M.A.S.S. Builder News

With weeks of new things being shown, we'd like to dial back to some balance changes we're planning to make to improve the game in 0.11.0 First, let us remind you that we'll be unlocking tier 7 units and sub-units in the development tree and their unlocking materials will be dropped from later waves in challenges and latest missions. We expect them to provide tons of power to the player and we'll keep watch to modify them if any of them are game breaking.

Now, for a more specific balance change, we aim to increase the power of tanky tech sub-units in the coming update. We'd improve them in 0.10.0 and while they are well received, their power is too low to be competing for a sub-unit slot. In 0.11.0, we're increasing their power by a significant amount.

Units that improve shield regeneration cooldown are mostly buffed by around 50%. Think nodes that currently lower time before shields start regenerating by 25%, all of them will be changed to a 40% reduction, allowing players to easily slot in one of two for constant shields regeneration. This should make them more dependable and more competitive for a slot in any build that rely on the regenerating shields.

On the same note, we'll also be improving sub-units that straight up improve shields regeneration and regenerate shields through other means. Things like Perpetual Generator will proc more frequently. Arms S. Battery will recover more shields. Things like that.

And lastly for this goal, we're also improving durability tech sub-units that are overshadowed by their peers, such as Metals Replacement and recovery nodes such as both the Nanorobotics variant.

What do you think about these tentative changes? We'd like to discuss about it so if you have any opinions on what we've listed, we're more than glad to hear from you through our discord, linked below. See you next time!

Discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
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Welcome back to another WIP post, this week introducing a new Bullet Shooter that is on another spectrum of shooters. Please welcome the Pile Bunker!



PIle Bunker is a MELEE Bullet Shooter, having one chargeable bullet, you. This is a weapon that took a long time to get it to work, being vastly different from other shooters, requiring us weeks to design, craft, and finding solutions for what we wanted with it. What you're seeing is the final design of Pile Bunker, a weapon that launches you into enemies.



The Pile Bunker can be charged for higher distance, piercing enemies, and a really high extra damage multiplier. It will damage any enemies within its path and players can instantly dash to cancel out of the end part.



While this might sound like a really good melee weapon that allow players to move through the battlefield quickly and uses Piercing to calculate damage instead, Pile Bunker will need to reload after every usage. No amount of MAG.Load will be able to increase its ammo amount.



Well then, why don't we make it a melee weapon instead? Well, the design philosophy of melee weapons is to have combo attacks and a single-attack weapon wouldn't fit well within that category. In our minds, we also think that Pile Bunkers would thematically fit better with shooters, being a weapon that winds up, pierce, and launches a steel needle into enemies and retracting them on reload.



Wait, that design we just mentioned was different than what we're showing right? It doesn't drag enemies along the trajectory and burst damage out at the end at all? You are correct in your observation. We tried staying as true to the name as possible at first but with our enemies design that doesn't allow some of them to be dragged along, that design was not able to feel good. Thus, we tinkered it in a way that allows Pile Bunker to just pierce through upon charging, and strike quickly when not charged.



With this design, players can also canonically think of it as other piercing blade, piercing lance, or anything that fits their design. This gif above shows how we've attached accessories onto the needle part and we can't wait to see how you all utilize and create something from it!

We hope you like it! See you next time!



Discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: http://bit.ly/3wpWofe

Welcome back to another weekly WIP update. It's a short one this week, featuring some weapon parts of the upcoming new shooter PRISM. We designed these things to look like they're particle accelerators or energy charging machineries but we'll also throw in the simple parts for you all to freely customize it as well.

We'll be back next week to show more!



Discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: http://bit.ly/3wpWofe

Welcome back to another WIP update. This week features one of the short perpetuals update we've been working on since ages ago, regarding Quark's models and aesthetics. These Quarks were one of the special uncommon Quarks that does not conform to the normal behaviors and uses special moves to effect combat. We haven't used much of them as they were causing frustrations for players and we've shifted them away, even to an extent of removing them from the game in most missions.



In 0.11.0, with the constant improvements we're doing here and there with the game, we'll be bringing them back with an updated model and possibly updated powers as an improvement to the old ones.



We wanted these uncommon/special ones to be able to spawn in most missions and provide a challenge more than the normal behavior of running into players or drop dead, but we'll also try to remove any frustrations from them like the old area shield they used. We hope we'll be able to make them a fun experience for everyone. Until next time!



Discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: http://bit.ly/3wpWofe

Continuing a streak of showing exciting stuffs, this week is about the up and coming, new Energy Shooter we've designed as something fun. An energy shooter we call PRISM. First, take a look at this image.



That doesn't look exciting at all though. What are you cooking, Vermillion Digital? Well, take a look at this next clip of PRISM.



Prism has a secondary firing acquired by holding down "left click" for around a second to charge up. It deals no damage at all, but attaches a prism onto every lockable points within an area. This means every enemy that can be locked by homing missiles are susceptible attachment points of this secondary fire. What does it do? Well... let's have this next clip explain it as it's worth more than a thousand words.



The PRISM's primary fire will chain to each and every PRISM that's attached on an enemy. Every shot is counted towards a threshold and when the threshold reaches a certain point, the PRISM explodes for another instance of damage. Stacking explosions here can be extremely strong to clear out groups of enemies if you can setup the perfect chain.



Now, this makes it feel that PRISM will only be good against groups of enemies... but that's not the case at all. Remember we mentioned that PRISMs can be attached to every lockable points? Yeah... with bosses having multiple lockable points, PRISMs are significantly effective against bosses. A charged shot aimed carefully can create multiple PRISMs onto a boss and every primary fire will now hit each and every of those PRISMs.



We're still fine tuning their numbers like attachment range, chain range, chain count, etc. We wanted it to be usable and not clunky in any situation but also not too overpowered that it overwhelms other currently overpowered weapons and be viewed as the only good weapon out there. We'll leave it here for this week. See you again soon!



Discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: http://bit.ly/3wpWofe