Ryan is back from vacation, so we have a bit more to show this week! Pat and Adam are still in glorious, sleep-deprived babyville.
First and foremost, this week’s major change is that you can now access your personal storage from the first room of every dungeon in the game, not just the Rebel City! The carrier that transported you to the dungeon now acts as a defacto storage depot as well (the birds may be ragtag rebels, but they are very organized!) This means you no longer need to carry elemental gear with you everywhere you go, since elemental enemies are mainly found in dungeons.
Also, the Walker class has been substantially refined. It is quicker and snappier; for example, turning speed while stopped has been increased approximately 60%. Additionally, the Walker’s weapon choices have been simplified to just the machine gun. Speaking of the machine gun, we increased its range a bit. In general, the Walker feels like a more balanced, less clumsy class to us now. Looking forward to hearing what you think! (Note: we also intend to give it a unique special ability at some point in the near future, instead of the damage-boosting cloud which is shared with the Assault class.)
We’ve also finally fixed an issue with the probability of earning a dungeon drop from a setpiece or event boss. Previously, the probability was a small amount *per player*, which meant that huge groups had a decent chance of getting a dungeon and small groups had a very low chance. The probability of earning a dungeon drop from a boss is now absolute, so whether one player or twenty kill a boss, it will not impact the drop rate. To be clear, we’re not doing this to encourage solo play – this is first and foremost a coop game – but its just too hard to tune a shared drop rate when the inputs can vary by as much as 1 to 40. Additionally, there are going to be times when a server only has a couple high level players on it, and it doesn’t seem fair to that one or two players (taking all the risk of killing top bosses by themselves) to have such a low dungeon drop rate.
Lastly, there’s a new setpiece boss in the overworld: the Jester ( name TBD; T7 difficulty). Think of it as a seriously souped-up Birdcatcher unit. The granddaddy of Birdcatchers. Birdcatcher++. OK I’ll stop now. 😛
Other notable changes:
- The usual smattering of bugfixes.
- Spider boss: swarmer minions, swarmer guns nerfed, slightly wider fence, smaller suicide explosion
- Escort dungeon: more deadly (blimps hit harder and have more health.) Also improved treasure chests.
- Ice dungeon is starting to have final art! husky and ice snake models are in, more to come.
- Doomsday boss (Space Dungeon): first pass at new art. Still needs work.
PS. Badass Boosted Boss Birdcatcher.
PPS. I’m so sorry.