Update 9 Feedback

[Zeritol]

First off I have to applaud DE for staying so late to get the patch and hotfix out. Thank you for that.

Some of the changes you made were completely positive. The new grinner map tiles are awesome. Keep up the good work on that. While on the subject of new art the new blade storm looks very nice. More mods and weapons are always nice although some of the new mods seem repetitive (there are 2 nightmare mode that as far as I can tell are just melee channel. Do they do different elemental damage or something?) The 2 new bosses both look nice and Vor especially is fun to fight. Almost forgot THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE DOJO CHANGES! My clan of 3 can now finally start building our Dojo. I look forward to checking out that whole system.

There are some parts of the update that are a mix of good and bad. The new UI for the map looks very nice (I especially like the scenes before missions), however it has lost some features. You can no longer tell what area your group is trying to go to, you cant tell how big your group is anymore, you cant see alerts / news unless you are all the way zoomed out, and you can't do the non alert version of an area with an alert now. (last one isn't that big of a deal but it is still something you could do and cant now as far as I can tell.

The changes to the artifact fall into this category as well (at least for me I know some people seem to hate them with a passion). I like being able to level my artifacts now. I don't mind that you have to be close to people to get the benefits from there artifact. (having some way to know how big the range was would be nice though) I also am not completely against having them take up mod points as long as they are better than they used to be. (most seem to be but I haven't seen some of them leveled all the way and I believe energy siphon / rejuvenation my be the same as it was at max level) My big problem is with the polarities, the fact that they are harder to swap, and that you have no idea if your team mates are using. The one nice thing about the artifacts was that you could swap them out depending on what people had to make your team more balanced. (OK so most of the time it did just end up that you had 3 energy siphons and a radar, but that's a balancing issue and that could be worked on) With the new system you have to pick a artifact and stick with it. The group you are in wants a rejuvenation but you have an energy siphon installed. you either have to take out another mod to get back points, or use a lower ranked one (assuming you have a lower ranked one lying around). Before it was a simple change. From a lore standpoint I like the polarities on the artifacts. It helps define the frames a bit more (excal is more well rounded, rhino like to kill things etc), but from a game play standard we got 2 nerfs to the artifact system. One they have a cost now. This to me is offset by the fact that they are better than they were. Two they are not easily swappable anymore. We got no benefit for this change. I would recommend making all the artifacts have there own polarity to fix this (maybe a O like they show as in the mod screen).

There are also some bugs / changes that were not mentioned. A few were just hot fixed and I am glad to see this. The biggest one I have noticed is that Blade Storm used to do 1000 armor ignoring damage without focus, and now with it on I am hitting 400 (600 crit) with it on. Unless this is just a display error (I have seen a few damage related weirdness like the new drone boss not showing any numbers some time when he takes damage) that is a big nerf. At first I just assumed that you took away its armor ignoring, but doing exactly 400 damage after armor seems unlikely.  The other big thing I noticed was that the lotus is reallllllllllly quiet now.  If I turn up the volume so that I can hear her then I am deafened by the noises of everything else that talks.

Wow that ended up being longer than I intended. All in all I like what you have done with u9. It does feel like some areas were slightly rushed, but that could be because you messed yourself up by announcing it was today. I feel like you guys have a very solid foundation with what you did with this update. It just needs some polish and tweaking. Keep up the good work and go get some sleep if your still up.

 

EDIT: Spelling changes wrote this in Steam overlay and didn't realize it had no spell check.

EDIT 2: Forgot about the lotus voice volume thing.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Zeritol

[Ddublu]

I gotta agree with you on basically all your points. I also feel basically the same way about the new changes; though I've always wondered what other V slot artifacts are there besides Steel Charge.. Rifle Amp? Anyways yeah that lotus voice thing.. I can't seem to find an equalizer volume; I hope they can fix the broken voice soon xD