Hello everyone!
We've taken a bit of a coding hiatus of sorts since last we updated. To be honest and transparent with our viewers and followers, we are full-time college students in-between jobs in order to stay alive to make this game for you guys. Sometimes our members can't continue working on the game for a while due to work. We are doing everything we can to stay diligently on track, but sometimes life comes crawling back into our game-development lives and we have to attend to it.
Our sprite designer, founder of Rendered World Games Jacob Giambalvo, has been attempting to keep up to date with new releases of pixel graphics. That is why our Images tab is stuffed with random uploads of pictures he has been developing over the past few weeks. We try to update that every day with new concept art, screens, animations, and more to keep you interested. Our music composer, Ryan Camus, has also done an excellent job producing quality tracks for the various environments and themes of our game; I am sure all of you will be pleased with his work.
New content is on the horizon, and it will get here. We promise. In fact, we want to shoot to have pre-alpha v0.01 out for all of you to enjoy by the end of June 2014, which will include a clean version of the very first prototype we released, the game's first boss and its basic mechanics, playable and switchable classes, usable health potions, and bug-fixed combat (arrows that actually rotate in the direction you shoot them).
However, for now, we can talk about something we've been looking forward to testing and getting worked out: class balancing.
Since we currently only have two playable classes (Sorcerer and Ranger), its important that we make changes so one of these classes doesn't turn into the game's version of "meta", or the preferred standard class of choice.
In order to achieve this, we've needed to make several nerfs and buffs to each of these classes. When the Sorcerer was first added to the game, her fireball attack was just a copy of the Ranger's arrow but with different graphics. Same damage, same speed, same fire rate.
More recently, we've decided that we want the Sorcerer to deal incredible burst damage with a high recharge time. So we buffed her damage counter for the fireball around 120% and decreased her rate of fire significantly to make up for the large increase of damage. We believe this decreases her survivability only slightly, due to the fact that there is a longer pause in between attacks. However, once players learn how to play her, her lower survivability can be overcome rather easily.
What about our Ranger friend? He deserves some attention, too. And we gave it to him. The Ranger's survivability, during the first prototype, was incredibly low due to the enemy's outstandingly annoying fire rate that was equal to the player's. That was nerfed to the ground (a near 500% fire rate decrease). However, the Ranger was still getting pummeled if surrounded by enemies.
What we decided to buff (based on how the class was playing) relied on his fire rate and a unique game mechanic we installed: knock back. We've talked about knock back before, and this is where the Ranger shines. With the Ranger's attack constantly knocking back enemies, the only reason he should ever die is if he misses his shots! The Ranger's health was also increased, allowing him to take more damage. With his high fire rate, decent damage, knock back and increased health, we calculated that his survivability surpassed the Sorcerer considerably.
Instead of making each class have the same fire rate, health and mechanics, just with varying graphics, each class is unique and will occupy its own space in the game, leaving a player's choice of style completely up to them to decide.
We hope you enjoyed (or at least tolerated) this update on class balancing. There will be more balancing in the future!
