explaining our ideas behind each changes will come in later weeks!
Additions
Improvements
Adjustments
Bug Fixes
Known but unfixed bugs
0.3.1 + 0.3.2 + 0.3.3 + 0.3.4 + 0.3.5 + 0.3.6 Hotfix Patch Notes
Please enjoy the game in its updated form and if there's any concerns, please don't hesitate to tell us or report any bugs to us through the bug-report channel in our discord! On that note, we'll be monitoring every channel of communication if there are any critical bugs (that we have not found) and apply hotfixes if required.
Once again, thank you very much for your support in our early access game, we do hope to deliver more things as soon as possible. Also, the new roadmap and post-patch manifesto explaining our ideas behind each changes will come in later weeks!
Additions
- Quantum Break: Players will be able to activate the Quantum Break modes, a short burst of extreme power-ups by continually attacking with close combat and hold down a Quantum Break button. There are four forms to choose from, each specializing in a playstyle or a situation.
- Guarding: Players will now be able to hold up their guard if equipped with a shield, reducing a large portion of incoming damage as another defense mechanism (aside from boosting to dodge attacks).
Guards are quick to deploy and will slow players down a bit while it is active. Guarding will reduce all incoming damage, with directional guarding receive much more reduction from the direction you're facing.
- Dual Weapons Stance: The first phase of dual weapons is completed to a level we can have players play around with it. Players will now be able to turn all close combat grips into dual weapons of the same looks and functionalities.
- Added a large number of tech and architecture nodes in regards to new features such as Quantum Break customization, guarding customization, and dual attacks that would improve close combat further in conjunction with the power-based nodes.
- Added the lore archives where players can read a summarization of the stories they've played through, the histories of the world and the M.A.S.S. technology, information about Quarks, and many more.
- Added new extended combo paths for close combat, unlocked by nodes in the Engine and OS development tree. We've also added an input to transition between combos so players have more controls over combo attacks so check your control settings before playing in this patch!
- Added 1 new story mission and 1 new hunting grounds into the game. The hunting grounds will be a bit different than what you've faced before.
- Added first batch player decals into the game, thank you for your support through our Kickstarter campaign!
- Added some UI and Help menu localization into the game for Japanese and Thai language through the courtesy of our publisher. More languages to follow later.
- Added new close combat weapon grips.
- Added 5 handles and 5 shells that combine into a shield into the game for guarding.
- Added a sorting feature into tuning mode. Players can now sort ascending and descending with reference to offense, defense, or utility.
- Added 7 new enemies into the game, and a returning boss.
- Added a weapon trail customization option, players can now select the colors for the visual effects of a weapon as well as their property damages.
- Added over 20 new assaulters and grips.
Improvements
- Improved and new icons for clarifications on the development nodes icons.
- Improved the VFX of various buffs for more clarity when they are applied.
- Improved development nodes positioning for better clarity of the whole development tree.
- Improved many of the game's soundtracks into original soundtracks. More will come and eventually, M.A.S.S. Builder will have its own OST library to listen to.
- Improved sound effects of some weapons and other ambients.
- The photography mode has been improved with new functions including showing shields, having a reversed grip, and much more.
- Improved close combat attack flows and movesets, now the various grip/assaulter will have differing moveset in combination with each other. These are the stances we currently have based on how your weapons are customized:
- OneHandSword
- OneHandKnife
- OneHandHammer
- OneHandAxe
- OneHandTwinSword
- OneHandTwinHammer
- OneHandKatar
- OneHandKnuckle
- BothHandSpear
- BothHandMace
- BothHandScythe
- BothHandHalberd
- BothHandTwinSpear
- BothHandTwinMace
- DualHandSword
- DualHandKnife
- DualHandHammer
- DualHandAxe
- DualHandTwinSword
- DualHandTwinHammer
- DualHandKatar
- DualHandKnuckle
- DualHandSpear
- DualHandMace
- DualHandScythe
- DualHandHalberd
- DualHandTwinSpear
- DualHandTwinMace
Adjustments
- Adjusted some development nodes levels for future nodes.
- Adjusted property damages - now displaying property weaknesses, more clarity on the visual effects, better status effects, and introduced new nodes in the Architecture tree that would help with the property damage playstyle
- Adjusted all enemies' property damage resistance.
- Rebalanced all enemies' offensive and defensive stats.
- Increased "Spread" firing type damage by 50%, people have been asking us to improve its accuracy but we think improving its damage output and keeping the whole large spread is a better choice for the firing type called "Spread."
- Adjusted the Architecture tree by the following:
- Pressurized Gears: from 200%/300% damage to 300%/400% damage. Pressurized Gears damage effect will now also occur 0.15 seconds faster than before thus making it easier to hit enemies.
- Hyperspeed Thrusters to a new node that decreases Fuel Burn Rate by a percentage
- Created new architect nodes for property damage playstyle and moved old nodes to the property damage tech line.
- Some tech nodes' designs are adjusted to change a playstyle drastically. Some will not be able to be used at the current tech tier lock but you can see them.
- All Architecture nodes with regards to playing a full close combat playstyle (no piercing or plasma damage) has received armor buffs. Also every nodes that have three damage types now have higher physical damage.
Bug Fixes
- Critical bug crash on startup and on fullscreen have been fixed.
- A lot of minor bug fixes.
- Locking/Unlocking while in-air bug is fixed.
- Fixed FPS loss bugs through better optimization, some graphical features might still cause a recurrence and we suggest not enabling them if the problem persists.
- Ray firing type has been dealing an unintended large amount of damage, making it one of the best energy shooter of the game, we have now bring it back to the correct multiplier (around 70% of the damage it used to have).
- Ray firing also has a cap to how fast they can fire alongside other shooters. We see you macro users.
- Fixed various typos and some nodes displaying wrong numbers.
- Hunting Grounds freeze on entering (game still runs but doesn't enter loading screen) bug fixed.
Known but unfixed bugs
- Some decals and/or patterns are behaving weirdly, we've known how they are but fixing it will take time and it's a minor bug thus we decided to leave it for now.
0.3.1 + 0.3.2 + 0.3.3 + 0.3.4 + 0.3.5 + 0.3.6 Hotfix Patch Notes
- Fix some decals not behaving properly during zoom-in/out
- Fix decals offset slider bug
- Redistribute the number of Quarks in the new hunting grounds mission to optimize the game, it should perform much better now.
- Fix drop table problems, preventing shields blueprints from dropping.
- Tried fixing the hunting grounds entrance freeze, the problem should either be solved, or appear much less often (as we are unable to consistently reproduce the bug, tell us if it still happens that often).
- Very minor bug fixes
- Fix thrusters not working properly in photograph mode
- Fix help menu input chart to match current inputs
- Fix Abandoned Base Boss' AI (it is not stuck on the wall now)
- Fix tier 4 locked info typo (it now correctly reads Tier 4)
- Change controller setup to allow multiple settings on the same button
- Lower the time required to activate Quantum Break
- Fix losing ammo when firing after a boost and braking
- Fixed a bug in drop algorithms that causes some shields to not drop
- Fixed a bug where Hillgard is giving Durability when it is not supposed to
- Adjusted some shield recovery numbers to help with close combat plays
- Fixed a bug where shields does not get imported with frame import function
- Updated Japanese localization on some areas
- Fixed a bug where weapons' pattern adjustment is not working
- Property Weakness now works.
- Added in help menu about Quantum Break, New Combos, and Guarding. Players will now get a pop-up of that page when the nodes are unlocked as well.
- Added in tooltips that mentioned the availability of drop rate techs being stackable.
- Remove achievements from Steam as it doesn't properly work right now to prevent any confusions. We're preparing to work on it by 0.4.0.
- More updates to the Japanese localization, as our translator wanted to improve it for everyone out there.
- Fix items falling into the abyss in Logistics Obstacles mission.
- Optimize Wrath of the Wastelands mission. Performance should be 30% - 50% better now.
- Fixed cutscenes bug where the camera pans up uncontrollably.
- Fixed thrusters not regenerating when entering cutscene with thrusters on.
More known bugs, but are not yet fixed - Sometimes, after using close combat last hit, the player instantly teleports into the far side of a map. We are not able to reproduce this bug yet, but we know it exists. If anyone is able to reproduce it or have it happen to them, please tell us what you did prior to the occurence.