This week’s changes are mostly a grab-bag, as our work on the Friends List and Tutorial is still very much in progress. But it’s a grab-bag with some goodies for sure! Case in point: the art for The Dig (aka Escort Mission) has finally been completed, with the exception of its final boss which will be unveiled next week. Feast your eyes:
There’s also some lovely new UI effects when you pick up and auto-equip better equipment. This is not the only UI change we’re planning – we also intend to do something to make it clearer to users which of a recently-looted item’s stats are better or worse than the stats of your current equipment. Hopefully you’ll see that soon. In the meantime, we have:
Other important stuff:
- The Paladin’s Sword DPS has been reduced by 40%. By our estimates, the Sword was roughly 3x more powerful than all other damage-dealing special abilities! Even with a 40% DPS reduction, it is still almost certainly the most powerful offensive ability.
- The steam cost of the Acid Cloud (Old Faithful) has been increased by 25%, and the cost of the Propeller Blast (Hog) by 20%.
- The lock-on range of the Arc Gun (Merlin + Shieldmaiden) has been increased by 20%.
- Lighting, terrain, and enemy art in the ice dungeon have all been tweaked. Is Adam finished? Who can say!
- Bashing through walls should no longer be possible. (I look forward to the inevitable revelation that it *is* still possible if you do something ingenuous and/or ridiculous while repeatedly chanting “I love driving game developers insane” in low, reverent tones.)
- Meowza laser misalignment fixed. Hopefully nobody will be unexpectedly vaporized anymore.
- Dropship icons on the radar hopefully don’t look as silly anymore. Dropships also show up in the radar at greater distances.
- The Obstacle, Grindhouse, Eyeball, and Space dungeons were some of the last to still have our old 2d art floating around in them. We’ve replaced all of that with temp 3d art. So don’t get excited or worried about the change – none of this is permanent. We just wanted to get rid of the old assets for a variety of reasons.