M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: 0.9.0 Overall Combat Adjustments – Steam News

This may come as a surprise, despite us mentioning throwing balance out the window down the drain, there are still changes that were needed for M.A.S.S. Builder’s combat to bring everything to a certain level that’s nearly the same. As mentioned time and time again before, our goal is to make everyt…

Melee build lovers, rejoice!

I think. 0.9.0 is still quite a ways off, but like usual it’s good news for the game. Vermillion’s addressing some of the issues melee builds have when dealing with bosses.

• Bosses will have a longer wind-up time before some attacks, such as the first boss’ ground stomp, the multi-headed runner boss jump attack.
• Bosses will now “fall” for a longer period of time to create a window for combo attacks to chain until the end. These windows of attack should also benefit slow firing weapons such as detonator and single shot weapons more.
• Bosses will recover their stamina from melee attacks less.
• *There’s something else planned as a big update coming to boss fights that both close combat and ranged players can utilize, which these changes will compliment. We cannot reveal them yet until its ready.

Bosses in particular are one of the main reasons I’m a shooter main and don’t really even delve into hybrid setups. Most bosses can knock you out in just a few hits so it’s usually not worth trying to muscle your way through all the AOEs and mobs to reach them and get in a few hits before inevitably having to run away again. The trade off with shooter builds is that doing this, you trade ammunition woes for HP woes.

The Dash attack is also getting looked at, but it was said this was just to make it slightly less spammable. It will have slightly less damage, and a longer transition from one dash attack to the next.

Some other good ideas coming include:

• As mentioned before, increase melee attacks’ animation speed in their combo attacks. The deeper the combo is, the faster the attack is.
• Certain defense nodes now have a passive increment to armor in addition to triggered defense increase.
• There are now nodes that allow faster shield recharges and quantum break activation. We just had some time to code them in so now there’s more choice of nodes to help with your playstyle. Glass cannons ranged players can now regen their shields much faster with a single shield regen investment node while others can have a much lower downtime.
• Quantum Break can now utilize “trigger at end combo attacks” tech nodes on every of their ‘nth’ hit. We’re still unsure what ‘nth’ will be.

I especially like the idea quantum break triggering from combos. I never use this mechanic because I can’t remember it exists for more than two minutes. I play this game on very hard difficulty when I’m not testing a completely new build, too, and that leaves a few more holes in gameplay aside from just not using melee on anything but lone mobs.

‘Overall’ these are great changes coming in the next update, and hopefully by the time it comes out I’ll have a few things to showcase. I’m not just covering this game’s weekly updates; I want to get some content of my own going as soon as possible. (See my Space Engineers material as an example)