M.A.S.S. Builder update for 30 September 2023

Surprise surprise! We were able to finish our bug hunt and final polishing sooner than expected and we're ready to release our update... so why wait? It's been a really long development cycle this time and we hope we're able to meet some expectations you people have for us.

As always, we'll monitor for any bugs and changes required for a week or two. We hope you'll have fun with this update and if nothing's too wrong or required a hotfix, we'll start working towards 0.11.0 ASAP!

Known Bugs

~~* New Parts not dropping, we'll have a hotfix ready tonight.

• ALSO New simple parts aren't available as baseline somehow, we'll have a hotfix for it tonight.~~
• Enemies now drop blueprints for new weapon parts.
• Simple melee parts are now available without any blueprints.
• Drones should now drop items like all enemies.

Additions

System Voice feature

This is the first iteration of voices in M.A.S.S. Builder. We've asked some of our friends as well as the talented Tequila from ARP to add their voices into the game as "system voice." Now this first iteration is not perfect and is not our planned Full Voice of the whole story and NPCs. The purpose of this system-voice is to add flavor into gameplay as well as notify players of some events happening in combat such as having to reload, taking multiple instances of damage, boss using their signature move, or your durability running low.

It also serves a purpose of more customization as we intend to acquire a lot of seiyuus/voice actors for this system, much more than the amount of NPCs in the game (so we won't have the problem of "why isn't my favorite voice actor in the game?"). Before anyone asks, yes we do plan to have some voices be in different languages as well as ENGRISH pronunciations but those will come later when the system is more fleshed out.

We appreciate feedback about this system as we'll frankly say it's unfinished and we would like to perfect them before we go for the big names to add their voices into our game. Of course, anyone who wishes to turn these voices off have the option to do so.

Photo Mode

• Added a few new Photo Mode backgrounds
  

• Added a few new Photo Mode poses
  

Missions

• 5 new Campaign missions. Take the fight back to the Cyclops and continue your resistant against the Quark threat. New enemies are added into the game for a more interesting experience. The end is nigh.
• 2 new Hunt missions. One featuring M.A.S.S. units enemies for a fun session fighting against enemies spamming bullets, missiles, and beams at you. The other is a large arena in the volcanic rift with tons of enemies trailing you about for a non-stop bout. Have fun.
• 3 new-old multiplayer missions as requested by our players. These are the same missions you've played in 0.9.0 but with a much lower difficulty. They're labeled as [Normal] and the old missions are now labeled as [Hard].
  

Enemies

• Added new machine enemies. These include new Cyclops mech variant and drones. They don't do much damage, but will spam their bullets and missiles a lot.
  
• Added 12 new Quarks, some with a unique moveset that doesn't just run and crash into players. We've also reworked some enemies and some boss patterns and we hope they're more fun to fight against.
  

New Customization Parts

• Added a few new melee parts to the game
• Added simple melee parts with minimal dimensions and the simplest polygons for players to mess around with using the accessory system to create something of their own with ease.
  
• Added a few new Accessories to the game
  

Improvements

• Aiming Mode Camera - When players enter aiming mode (default: hold down right click) and boost, the camera will now hold towards the side when players first boosted as much as possible and not bounce between left and right. Players still cannot lock it to one side but it'll bounce much less and we intend to keep it this way for future dynamic usage of walls and covers allowing players to hide behind and shoot out from both sides, but we'll be improving on it as we go.
• Combo Speed Ramping - When players use melee weapons and enter into a combo, they will swing faster with each attack up to a certain cap as long as they remain attacking in the combo. This attack speed resets whenever the combo end, but will be reapplied if a player chooses to chain their combo into another combo chain (like entering an extended or empowered combo after a normal combo string).

We've also merged parts of the extended combo into the base combo and they can still move into another extended combo for this feature to fully shine.

• Boosting Momentum retains acceleration direction - Whenever players boost towards a direction and stops boosting, they will now accelerate towards the direction they last faced instead of forward where the camera is aiming.
• Optimized Multiplayer latency and crashing issues.
• We've reworked most of the game's audio. It's now much more dynamic, appropriate for both Quarks and the weapons, and should not have anything too overbearing.

Game Balance Changes

Disclaimer:

• Node changes notes will only mention up to tier 6 nodes. Changes to tier 7 nodes aren't mentioned, but have taken effect in game.
• Most balance changes have been discussed with our players through discord, and we'll keep monitoring how things perform.

Generic Adjustments
With the latest adjustments, some shooters and launchers have fallen too far from grace. While still usable, it required too much investment to work while some other ones have been too prevalent. We're buffing the underperforming ones while also nerfing the overperforming ones with low investments extremely slightly.

• Magazine load and Energy cap ceiling is raised from 1500 to 2000.

AUTO shooters have been reworked:

• Lowered AUTO shooters' damage per round.

• Increased AUTO shooters' shooting speed. It now fires roughly 15 rounds per second, even faster than its 0.8.0 counterpart.

• Increased AUTO shooters' ammo stock cap gained from Magazine Load and Energy Cap status. This is to compensate for the increase in firing speed as well as provide a more comfortable experience in using them.

• Bullet and Energy Shooter's AUTO mode now gains a substantial difference. ES will fire much faster than before, but will require some time to regenerate all its ammo. BS, on the other hand, just require players to reload to fully gain back all of its ammo.

• Increased SINGLE Damage by around 2%.

• Increased DETONATOR Damage by around 3%.

• Increased DETONATOR Stamina Damage by around 10%

• Increased SLASH Stamina Damage by around 5%.

• Decreased RAY damage by around 2%

• Decreased SPREAD damage by around 2%

• Decreased Wave damage by around 5%

• Increased PHOTON, NUKE, HOMING, damage by around 10%

• Quantum Break: Enhanced has its duration extended by 2 second. It now lasts 5 seconds more than other forms (up from 3 seconds).

Defensive Tech nodes
We feel that most defensive techs are useful enough right now, with different flavors of how tanky would one like to be and in what condition. Our players have suggested a new tech for us and we liked it, so we're adding it here.

• Reactive Armor II is replaced with Road's Armor. It reads While having 50% or higher DURABILTY, gains 12% increased defense. While having 49% or lower DURABILTY, gains 7% increased speed.
• Kinetic Reversal is nerfed from 14% to 12%. We still think this is strong enough as it buffs total damage.

Close Combat Tech nodes
Close Combat is now is a good place and a number of different builds can be made with the playstyle, thus we won't touch much or it aside from small buffs here and there alongside some QB techs adjustments.

• Airblast Trigger damage loss buffed from -43% to -41%. While the intended design of Airblast Trigger is to generate more proc chances for things such as VRW, lowering it to under 0.25 seconds sometimes cause an infinite loop of self triggering (which might sound awesome but the constant exploding screen shake is nauseating during testing) so we're buffing its damage minimally to make it a bit more charming to use.
• Kinetic Canceller increased defense duration increased from 0.75 seconds to 1.25 seconds.

Quantum Break Tech nodes
Quantum Break adjustments in 0.9.0 have brought it to a good place, albeit some sub-units are underperforming while some are difficult to use. We had discussions with players regarding some of them and changed them accordingly to improve their usability.

• Immediate Enhancement duration is buffed from -50% to -25%.
• Quantum Kelvinizer damage is decreased from 1000% to 650%. Quantum Kelvinizer AoE is increased by around 40%. This was a player requested change for the ease of usage and was discussed to make sure they really wanted AoE instead of damage.
• Sky Disperser damage is increased from 150% to 180%.
• Unending Transformer I is now Particle Life-Extension-Unit functionality change. It now reads: Quantum Break Duration is increased by 66%. Quantum Break Charges gain from attacking Quarks -66%.
• Unending Transformer I is now Particle Life-Extension-Unit functionality change. It now reads: Quantum Break Duration is increased by 66%. Quantum Break Charges gain from attacking Quarks -66%.

Extra Note: There has been a request for a node to replace Quantum Spender but to just forego Quantum charges all-in and gain some status buffs. We'd like the requester to use Quantum Empowerment as it serves that purpose already, providing an extremely substantial buff for quite a long period of time.

Ranged Tech nodes
Base powers of ranged styles have always been high and even with scarcity in their techs, has been a prevalent playstyle in our game up until the latest update where melee was finally in a good place alongside Quantum Break based builds. We're not in a hurry to buff ranged as a whole with how safe it is to just always be out of enemies' range of attacks while still able to constantly take them down. With that said, we also wanted to provide more playstyle towards shooters and give them some small improvements overall.

• Added in a new sub-unit called Close Combat Pointmarker. It reads: Gain increased 13% PIERCING and PLASMA Atk. while there are at least 1 enemies nearby. Lose 7% PIERCING and PLASMA Atk. when there are no enemies nearby. Please experiment with it as a close combat shooter node.

• Full Metal Jacket and Binary Monarch are combined into one node called Full Metal Monarch. Downsides are removed to not brick the other side but upsides are lowered in values to compensate the power gained. The node now behaves just like an automatic ammo pickup every few seconds. The node now reads: Gain 12% Bullet Shooter ammo stock every 12 seconds and 2% Energy Shooter cells stock every 3 seconds.

• Micro Ammunitions-Factory Maximum Durability and Shields increased from -85% to -75%

• Seismic Propulsion Damage is increased from 400% to 450%.

• Frontal Unloader I Damage is increased from 25% to 37%.

Property Damage Tech nodes
After the previous balancing and removal of most resistances, Property Damage, especially HEAT have been working too well above others to the point where even without any investments, it's straight up addition to damage against raw physical or piercing builds and we've observed players telling each other to just set everything to HEAT because it's too good. What we're doing here again, is lowering the floor for zero-investments and raising the ceiling for high-investments to shine more for HEAT, and upping FREEZE and SHOCK's utilities.

• Lower base BURN damage multiplier equivalent to 40% acquirable from tech nodes.

• Blaze Arms Enhancer BURN damage multiplier is increased from 75% to 100%.

• Melting Chemicals BURN damage multiplier is increased from 35% to 50%.

• Suncaller BURN damage multiplier is increased from 10% to 25%.

• Sunbringer BURN damage multiplier is increased from 10% to 25%.

• Baseline FREEZE duration is increased by 20%

• Long Lasting Cryo Chems duration is increased from 40% to 50%

• Cryo Coated Metals damage is increased from 250% to 275%

• Baseline SHOCK effectiveness increased by 10%

• Arms Conduction Controller SHOCK chance is increased from 12% to 15%

• Pods Conduction Controller SHOCK chance is increased from 10% to 12%

• Fluid Cycling Bits extra damage is increased from 60% to 63%.

• Tinkerer's Blade extra damage is increased from 80% to 85%.

Afterburners I and II are changed to proc only at the start of boosting rather than start and end. This is to solve a misunderstanding of our players saying it's a bugged sub-unit that can be exploited by macro spamming. We wanted to clarify that we made Afterburners have a cooldown check only at the start due to how fast a boost can end and had wanted to keep the interaction but we've received requests and messages telling us how it is "bugged" and we decided we should solve it. However, we understand that some people love the node and the playstyle to use Afterburners to deal damage thus we are buffing the sub-unit to compensate.

• Afterburners cooldown on start proc reduced from 1 second to 0.75 seconds.
• Afterburners damage is increased to from 65% to 175%.

Resource Tech nodes
Raised all farming nodes percentages for the ease of farming everything. Remember, these can stack.

• Materials Collector increased chance to get materials from 10/15/20 to 20/27/35%.
• Enemy Inspector increased change to get blueprints from 15/30/45%% to 30/50/70%.
• WDF Recording Unit increased mission rewards from 15% to 40%.

Enemy Changes

• More fodder enemies will be spawned in every mission, especially in challenge missions.
• Sandstorm Glutton's mission boss melee attacks damage lowered by around 10%
• Sandstorm Glutton's mission mechanics damage lowered by 20% in NORMAL and 10% in HARD difficulty.
• Shields and health numbers have been adjusted for all enemies. They are lowered by a substantial amount in NORMAL and around 10% less in VERY HARD.
• Shields regain to full after refilling stamina in Normal has mostly been removed (there are still some bosses that have this as a part of their identity) from NORMAL difficulty. These bosses will have significantly lower HP than other bosses.
• Bosses' ultimate attack cooldown has been increased. They now uses the ultimate attack less, but they does more damage and some are harder to dodge in higher difficulties.
• All co-op missions had their scaling lowered by around 25%. They are now easier but we still recommend players to achieve at least tier 5 units and sub-units first before challenging them.

Rewards Changes

• Raised the credits reward at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD
• Raised the bonus credits rewards at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD

Bug Fixes

• Raised the credits reward at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD
• Raised the bonus credits rewards at the end of mission of EASY, NORMAL, and HARD to be almost identical to VERY HARD
• We've taught Quarks to not spawn inside walls or out of bounds. They are now smarter and hopefully spawn correctly.
• Fixed Lens Flare not showing in Multiplayer Lobbies.
• Fixed some weird camera angles in Multiplayer Lobbies.