Back in our early demo Omen, we had a main NPC called Meno, she gave you the tutorial and the narrative arc of the game through a dialogue system within runs. That package was very well received and we want to bring it back in a new and improved way for Underboard. That's why we wanted to include the tutorial part of it in our fourth monthly update. We also made changes to the game's difficulty curve to make it more consistent. [h3]Tutorial[/h3] A new NPC appears to give you the basics about exploring the Underboard. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43885588/722d8213a45f9b0c4181fc06b790a23a76d7690a.gif[/img] This is mostly an addition for new players, so that they get an explicit explanation of the game structure and main mechanics. You can choose to skip it or not at the start of a run, but there's also a new toggle in the settings menu to always skip it by default once you don't need it. We plan on expanding the dialogue system a lot in the future to serve things like multiple NPC's and narrative branches, but we also want to use it for mechanical replayability with the future meta-progression system. [h3]Difficulty Changes[/h3] Part of what we want to achieve with the alpha playtest is to find a good spot for the base level of challenge in the game. To better communicate what would that look like for us, here are our design pillars regarding win rates: [list] [*]A new player should have a very low probability of winning their very first run, being much more likely to lose multiple runs until their first win. [*]An experienced player should have a higher than 50% win rate. [*]It should be possible for any run to end in a loss, but better teams should lower that probability. [/list] We want a mix of luck and skill to play a part in winning a run. This is because having the certainty of victory makes a run lose all tension and choices become meaningless. It should be possible to have very good luck and build an overpowered team, but that should be a rare ocurrence. The alpha playtest represents part of the base content for the game. Our intention with the future meta-progression system is to bring more power to players, so that their win rate in the base content increases as they learn how to use it. Then the aspirational end game content should require tactical use of meta-progression to get a win at all. Having said that, we felt that there were some issues with the previous difficulty curve, those being influence chance, reward rarities and enemy rarity. [h3]Influence Chance[/h3] Influences should be a rare ocurrence, so that when an influence spawns it feels unexpected. Previously it felt like it was better to reroll rewards until an influenced one spawned instead of picking a non-influenced one due to how common they were. We made the following change to influences: [list] [*]Lowered influence chance to 5% (from 10%). [/list] This change also affects influence chance in enemy teams. [h3]Reward Rarities[/h3] Items and spells have rarities, these are common, uncommon, rare, unique and uber. Players should have to settle for some low rarity rewards, so that when the higher rarities spawn they represent an improvement instead of the baseline. Some of the rarities didn't feel as rare as they should be, it was often better to reroll for higher rarities because their spawn chance difference compared to lower rarities wasn't big enough. We made the following changes to reward rarities: [list] [*]Lowered uncommon reward rarity spawn chance to 20% (from 30%) [*]Lowered rare reward rarity spawn chance to 10% (from 15%) [*]Lowered uber reward rarity spawn chance to 0.025% (from 0.5%) [/list] The unique rarity still maintains its spawn chance of 5% and the common rarity is now used for any reward that failed to be a higher rarity one. We also changed the color of the uber rarity to purple (from red) to make those rewards more obvious when they spawn. This changes also affect item rarity in enemy teams. [h3]Enemy Rarity[/h3] Enemies had a rarity system of their own, basically there was easy (Cacnelito), normal (Chombie) and hard (Muertocho). The easier enemies were more likely to spawn, but level 3 enemies had a higher chance of spawning as a harder enemy. The idea was that at the start of a run you should always be able to win your initial combats because you can't change much at that point if you lose them, so you mostly encounter easier enemies there. Once you beat your first map boss and lvl 3 enemies start appearing, they should feel dangerous, so they mostly were harder enemies, The problem was that when a lvl 3 enemy spawned as an easier one it was hard for them to pose a threat because of their lower base stats, and even when a harder enemy appeared as lvl 1 or 2, they were significantly more powerful because of their higher base stats. This meant that the hard enemy should always be prioritized and the easy enemy never matters. Level 1 enemies should always be beatable by a lvl 1 player character, while level 3 enemies should always be a threat. Things like positioning, traits, items and spells should then create low and high rolls of that base difficulty within combats. We made the following changes to enemies: [list] [*]Enemies no longer have rarities, they all have an equal chance to spawn now. [*]All level 1, 2 and 3 enemies now have lower, similar and higher base stats compared to player characters respectively. [*]Buffed the lvl 3 skill of previously easier enemies. [*]Nerfed the lvl 1-2 skill of previously harder enemies. [/list] Level 3 enemies should represent a constant threat, but each one should be different in some way, instead of some never really making an impact. [h3]Misc Changes[/h3] [list] [*]An initial portal choice for the first map is now presented and portal options always contain 3 portals. [*]Enemy teams always have all their Map Traits present, with Map Difficulty increasing their chance to reach higher bonuses in those Traits. [*]Enemy teams scaling with Map Difficulty was adjusted to have a slower increase at the start and to maintain the boss fights as difficulty spikes. [*]Increased the base stat range in characters Attack Damage to 20->40 (from 20->30) and Attack Speed to 0.6->1.0 (from 0.6->0.8) to make character differences in these stats more significant. [*]Increased the base stat range in characters Attack Resistance to 20->60 (from 30->50) to be in line with Skill Resistance. [*]Reduced the total amount of effective Shield characters can gain until their Shield Decay rises to 100% to 10 times their Maximum Health (from 20 times) since Shield prevents Health Loss from rising due to absorbing 100% of incoming damage. [/list]