Cover image by heycaaat, circa 2011 for SU2k3
January came and went! Thanks for your patience as the monthly recap is a bit late. I finally have a process for exporting gifs (I think? are these gifs kinda slow to you?) so hopefully the next one will won't be as time-consuming.
You might have seen it already, but it's worth a second watch, especially if you haven't watched with the volume on.
We launched a playtest! The feedback has been so helpful. We'll let in another batch of folks soon, after the important changes from round 1 have been mostly addressed. More on that below.
In preparation for the playtest we swapped all of the game music. Check out the OST if you haven't heard yet. It's definitely worth a listen. Brandon pushed so hard to get this done in time for the playtest, and being able to work with him to create something so cohesive feels wonderful.
Related to the OST swap, I also made the combat system dynamic, with intro and outro jingles blending seamlessly with the core battle bgm. There's actually some tempo metadata shenanigans going on which allows the outro to sync to the beat of the combat music.
We also added some input improvements: auto-assigning xinput controllers so you don't have to go thru the entry menu, adding support for inline icons, used primarily for displaying buttons to press during tutorials/input menus.
Most of the more severe issues from the playtest have been resolved: audio issues from the last-minute blitz to get the OST in place, some issues with skipping cutscenes, a few collision issues, and others. Full details in the discord #updates channel if you're curious.
For some context, the creation of SU's battle system has always been difficult for me. I wanted something that respected players' time and felt fun, with elements of both turn-based (trading hits, resource management) and real-time (positioning, active play) combat. Most designers will tell you to avoid doing things like this because it alienates fans of both action and turn-based styles, but it doesn't feel like too far of a stretch, especially with games like xenoblade chronicles, to take a more hybrid approach. The challenge of doing something a little less "safe" is a bit exciting, even if it's harder to get right. Couch co-op also rules.
Anyway, going into the playtest, I knew this wasn't perfect, but I had been tweaking it so much I was worried I was getting tunnelvision. I was in desperate need of feedback, and boy did you guys deliver. I'll summarize what I took away from the playtests and share some incoming changes I'm experimenting with.
Combat feels spammy. Players press abilities on cooldown without meaningful decisions. I removed resource costs (other than cooldowns) to streamline combat, but in reality what that means is there's no tradeoffs. When an ability is off cooldown, using it ASAP is always the right move.
There's no reason to switch characters. AI use abilities basically immediately, so why swap? The controlled character has fewer unique advantages over AI-controlled allies.
Battles can feel cluttered. Enemies and characters pile together. It's hard to read what's happening.
SP is Underutilized. It's only used for post-combat healing. Players forget it exists until they run out.
There's a lack of moment-to-moment gameplay. Few reactive decisions. It falls between both action and realtime without some of the key benefits of either. Dodging/blocking exists, but it's gated behind passives.
I'm experimenting with a few things to see if I can improve the general moment-to-moment decisions during battles.
Use SP more as an in-combat resource, instead of a post-combat "tax". This will be the main resource for "Primary" skills. Some will generate, some will consume.
Introduce tactical changes to Thrill. Instead of just a second party-wide currency that goes largely ignored, make it more of a "sweet-spot" system where there are multiple thrill zones, each with their own unique advantages.
Introduce a channeling system for larger spells. Heavy skills use channel times instead of cooldowns, creating unique timing decisions.
Add distinctions between primary and secondary skills. Secondary skills are everything from items, to combos, and these new channeled abilities. They're accessed by holding the "Secondary" key, which is usually LT or L1.
Create tag bonuses, which you can think of as skills that are executed when switching to a character that hasn't been controlled by a player for some time.
Make dodging/blocking baseline, instead of gated behind passives.
Reduce visual clutter by naturally spacing out enemies, more visual hierarchies to damages, effects, etc.
Include more character interplay by allowing more coordinated skills and bonuses between character abilities. For example, Amalia's skill causes status A, Illari has a skill that does some extra effect if the enemy is already afflicted with status A.
I started elaborating on a lot of these changes, but it got too verbose. I'll save it for a video!
Thank you for playing! I appreciate the feedback and bug reports tremendously. There's a new experiments branch if you'd like to see some of the changes, but note a lot of the timing of tutorials and things are now totally broken, unexplained, and more generally there are a few more missing localization keys.
As mentioned, we'll open things up in in a week or two once the experiments are complete and builds are clean again.
I'm sitting on enough bugs and feature requests to keep me busy for months, but really I need to start thinking about getting back to story content. I'll likely spend a couple more weeks getting the experimental stuff mostly there, open that up for feedback, and focus on story content. In drafting some of the scenes/flow for Act 3 I realized I need to tighten up some of Act 2 just a little bit.
Looking forward to sharing more with you.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew