Posted November 22, 2018
Build 48 is finally ready for some play testing by the community. We are hoping to have it on the main branch for everyone this week but it mainly depends on the initial feedback and if there is anything that makes us think it should be held for a bit longer.
The first thing to mention are the New Maps we have added to the game. We’ve got three new ones that each add slightly different dimensions to the game. They are introduced as you progress through the enemy zones.
To make the game more accessible to new players, we have added an “easy” mode. The first time you play the new version of DOE, you will be asked which difficulty mode you want: Easy or Normal. Normal will be basically the current version of the game (with the other changes in Build 48) while Easy will have a few differences. First of all, in Easy you will have the option to retry any mission where you failed (team wiped out), aborted or even lost a character. Secondly, your characters will have a higher “base” health value than the enemies, allowing you to take a few more hits.
Easy mode is primarily aimed at players who want to experience a slightly easier version of the game and not have to deal with permadeath (unless they want to).
We’ve also greatly increased the speed of the game. We have gone through each aspect of the tactical component of the game to remove any extra delays and reduce the time things take to execute (like changing the turn and firing). We also have completely revamped the character movement system so that the movement speed can be tuned by the player in the settings. The default speed to significantly higher than the previous defaults. The “cinematic” system also had a setting added to let players control how long the camera delays over items of interest last. Hopefully this solves a lot of the battle pacing issues.
Another big change: enemy pods are now triggered based on their visible range from player characters. This means that instead of enemy pods activating as soon as you see them, they will only activate when you either attack them, move into their visible range or fire at another enemy within their visible range.
We’ve also beefed up the story with additional cutscenes and banter between characters.There is still plenty more work to do here but we have added two more standalone cutscenes and several cutscene situations during the final mission of each story objective.
The encounter system has been significantly upgraded, with the main change being new “task” encounters that charge the player with disarming bombs, hacking terminals or disabling a failing reactor as you travel across the maps. These mission types were available previously only as final missions on some side quests. A lot of players found them fun so we wanted to make them happen a bit more often!
Some smaller changes to encounters:
“Class” options have a color coding
Fewer “sub” battles
“Go in loud” generally sets the alert level to high
Smaller stuff
Status effects (fire, poison, regen, etc) damage and healing are triggered at the end of the turn
Constitution skill at 5 points is Mend rather than Regen
Flip the Field multiplies movement by 1.5x rather than 2x
Assault Close Combat only gives you 1 free shot per turn
Status effects trigger at the end of a turn rather than the beginning
Higher tier items cost more and resell for less
“Trap” missions happen more often
Only one free shot with close combat
Hostages no longer have to be led back to the exit when the level is empty
Reduce the frequency of voice barks
Inventory filters by tier on equip screen and tier and type on merchant
Evac notification no longer pops up but appears permanently on the side of the HUD
What’s next?
We are still going to be making adjustments to Build 48 over the next few weeks so please let us know any feedback that you have!
The first thing to mention are the New Maps we have added to the game. We’ve got three new ones that each add slightly different dimensions to the game. They are introduced as you progress through the enemy zones.
To make the game more accessible to new players, we have added an “easy” mode. The first time you play the new version of DOE, you will be asked which difficulty mode you want: Easy or Normal. Normal will be basically the current version of the game (with the other changes in Build 48) while Easy will have a few differences. First of all, in Easy you will have the option to retry any mission where you failed (team wiped out), aborted or even lost a character. Secondly, your characters will have a higher “base” health value than the enemies, allowing you to take a few more hits.
Easy mode is primarily aimed at players who want to experience a slightly easier version of the game and not have to deal with permadeath (unless they want to).
We’ve also greatly increased the speed of the game. We have gone through each aspect of the tactical component of the game to remove any extra delays and reduce the time things take to execute (like changing the turn and firing). We also have completely revamped the character movement system so that the movement speed can be tuned by the player in the settings. The default speed to significantly higher than the previous defaults. The “cinematic” system also had a setting added to let players control how long the camera delays over items of interest last. Hopefully this solves a lot of the battle pacing issues.
Another big change: enemy pods are now triggered based on their visible range from player characters. This means that instead of enemy pods activating as soon as you see them, they will only activate when you either attack them, move into their visible range or fire at another enemy within their visible range.
We’ve also beefed up the story with additional cutscenes and banter between characters.There is still plenty more work to do here but we have added two more standalone cutscenes and several cutscene situations during the final mission of each story objective.
The encounter system has been significantly upgraded, with the main change being new “task” encounters that charge the player with disarming bombs, hacking terminals or disabling a failing reactor as you travel across the maps. These mission types were available previously only as final missions on some side quests. A lot of players found them fun so we wanted to make them happen a bit more often!
Some smaller changes to encounters:
“Class” options have a color coding
Fewer “sub” battles
“Go in loud” generally sets the alert level to high
Smaller stuff
Status effects (fire, poison, regen, etc) damage and healing are triggered at the end of the turn
Constitution skill at 5 points is Mend rather than Regen
Flip the Field multiplies movement by 1.5x rather than 2x
Assault Close Combat only gives you 1 free shot per turn
Status effects trigger at the end of a turn rather than the beginning
Higher tier items cost more and resell for less
“Trap” missions happen more often
Only one free shot with close combat
Hostages no longer have to be led back to the exit when the level is empty
Reduce the frequency of voice barks
Inventory filters by tier on equip screen and tier and type on merchant
Evac notification no longer pops up but appears permanently on the side of the HUD
What’s next?
We are still going to be making adjustments to Build 48 over the next few weeks so please let us know any feedback that you have!