Hello everyone,
This is Week 2 of us reporting what happened in our internal testing! This week has some super rough around the edges gray boxed items, but we wanted to show you the path we’re embarking on as we test ideas in addition to showing only the more finished work.
This is as behind the scenes as it gets!
NORMAL VS HARD
We focused on testing the scaling between Normal and Hard difficulties. It’s always one of the most difficult areas to balance between the intermediate players and the more experienced. Strangely enough, with our tweaks for this internal test, we died twice on Normal and didn’t die at all on Hard! More testing is needed to make sure we have this right before the update and open period at the end of the month, but we did learn a lot about the tension controls that caused the swarm that overwhelmed us for Normal. This was also a bit of what people experienced during the last open period, so we’ll be ready to make some adjustments for the next update.
See more after the jump!
UNIQUE DEFENSE
New “Dual Lane” defense map got tested. We tried it with two drills earlier, but was way too short, so this run was with three drills. It’s a max 3 ship map with an ideal number around 1 and 2. It’s a different build than our normal design, but it’s unique set up gave a very tight experience for us and the choke points were amazingly fun. (Enjoy the gray box map preview!)
AMBUSHED!
Continued our Ambush mode testing and ended up getting destroyed with too much disable and not enough kill. We placed our ambush well to get in the way of the convoy, but we had issues doing anything more than slowing them down. We had the boss spawn at the perfect time and our tension ramps were working great. Some tweaks to the enemies and some more effective builds (for us) are definitely in the pipeline as we continue to test this mode.
STATIC DRONE
A new special ability that spawns (currently a target dummy) with weapons! Used to great effect to distract the boss, but also got in the way of the captain. It definitely helped the crew survive and not get insta-gibbed by the Baronies Carrier. Loved the free damage it threw into the boss as well and helped us mop up the mode quickly.