Much like the past month or so, this update is going to focus on more changes to the Nexus and low level game play. It will also address a few more features that are being added to smooth out the UI for newer players! Keep reading to find out more!
The Nexus is coming along very well. All the content on both sides, Cadet and Volcom, up to Deep Space have been streamlined to remove all the backtracking and pointless docking. They’ve also been rebalanced to make them easier with the new player in mind and all the galaxies have been reworked slightly to make the flow of progression through the Nexus a lot smoother. Most recently, in the past week I looked at the Contracosta and Honey Moon dungeon arms.
The content in both of these dungeons arms was significantly overtuned for the players we wanted to complete them. Contracosta received the bulk of the changes. I’ve moved the ‘stations’ that you have to destroy to ambush spawners so they don’t stick around after the player kills them. I’ve also turned the fight against the Ganglinite Research Gamma station into a mini-event similar to Whiskey Outpost. Instead of going it alone against an army of Micro-Zebus and defense drones, the player is now given backup in the form an allied Volcom army. Not only does it make the mission a lot easier to complete, it makes it a lot more fun and engaging. Honey Moon received a few changes for difficulty as well. Firstly, the AI in both Dagger and Cutlass Caprice were unteamed. Most of the difficulty in those areas were the fact a new player would get swarmed. I’ve also toned down Urzod significantly. Having him call for reinforcements just overwhelmed new players who don’t know how to handle AI swarms yet.
I’ve also made a few other changes to help out new players server side, the biggest of which is that docking in an AI base will now refill 50 energy and 50 shields per second. This isn’t enough to be extremely useful for higher level players, but for the new player this kind of regen will ensure that if they dock because of low shields, they’ll be back in action a lot faster than they would have before.
On the client side I’ve made a few more improvements to the pop-up mission agent dialog as well as another change to station UI. For the pop-ups I shifted the typing animation from a frame based animation to a time based animation. This will make sure that jumping into a galaxy with a lot going on (which can lag your client and slow the framerate) won’t slow down the speed the text types out. I also removed the big close button from the agent dialog and made a few modifications to the accept button so it can handle all the usage conditions. It didn’t make much sense to have two close buttons on that dialog and it allows for the mission vendors name to be visible for all missions (which is a definite win for immersion!).
For the station UI, I am sure some of you have already noticed a button underneath the mission list that reads ‘Contact Agent’. This button when clicked will automatically open the first available mission at that station. It can also be used to avoid double clicking to open missions. Clicking on the mission you want in the list and then hitting that button is a bit easier to understand for a new player. The second change I’ve made that you probably don’t know about is that I’ve added a new button to the bottom of the ships tab in AI stations. This button is the ‘Buy or Upgrade Ship’ button and when clicked will automatically take the player to the hull tab of the trade bay. Again, this was done to help new players. Upgrading your ship is one of the most important power increases in the early game but it isn’t the most intuitive process. Hopefully this button will help alleviate some confusion — they can go to the ships tab to see their ship and click this button to easily see if the base they’re docked at has any alternatives.
So that’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back again with another post (perhaps the final one!) on the Nexus! Until then, feel free to post questions, comments or suggestions in the forums!
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