First, before anything else, let us provide you all with the final patch notes before we move on from update 0.10.0 to prepare for the "What’s Next" for M.A.S.S. Builder next week. 0.10.4 Bug fixes Significantly reduce enemies HP and shields in later stages especially on M.A.S.S. enemies.…
There will be bugs, and thankfully, people to fix those bugs. Anyway, here’s a list of what VD took care of:
Significantly reduce enemies HP and shields in later stages especially on M.A.S.S. enemies.
Multiplayer mode [Normal] missions has significantly lower multipliers. It’s still recommended for 4 players but will be much easier than before.
Fixed various bugs regarding customization parts
Fixed a small discrepancy in lock-on tracking. Still, it’s a soft-lock system and players may still miss their shots especially weapons with small bullets.
Fixed some parts providing more stats than intended
Fixed a ton of collision bug in the new volcanic area missions
Fixed profiles showing wrong chapters in selection page
Fixed damage showing in the wrong spot in some missions against some enemies
Fixed players able to get stuck within a crystal in the new mission
I’ve been too busy to hop back in, but I’m kind of glad I did, at least up to this point. Some of those bugs sound really annoying, especially that last one.
VD also has a few things to say about the road ahead, which is always good to see.
With those out of the way, let us first say, hello everyone. It’s us, the Vermillion Digital team, once again with our post-patch message. Thank you for another year of your interest in our game, even though it’s still an unfinished dream that we’ll continue working on. At this point, the game is almost ready to be called version 1.0.0 right? There’s a patch or two of campaign missions left, and few features here, a few additions there… that shouldn’t take more than the end of next year right? And then we can start working on all the other fun stuffs like other legs… oh wow it’s so far away… but fret not we’re here to stay working on it, being committed to our dream.
So! Once again, many of you must have the question, why did it took almost a year for a patch to be done again? Honestly, there’s too many things to fix and many things we wanted to do, as well as a shift mid-development and heated discussions with you supporters to change many of the things we showed during our WIP (and we’re grateful for that, since it bettered the game during the time we can still change things around easily).
One of the main things that took time to work on was new missions. We wanted something new, something that looked different than before, and something that fits the game. Creating these new missions was a task managed by two of our team members, designing the levels, designing the newer Quarks, and designing the mechanics of each mission itself. You might’ve seen the new type of in-game cutscene in one of the later missions that moved away from a total cut to a smoother transition as well. Those took time, and then after missions, they went on to made new Quarks, new animations, new attacks, new parts, new everything content related. Such is a pain of a small team and we wasted no time working on everything to a point where we think it’s enough of an update to be released.
Now let’s look at the update reception (at least, our understanding of the reception so bear with us here). 0.10.0 was not a satisfying update. We know, we understand there’s a lot to be desired from M.A.S.S. Builder and maybe leaving it in the oven for a few more months could do the trick. We’d like to say it can’t. We released 0.10.0 in this state, as there are some of the things that needed to happen which we’ll talk next week during the “What’s Next” but for 0.10.0 we deem this is where we should stop and release the update. It’s still the things we promised you with, a lot of missions, fixes here and there, many of the requested features and parts made it in, to a point where we think this is good enough, not what we wanted for the best, but good enough.
What’s not to the point we wanted things to be? Let’s see. How about melee combat?
Melee combat received its major update, a bump into attack speed, and that’s something we thought was good. It honestly plays much better and its well received by most of you guys trying it out and playing around with something newly added. Still, it’s not in a most-desired state yet. We wanted more, we wanted it to flow better. There are things like going too far with the combo, missing hits when crossing with a Quark and “sliding” attacks that looked weird. Those will require something much more and we have a plan for them in the coming days.
Ranged combat also received some number adjustments, AUTO was reworked and it’s said to be a better choice for single target now, being able to forego stamina damage towards just pure damage through aiming. That’s good in itself, but leaves something else that we can’t do this update, more shooting methods. That’s something to be expected to come next update, we’ll talk about it next week.
See, we’ve planned the game to last around 22 missions, shifted it to 24, and now it’s… 26? 27? Around that number, but we haven’t rescaled our enemy stat’s growth back. Tier 6 was meant to be used for ending the game and tier 7 was a victory lap tuning. Stretch the mission counts out and now Tier 6 isn’t going to be powerful for the final missions. That’s something we understand made players feel like enemies became too much of a spongy HP tank than ever. We’ll acknowledge it’s a problem here.
One last thing before we end this Afterwords, feel free to suggest anything. We’ll read it but won’t respond as it’ll turn into a back and forth of demand and not compromise between us and you. Unless of course if you’d like to discuss things with us, we’ll have someone to take the feedback to our team and discuss it with you in our discord.
Until next time!
Vermillion Digital Team
Since my free time’s pretty scarce right now, I’m going to try to set aside specific things for specific days going forward. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to work M.A.S.S. Builder and other games I want to cover on the blog back into my schedule. That still comes out to only about one session per week, but that’s better than the nothing the blog’s been experiencing for so long now. Maybe it’ll be Tuesdays or Wednesdays where I focus on it. We’ll see; I need to give this a lot more thought before I make any hard commitments.
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.
Another short update this week as we prepare for the upcoming patch (hint: it’s coming in a few weeks now). This week, showing some new poses coming to the photograph mode! As part of the continuous update, new poses is a must in every coming update.
What’s an update with new photo mode backgrounds without new poses to go along with it?
These are right up there with FFXIV’s ranger poses.
Short update this week while we’re polishing and finishing the update, new photo mode backgrounds! They are backgrounds from the new missions we’re adding into the game in 0.10.0 and we’ll keep adding more as time comes. See you again next week!
Welcome back to another WIP update, this week, showing something that’s been in the works since last patch. We’ve mentioned we wanted to increase players’ attack speed the further they’re into a combo.
Melee has never really been my thing in this game, and while it might never factor heavily into my gameplay, I’m still intrigued by the improvements. Maybe we’ll actually reach a point where melee’s comfortable enough for me to make well rounded builds instead of just pure gunners.
I grew up with Gundam though, so even a dedicated melee build designed by me would just be dual beam sabers and the like.
