M.A.S.S. Builder News

Recapping 0.6.0

So, after weeks of lateness, we were able to launch 0.6.0 to quite a... non-problematic level. There were no critical bugs that needed fixing, challenges modes and improved AIs were quite well received, but we've also been reading feedbacks on their difficulties and differences from the last patches. All in all, after a few hotfixes here and there, we think it is time we conclude the 0.6.x update and move on to developing 0.7.0 which will arrive in a few months.

What's next for 0.7.0

Let's call the next update as the "art" update. The main protagonist of the next update is a system called Accessories, which had a button without use in-game since day 1. We'd like to first explain how the system will work in a summarized image below.

Accessories



Accessories are first conceptualized as a "3D decal system" where players can attach small parts onto armors and weapons, making a unique creation of their own, specializing them and fulfilling their imagination, and we've been introducing them to everyone's who been following their developments as such.

Accessories will range from geometric shapes to complex parts, and you will be able to attach them to most surface of EVERY part itself.

So, in this coming 0.7.0 update, our team will be fully devoting their time to work on the system and if you're asking about the amounts we're making, let's just say we'll add as much as we can until deadline arrives.

On that note, you all have been extremely vocal on how we should further develop the system. Certain people have been campaigning about how to improve them as we discussed more and more on how the system would work, and we've been reading months and months of your discussions.

Now, let us say that a lot of your suggestions made the cut, such as the amount of accessories available to be attached, are a lot more than we first thought of it, separated coloring system, as well as the mirroring of accessory parts over an axis. We'll continue to reveal more as the update progress, stay tuned..

Decals

As we've mentioned about accessories, we cannot leave Decals alone in this ART update and we have decided that in 0.7.0, we'll be doing a clean sweep to find bugs and increasing the amount of decals that can be attached on every part to 8.

Global styles

Painting your M.A.S.S. had been quite a tedious task, and we've heard complaints of how frustrating it is for you all the carefully setup styles for painting armors, then needing to redo them all over with your weapons. 0.7.0 will introduce "Global Styles" to help with that.



NPC Illustrations

There have been a great concern over the art style of our NPC illustrations since day 1, and we're very excited to tell you that we'll be overhauling and improving them all in the upcoming 0.7.0 update. We are not able to say more during this time, so have a sneak peek on their early drafts here.



Performance Issues

With all of these being added into the game, there is a certain challenge that we'll need to overcome before we are able to release them and that is PERFORMANCE ISSUES. In technical terms, all these added decals and accessories will demand more from your PC, and while you might not feel their effect on your own, we are looking forward to when multiplayer drops much much later into development, and how we could optimize them early so not to have an effect we needed to fix down the line.

That will be all for today, we hope that you will have fun with 0.6.5 and look forward to 0.7.0. If there's anything you'd like to discuss or any ideas you'd like to suggest, you're very welcome to come and have a discussion with us and other players in our discord, linked below.

Discord: https://bit.ly/3qK7XJS

Additions

• Added a new game mode, challenge. There are three challenges at the moment, Battlegrounds, Breach, and Boss Rush, and each has its own special ruleset.
  
  
  
  
• Added a new armor set, the Panzer with its variations.
  
  
  
  
• Added 6 new poses to the photographing mode.
  
  
  
  
• Added new Visual Effects when transitioning into Extended and Empowered Combo for melee attacks.
  
• Added new camera tracking system and shifting for close combat.
  
  
  
  
• Added new range weapons stances.
  
  
  
  
• Added 20 new Close Combat (Assaulters and Grips) and 6 new Shield (Handles and Shells) parts.
  
  
  
  
• Added Primal Quarks into the game. Primal Quarks are another version of the Quarks players faced before, with new and stronger attacks.
  
  
  
  

Improvements

• Improved enemy spawning mechanics. Now bosses will always have the most basic Quarks in their area to help players replenish ammo.
  
• Improved most bosses' attack patterns, behaviors, and reworked some of the bosses to be more challenging. They will also have varying attacks in different difficulties.
  
• Improved most Quarks attack patterns to have them attack roughly much more frequently from every direction when they surround a player.
  
• Increased Credits gain multipliers from various sources.
  
• Improved Thrusters VFX
  
  
  
  
• Improved UI effects and optimization, you might now see some distortion with some notifications and menus. There is also a slight skewing in various UI to provide a more "monitor screen" feel to the game.
  
• Improved mission selection UI.
  
  
  
  
• Improved input responsiveness, players should now be able to continue moving after an interruption.
  
• Improved Mission 8 performance.
  

Adjustments

• Composite Nanorobotics, Full Metal Jacket, and Binary Monarch has been split into two nodes. Their downsides have also been split between these two nodes, so players can choose how they want to approach these benefits and downsides.
  
• Replaced Energy Regulator and Overdrive Systems with a more generic node as well as playstyle changer node, providing more methods to tinker with benefits and demerits.
  
• Replaced Efficient Thrusters II and Afterburners II with a situational boost tech, providing something similar to an invincibility frame at the moment at the cost of Fuel Burn Rate. Please check them out.
  
• Adjusted Close Combat weapons stopping power, they will now stop enemies more frequently.
  
• Slightly adjusted Close Combat combo damage for both ground and air attacks. Latter parts of the attack combo will hit for more damage than combo starts and dash attacks.
  
• Removed Weight calculations from all weapons. With that said, we have also reduced other stats that are tied to acceleration from almost every node to balance the benefits gained from the removal of weights except for nodes that are dedicated to acceleration itself.
  
• ALL shooters have their damage tweaked by a very little margin (around +- 5%).
  
• Detonator ammo is reduced by around 50% unless you invested into Magazine Load, which will reduce that number to around a 25% nerf instead.
  
• Adjusted warhead bullet launcher's damage multiplier to be higher by around 40%.
  
• Adjusted bullet and energy cell drop algorithm and enemy spawn in boss rooms. As long as you defeat the constantly spawning Quarks, you will have ammo.
  
• Adjusted enemy's property weakness down a notch. Using the advantage property will now deal up to 50% more damage to enemies.
  
• Removed Nitrogenic Slugs and added a generic node alongside another non-generic node.
  
• Redistributed blueprints droplist. Story missions will be a more targeted drop while Hunting Grounds have a larger drop pool and Challenge Missions have the largest amount of blueprints available.
  
• Moved Weapon Slots related nodes towards Resource and Item drop nodes. Players that have more weapons that allowed equipment will not be forced to remove them, but you will not be able to re-equip them unless you developed the new weapon slot nodes.
  
• Reworked most of the property damage nodes as well as shield-based nodes to promote the playstyle properly.
  
• Balancing Hydraulics has been integrated into Protective Coating and Saintess Bulwark. They now have an increased total attack buff on lowering shields. Balancing Hydraulics is also replaced with a shield node that provides another shield-based playstyle.
  
  
• Adjusted Photograph Mode BGM to our own original soundtrack.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some parts' decals not showing correctly on some parts.
  
• Fixed some parts disorientation.
  
• Fixed Accelerated Boosters not able to be equipped correctly in its tier.
  
• Fixed shields recovery not working correctly with nodes that reduce shields regeneration.
  
• Fixed some bugs that could cause crashes in Mission 8.
  
• Fixed a notorious flashbang bug that happens randomly when painting parts.
  

0.6.1 + 0.6.2 + 0.6.3 + 0.6.4 + 0.6.5 Hotfixes

• Fixed a typo on various places, please report them in and we'll fix them in the following hotfixes or update.
  
• Reduced stamina damage of Auto, Ray, and Detonator shooters. Increased stamina damage of Wave shooters.
  
• Reduced Gates of Ascension 2nd area boss Ultimate damage reduced by 20%.
  
• Reduced Gates of Ascension 2nd area boss Ultimate's projectile numbers and speed to make it easier to dodge.
  
• Adjusted Gates of Ascension 2nd area boss behaviors, it is now more responsive.
  
• Fixed a bug that somehow made Gates of Ascension 5th area boss stood still or run into walls, it is now more active and befitting of a last boss.
  
• Optimised enemy waves in Void Convergence more to reduce FPS drops in later waves with how much enemy projectiles are spawning.
  
• Changed Blizzard Core functionality to prevent an unintended exploit of the tech.
  
• Adjusted combo transition speed to make game flow for close combat better.
  
• Adjusted spear pose hilarious self-clipping bug.
  
• Fixed a lot of typo once again
  
• Added descriptions on nodes like Composite Nanorobotics and Powered Nanorobotics to show they can stack with each other on their durability gain effect.
  
• Fixed battle report screen showing blank pages instead of rewards.
  
• Demo updated to 0.6.5
  
  
• Re-introduced Texture streaming into the game. This will speed up game-startup and most likely fix launch problems for players showing only a black screen, sometimes resulting in fatal errors from not having enough VRAM or massive FPS drops. Some players might face lower-than-expected resolution for their textures. Please know that it is due to the game trying to maintain your FPS and performance. Consider lowering some options to help with the issue if faced with one.
  
• Adjusted Story Mission "Unexpected Coordination" to not have the ally able to get destroyed.
  
• Passive playstyle has emerged and it is deemed extremely strong. While we like everything to feel strong and have a variety of playstyle available, some concerns came up about it being stronger than active playstyle. We're nerfing the highest offenders by the following:
  
• Saintess Bulwark added punishment, while guarding, -15% total attack.
  
• Cryo-Coated Metals, Blizzard Core, Voltage Overload will not proc on-hit effects like Nanorobotics anymore.
  
• Fixed a bug where item drops are extremely concentrated on one spot
  
  
• Fixed Gates of Ascension 1st boss Ultimate skills not showing its full particle effects
  
• More typo fixing!
  
  
• Fixed some poses in Photography Mode that did not have a good grip on their weapon.
  
• Fixed Hunting Grounds 2: Snowfield Custodian not spawning enemies if certain conditions are met.
  
  Known Bugs: If you're one of the people facing these problems, please report it to us in Discord as we are trying to reproduce and fix the problem.
  
• Unable to use "Abort Mission, Restart Mission, and Options" functions.
  
• In Campaign and Hunting Grounds, some times there are enemies left over but the mission is completed.
  
• Decals cannot be placed on a specific parts of an armor.
  
• Sometimes, input does not register and you're unable to do anything for a few seconds.
  

Join discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46

Hello everyone! Today's WIP update features the complete Panzer Armor Set, showing the variations we've created for it.





On another important note, Update 0.6.0 will be released on March 6th GMT+7 (so around March 5th Western times). Again, we are extremely sorry the update has delayed this much, but we hope we're able to create something that was worth all the time spent developing them for you all. Patch notes next week!

With the coming of 0.6.0, we thought it's best to change our normal routine of providing changelogs a week in advance to writing up a preview of the coming game balance changes and giving our reasonings for them first. This is due to the changes that can still be made in the last week before patch deployment and changelogs one week prior to it might not be implemented if a problem arises during bug testing. We don't want players to read a changelog once, then proceed to play in the update without realizing that we've changed the changelog (pun not intended) and not having the experience they expected. Just QUICK REMINDER, this does not mean that we're deploying the update next week yet, it's coming when it's ready, but soon.

So, without further ado, here are the game balance previews:

Enemies (Quarks)
Quarks are one of the most important aspects of the game, being the main enemy type presented to players. We've been trying to improve the AI and behaviors of Quarks in every update, trying out different approaches to make them feel more threatening, and this time, we'll be making them attack a lot more as requested by many of our "Very Hard" players. Bosses have also been adjusted and given new attacks, and many of them will have "Very Hard only" attacks to spice up the difficulty differences now.



Credits
There has been a topic of "grind" that we'd like to address. While we would like everyone to have fun playing the game and getting credits as a by-product to develop their M.A.S.S. technology, the amount received was not enough to progress smoothly through to tier 5 and players have mentioned the requirement of grinding to achieve tier 5's. This was not something intentional and while we do want everyone to have some sort of progression from being able to unlock each node, a tedious grind is not something we desired. In 0.6.0, we'll be increasing the multipliers for credits received after missions, especially from bosses, and the new challenge maps will have special credits multipliers with them.

Nodes
0.5.0. was a very experimental patch for the game, introducing a lot of nodes that drastically change the playstyle of a player. We have been observing your discussions, most likely in our Discord as well as the feedback hub, and have been secretly taking notes on how you think about them. With that said, we're replacing a lot of development nodes, breaking the tier 5 game changers into two nodes instead due to how strong they are (and with your mentioning of the fun aspect you had when getting to use nodes like FMJ or Composite Nanorobotics). These new nodes will mostly be available much earlier in the game and new players will get to use them, solidifying their playstyle much faster than before, and we're also working to promote playstyles that don't use these nodes as well. Read more below.



Melee Playstyle
We would like melee to feel better and the last update had shown us that survivability is a thing many people wanted more of. However, putting everything into a node like Composite Nanorobotics had made other methods quite a trivial option to pick over. We're improving 1H + Shields through various shields nodes such as Saintess Bulwark rhythmic playstyle of guard and slash, speed nodes that provide a fraction time of extreme defense, and baseline lower time before shields recovery kicks in. Stacking different levels of OS (for things like shield regen) is also something we'd like you to try.

Shooters (and Bullet Launchers)
A lot of number tweaks have been made to balance them as a whole, but we'd like to say that Detonators, regarded by you as the strongest shooter as of the moment, been nerfed by around 5% in the damage department but their ammo count took around 35% hit if you don't spec into Magazine Load. We don't want to ruin your fun seeing BIG explosion numbers and we hope that the other buffed-up weapons can be a contender to them in this update.

Weight
Weight is a very controversial stat in the game at its current state. We were first dedicated to not having it affect the game but received lots of complaints on the realism of the matter and have decided to put in its effect in every place as a balance of Acceleration and Armor. As the game grew and more nodes and spaces are unlocked, complaints from the other side were received as it is seen as a detrimental status, even with the versatility it provides against raw damage. We wanted players to have utility choices when carrying large amounts of weapons, with differing ranges, properties, usages, and a lot of things with speed as a sacrifice. However, it isn't prominent enough and has shown that the changes proposed during the early stages of development have not brought good towards weapons tuning, thus we decided to remove weight effects from the weapon as a whole while still retaining its effects on armor pieces. On that note, due to the total increment in speed itself after testing, we will also be removing a lot of acceleration status on various nodes to balance this change, while nodes that are focused on speed will be the same.

Property damages
Property damages were always either "everyone we can burn everything down in seconds while freezing the world" or "it's a small flame that can't even heat up my hands and this is just a splash of water." In 0.6.0 we are revamping almost every property damage node in the development tree to help customize them to their playstyles. There will be less generic percentage increment nodes and more specific swing nodes (higher burn damage while lowering duration, shock and weak more effective, etc.) while also making "advantage property" stronger. Alongside weight changes, this should allow players to bring in an arsenal that could deal with any defense if they are willing to use their weapon slots and concentration to weapon swap to compensate for each type of enemy.

This week's WIP update is a small one while we're working to bring 0.6.0 to life for everyone as soon as possible. These new Shield parts are for the upcoming 0.6.0 update, and they should be arriving soon.



#Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46