M.A.S.S. Builder – Update 0.10.0 Released + Patch Notes – Steam News

Surprise surprise! We were able to finish our bug hunt and final polishing sooner than expected and we’re ready to release our update… so why wait? It’s been a really long development cycle this time and we hope we’re able to meet some expectations you people have for us.

That was unexpectedly early! That means one of the biggest content droughts we’ve had in a while is over for the moment. Since I’ve already been covering everything VD teased for this update up to today, I’ll bring over just the ones I’m personally interested in and let the article link do its job.

Photo Mode Update

• Added a few new Photo Mode backgrounds
• Added a few new Photo Mode poses

New Missions

• 5 new Campaign missions. Take the fight back to the Cyclops and continue your resistant against the Quark threat. New enemies are added into the game for a more interesting experience. The end is nigh.
• 2 new Hunt missions. One featuring M.A.S.S. units enemies for a fun session fighting against enemies spamming bullets, missiles, and beams at you. The other is a large arena in the volcanic rift with tons of enemies trailing you about for a non-stop bout. Have fun.
• 3 new-old multiplayer missions as requested by our players. These are the same missions you’ve played in 0.9.0 but with a much lower difficulty. They’re labeled as [Normal] and the old missions are now labeled as [Hard].

New Enemies

• Added new machine enemies. These include new Cyclops mech variant and drones. They don’t do much damage, but will spam their bullets and missiles a lot.
• Added 12 new Quarks, some with a unique moveset that doesn’t just run and crash into players. We’ve also reworked some enemies and some boss patterns and we hope they’re more fun to fight against.

New Customization Parts

• Added a few new melee parts to the game
• Added simple melee parts with minimal dimensions and the simplest polygons for players to mess around with using the accessory system to create something of their own with ease.
• Added a few new Accessories to the game

Improvements

• Aiming Mode Camera – When players enter aiming mode (default: hold down right click) and boost, the camera will now hold towards the side when players first boosted as much as possible and not bounce between left and right. Players still cannot lock it to one side but it’ll bounce much less and we intend to keep it this way for future dynamic usage of walls and covers allowing players to hide behind and shoot out from both sides, but we’ll be improving on it as we go.
• Combo Speed Ramping – When players use melee weapons and enter into a combo, they will swing faster with each attack up to a certain cap as long as they remain attacking in the combo. This attack speed resets whenever the combo end, but will be reapplied if a player chooses to chain their combo into another combo chain (like entering an extended or empowered combo after a normal combo string).
  
  We’ve also merged parts of the extended combo into the base combo and they can still move into another extended combo for this feature to fully shine.
• Boosting Momentum retains acceleration direction – Whenever players boost towards a direction and stops boosting, they will now accelerate towards the direction they last faced instead of forward where the camera is aiming.
• Optimized Multiplayer latency and crashing issues.
• We’ve reworked most of the game’s audio. It’s now much more dynamic, appropriate for both Quarks and the weapons, and should not have anything too overbearing.

Game Balance Changes

Generic Adjustments
With the latest adjustments, some shooters and launchers have fallen too far from grace. While still usable, it required too much investment to work while some other ones have been too prevalent. We’re buffing the underperforming ones while also nerfing the overperforming ones with low investments extremely slightly.

• Magazine load and Energy cap ceiling is raised from 1500 to 2000.

AUTO shooters have been reworked:

• Lowered AUTO shooters’ damage per round.
• Increased AUTO shooters’ shooting speed. It now fires roughly 15 rounds per second, even faster than its 0.8.0 counterpart.
• Increased AUTO shooters’ ammo stock cap gained from Magazine Load and Energy Cap status. This is to compensate for the increase in firing speed as well as provide a more comfortable experience in using them.
• Bullet and Energy Shooter’s AUTO mode now gains a substantial difference. ES will fire much faster than before, but will require some time to regenerate all its ammo. BS, on the other hand, just require players to reload to fully gain back all of its ammo.
  
• Increased SINGLE Damage by around 2%.
• Increased DETONATOR Damage by around 3%.
• Increased DETONATOR Stamina Damage by around 10%
  
• Increased SLASH Stamina Damage by around 5%.
• Decreased RAY damage by around 2%
• Decreased SPREAD damage by around 2%
• Decreased Wave damage by around 5%
• Increased PHOTON, NUKE, HOMING, damage by around 10%
• Quantum Break: Enhanced has its duration extended by 2 second. It now lasts 5 seconds more than other forms (up from 3 seconds).

Ranged Tech nodes

Base powers of ranged styles have always been high and even with scarcity in their techs, has been a prevalent playstyle in our game up until the latest update where melee was finally in a good place alongside Quantum Break based builds. We’re not in a hurry to buff ranged as a whole with how safe it is to just always be out of enemies’ range of attacks while still able to constantly take them down. With that said, we also wanted to provide more playstyle towards shooters and give them some small improvements overall.

• Added in a new sub-unit called Close Combat Pointmarker. It reads: Gain increased 13% PIERCING and PLASMA Atk. while there are at least 1 enemies nearby. Lose 7% PIERCING and PLASMA Atk. when there are no enemies nearby. Please experiment with it as a close combat shooter node.
  
• Full Metal Jacket and Binary Monarch are combined into one node called Full Metal Monarch. Downsides are removed to not brick the other side but upsides are lowered in values to compensate the power gained. The node now behaves just like an automatic ammo pickup every few seconds. The node now reads: Gain 12% Bullet Shooter ammo stock every 12 seconds and 2% Energy Shooter cells stock every 3 seconds.
  
• Micro Ammunitions-Factory Maximum Durability and Shields increased from -85% to -75%
• Seismic Propulsion Damage is increased from 400% to 450%.
• Frontal Unloader I Damage is increased from 25% to 37%.

Enemy Changes

• More fodder enemies will be spawned in every mission, especially in challenge missions.
• Sandstorm Glutton’s mission boss melee attacks damage lowered by around 10%
• Sandstorm Glutton’s mission mechanics damage lowered by 20% in NORMAL and 10% in HARD difficulty.
• Shields and health numbers have been adjusted for all enemies. They are lowered by a substantial amount in NORMAL and around 10% less in VERY HARD.
• Shields regain to full after refilling stamina in Normal has mostly been removed (there are still some bosses that have this as a part of their identity) from NORMAL difficulty. These bosses will have significantly lower HP than other bosses.
• Bosses’ ultimate attack cooldown has been increased. They now uses the ultimate attack less, but they does more damage and some are harder to dodge in higher difficulties.
• All co-op missions had their scaling lowered by around 25%. They are now easier but we still recommend players to achieve at least tier 5 units and sub-units first before challenging them.

Rewards Changes

• Raised the credits reward at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD
• Raised the bonus credits rewards at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD

The New Voice System

I had to look up who Tequila was and they seem like a solid pick to help implement the system. VD’s planning to add a lot more voiced content to the game so this aspect is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Closing

This is looking like an overall great update, but I still need to dive in and start reclaiming my old progress. I’ll be back with my thoughts on that as soon as I can.