We're here at the end of October, how has everyone been? Are you enjoying M.A.S.S. Builder? We sure hope you do. Now here comes exciting news about the upcoming updates in November. First things first, when is it coming? We aren't sure as well to when we can finish everything that we're working on for this version. To be honest, we tried to fit as much as possible in this patch to round up various suggestions that can be done instantly as well as fixing some bugs.
What we can say is that the update will be coming
late November. Now before you all start pulling up your pitchforks, let us talk about everything we're doing in the update, and why we're making it so late in November shall we? Starting off with what's promised in the Roadmap.
Story Missions 7 & 8 (End of Chapter 1) and New Hunting GroundStory missions 7 and 8 will be coming as promised. To add to that, we also revised some mechanics that we've designed in conjunction with feedbacks and data gathered by what people have been saying about each mission in the past (yes, each mission from 1 - 6 was designed in a way to introduce mechanics and for us to see which one people liked or hated). Expect to see some more things to play with!
Also, the new hunting grounds will feature a tileset much requested by you all, which is something new so it'll take a bit more time.
Spherical and curved armor designsAs you might have seen it in last week's update, the Kaiser armor set presents to you its spherical and curvy armor designs. In the upcoming November patch, another 2 variants of the Kaiser set will be available so a total of 3 variants (same as old armor sets) will be available for you to play around.
We know this might not be as spherical or curvy as one expected or maybe one is not enough so we'll be sure to make more of it in the future.
More ranged weapons mechanics and firing typesYou might have seen some previews we've been releasing of the new firing types and some that we are still keeping in secret. We won't be showing them here to you but we'll give out their short description. First, let's talk about the ones we've shown.
Bullet shooters will receive Spread (as shown before in our WIP preview) firing. Spread fires will have lower damage but can deal a lot of hits onto a single enemy, combining them into a much more powerful with great stopping power weapon.
Energy shooters will receive the Ray (has a very good feeling of usage in our opinion). Rays expend bullets at a really fast rate, but they're extremely strong against large group of enemies, pierce through to a certain range. Even with their lower damage, they are able to apply PROPERTY STATUS at an excellent efficiency.
Now with these two weapons we've shown out of the way. Let's talk about something more exciting that we haven't showed yet. We've been seeing a lot of requests for slower weapons that will bring in true heavy impact. What we came up for both shooters are massive Area of Effect weapons with low bullet count, low firing rate, and highly effective in area control. We think you know what we're talking about.
For bullet shooters, we're working on something that fires a large bullet that pierce into the first target on impact. They'll explode after a few seconds, creating a humongous explosion, damaging all enemies caught in the vicinity. For energy shooters, it'll be a pulsing vortex that constantly damage enemies around CHARGEABLE flux of energy. These will be shown throughout the Saturdays of November itself so be prepared!
Old armor pieces reworkIt's still coming, we pulled some of our gears back for it though and have decided this should be constant upgrades to the old sets instead of a one time rework of everything so that we may receive feedbacks on those old sets and how they under perform in the aesthetics department compared to other pieces.
Photography modeWe have been hard at work at completing this feature and suffice to say, we have completed a very workable feature for everyone to use. We would like to cut this a little bit short due to the amount we will continue to work on them. We are proud to say we're releasing a feature at 90% functionality and completion on its core values added to the game.
To clarify, the photography mode is planned to be upgraded with each patch (more poses, more backgrounds, things that are locked behind tilesets and contents) thus it will be a feature that grow alongside other features of the game. We also heard some of you wanted poses that are quite out of the norm. What we can say is that we will try to increase them gradually after the "serious" and "popular" ones are completed.
Now, aside from the promised stuff, we know you are wondering why we are setting back the patch into late November itself. Here it comes. LocalizationSurprise surprise! With requests and players from all around the world telling us to have localization for the game, we have decided in conjunction with Sekai Project to step up with localization schedules. We are not fully translating the game as there are various places we think might change (like the story) but we're committed to translating all the UI and HELP menu to help everyone have a more enjoyable experience. This will be a continual experience and we do have some things planned with how localization is done.
The first batches would be (Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese). Why these languages? It's the ones we can perform localization ASAP with our publisher's help and in time for the November patch and we do plan for other languages as well. This is a time-consuming feature but we think it's worth to shift back the patch a little bit for it.
Defensive Focus adjustmentsAnother unplanned adjustments we've made to the game as a whole is how all the defensive functions work. We've changed a large amount of numbers pertaining to them such as Durability, Shields, and Shields Recovery and adjusted some formula and calculations.
We're doing this to improve upon a playstyle looked upon by many of our players as unworthy and too weak (we see you, people who min-max by focusing on power/accuracy/damage only).
We're also going further on distinction, putting more difference between an offense focused piece of equipment and a defense focused one. This meant people going for offensive stats will have a much lower tankiness when compared to a defense focused one and vice versa.
With these adjustments, we hope to help brawlers playstyle that can make players feel better when fighting in close combat without having to worry much about their durability. If damage to a point, they can quickly step out of combat to regenerate most of their shields before rushing back into battle. Please let us know how these changes affect you and how you feel about it, and if it's enough or not.
Close Combat adjustmentsOn the same note, we've been secretly reading through discussions and noticed that players don't have the greatest feeling when using close combat weapons. As a response to that, we have adjusted a lot of things relating to them as well as add some new things to the playstyle. We believe this alongside the shield changes could bring brawling up to a higher level and bring more fun to players in preparation for the January major update. We know it might still not be enough to break through the efficiency of shooters (especially the new ones) but we hope to bring them up alongside before January happens.
Also, some new set of attacks are making way ahead from the planned January update into this November update itself to help out. Players will now be able to approach Quarks, both in the air and on ground, on an easier scale with their close combat attacks. It's just a glimpse of what we're doing to close combat and we'll be sure to continuously upgrade it further.
Weight adjustmentsWe have seen players speaking of optimal methods to play and didn't like how it sounded as our game prioritizes customization and we want everyone to be able to play with the appearances they like as it is the core concept of our game. This is why we have decided to adjust weight to have less impact on gameplay itself, rather than having them effecting everything and players needing to min-max with aesthetics in mind. No, we want everyone to really create something they like and think look good. We wanted players to have those M.A.S.S. be as effective as others through "Tuning."
We're still reiterating on the numbers of the floor and the ceiling of weight effects though and we're looking to stabilize them to an amount that only has a small amount of difference. We hope to come to a conclusion ASAP.
OthersThere are various other things coming into this patch (bug fixes and settings relating to FPS and optimizations) as well so look forward to the upcoming patch notes in a few weeks! There's an exciting news about decals and the ease of putting them on and more. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to come into the discord and ask it from our developer themselves. Maybe you'll get some leaks and hints.
