M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: 0.11.0 New Armor Set Preview ZENITH Z – Steam News
Back to another WIP update for the week! We’re featuring the final variant of the new armor set Zenith, the Z variant. For this one, we wanted to emphasize the sharp, pointy, and oversized parts in some areas.
While VD does state that they want to emphasize certain aspects of the Z variant of the Zenith armor, that almost doesn’t explain the off feeling I get with this one.
Admittedly I’m not very good at explaining what bothers me about designs that have scaling issues, but hopefully it’s enough to just say the proportions just feel odd with the Z set compared to the X and Y. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. One issue I have with M.A.S.S. Builder is that the proportions of all builds are tied to a customizable (but still limited) inner frame. That limits what kinds of builds and replicas you can make. Thankfully there’s some customizability to begin with or builders could only compensate by scaling their builds up, which isn’t practical in a lot of cases.
For the Zenith Z set, that means people looking for more ‘leggy’ proportions can use pieces from this set to help get that look instead of relying solely on stretching out the legs and keeping the torso sections short.
On a side note, I like the feet. They’re very reminiscent of Armored Core style light builds, and while that’s an insanely impractical way to handle feet in real life, it looks amazing in video games and other media.
I’ve been distracted as all get out so here’s a three parter. Having said that, I think once M.A.S.S. Builder releases either 0.11.0 or 0.12.0 I’m going to stop writing about the news itself unless it’s particularly important. I want to make another shift since half my posts are about a game I don’t even have time to play right now. That’ll change but right now the old 9-to-5 is sucking up darn near all of my focus.
M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: 0.11.0 New Armor Set Preview ZENITH Y – Steam News
Did you miss us? We’re extremely sorry about the past weeks where there’s zero WIP update for anyone. We’re now back in service and we’re starting off with another preview of the Zenith Armor set variant Zenith Y! Did you guys remember that each armor set consists of 3 variants? This is the second variant called Zenith Y.
The second set for the Zenith style armors. The Zeniths in general have a nice flair to them and feel like they fall somewhere between the lankier SRW bots like the R-1 and R-3, and Jehuty from Zone of the Enders. There are probably plenty of other close comparisons, but those are the ones that always leap out at me first.
M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: 0.11.0 New Feature Parts Hiding Preview – Steam News
Welcome back to another WIP update. We took some time to ready this HUGE feature update that has been requested ever since the first versions of M.A.S.S. Builder, hiding of certain parts. We’re excited to finally show it so let’s get to the images and explanations of the feature. In update 0.11.0, you can now choose to "HIDE" certain parts in addition to unequipping them.
Next up is the big one, the one literally everyone’s been waiting on. Well I guess everyone’s still waiting since this is also a part of the upcoming 0.11.0 update. Anyway, there are a ton of popular builds that just don’t scale correctly due to the exact issue this update will help address. Think of the evas from Evangalion. They’re too thin for that side skirt look you often see in ‘Gundam’ style robots, but people have had to work around that limitation and it tends to lead to the proportions looking off. Again, this is going to help address that in very short order.
The only other thing I would want added to this is the ability to further displace the arms and legs from the main body in order to get more exact starting proportions. Since the game doesn’t use contextual animations (synchronized grapples, etc.), having the arms and legs be longer or shorter than they already can be, as well as further off center, would be a big benefit to builders.
Another WIP is finally here! As we’re approaching the end of story missions, we’d gone and revisit our old enemies that isn’t fun enough to fight with, M.A.S.S. units. So that’s what we’ve been working on for the past few weeks. We’re showing you some improvements we’ve work on the bosses this week!
I have never seen such an angry M.A.S.S. NPC before …
He wants the player dead more than the quarks do. Looks like a fun fight!
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.
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!
Vermillion Digital
So, “Raise shields!” basically. That’s probably a good idea. Tank builds have always been in a weird spot in this game, since the best defense is a good offense. You don’t really want to take a lot of damage in the first place, so it’s better to just blast everything ASAP and play more evasively against bosses.
VD’s proposed changes should make tanking more relevant on higher difficulties, but for lower ones, it’s not hard to evade most incoming damage by just running around–not even boosting, just running around. It’s that easy. Fighting bosses is where changes like these are really going to shine since they trap you in relatively small areas and throw out enormous, fast hitting AoE attacks. Playing evasive is easy enough with shooter builds, but for melee, you’ll definitely want to be able to take more than a couple of bad hits.
So that’s my 2 cents on that for now.
Next up, the Zenith Armor Set. Yeah, this one’s going to be a 2 in 1.
M.A.S.S. Builder – WIP: 0.11.0 New Armor Set Preview ZENITH X – Steam News
Sorry we took a break, here’s some more WIP Progress post of the upcoming 0.11.0 featuring a new armor set! The set, named Zenith X, is designed with a concept of futuristic, cyber-like designs.
Look at this armor set.
Look at it.
This one’s coming along wonderfully. I’m particularly interested in the head and shoulder parts.
The Zenith X set feels like something between SRW’s more slender robots and Zone of the Ender’s orbital frames. I don’t know what impression I’ll get when I see this colored, but either way the Zenith X is going to be a great new addition.
We’re launching the GPT Store to help you find useful and popular custom versions of ChatGPT.
You can bet I’m going to get in on this. I’ve actually already made more than half a dozen custom GPTs just testing concepts and also building a few helpers for my own personal use. Based on that experience, I’d say getting some kind of business started on the GPT store is more than doable if you’re persistent enough.
Unfortunately that does mean I have to play catch up for a little while. I was aware the GPT store was opening this week, but I haven’t had the time I’d like to prepare. I’m still building another website specifically for GPT powered apps, but I’m considering using the Praedian Records main site for that purpose if it starts looking better suited to that. After all, since this blog is on a subdomain, the main site has been struggling to justify its existence for a while now.
This might be the niche I was looking for. We’re about to find out one way or another.
2023 ended weirdly abruptly for me, but I got the shot in the arm I needed in order to hit the ground running in 2024. This year’s going to be absolutely crazy, but for me personally, I feel my worst years are finally behind me. I’m ready to stop drowning in a sea of projects and aspirations and just learn to live and breath those things. After all, my kind of work doesn’t have to be boring and my personal deadlines don’t have to be stressful. All of that can just be … me.
For now the focus is going to be LGT and the Yamato project, but there are plenty of other things I’m working on between those sessions. Any big or noteworthy updates will be posted here like always.
