Hello guys!
There's a lot of feedback I haven't replied to because I wasn't sure of the appropriate response. So this is what I'm gonna try to address today!
Weapon upgrades
One pain point that was mentioned the most: the weapon instances, and the fact that upgrading one weapon now upgrades only ONE of its instances.
I initially did this because:
I had the feeling that the game looked like a one trick pony, and lacked space for creative builds.
Unlocking new weapons meant that the best strategy became less accessible and therefore, progressing also weirdly meant "unprogressing".
I wanted this feeling of power to come later, in order to feel rewarded for unlocking the tech tree. Therefore, with the last tech unlocked, stacking the same weapon was actually still just as powerful.
But on second thought, I also realize this might be against the "simple fun game" mentality I started this project with. And I agree that there's something so satisfying when you see a weapon you already own in a crate and you know you're gonna benefit from your previous investment.
This is why, in the next update, we will try an iteration with the old system back, while keeping the weapon leveling system.
And you'll tell me which version you prefer!
The all-scope upgrade stays very useful for many reasons:
1 - Stacking bonuses without reaching a level up, in order to make the level up stronger.
2 - Upgrading a weapon past its max upgrade.
3 - Minmaxing on combos more efficiently by increasing the fire rate/cooldown of two weapons of different damage types.
For the sake of not making same-weapon stacking the one trick pony of the game, I will also buff combos significantly.
Difficulty
I think I might have made things a bit too hard in 0.3.0, and I hope the combo buff + the weapon stacking coming back should compensate for it, and the demo completion time should land back around 1H30/2H rather than the current 3H.
Balancing a game is hard, but shatAAAAp! has its own design challenges:
It's designed to be a rather small game (aiming for 5h to 10h of content), and there's one big limiting factor: computing power. The game MUST run on Steam Deck, and the gimmick of my game is to have a SHIT TON of things on screen.
In a world without this limitation, I could just add content without worrying about you having 19739187% fire rate. So I need to plan from the top down, while making a demo that feels satisfying enough (therefore, close to the technical limitations).
So it's kinda like I'm giving you near end game content in one hour instead of 5. Then I'm fucked, because in order to add content I end up with no other choice but to delay the gratification for later.
On top of that, progression is exponential in many ways rather than linear, which is really not intuitive to juggle.
That's basically the short version of why it's quite a challenge for me to pull this off correctly. The trickiest part is determining which player frustration is unavoidable, and which to try to solve.
That's why I'm grateful to everybody who respectfully shares their disappointment or constructive feedback. I'm trying my best to give the appropriate responses. Please also share what you're happy with, this helps too!
Upgrade picking and XP
The utility/weapon upgrade boosters have received mixed feedback, mainly because sometimes we want to have mixed upgrades. So I will add a mixed upgrade booster that behaves exactly like the no-tech behaviour.
The XP bonus is not intuitive, because we expect that taking x1.5 XP should give x1.5 level-ups and therefore that same amount of upgrades. But XP goals growing exponentially after each level-up makes things different, because gaining levels is ALSO what makes gaining levels more difficult. So increasing your XP gains also speeds up the moment when the exponentiality kicks in and makes the next XP goal so hard to reach.
That's why, since 0.3.0, XP bonuses are compounding. But that only partially solves the issue, because the intuition for players is that it's better to take some XP bonus in the early game, then forget about it. That's not how it works atm! XP bonus stays relevant at any point of the game, and taking too much at once is not optimal, because you may get +6 level-ups now, then go back to +1 level-up on each subsequent wave.
So I'm thinking of tricks to make the XP bonus work in a more intuitive way. My idea for now is to have the XP bonuses no longer be compounding, but reapplying at every level-up. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we will try. And as always, you are the judges!
Thanks for reading this long post. I really wanted to give you a little insight into how I view things, and let you know that even if I don't always answer, I'm reading all your comments both on the Steam forums and Discord.