May 24, 2023

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Introduction

Howdy guardians!

We’re back for another Roboquest devblog.

Before diving into it, let us repeat a few information we’ve talked about already:
• The reason there hasn’t been a game update for a long time is because we’re working on the 1.0.0 version of the game (out of Early Access)
• It is the biggest update we’ve worked on so far and we’re all hands on deck
• That’s also why we might be a bit less active on our different community platforms
• For now, the only date we can talk about for the release of the 1.0.0 is Q3 2023
• We’ve been asked several times whether there were going to be updates after the 1.0.0, the answer is likely yes, but it’s way too soon for us to talk about anything regarding this as we first need to finish what we started, and to finish it properly
• There will be more Noisecream tracks (and yes, they’ll be added to the soundtrack)

Talking of Noisecream... what could this be?

Now onto the Devblog itself, what are we going to talk about today?

Let’s talk about something that you all talked about a lot during EA: “MOAR CONTENT”.

Adding more content

We’ve already been adding more content at each update, but we still need to push it further in the 1.0.0.
In terms of content, we would say that what you experience during the EA is the “skeleton” of the gameplay loop of Roboquest. We now need to talk about the muscles we’re going to add on top of it.

So let’s discuss just that: what features we’ll be adding in the 1.0.0 that are pushing the content further.

Higher toy diversity

What we’re calling “toys” are anything you can play with. Things such as weapons, classes, perks, enemies, items etc. More toys means run variety, replayability and more playtime in order to discover, learn, play around and get tired of each single toy.

However, we need to be extra careful with certain types of toys. For example, adding too many items might distill the “good” ones among a lot of “junk” ones, negatively impacting the gameplay experience.

In any case, regardless of those “too much of it” cases (which can be handled through careful random system management), usually “more toys” means “more content” and we’re adding more of that in the 1.0.0.

Alternative in-run objectives

Right now there’s only one objective in each single run: to go the furthest possible, eventually beating the game.

While it’s simple and straightforward, there’s nothing much to pay attention to in each level, there’s not much to “unveil”, to “discover” or “to do in between”. It doesn’t get fresher each run.

But what if there was more to it? What if there were quests to complete? Paths to discover? Secrets to unveil? Things that would ask you to actually pay attention to stuff, whether that’d be environment, enemies, items or weapons. Things that would require you to plan a little bit more, to think ahead, to plan your next run for?

Well, then we feel like it would make each run more exciting and overall extend the playtime of the game. Mostly because it would give you other things to do aside from beating the game but also because you’d be incentivized to spend more time figuring things out in the game.

But discovering things for the sake of discovery isn’t that thrilling, especially in a fast-paced game. So we needed to find things you’d actually care for as Roboquest players (or Guardians shall I say) and reward with it when pursuing those “alternate objectives”.

Here’s what we came up with:

Power Crystals

The later in the game, the more powerful enemies are. So much so that they are powered by powerful and mysterious crystals.

Finding and claiming these crystals for yourself will weaken the late-game level traps and other hazards as well as populate the world with more elite enemies (netting higher rewards).

Those crystals only need to be recovered once, and then their effects will be permanent. There are several different crystals, each granting a unique basecamp upgrade and applying a different set of effects on the late-game levels and bosses.

One of the new objectives as a player is then to find and recover those crystals to facilitate the access to the late game and increase the number of rewards in each run (by increasing the number of elite enemies).

This also goes well with the player progression. The more you play, the better you become and the easier earlier levels might become. Making these levels harder by adding elites to them makes each playthrough a bit more engaging and challenging. Also, since you have more experience in the game, being granted more rewards won’t “overwhelm” you with too much information or choice to make because you’re more than capable to make those choices at that stage of the game.

Finding and claiming power-crystals will usually imply changes in rhythm, pace and play style compared to your regular gunfights.

Quests

We added a wide array of NPCs in the game. They all are friendly figures you can encounter in the different levels of the game. Most of these figures will give you a unique reward if you complete a quest for them (quests are one-time completion, meaning once completed their reward is permanent).

Rewards will usually be game elements like gadgets (most gadgets will now be unlocked through quest completion).

“Quests” can imply a wide range of objectives but we mostly limited it to “find an item and bring it back to the NPC in your next run” or “find a specific hidden place”. It is not necessarily limited to that though.

While playing, we realized it creates an interesting player behavior where you’re actually looking for a specific item or place and then, once you found it, go back to the initial place you were given the quest in (usually in another run). So you’re actually changing your run behavior to look for something specific.

We think it’s quite compelling to complete the toy collection (gadgets mainly but not limited to) by scouring through the levels. The extra “exploration” layer added is a quite fresh addition to the usual “run and gun” gameplay.

We really liked this system: not only did it gave us more things to do in the game (by incentivizing new and fresh run objectives), it also made the unlock process of game elements (like gadgets) more interesting (because more interactive: you don’t need to simply “click a button to unlock” anymore).

Finally, adding QUESTS to RoboQUEST was definitely something we felt was missing.

Secrets

As simple as it sounds, the Hidden Sanctuary in the Oasis had quite an effect on most players who discovered it. Back in the days, we also had several other secrets such as Buddy bot opening an hidden door.

Not only is it rewarding in itself to discover such areas or hidden interactions, the actual rewards contained within are often interesting in terms of gameplay and can incentivize going in a specific level just for them.

We’re bringing back those kinds of secrets.

“Secrets” in Roboquest can take various forms: hidden places, interactive elements scattered in the levels, items to carry on from a run to another (or within the same runs) and other things like this.

Some Secrets will grant unique and permanent rewards (and you won’t have to “find” or “resolve” them again). Some others will unlock the access to rewards you can gather each single run (which can have an impact on the levels you’re going for in a specific run).

We can’t really dive deeper into the details of what secrets are, at the risk of spoiling them. But we’ve concocted a wide variety of interactions that we hope you’ll be thrilled to discover by yourself (and to take advantage of during your runs).

While it may seem like it doesn’t “add more content”, we believe the additions of those secrets will actually be interesting “side run objectives”.

Alternative Levels

Tied to the quests, the secrets, the power crystals and the exploration of the levels in general comes the addition of several alternative levels.

We’re populating the game with various “corrupted” versions of the levels.

These levels will be harder, weirder, sometimes different in terms of gameplay and filled with different enemies than usual.
Accessing these levels will first require you to complete quests, find secrets or simply to explore the regular levels.

These levels will each contain a “power crystal” that you must claim for yourself.

Once a crystal is claimed, you will still be able to reach these corrupted levels and run through them (in case you’d want it for various reasons such as gaining run time, earning specific rewards or taking a specific route).

We hope that finding the way to access the corrupted levels and then completing them will be a compelling experience for you as it diversifies the way to play the game.

Various elements to unlock

Unlocking non-gameplay things for the sake of unlocking them. Things such as unlocking all achievements or filling the entirety of Max’s Museum (a collection of everything you’ve encountered in the game).

While it isn’t something that directly “adds playable content” (depending on what type of player you are), one shouldn’t undermine the importance of such “unlocking” systems.

Granting players “a list of things to do” and the possibility to show how much of the world of Roboquest you’ve explored (and challenged) is something that often greatly increases the amount of “content” to play with.

While “unlocking non-gameplay things” is a joy in itself and doesn’t grant you any reward gameplay-wise we’re still ironing out the details of these systems and imagining the potential ways to add gameplay rewards to them.

”Wrong” Content

During the Early Access of Roboquest and along the way of adding more content, we’ve come across several systems that we deemed unfit to the game. Either they didn’t fit our philosophy or they’d be detrimental to the gameplay experience for various reasons.

Among those ways, we ruled out the idea of increasing the length of each run, the idea of having to grind for numerous small stat upgrades in order to be able to compete against the enemies (in terms of raw stats) or the idea of “virtually multiplying” everything we have (from basecamp upgrades to levels).

These solutions mostly added “content” that we didn’t deem worthy of your time. We like grinding stuff, but not in Roboquest. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a very high rate of awesome / second.

After 1.0.0

If there’s one thing we’ve been discussing for a long time now it is “alternative game modes”. And two of them have caught our attention.

We’ll be discussing something here that won’t be included in the 1.0.0 but that we have our eyes on.

We very much like the idea of having things such as an endless mode and a run-of-the-week system.

While both modes seem to be straightforward in terms of design, there are still some design decisions to make and some technical difficulties to face. We can’t just say “let’s add them” and be done with it.

“Run-of-the-week” would simply be a fixed run that every player can try to finish once a week. That would require implementing things such as leaderboards, data synchronization between players (and platforms) as well as a few other details.

Another mode we’re thinking about would be “Endless Mode”. We have a specific implementation in mind for such a mode, which is a bit different than just saying “loop again with a higher difficulty once you complete a run”. We won’t dive into too much detail here but basically it would be something like an endless stream of short levels, alternating between free-corridors, battle rooms and boss fights. That would require us to tweak the player progression a bit and also probably to do some adjustments to some Bosses.

Basically these are both ideas we like and enjoy and they do highly increase the game’s content. But they need a lot of work and like we said previously, we need to focus on the core gameplay first and foremost.

And that concludes our thirteenth devblog. We hope you like what you read. Don’t hesitate to give us feedback here on Steam or on our Discord (link below).

We wish you all the best Guardians, and see you soon with more news :)

Discord | https://discord.gg/roboquest

Website | http://www.roboquest.com/

Twitter | https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame

YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ

If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).

Mar 17, 2023

Roboquest Devblog #12 - What's going on?

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Hello Guardians!

It’s now been a bit more than two months since we released the Winter Update and you might be wondering what we’ve been up to meanwhile.

So here we are with this twelfth devblog.

Today we’ll be having an overview of what’s to come in the 1.0.0 launch and we’ll follow up with monthly devblogs to give more details and juicy visuals about several of these additions.

Please note that we may or may not manage to include them, depending on the time frame. But we’re aiming for that and we’re trying to mini-maximize our schedules to include all of them.

We know a lot of you might be more curious about the “when” than the “what” though, so let’s talk about this real quick.

We can’t confirm any date yet, but we’re aiming for a release around Q3 2023. Obviously, this is subject to change and we will properly announce the release date once we’re certain of it and feel comfortable about the schedule.

As you probably all know by now we’re always aiming for quality over quantity or speed, and what we plan for 1.0.0 makes it our biggest update so far.

That being said, what will the 1.0.0 launch include exactly? The roadmap is well and good but… it isn’t that descriptive.

The 1.0.0 will include everything you can expect from a full-fledged game, noticeably things such as:

Achievements

One of the most asked features, we’ve been patiently waiting for the rest of the game to be in a more final state to include them, and they’re coming!

Compendium

Who doesn’t love collecting things? We certainly do! For now, we’re working on bringing Enemies, Weapons and a few other things to the compendium.

Research / Work in progress

Story implementation

We’re reworking all cinematics (and a bit of the storytelling within) with brand-new graphics. We’re implementing more Max’s dialogues and story bits to read in the data-logs. We’re giving Max a major graphic overhaul (and new animations!). In other words, we’re infusing the story and worldbuilding we’ve been working on since the very beginning of the development of Roboquest. We wanted to do that for a while now, but the gameplay was our primary focus during Early Access.

Complete localization

We’re still unsure of which languages will be available at launch, but those selected will be 100% completed (unlike most of our update releases so far).

We will also implement the remaining parts of the gameplay-loop:

Corrupted levels

We’ve been discussing this in several devblogs and it should have been included in our previous update (but it was postponed). We’re still hard at work to include those special levels. They will be directly tied to your game progression, your exploration of the world and will make choosing your run-path a more meaningful choice.

The final boss

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And necessarily, we will be cleaning up what’s still considered “wip” in the game:

Interface

A lot of user interface bits are still placeholder and we’re reworking / finalizing them.

Work in progress

Game textures

For a long time, lots of game textures were pretty “simple” and we’re in the process of injecting more details and personality in those.

Weapon names

While pretty anecdotal, we thought it’d be fun to mention that we worked hard to choose new weapon names that would sound less generic (while still keeping those we deemed emblematic or that would have a nostalgic feel to them). And we will also make them localizable.

We’ll also be reworking some older system:

Gadgets

For now, we’re planning to overhaul the gadget system to make you able to equip any and as many gadgets as you want. Yes, this has a huge impact on the balance of the game and we’re still thinking of the exact implementation of this system. That will also mean that some gadgets might get removed / replaced / reworked / transformed into other game elements (such as perks or items).

Basecamp upgrades

We will be adding / removing some upgrades and we will fine-tune the price of everything to reach the progression feeling that we deem pleasing for a game like Roboquest. We will also complete the visuals of the basecamp (polishing it and making its evolution clearer).

Wrenches flow

You will loot wrenches on destroyed enemies, it should feel more rewarding than simply gaining them at the end of a level. And we will obviously fine-tune the amount of wrenches you earn to make sure it’s not becoming too long to progress through the basecamp upgrades (and to follow the new progression feeling we’re aiming for, which would be a tad faster than the current implementation).

Elite system

As said in an older devblog, the elite enemies were quickly added to the game in their current form. The final form of its system should be better and be intricate with other systems in the game.

New game+

For those who don’t know, NewGame+ is the fact of restarting a game with a higher level of difficulty (it’s basically what Heroes+ difficulties are at the moment). We’re currently thinking of ways to improve this system and to create more differences between each difficulty level (more than just increasing the health and damage of enemies each time). For now one of the leads is to modify the enemy roster of the different levels based on your current difficulty.

Class perks

We’re always in the process of fine-tuning perks, whether that’d be removing / adding / reworking existing ones following our data and your feedback.

Tutorial

The current tutorial doesn’t include some important Roboquest features such as the powerslide (but not only), we will make sure to rework / complete that.

Items

While the system is already in a spot we deem good enough, we will probably clean up some of its aspects and include and tad more control over its random and rarity system.

But more importantly, we will be implementing several new systems you probably haven’t heard of yet:

Corruption Crystals

But what are those?! They are directly tied to corrupted levels, and we’re not ready to tell more about that just now.

NPCs

Bazaar Bob and Smithing Joe aren't the only friendly bot you will encounter...

Work in progress

Quests

What would RoboQUEST be without quests? We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And there will definitely be some questing involved!

Secrets

While there were some secrets in the past, they’ve been really scarce since we removed a few of them. But we definitely want to add a little bit more spice and mystery to the game, so look forward to the addition of secrets to the game.

End-run stats

Something many of us have been waiting for, end-game stats! That would make it more simple to share builds and simply to check out how well you’ve been performing.

And finally, we will continue to add more content to the game:

New class

We’re planning to add one more class to the game. Nothing more to say on the subject for now.

Enemies

We will be adding more enemies (and reworking existing ones) to continue fine-tuning each level’s enemy roster and tune down the level of annoyance of some of them.

Weapons

While it’s not our primary focus, we’re working on new weapons for the 1.0.0 launch (and all the ideas you’re posting in our community channels help us a ton on that side!).

Roboquest 40k

Items

We will be adding more items to the pool as they help each run feel fresh and different. We’ll be closely monitoring those aspects in order to avoid a situation where the pool of items is so vast that every “good item” is diluted in it.

Affixes / Alternative Fires

We’re continuing to think of new affixes and alternative fire to add to our weapons.

Obviously, there probably are several things that aren’t on that list and will end up being added / reworked, and others that are on this list that won’t make the cut.

But you should probably have a clearer idea of where we’re going with Roboquest.

You might be wondering why we’re not releasing all of this in different updates rather than all at once and we’d like to give you a little bit of context about this.

Preparing and releasing an update slows down the entire development process since we need a stable version of the game. This forces most of the team to stop implementing things in the game for a little while each time. Considering the sheer amount of content we’re working on, not stalling the development allows us to keep working on every new system at once and eventually to release the 1.0.0 faster.

In addition, most of the new systems are tied up with each other (the corrupted levels with the final boss, the elites and the NPCs/quests as well as the story elements) like we’ve discussed in other devblogs.

And we deemed necessary for the “1.0.0 update” (the launch of the game) to include those final systems in order to have a very impactful launch.

All of those reasons made us consider halting the release of updates to deliver the 1.0.0 version of Roboquest we’ve been envisioning for a long time now.

We know it’s a long road to the 1.0.0 launch and that you might be getting impatient. But bear with us, we’re hard at work to bring Roboquest in its FINAL FORM. Like we said early in this devblog, we’ll keep you in touch with monthly devblogs to give you insights and juicy visuals of the new features. Stay tuned for that!

Jan 12, 2023

Roboquest - Winter Update is now LIVE!

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

The Winter Update is now LIVE and available!

Hello guardians!

The Winter Update is now available (there might be a slight availability delay on different platforms).

The playtest branch has been closed as a result.
Like usual, we thank all playtesters who allowed us to improve it and fix most of the gamebreaking issues.
There were a lot of positive and constructive discussions during this playtest (even more than usual!) and we were closely following them. Thanks again for that!

Note: A sale is planned to be launched at 10am Pacific Time so make sure to wait for that if you wished to pickup Roboquest!

Below are the highlights of the changes that you can experience in the Winter Update and you can access the full patch-notes here.

You may also want to check out our resident player Jamesaroni's video highlights of the Winter Update available here:

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

New Class: the Ranger

A new class is coming into play: the Ranger.
The ranger can stealth and throw javelins at enemies and it accumulates bonus critical damage as long as it doesn’t take damage.
It is more of a ranged-precision class.
In order to unlock the ranger, you will have to find the ‘lost javelin’ hidden in one of the levels.
Most of the perks related to Stealth have therefore been moved to the Ranger (view below for a brief explanation of that).

Recon Rework

We moved Stealth away from the Recon and gave him a dash instead.
Stealth seemed more fitting to the Ranger after playing it for a while and a dash seemed to synergize very well with the natural strengths of the Recon (noticeably its melee and front-fighter aspects).
Therefore we added a bunch of completely new perks to tailor its new ‘Blink’ (dash) ability to your liking and we also reworked several other of its perks.

Elite enemies

Elite enemies are powerful variants of a new enemy called ‘Elitepawn’.
There are a few variations of this enemy (with different attacks and behaviors) and we will add more variations as time goes by.
You may encounter one or several ‘elitepawns’ in each level and this number will increase based on the difficulty level you’ve chosen (starting in Heroes+1 onward)
But right now, this system is still in its very early stage and will be finalized later down the road, but its addition will help us determine exactly how the system should behave and how these elite enemies should be.
We already know that elite enemies' spawn rate will be tied to game progression in its final version but we do not have much more information to share right now.

Rocket-Jump

We added a new functionality to most explosions: rocket-jump!
Your own explosions will propel you into the air, in the direction opposed to the center of the explosion (your brobots explosions won’t propel you).
Some explosions in the game do not trigger a rocket-jump (such as ‘Pulse Blaster’ and ‘Hero Knee Pad’ explosions). While testing, we realized that adding rocket-jump to those explosions was very detrimental to the weapons’ gameplay (and your own movement gameplay).

New Boss

‘El Moustiko’ has joined the fray!
He’s been added to the random pool of bosses for Act 1.

Energy Weapons

For a long time, energy weapons were unable to use any of our ‘reload’ systems (such as ‘reloading grants X bonus’ for example).
But no more!
You can now press ‘reload’ with energy weapons to force them to overheat.
Every mention of ‘reloading’ in the game now applies to energy weapons as well, making them fit in much more builds than before.
In addition and consequently, we modified most of their energy metrics: they can shoot for longer periods of time (reduced energy cost) but also reduced their energy regeneration speed (it takes more time to cool down passively).
We felt like we needed to make these changes in order to make sure energy weapons have a healthy place into the different perk builds.
We also initially gave energy weapons a very low impact force. It was part of our design philosophy to make them ‘different’ than other weapons. After consideration, we realized it made them feel weaker than other weapons and we didn’t need that aspect at all. We therefore increased the impact force of all energy weapons.

Basecamp visuals

We started to implement the final stage of the basecamp visuals and building placement.
You will still find your usual couch co-op and hoverbus starter zone but also new buildings that are yet to be activated (noticeably a ‘compendium’ building!).
Each basecamp level will improve all of the basecamp buildings, props and accessories.
For now, reaching a new basecamp level will not immediately show in the basecamp. The visuals will only be updated once you reload the basecamp.
We know there are still a few quirks and oddities in the new basecamp, especially regarding gameplay collision but we will be monitoring and addressing the issues as usual.
We hope you’ll like those new and fancy visuals!

New Content

Finally and as usual, we’ve added a bunch of new enemies, bazaar items, perks and affixes to the game as well as a new class, new boss and new weapon.

You can access the full patch-notes here.

Happy robot smashing everyone!

Roboquest Discord - https://discord.gg/roboquest
Roboquest Website - http://www.roboquest.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RoboquestGame/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ

If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).

Jan 12, 2023

Roboquest - Winter Patch-Notes

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Here is the breakdown of all the changes of the Winter update.
View the announcement and the highlights of the update here.

PATCH NOTES

• Your own explosions trigger a rocket-jump (some explosions such as the Pulse Blaster’s do not trigger the rocket-jump)

• Increased the requirements to reach rank A
• Reduced the requirements to reach rank C

Developers' Note: Most of you were getting rank A kind of regardless of your performance. We decided to modify that to create a more visible difference between succeeding and performing. Also, rank D really felt like a harsh punishment for players who were actually trying to do well and should only be limited to players really ignoring most enemies while still going slow.

• Increased player size and player camera height a bit

Developers' Note: This was made to clearly show how big of a height difference there is between the guardian and the other characters in the game and to better grasp the environment scale. This shouldn’t have any impact on the gameplay whatsoever.

• Armor and movement speed bonus are now clamped at 70%
• Player abilities damage scaling per level increased from 20% to 25%

Developers' Note: This should have been the case in the previous update and we missed it. That’s why the ability-centric builds seemed to be a little less viable than weapon-based builds. It should feel better in this update.

• Your brobot will automatically be rebooted after 60s if you do not reboot it yourself

Developers' Note: This makes sure you’re not soft-locked in multiplayer if your brobot dies in a spot you can’t reach (because you don’t have the proper gadget for example).

• Player stun duration increased from 1.75s to 2s
• Enemy stun duration increased from 3s to 3.5s
• Enemy freeze duration increased from 4s to 6s
• Effects increasing your damage based on your current movement speed bonus will no longer reduce your damage when you’re slowed or have movement speed reduction effects

• A new class has been added: the Ranger

Ranger (new!)

• Unlocked by finding the lost javelin in one of the level
Javelin
• New Secondary Ability
• Throws a spear which you can then pickup on the ground to refill, has 2 charges by default
Stealth
• New Primary Ability
• Your OG’ stealth, except it reloads all of your Javelin charges
Awareness
• New Passive Ability
• Passively generates charges every second, increases critical damage per charge, some charges are lost upon taking damage
Perks
• Added all previous Stealth’s Recon perks to the Ranger (and modified a few of them)

Recon

• Updated its class upgrades
Blink
• New Primary Ability
• Dashes a short distance, becoming immune to damage during travel and staggering enemies at the arrival point

Laser Dagger
• Damage increased from 50.0 to 65.0
• Healing cell generation when hitting bosses increased from 1 to 3
Perks
• Added perks for its new primary ability
• Updated, reworked and moved around lots of upgrades following the addition of its new ability and the Ranger/Recon ability swap

Guardian

Bash
• Damage increased from 35.0 to 50.0
• Impact force increased from 70.0 to 80.0

Commando

Shorty
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 12.0
• Impact force increased from 14.0 to 15.0

Engineer

Scrap Blaster
• Impact force increased from 60.0 to 66.0

• Increased the number of class-upgrades from 2 to 3
• Modified the metric values and effects of many different perks
• Moved some upgrades to different perks or as class-upgrades

Guardian

Tactical Slap
• Piercing arc range increased from 1600 to 1800

Stim Bubble
• Bonus firerate increased from 30% to 50%

Quadrinity (previously Trinity)
• Next shot damage increased from 50% to 60%
• Now triggers every 4 shots instead of 3

Lucky Ammo
• Auto-critical chance bonus decreased from 30% to 25%

Lock N' Load
• Bonus firerate increased from 30% to 40%

Recon

Dancing Blade
• Bonus damage increased from 30% to 35%

Favorite Weapon
• Bonus damage increased from 25% to 30%
• Bonus reload speed decreased from 25% to 20%

Discipline
• Duration needed to activate decreased from 1.35s to 1.25s
• Bonus damage of super-shot increased from 50% to 70%
• Now also activates when using your primary ability

Good Fortune
• Auto-critical chance bonus decreased from 12% to 10%

Engineer

Targeting Protocol
• Duration of drone bonus increased from 5s to 6s

Commando

Hot Potato
• Cooldown between weapon throw increased from 3s to 4s

Ranger

Night Shroud
• Duration increased from 6s to 9s
• Bonus armor decreased from 30% to 20%
• Bonus movement speed decreased from 20% to 15%
• Bonus damage increased from 35% to 50%

Energy Weapons

Developers' Note: Read the highlights for more details on these changes.

• You can now press R to force your weapon to overheat
• Added new overheating animations shared by different energy weapons

• All energy weapons regenerates their energy slower
• All energy weapons energy cost has been reduced
• Increased the impact force of all energy weapons

Developers’ Note: We heard a lot of feedback during the playtest version and we hear you: energy weapons don’t feel as good as they could. We think the current system is the right one considering it makes them fit into the rest of the game, but we will definitely look into ways to make them feel better.

General

• Added a new weapon: Throwing Axe

• Reworked ‘Bubble Splasher’ shoot pattern

Affixes

• Added 4 new affixes
• Removed ‘Trigger Tap’ from the ‘Shock Cannon’ (thanks StoutShakoForTwoRefined, it was indeed pretty useless of an affix on this weapon)
• Added 'Sidekick' as a base affix for 'Buddy Bot' (if anyone deserves to have it, it’s definitely this lovely little dude)
• 'Sheriff Carbine' can no longer roll the 'Bounce' affix
• ‘Warmup’ firerate bonus increased from 20% to 25% (affecting only the affix which can roll randomly on weapons, not the base affix some weapons inherently have)
• ‘Amplifier’ damage bonus for consecutive hits reduced from 60% to 40%

Developers' Note: The Mine Gun and the Pulse Blaster were doing exceptionally well against bosses and that was mainly due to the effects of the Amplifier base affix they both have. Reducing this affix should put them closer to other weapons in terms of efficiency against bosses in particular without hurting their other performances.

Alt-Fires

• All alt-fires that shoots a volley of projectiles have more spread (and therefore should hit more enemies than before while still dealing the same amount of damage per enemy)

Balance Changes

Developers' Note: You will see a lot of buffs and a few nerfs in the next section. We tried to raise a lot of weapons to the level of the average “good-performing” weapons and to tune down the few “godlike-performing” weapons a bit. We followed our statistics, your feedback and our feelings to validate those changes. We will obviously keep monitoring the balance of the game.

Dual Uzis

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 7.5 to 8.0

Assault SMG

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 8.0 to 9.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5

Windmill Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 13.0
• Impact force increased from 11.0 to 13.0

Tommy Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.0 to 10.0
• Firerate decreased from 12.04/s to 11.36/s

Light Machine Gun

Primary Fire
• Recoil pattern has been updated
• Damage increased from 13.0 to 14.0
• Impact force increased from 13.0 to 15.0

Blast SMG

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 10.0 to 11.0
• Impact force increased from 7.0 to 9.0
• Energy cost decreased from 2.75 to 2.25

Scratch Rifle

Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5
Alternative Fire
• Damage increased from 60.0 to 64.0

Pumping Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 12.0 to 14.0

Sawed-Offs

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.0 to 10.0

Grandma's Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 12.0 to 15.0

Kramer

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 14.0 to 17.0
• Energy cost decreased from 4.5 to 3.0

Blunderbuss

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.0 to 10.0
• Impact force increased from 8.0 to 13.0
• Energy cost decreased from 12.0 to 10.0

Power Gloves

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 38.0 to 52.0
• Impact force increased from 68.0 to 76.0
• Energy cost decreased from 8.0 to 6.0

Graviton Launcher

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 50.0 to 52.0
• Impact force increased from 42.0 to 62.0
• Explosion radius increased from 1.0m to 1.2m
• Energy cost decreased from 14.0 to 10.0

Flare Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 36.0 to 38.0

Torpedo Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 12.0 to 11.0

Mortar

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 80.0 to 92.0

Missile Gatling

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 22.0 to 24.0
• Impact force decreased from 35.0 to 26.0

Throwing Knife

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 25.0 to 28.0
• Impact force increased from 10.0 to 16.0

Rifle Crossbow

Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 2.0

Revolver

Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 2.0
• Removed ‘Bullseye’ as a base affix

Dual Crossbows

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 30.0 to 36.0
• Impact force increased from 32.0 to 36.0
• Critical ratio decreased from 2.25 to 2.0

Scout Sniper

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 52.0 to 54.0
• Critical ratio increased from 2.25 to 2.5
• Removed ‘Bullseye’ as a base affix

Arquebus

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 26.0 to 40.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.75 to 2.0
• Energy cost decreased from 15.0 to 10.0

Sheriff's Carbine

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 53.0 to 55.0
• Impact force increased from 46.0 to 48.0

Longbow

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 70.0 to 72.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 1.75

Ice Cannon

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 50.0 to 52.0
• Energy cost decreased from 22.0 to 12.0

Cryo Launcher

Primary Fire
• Firerate increased from 4.54/s to 5.0/s
• Energy cost decreased from 6.0 to 3.5

Fire Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 14.0 to 15.0
• Energy cost decreased from 6.0 to 4.0

Shock Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 8.0 to 9.0
• Energy cost decreased from 3.0 to 2.25

Shock Cannon

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 8.0 to 9.0
• Energy cost decreased from 4.0 to 3.0

Fire Launcher

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 30.0 to 36.0
• Projectile speed increased from 5600 to 6500
• Energy cost decreased from 8.0 to 7.0

Junk Beam

Primary Fire
• Energy cost decreased from 3.5 to 2.5

Blast Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.5 to 10.0
• Impact force increased from 7.0 to 9.0

Assault Rifle

• Ammo in clip increased from 30 to 35
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 11.0 to 10.0
• Impact force increased from 9.5 to 10.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5

Militia Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 13.0
• Impact force decreased from 13.0 to 12.0

Minigun

• Ammo in clip decreased from 100 to 80

Blastgun

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 14.0 to 18.0
• Energy cost decreased from 6.0 to 5.0

Blast Minigun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 7.0 to 9.0
• Impact force increased from 5.0 to 8.0
• Energy cost decreased from 1.5 to 1.2

Dual Guns

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 10.0 to 12.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5

Blast Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 10.0 to 11.0
• Impact force increased from 5.0 to 10.0

Assault Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 6.0 to 7.0
• Firerate decreased from 3.57/s to 3.44/s

Sulfator Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 6.0 to 7.0
• Impact force increased from 10.0 to 11.0

Laser Saw

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 15.0 to 16.0
• Firerate increased from 2.5/s to 3.12/s
• Projectile speed increased from 7000 to 9000
• Energy cost decreased from 10.0 to 8.0

Barrel Cannon

Primary Fire
• Explosion radius increased from 1.0m to 1.2m

Rocket Launcher

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 64.0 to 70.0

Pulse Blaster

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 4.0 to 14.0
• Energy cost decreased from 3.5 to 2.5

Flak Cannon

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 16.0 to 18.0
• Impact force increased from 12.0 to 18.0
Alternative Fire
• Damage increased from 70.0 to 72.0
• Impact force increased from 76.0 to 82.0

Long Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 36.0 to 40.0
• Impact force increased from 32.0 to 36.0
• Firerate decreased from 3.03/s to 2.77/s
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 2.0
• Removed ‘Bullseye’ as a base affix

Blast Sniper

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 26.0 to 42.0
• Energy cost decreased from 12.0 to 10.0

Dual Blast Guns

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 34.0 to 42.0
• Impact force increased from 26.0 to 38.0
• Firerate increased from 3.12/s to 3.57/s
• Energy cost decreased from 8.0 to 6.0

Elite Sniper

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 80.0 to 86.0
• Impact force increased from 80.0 to 86.0
• Critical ratio increased from 2.0 to 2.25

Elite Crossbow

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 52.0 to 56.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 1.75

Blast Palms

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 18.0 to 20.0
• Impact force increased from 15.0 to 18.0
• Energy cost decreased from 4.0 to 3.0

Assault Sentry

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 18.0 to 20.0

Ball Cannon

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 80.0 to 96.0
• Energy cost decreased from 48.0 to 30.0

Cyclone

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 32.0 to 46.0
Alternative Fire
• Impact force increased from 90.0 to 110.0

Blast Arbalest

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 39.0 to 48.0
• Impact force increased from 29.0 to 46.0
• Firerate increased from 2.5/s to 2.77/s
• Energy cost decreased from 10.0 to 8.0

• Added 28 new bazaar items

Balance Changes

Boombox
• Bonus firerate decreased from 35% to 30%

Rice Cooker
• Healing-cell efficiency bonus decreased from 35% to 20%

Ugly Tie
• Bonus damage against bosses decreased from 15% to 10%

Rake
• Bonus damage against turrets decreased from 15% to 10%

Bug Net
• Bonus damage against flying enemies decreased from 15% to 10%

Credit Card
• Chance to refund ammo increased from 8% to 10%
• Ammo refunded decreased from 2 to 1
• Energy refunded decreased from 6% to 2%

Party Popper
• Chance to drop a healing cell increased from 2.25% to 3%

Olive-Oil Bottle
• Bonus reload speed increased from 7% to 10%

Claw String
• No longer reduces health
• Bonus melee damage decreased from 30% to 10%

Knight Banner
• Bonus armor increased from 10% to 15%

Atomic Radish
• Rocket-jump damage increased from 60 to 65
• Rocket-jump explosion radius decreased from 1600 to 800

Super Sandwich
• Bonus duration increased from 2s to 6s
• Bonus movement speed increased from 20% to 25%

Toy Helicopter
• Rocket-jump damage increased from 20 to 65
• Rocket-jump impact force increased from 20 to 75

Artishock
• Now has a chance to stun you when you take damage rather than when dealing shock damage
• Bonus damage decreased from 30% to 20%
• Chance to stun upon taking damage increased from 1.5% to 5%

Snow Globe
• Now always deals cryo damage to enemies attacking you
• Chance to freeze upon taking damage increased from 3% to 10%
• Freeze rate increased from 2 to 2.5 (freezes more efficiently)

Bonsaï Tree
• Bonus auto-critical chance decreased from 25% to 20%

Dragonfly Ball
• Healing-cell efficiency decreased from 100% to 40%
• Now reduces Healing cell duration by 30% instead of 50%

Hero Knee Pads
• Firing grenades no longer has a cooldown

• Added the visuals for Bazaar Bob (he’s now a polite and gentle monsieur)

• Completely overhauled the basecamp map, size, buildings visuals and placement

• Added 7 visual levels for the basecamp buildings (each have 7 different appearances based on your level and many other aspects of the basecamp will evolve alongside them)

Developers' Note: For now, you will only witness the visual evolution when going back into the map after you leveled up your basecamp through purchasing upgrades. Later down the road, you will probably get to experience it on-the-fly.

Upgrades

• The upgrade ‘Lottery Ticket’ level 2 now grants a chance to find 2 powercells in Max’ Chests

• ‘Safety Helmet’ now grants Armor instead of Health

Developers' Note: ‘Yoyo design’, remember?

• Added several new enemies: Firepawn, Ghostpawn, Hatfly, Larvabug, Goliath Larvabug, Firepod and Elitepawn (4 variations)
• Added a new boss in the random pool of Act 1 bosses
• Decreased 'Firefly' hitpoints from 90 to 80
• Reduced homing targeting range of enemy missiles by 25%
• ‘Icebots’, ‘Iceflies’, ‘Rocketpawns’ and ‘Firepawns’ no longer explode on death
• Spawned enemies no longer grant experience points under certain circumstances
• Updated the size of several different enemies

Developers' Note: Shouldn’t change much from a gameplay perspective aside from being just a tiny bit easier to shoot at. This change was mainly a subsequent change of the player-character height change.

• Increased ‘Bullfly’ impact resistance
• Movement prediction on enemies such as the ‘Shockpod’ (and other ground area patterns) reduced to make them easier to dodge when moving at full speed
• The ‘Shotgun’ pattern of Goliath enemies changed to more of a ‘Gatling’ pattern to reduce the number of projectiles being spawned at once (therefore reducing the performance overload)

Developers' Note: We therefore reworked the pattern a bit and it should even be a little more interesting to play around (in terms of movement skills).

Elite Enemies

• Elite enemies are different variations of the new enemy ‘Elitepawn’
• Based on your current difficulty level, a certain number of elite enemies will spawn in each level (starting from the very beginning)
• Elite enemies won’t appear on Standard difficulty and below

Developers' Note: View the patch highlights for more details.

Bosses

Dr. Turret

• Laser speed rotation has been decreased
• Fire area damage reduced but now deals burn damage (I mean… like walking into a literal burning area would)
• Replaced its mortar attack by an homing missile attack

Judgeball

• Mine hitbox detection, explosion and visual effects aligned to better reflect their actual danger zone
• Removed the shockwave from the artillery pattern
• Laser bars and laser blasts from the artillery pattern have more spread (leaving more room to move left and right)
• Reduced charge speed acceleration
• Increased preshoot timings for most attacks

Uncle Jim

• The duration of its head-helmet protection has been reduced
• Missile attack preshoot time decreased from 1.5s to 1s

• Removed the hidden upgrade in ‘Oasis’

Developers' Note: While it may seem interesting to add a little bit of exploration to the levels, being forced to reach a hidden place every single playthrough quickly becomes a chore. We will look at other ways to incentivize a little bit of exploration.

• Reduced enemy density in ‘Energy Center’ by 15%
• Fully reworked ‘Haven-City’ and ‘Haven-City’ corrupted visuals
• Removed the dead-end containing enemies in ‘Haven-City’
• Added easier access to ‘Haven-City’ heights
• Added new railings in ‘Haven-City’ heights

Developers' Note: These 3 previous changes should make backtracking in ‘Haven-City’ less frequent and the entire level faster to travel therefore reducing the amount of time spent in ‘Haven-City’ overall.

• Reduced the frequency of Flashflies encounter in ‘Ruins’
• Reduced the frequency of Leashbots encounter in ‘Fields’
• Reduced the enemy density in ‘Fields’ battle room
• Added new challenge rooms everywhere

• Max no longer talks through the dialogue bubble in the top-right corner (except in the tutorial level)
• Max now talks using a 3D bubble above its head when you meet her in the different levels, approaching her will pop-up the bubble and allow you to read it
• Updated all Max dialogues

Developers' Note: This is just the very first step of the integration of a more ‘final’ experience for the story elements. Do not be surprised if Max tells you about things you already know or have already completed as the new system is based on your game progression (and the dialogue system starts fresh: he considers you as a new player). We will be monitoring your feedback and reactions to this new system and update it accordingly.

• Entirely reworked the Class Selector interface

• Updated the icons of all gadgets
• Added an option to remove the white-flash damage indicator on enemies when dealing damage to them
• Added a colored frame to the text popping in when interacting with ingame shop
• Switched the colored frame to red when you don’t have enough powercells to interact with ingame shops
• Switched the stun interface from displaying arrows to displaying movement keys
• Updated the key design of the stun interface to also displays the movement direction
• Increased the size of the screen-space available when being flashed
• Added new elements and polished the end-level and end-game screen

Developers' Note: This is just the first step in improving these screens, we’re thinking of adding more elements and information including but not limited to the scores and figures of your run as well as detailed information regarding your build.

• Updated the attachment point of all enemy invulnerable bubbles (one by one, by hand, with love and passion for the task)
• Updated the tail indicator on enemy invulnerable bubble
• Updated enemy projectile, trails, muzzle flash and laser color
• Updated challenge rooms laser and projectiles color
• Updated ‘Flare Gun’ explosion and added elemental variations
• Improved ‘Bullfly’ preshot visual effects
• Added a pulsing shield visual effect to ‘Judgeball’ shielding pillars
• Reworked overheating visual effect for all weapons
• Added a Burn and Cryo variations of enemy explosions
• Updated explosion and trail visuals effects of the enemy homing projectiles
• Updated explosive barrels visuals in ‘Quarry’
• Updated Pulse Blaster and Cyclone explosion and reworked their elemental variants

• ‘Electro Punishment’ perk now properly triggers against Frozen enemies rather than Stunned ones
• 'Shieldpods' will no longer continue to shield enemies that are too far away from their active range
• The information panel now properly displays hit points depending on your basecamp upgrades
• Elemental-based perks will no longer fail to properly display their name in their description
• Binding the interact action to the left face button (B) of the gamepad will no longer prevent you from opening basecamp menus
• The ‘Reboot Brobot’ text will no longer appear when your brobot is under the effet of an invulnerable bubble
• Other numerous bug fixes

• Some languages still have missing localization
• You may experience low framerate in the main menu, unfocusing and re-focusing the window will fix the issue

Dec 29, 2022

Roboquest - Winter Playtest Patch-Notes

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Here is the breakdown of all the changes coming into the playtest Winter update.
View the highlights and playtest announcement here.

PATCH NOTES

• All player explosions now trigger a rocket-jump, propelling you in the direction opposed to the explosion center (some explosions such as the Pulse Blaster’s do not trigger the rocket-jump)
• Increased the requirements to reach rank A
• Reduced the requirements to reach rank C

Developers' Note: Most of you were getting rank A kind of regardless of your performance. We decided to modify that to create a more visible difference between succeeding and performing. Also, rank D really felt like a harsh punishment for players who were actually trying to do well and should only be limited to players really ignoring most enemies while still going slow.

• Increased player size and player camera height a bit

Developers' Note: This was made to clearly show how big of a height difference there is between the guardian and the other characters in the game and to better grasp the environment scale. This shouldn’t have any impact on the gameplay whatsoever.

• Armor and movement speed bonus are now clamped at 70%
• Player abilities damage scaling per level increased from 20% to 25%

Developers' Note: This should have been the case in the previous update and we missed it. That’s why the ability-centric builds seemed to be a little less viable than weapon-based builds. It should feel better in this update.

• Your brobot will automatically be rebooted after 60s if you do not reboot it yourself

Developers' Note: This makes sure you’re not soft-locked in multiplayer if your brobot dies in a spot you can’t reach (because you don’t have the proper gadget for example).

• A new class has been added: the Ranger

Ranger (new!)

Recon

Blink
• New Primary Ability
• Dashes a short distance, becoming immune to damage during travel and staggering enemies at the arrival point
Laser Dagger
• Damage increased from 50.0 to 65.0
• Healing cell generation when hitting bosses increased from 1 to 3
Perks
• Added perks for its new primary ability
• Updated, reworked and moved around lots of upgrades following the addition of its new ability and the Ranger/Recon ability swap

Guardian

Bash
• Damage increased from 35.0 to 50.0
• Impact force increased from 70.0 to 80.0

Commando

Shorty
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 12.0
• Impact force increased from 14.0 to 15.0

Engineer

Scrap Blaster
• Impact force increased from 60.0 to 66.0

• Increased the number of class-upgrades from 2 to 3
• Modified the metric values and effects of many different perks
• Moved some upgrades to different perks or as class-upgrades

Guardian

Recon

Dancing Blade
• Bonus damage increased from 30% to 35%

Favorite Weapon
• Bonus damage increased from 25% to 30%
• Bonus reload speed decreased from 25% to 20%

Discipline
• Duration needed to activate decreased from 1.35s to 1.25s
• Now also activates when using your primary ability

Good Fortune
• Auto-critical chance bonus decreased from 12% to 10%

Engineer

Targeting Protocol
• Duration of drone bonus increased from 5s to 6s

Commando

Hot Potato
• Cooldown between weapon throw increased from 3s to 4s

Ranger

Energy Weapons

Developers' Note: Read the highlights for more details on these changes.

• You can now press R to force your weapon to overheat
• Added new overheating animations shared by different energy weapons
• All energy weapons regenerates their energy slower
• All energy weapons energy cost has been reduced
• Increased the impact force of all energy weapons

General

• Added a new weapon: Throwing Axe
• Reworked ‘Bubble Splasher’ shoot pattern

Affixes

• Added 4 new affixes
• Removed ‘Trigger Tap’ from the ‘Shock Cannon’ (thanks StoutShakoForTwoRefined, it was indeed pretty useless of an affix on this weapon)
• ‘Warmup’ firerate bonus increased from 20% to 25% (affecting only the affix which can roll randomly on weapons, not the base affix some weapons inherently have)
• ‘Amplifier’ damage bonus for consecutive hits reduced from 60% to 40%

Developers' Note: The Mine Gun and the Pulse Blaster were doing exceptionally well against bosses and that was mainly due to the effects of the Amplifier base affix they both have. Reducing this affix should put them closer to other weapons in terms of efficiency against bosses in particular without hurting their other performances.

Alt-Fires

• All alt-fires that shoots a volley of projectiles have more spread (and therefore should hit more enemies than before while still dealing the same amount of damage per enemy)

Balance Changes

Developers' Note: You will see a lot of buffs and a few nerfs in the next section. We tried to raise a lot of weapons to the level of the average “good-performing” weapons and to tune down the few “godlike-performing” weapons a bit. We followed our statistics, your feedback and our feelings to validate those changes. We will obviously keep monitoring the balance of the game.

Dual Uzis

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 7.5 to 8.0

Assault SMG

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 8.0 to 9.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5

Windmill Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 13.0
• Impact force increased from 11.0 to 13.0

Light Machine Gun

Primary Fire
• Recoil pattern has been updated
• Damage increased from 13.0 to 15.0
• Impact force increased from 13.0 to 15.0

Blast SMG

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 10.0 to 11.0
• Impact force increased from 7.0 to 9.0
• Energy cost decreased from 2.75 to 2.25

Scratch Rifle

Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5
Alternative Fire
• Damage increased from 60.0 to 64.0

Pumping Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 12.0 to 14.0

Sawed-Offs

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.0 to 10.0

Grandma's Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 12.0 to 14.0

Kramer

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 14.0 to 17.0
• Energy cost decreased from 4.5 to 3.0

Blunderbuss

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.0 to 10.0
• Impact force increased from 8.0 to 13.0
• Energy cost decreased from 12.0 to 10.0

Power Gloves

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 38.0 to 52.0
• Impact force increased from 68.0 to 76.0
• Energy cost decreased from 8.0 to 6.0

Graviton Launcher

Flare Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 36.0 to 38.0

Torpedo Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 12.0 to 11.0

Mortar

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 80.0 to 92.0

Missile Gatling

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 22.0 to 24.0
• Impact force decreased from 35.0 to 26.0

Throwing Knife

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 25.0 to 28.0
• Impact force increased from 10.0 to 16.0

Rifle Crossbow

Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 1.75

Revolver

Primary Fire
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 2.0
• Removed ‘Bullseye’ as a base affix

Dual Crossbows

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 30.0 to 36.0
• Impact force increased from 32.0 to 36.0
• Critical ratio decreased from 2.25 to 2.0

Scout Sniper

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 52.0 to 54.0
• Critical ratio increased from 2.25 to 2.5
• Removed ‘Bullseye’ as a base affix

Arquebus

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 26.0 to 40.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.75 to 2.0
• Energy cost decreased from 15.0 to 10.0

Sheriff's Carbine

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 53.0 to 55.0
• Impact force increased from 46.0 to 48.0

Longbow

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 70.0 to 72.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 1.75

Ice Cannon

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 50.0 to 52.0
• Energy cost decreased from 22.0 to 12.0

Cryo Launcher

Primary Fire
• Firerate increased from 4.54/s to 5.0/s
• Energy cost decreased from 6.0 to 3.5

Fire Gun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 14.0 to 15.0
• Energy cost decreased from 6.0 to 4.0

Shock Rifle

Primary Fire
• Energy cost decreased from 3.0 to 2.25

Shock Cannon

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 8.0 to 9.0
• Energy cost decreased from 4.0 to 3.0

Fire Launcher

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 30.0 to 36.0
• Projectile speed increased from 5600 to 6500
• Energy cost decreased from 8.0 to 7.0

Junk Beam

Primary Fire
• Energy cost decreased from 3.5 to 2.5

Blast Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 9.5 to 10.0
• Impact force increased from 7.0 to 9.0

Assault Rifle

• Ammo in clip increased from 30 to 35
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 11.0 to 10.0
• Impact force increased from 9.5 to 10.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5

Militia Rifle

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 11.0 to 13.0
• Impact force decreased from 13.0 to 12.0

Minigun

• Ammo in clip decreased from 100 to 80
Primary Fire
• Damage decreased from 10.0 to 9.0

Blastgun

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 14.0 to 18.0
• Energy cost decreased from 6.0 to 5.0

Blast Minigun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 7.0 to 8.0
• Impact force increased from 5.0 to 7.0
• Energy cost decreased from 1.5 to 1.2

Dual Guns

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 10.0 to 12.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.25 to 1.5

Blast Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 10.0 to 11.0
• Impact force increased from 5.0 to 10.0

Sulfator Shotgun

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 6.0 to 7.0
• Impact force increased from 10.0 to 11.0

Laser Saw

Barrel Cannon

Primary Fire
• Explosion radius increased from 1.0m to 1.2m

Rocket Launcher

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 64.0 to 66.0

Pulse Blaster

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 4.0 to 14.0
• Energy cost decreased from 3.5 to 2.5

Flak Cannon

Long Rifle

Blast Sniper

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 26.0 to 42.0
• Energy cost decreased from 12.0 to 10.0

Dual Blast Guns

Elite Sniper

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 80.0 to 86.0
• Impact force increased from 80.0 to 86.0
• Critical ratio increased from 2.0 to 2.25

Elite Crossbow

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 52.0 to 56.0
• Critical ratio increased from 1.5 to 1.75

Blast Palms

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 15.0 to 17.0
• Energy cost decreased from 4.0 to 3.0

Assault Sentry

Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 18.0 to 20.0

Ball Cannon

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 80.0 to 96.0
• Energy cost decreased from 48.0 to 30.0

Cyclone

Primary Fire
• Impact force increased from 32.0 to 46.0
Alternative Fire
• Impact force increased from 90.0 to 110.0

Blast Arbalest

• Added 28 new bazaar items

Balance Changes

• Added the visuals for Bazaar Bob (he’s now a polite and gentle monsieur)

• Completely overhauled the basecamp map, size, buildings visuals and placement
• Added 7 visual levels for the basecamp buildings (each have 7 different appearances based on your level and many other aspects of the basecamp will evolve alongside them)

Developers' Note: For now, you will only witness the visual evolution when going back into the map after you leveled up your basecamp through purchasing upgrades. Later down the road, you will probably get to experience it on-the-fly.

Upgrades

• The upgrade ‘Lottery Ticket’ level 2 now grants a chance to find 2 powercells in Max’ Chests

• ‘Safety Helmet’ now grants Armor instead of Health

Developers' Note: ‘Yoyo design’, remember?

• Added several new enemies: Firepawn, Ghostpawn, Hatfly, Larvabug, Goliath Larvabug, Firepod and Elitepawn (4 variations)
• Added a new boss in the random pool of Act 1 bosses
• Updated the size of several different enemies

Developers' Note: Shouldn’t change much from a gameplay perspective aside from being just a tiny bit easier to shoot at. This change was mainly a subsequent change of the player-character height change.

Developers' Note: We therefore reworked the pattern a bit and it should even be a little more interesting to play around (in terms of movement skills).

Elite Enemies

Developers' Note: View the patch highlights for more details.

Bosses

Dr. Turret

Judgeball

Uncle Jim

• The duration of its head-helmet protection has been reduced
• Missile attack preshoot time decreased from 1.5s to 1s

• Removed the hidden upgrade in ‘Oasis’
• Fully reworked ‘Haven-City’ and ‘Haven-City’ corrupted visuals
• Removed the dead-end containing enemies in ‘Haven-City’
• Added easier access to ‘Haven-City’ heights
• Added new railings in ‘Haven-City’ heights

Developers' Note: These 3 previous changes should make backtracking in ‘Haven-City’ less frequent and the entire level faster to travel therefore reducing the amount of time spent in ‘Haven-City’ overall.

• Reworked the corruption visuals (you know, these purplish thingy things)
• Reworked the enemy line-up of all levels (following the introduction of new enemies)
• Added 2 Goliath enemies in ‘Haven-City Corrupted’ (you don’t have to take them down to unlock the door to the boss)
• Added 1 Goliath enemy in ‘Quarry’
• Added 2 Goliath enemies in ‘Fields’
• Added ‘Larvabug’ as an enemy in ‘Oasis’ (it’s a huge enemy, but less threatening than usual Goliaths)
• Reduced the frequency of Flashflies encounter in ‘Ruins’
• Reduced the frequency of Leashbots encounter in ‘Fields’
• Reduced the enemy density in ‘Fields’ battle room
• Added new challenge rooms everywhere

Developers' Note: This is just the very first step of the integration of a more ‘final’ experience for the story elements. Do not be surprised if Max tells you about things you already know or have already completed as the new system is based on your game progression (and the dialogue system starts fresh: he considers you as a new player). We will be monitoring your feedback and reactions to this new system and update it accordingly.

• Entirely reworked the Class Selector interface
• Added an option to remove the white-flash damage indicator on enemies when dealing damage to them
• Added a colored frame to the text popping in when interacting with ingame shop
• Switched the colored frame to red when you don’t have enough powercells to interact with ingame shops
• Switched the stun interface from displaying arrows to displaying movement keys
• Updated the key design of the stun interface to also displays the movement direction
• Increased the size of the screen-space available when being flashed
• Added new elements and polished the end-level and end-game screen

Developers' Note: This is just the first step in improving these screens, we’re thinking of adding more elements and information including but not limited to the scores and figures of your run as well as detailed information regarding your build.

Developers' Note: Audio has been ongoing several in-depth changes regarding spatialization (spatial recognition), attenuation (range recognition), concurrency (managing multiple instances of the same sound) and mix (the overall balance of volume between the different sounds of the game). While it should be healthier for the game in the long-run (both in terms of future implementation as well as future game experience), it also means that things might sound a bit different than before (and maybe a bit broken). We will be monitoring this and taking appropriate measures to fix and improve that.

• Reworked the importance of interface sounds within the global mix
• Modified interface sounds volume ducking depending on music volume
• Reworked the attenuation settings for all the different sound categories
• Reworked the concurrency settings of all sounds in the game

Developers' Note: This was particularly important for all older devices which are unable to render more than 32 sounds at once. Changing the concurrency settings will make sure to never reach that limit (and also prevent our ears from exploding if one sound would be spawned a dozen times at once).

• Added some missing explosion sounds for both players and enemies
• Added some missing enemy sounds regarding attack animations and shoots
• Added or tweaked enemy projectile impact and travel sounds
• Normalized interface sound volumes
• Reworked button hover sound (new one should sound way more pleasing)
• The level ambient sound now also plays during loading screen and end-game screen
• Added a “mega land” sound that plays when landing from a very high spot
• Added a sound for the triple-jump to make it sound different than the double-jump
• Updated destructible sounds
• Added some missing sounds on several perks, items and status effects

• Fixed an issue with the ‘Electro Punishment’ perk which made it trigger against Frozen enemies rather than Stunned ones
• Other numerous bug fixes

• Some languages still have missing localization

Oct 28, 2022

Roboquest Devblog #11 - The Winter Update

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Howdy ho everyone!

We’ve been talking about it several times now and we’re finally here to share it: our new Roboquest devblog.

In this devblog, we’ll talk about a few of the incoming additions to the game and we’ll finish by touching a few words on the technical issues we’ve been facing as of late (and that you’ve been reporting).

As indicated on the roadmap, the next update will be the Winter update, we have no release date to reveal yet. It will probably be around mid-December, but as usual, we don’t want to set expectations for this date considering the development is in progress.

Shall we start then?

Corrupted Levels

We need to kick things off with a heads up regarding the corrupted levels mentioned in the roadmap.

We initially planned to include them in the Winter update. But they aren’t ready yet and won’t probably be ready in December either.

We hope it’s not too disappointing as more time to work on them means higher quality in the end. And since it’s something many of you are waiting for, we really want to do it right (like everything else in the game actually, but the other things are smaller chunks and easier to release piece by piece and rework if needed).

But… we never talked about them so you might be wondering “what the heck are those corrupted levels anyway?!”.

So let’s take some time to discuss it.

Please note that everything below (the level layout introduced by the image and the corrupted levels themselves) are still under construction and are subject to change.

The levels indicated as ? are potential new levels, considered “corrupted”.

Corrupted means they will be crawling under the weight of the weird-looking, purple-ish architecture you’ve seen in the challenge rooms and Haven City - Corrupted. But that’s not all.

We’re trying to give them uniqueness through specific objectives and new ways to complete them. They will also play a role in the final level progression system (the way to progress through the game in order to reach the final level).

If the current levels in the game can be considered the spine of the level progression, the corrupted levels are the extension of it. They will form alternate paths and provide incentive and alternative run objectives during your progression.

That’s pretty much what we can say right now, we know it’s not that much but we hope it will help make your wait worth it nonetheless. Now, let’s move on to the next topic.

Basecamp Rework

This was a recurring question after the Autumn update as well as a concern many of you shared. We probably didn’t communicate well enough on that side. The 3D visuals of the basecamp will come back! We’re just in the process of reworking how it looks.

Here’s a sneak peek of the future visuals (note that everything is subject to change, especially the position of each object relative to each other, to ensure a smooth and efficient navigation within the basecamp):

Note: We already shared that image in a previous devblog but we’re doing it again to make sure everyone is aware that we will indeed implement new 3D visuals in the basecamp and the visuals you’re currently experiencing in the game is temporary.

The basecamp will visually evolve as you unlock new upgrades, we have several levels of progression planned and almost ready to go. There will also be an array of different interactive spots in the basecamp (some of them that you already know like the difficulty or class selector but also new ones).

But we needed a more intuitive and pleasing way to unlock the basecamp upgrades hence why we reworked the way you unlock upgrades to use a 2D interface. Not only is it more convenient to use but it also neatly lays out the numerous basecamp upgrades to make you able to clearly visualize all of them.

Most of that will be available in the Winter update (aside from a few of the new interactive consoles that are tied to other game systems such as a potential Compendium).

Please note that the unlocking process will remain this way (using a 2D interface).

New Class?!

This probably will peak the interest of most of you (or at least we hope it does :p). What about the new class?

The ‘Sentinel’ is currently in the early stage of implementation in the game, which means we’re testing it and ironing out the quirks and oddities that occur during that time. For now, we feel like we’re on the right track regarding its abilities and interest compared to other classes.

In our initial design, the Sentinel had a dash as main ability and a throwing spear as a secondary ability. Throwing a spear made it stick onto the ground for a short time, and picking it up would refresh its cooldown.

But after some time and playtests, we realized the Stealth would be more fitting for the Sentinel as it would help it safely pick up the spears. Also it seemed counterintuitive to have a ranged secondary ability coupled with a “all-in” main ability like a dash.

And interestingly enough we initially planned to have a Dash ability for the Recon (but couldn’t implement it in the game due to the multiplayer movement issues that have been solved since). Also, a dash would make a lot of sense in terms of mechanics when coupled with the melee slash of the Recon. Finally, we realized a “dash” ability would have a faster cooldown than a “stealth” ability, making the “charge combo points” synergy between the main and secondary abilities of the Recon work even better than before.

So we gave it some thought and realized swapping those two abilities would make a lot of sense. And here where we’re at right now (please note that like the other sections of this devblog, most of what you can read here is a work-in-progress and subject to change):

Recon

Dash - A new ability, dash a short distance, evades projectiles along the way, short cooldown, gives some charge of Overslash
Slash - Like before
Overslash - Like before

Sentinel

Stealth - Like before, fully charges Trueshot
Spear - Throws a piercing spear at your crosshair, dealing damage on impact, can be picked up to replenish its cooldown, has two stacks
Trueshot - Charges a point every second, each point increases critical damage, taking damage makes you lose points

Obviously, most perks related to the Stealth ability have been moved to the Sentinel, but we also modified them and created new ones. And we created new perks for the Recon’s Dash ability.

Regarding classes and perks, the Winter Update will therefore focus on the implementation of the Sentinel and the polishing of the Recon’s perks, upgrades and new ability. We will obviously also be making some minor changes to other classes according to your feedback and our data.

Bonus: here’s a concept art board of the Sentinel’s spear:

Elite Enemies

We will be pushing a temporary system in the Winter Update to implement the Elite enemies in the game.

We already know what Elite enemies are: powerful and beefy enemies with multiple threatening attacks and potential crowd controls (and no, the Goliaths in Haven City aren’t Elite enemies despite them fitting this description pretty well).

Though, they are tied to other systems in the game that won’t be ready for the Winter Update. Therefore we can’t implement their final spawn system.

But rather than simply wait for these other systems to be ready, we thought we should find an easy way to inject them in the game right now. Therefore you will encounter some elite enemies during your runs, at arbitrary locations.

Not only does this solution make the elite enemies available for you sooner, it also gives us the possibility to evaluate them and listen to your feedback and our data earlier.

Here are also a few things you might want to know about the Elite enemies:
Elite enemies will be directly tied to the in-run economy (powercells)
The spawning of Elite enemies will make sure that early levels such as the Canyons remain interesting in terms of difficulty in the long-term
The spawn rate of Elite enemies will be also tied to the difficulty level (Heroes+) and your game progression overall (the more you progress, the more numerous elite enemies are)
The elite enemies and corrupted levels are closely tied to each other

So Elite enemies will make their first appearance in the game in a very simple way in the Winter update. We will be monitoring your feedback and our data and we will implement their final spawn system later down the road.

Bonus: here’s a concept art of one of the elite enemies and the first look at an early implementation in the game:

Energy Weapons

There are a few long-lasting issues with the current energy weapon system:

It’s not connected to the reloading-effects (can’t build synergies with them)
If we want them to feel good to use, we have to set a fast recovery rate,
If we want them to have a real “cost”, we have to set a rather “high” energy cost
The two assertion above makes energy weapons both heat and cool super-fast
All of that makes it so maintaining the energy at a specific level (for example above 50%) was really hard to do (you wouldn’t spend a lot of time in that state and reaching the state would only take a few shots), therefore limiting the gameplay interest of the condition “above or below X% energy” (which is a pity considering it is an interesting effect to play around)
Another consequence of this lack of “control” over the gauge is that you can just completely ignore the gauge and how it behaves when you play
The final issue was that energy weapon would incentivize switching weapons way less than magazine weapons

While we identified most of these issues, we still had to find a way to fix them without losing the feeling of using a weapon that uses an energy that heats (rises) and cools (goes down) at a rate that is in rhythm with Roboquest combat pace.

To increase the “play-space” (the amount of time you can actually play with it) of the energy gauge, the first step was to reduce both the energy cost when shooting and the recovery speed. But then we found ourselves in a situation where you had to wait a lot of time for the weapon to cool down (or shoot a long time to force it to overheat).

This first change was fixing a lot of the issues mentioned above, but the issue it created felt frustrating and not in sync with the combat pace.

Hopefully, this desynchronization issue could be solved by allowing you to press “Reload” to force the overheat of the weapon. And interestingly enough, this was also fixing the issue of energy weapons not being able to benefit from the “reloading” effects.

To sum this up, here are the changes coming for the energy weapons:

Reduced energy cost
Reduced energy recovery speed
You can now press R to force the weapon to overheat

Technical Issues

While we already discussed those issues in our latest hotfix, we felt like many of you might have missed those points, and we feel like they are pretty important so let us reiterate here.

The game is facing both long-lasting and new technical issues, noticeably: mouse inputs not registering, lack of performance (or recent loss of performance) and an abnormal CPU heat.

We’ve recently received numerous reports on these sides and we wanted to take some time to discuss those and the measures we’re taking to solve them.

Firstly we want to make sure you’re aware that we are concerned by these issues and are looking into them. We are not ignoring them. The fact that some of these issues were reported a while ago but weren’t fixed doesn’t mean we don’t care about them, it means we weren’t able to fix them. The fact that more people are having these issues and that we are more experienced than before (in developing games in general but more especially in improving the game’s performance) means that we are much more likely to find the cause of these issues.

We know you want to hear from us “it’s fixed”, but these are not easy fixes for us, they are important technical issues that we need to dive deep into. So apologize if it’s taking some time. We hope you will grant us that time.

Then, let’s talk about each of these issues and a few of the workarounds we and the community were able to come up with:

Mouse inputs not registering

Issue description: I click on my mouse but it doesn’t shoot with my weapons
Potential identified causes: Lack of game focus, frame-skipping the input due to the lack of input multi-threading, compatibility problems between some laptops hardware and our game.
State of the issue: We’re looking at ways to better enforce game focus and how to implement a multi-threading input system. Meanwhile we’re also trying to find a machine with a similar issue in order to run more in-depth tests. All of that while continuing to gather all the data we can from your reports.
Potential workarounds: If it’s a focus issue, switching to ‘Fullscreen’ render should alleviate if not entirely get rid of the issue. If the issue lies within the other causes, we don’t have any workaround for now (reducing the graphical settings may be of some help). In any case, we recommend setting the game to fullscreen to see if the issue persists.

CPU overheating

Issue description: My CPU heats a lot, too much and more than other games
Potential identified causes: Seems to be a recurring issue with Ryzen CPUs when running the “unlimited framerate” option, but it might not be limited to Ryzen CPUs. It might be coming from a game engine issue that needs resolving on our end. In any case, the issue might be that the game is overloading one single CPU core.
State of the issue: We’re trying to find a machine with similar specs that actually has this problem in order to run more in-depth tests directly on it. Some of us do have computers equipped with a Ryzen CPU and are playing with unlimited framerate without experiencing any issue. We’re also trying to find other correlations between that issue and specific hardware pieces.
Potential workarounds: Disabling V-Sync and limiting framerate to 144, 100 or even 60 should help (we absolutely know that it’s far from the ideal solution, it’s a “workaround” for those wishing to play but being afraid to melt their CPU in the process). Downloading RyzenController and manually limiting the CPU temperature is another workaround. Our last one would be to limit CPU usage directly in Windows (power options -> power saver plan).

Loss of performance

Issue description: The latest update made the game performances worst
Potential identified causes: We have no lead on that side, the game’s supposed to run smoother the more we optimize it (and we’re optimizing it a bit more each update).
State of the issue: We’re gathering more data on the issue (such as the specs of the people experiencing it) and are also expecting our optimization process to eventually solve that.
Potential workarounds: We don’t really have a workaround for now. Reinstalling the game might fix the issue (maybe, hopefully).

This marks the end of our eleventh devblog. We hope you liked it!

If you have any question, feedback or comment, make sure to tell us, we will be actively following the conversation here, on the Steam forums and on our Discord!

And as usual, happy robot bashing everyone!