A little over a week has passed since the new utility skills went live on our Frontline beta, and we've had some time to discuss your feedback and make plans for our next step(s).
While we were ready to rework any skill that people felt were too unbalanced or difficult/boring to use, it seems we won't have to: most of the skills have received positive feedback, and the main points of discussion have been whether some skills have been too OP or not: often with different people claiming the very same skills are either too OP or too underwhelming. Hopefully these issues will be solved through some proper balancing.
In regards to this, there's a number [.....]
In Fred's department, it's been all about getting the Focus animation up and running, and starting on what's a little sneak peek of what's to come: a new fireball animation for the upcoming skill rebalance!
First, let's take a look at the fireball:
You might wonder what this new animation has to do with skill rebalance. The thing is, we found that some of the skills were a little lacking in effects, which made them feel less epic or impactful than they actually are. This [.....]
With Arcadia's rework, we want this Arcade Mode town to feel different from the rest of the world, so almost all graphics will be made more or less from scratch, rather than reusing old sprites. This means not only the buildings, but also the greenery needs to be remade.
Previously, we looked at making new paths and grass decorations (where we did reuse a few flowers: we've not yet decided if we want to remake those as well). Today, let's look at the trees and bushes!
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..and in the desert portrait area, it's time for a portrait of a woman living in the village (they aren't all tourists or merchants!):
Finished version below:
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In this next part of the Arcadia rework, we slow down a little and start looking at the details. There's some vital parts missing, such as the mountain which allows you to enter your arcade runs, as well as actual paths and greenery! Time for a fix:
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After a couple more weeks of designing, implementing, polishing and remaking, we have finally patched the frontline beta to include the new set of Utility skills! With the addition of these skills, we expect the game change a lot for some players, if not all - we suspect a lot of you have longed for something to use spare silver points on, and many of the Utility skills offer new paths of gameplay. In short, we can't wait to see how you guys use them, and what the feedback will be.
While we hope it will be possible to balance all of this properly (we've done our best so far, but we're always ready for your feedback [.....]
In Fred's department, there's a lot of Utility skill stuff going on. First, the development of the blink:
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With the intended patch date drawing ever closer, it's time to make a decision concerning the buffs and how many times it'll be possible to upgrade each skill.
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The next step on our quest to implement the Utility skills is making the proper menu backgrounds for it! The old one is rather outdated, and in fact much older than the rest of the skill menu: [.....]
As we continue to test the Utility skills, we're now fairly sure these are the ones we want to use in the end, and so it's time for me to make a bunch of skill icons!
First up, the Focus skill (the very first frame of each WIP-animation shows our current placeholder icon made by Teddy, and the last frame is my reinterpretation):
Focus is the current name of the meditate skill which allows you to channel EP by holding the skill button, and allows [.....]
Last week was all about the Arcadia Rework for me, something which will continue to be the main focus for a long while to come. As you can tell, it's coming along at a steady pace, one building at a time!
This week I will begin creating the underlying decorations, grass and paths between the various spaces. Since we're also fairly sure about the Utility skills, I'll also start creating their icons, while Teddy and Fred continue to deal with testing, testing, testing and skill graphics!
We've had two major discussions these last few days, both in regards to the new Utility skills. First, about the buffs: we are currently disagreeing whether it's better to keep [.....]
In Fred and Teddy's department, things are progressing rather quickly: the graphics for the Utility skills are coming together one by one. Here's a few examples of the Barrier skill, starting with it's breaking due to a bee attack:
In the current iteration we've decided not to go with our original plan, which was that a barrier break like the one seen above would cause you to take the remaining damage (if any) after the last of your barrier hp is used up. Instead, it'll now [.....]
Arcadia continues to grow, and now it's time to add that central piece of decoration, right below the mountain where you set your course for another arcade run!
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In the portrait department, it's time for another kid roaming the streets of the desert/harbor town:
I have all kinds of ideas for this NPC, though I'm not entirely sure they will actually be realized, so I'll keep quiet about them for now. All I can say is that Heero Yuy of Gundam Wing might have been an inspiration!
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Last week we left Remedi with his wagon surroundings looking rather empty! Time to remedy (ha) that, and give him some fancy flowers for his collection:
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It's another Monday, and work on the Utility skills is in full progress!
Right now, that mainly consists of testing all the billion ways each spell can break the game (which they do, a lot), by playing through the entire thing using each spell on every enemy in every possible way. While we won't be able to find all of the bugs or problems this way, hopefully it'll make them more or less fully functional before we hand it over to you guys in the Frontline beta! Multiplayer will need a whole lot of testing of its own, both to make sure the effects are syncing up between users, and to bug test the friendly targeting (as [.....]
Since the Utility skills will be implemented much sooner than the desert enemies, Fred has paused the creation of those beast and began work on the spell effects needed!
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Prototyping the skills is quite fast work, (as always it's the last 5% - the polish - that take 95% of the time). Today, we'll look at the next set of utility skills, those categorized as offense!
First, the Death Mark! This skill has a new targeting system, which can be seen above. It basically aims at whatever enemy is the closest to your target, which you can move around the screen so long as you hold down the spell button.
Everything you see here [.....]
Another desert character! This time a young boy, roaming the streets - wonder what he might be up to :)
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As Teddy continues to prototype, I thought it would be fun to take a look at these very early stages of each of the skills! First up, we have the Defensive utility skills, three skills that are bound to change the game play slightly for at least some of you:
First up, we have the blink (as seen above). As mentioned in the earlier rundown of the utility skills, it auto-targets some distance away as you tap the button, but you can also move the target [.....]
And another week goes by! Last week we finalized Housing and finally managed to get a Stable patch up and running with the whole thing, meaning that (unless there are many more bugs that need fixing), it's time to focus our attention on those Utility skills! If you are one of those waiting for Stable updates, please go ahead and try housing out, and let us know about how to make it better in the future or any bugs you might find! The full patch notes can be viewed here!
I know a lot of you are sad to hear about there still not being a healing skill, but hopefully the inclusion of the barrier skill will [.....]
