State of the Beta - Post #5
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Earlier State of the Beta posts:
First Second Third Fourth Biological Horror and the Rapture "Is that a chest? … Really? I'm not sure I'd use any items that came from that." "Wow, it doesn't, oh, OK, that is actually disturbing." These are just a few of the statements I get to hear as the art assets get hooked up for the final levels of Act 4. The art for these areas, and the large fights included, add a lot to the experience. The artists have really pushed the boundaries, of their own skill, and the level of unpleasantness and horror. We are still a couple of weeks away from having this added to the beta. Next patch we will be adding the Rapture device in. Looking at other content, we have only a couple of monsters, a couple of new skills and a lot of end game maps to complete. Melee vs. Caster For balance, the big question of last week was where do caster builds stand vs. melee builds. It is something our players have been discussing, with many being concerned about casters being left behind melee in the new version. We have done a lot of testing and have made some changes to improve things for casters. As part of this, we have scaled back some of the experience needed to get level 20 gems. We are making sure we are being careful with these improvements. Casters tend to have better tools available, and can appear weak in early testing, with players having a lot of room to improve them. We have been looking at the power of the characters in a variety of ways - clear speed, combat damage, levelling, power at different points of a league. Things are looking good, but we know we have a lot of balance tuning to do before it is ready to go live. The Big Leagues The other important content to get ready for release is the new challenge leagues. Mark (Neonspyder/Mark2) is leading the standard league and Chris is leading the Hardcore league. I can't tell you anything about them yet, but they are both working hard to make sure the leagues are going to provide excellent experiences. We should be able to show you more details in late June! Are we still on track? Number of issues: 629 (Including 91 new issues from last week) I have spent a lot of the last week looking at each team member's issues and the overall feature list. This is important for making sure people are working on issues required for release, and also to make sure all the features have issues created for them. We are on track for the early July release. There is a lot of focus on polish. The question for most features is not, "can we get it ready on time", but "what else does this need to make it the best it can be". Last edited by Qarl#1370 on May 31, 2015, 7:51:42 PM
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I should probably update my beta client by now.
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nice!
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Excited to see the caster changes. It's currently fairly tricky to strike a balance between adequate investment in damage, defense and mana sustain.
REALLY excited to see the rest of Act 4. The art and level design on this act has been a world apart from the rest of the campaign, and it's the first time I've really loved any of the content outside of mapping. Keep up the good work! Last edited by Imprecision#5677 on May 31, 2015, 7:53:21 PM
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" <3 <3 <3 |
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Good to see that they are making sure it's polished, also really excited with what chris comes up with for the HC league
Last edited by Macattackmicmac#7418 on May 31, 2015, 7:51:59 PM
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Give me access already.. I almost forget to tornado shot
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Awesome keep up the good work
Only after Midnite do the Pagans Play
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new league hype :-)
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Keep up the good work fellas.
Last edited by Draconyn#6265 on May 31, 2015, 7:52:32 PM
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