Update log
Full We Who Are About To Die update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Store
- Gameplay
- Balance
AVE ASPIRANTS!
Welcome to Preview #2 of the upcoming content update. (Celebrating the anniversary of the game!)
In Preview #1 I gave some info about 1.0 and look at some of the new traits, attributes system as well as some of the new items.
Today I'll reveal more content and dig into the big overhaul this update will have: the AI overhaul (the second one if anyone's counting!)
Total AI Overhaul
After the last Major Update (Blood & Sand) where we massively improved combat and animations, the AI started to fall behind again in terms of quality. For me it was the one big weak link in the game's combat. We set out to overhaul the AI again (staying fearless!) with some specific goals in mind:
To get more movement and lethality in the AI. Make them more aggressive and fix them being static and passive.
Make the AI go between much more clear "tired" and "not tired" states
- CosmeticBring back some bitethe AI was generally too easy, especially low level
Fixing glitchy stuff like odd movement, failed attacks, jitters, odd repetitive blocks etc.
Depicted: twitchy odd behavior of the old AI
To achieve these goals we rebuilt the AI from scratch, which was scary, but turned out very worth it.
Gassed Out
In the last update we vastly improved stamina from a gameplay and visual POV. The old AI was not super aware of its own stamina.
Some Aspirants would never run out of stam, and some would be permanently tired once they got gassed out.
Generally speaking Aspirants are now much more aware of their own stamina than in the past. They still care about the amount of enemies, health, their own personality and weapon type and much more, but Stamina has a higher priority now.
Depicted: a retreating, tired enemy.
The AI will be far more aggressive when full of energy and go into a very passive mode when gassed out. They will then retreat, recharge and go again.
You'll have to keep this in mind and switch between aggressive and defensive as well! The dance of the arena...
Depicted: the counter attack
In the new aggressive state, they unleash attacks after attacks, including combo's, and are generally far better at hitting and being scary - they really go for the throat.
We have elimited all the weird unnecessary pauses and blocks they used to do too, so it can get quite intense. (especially higher level enemies and on Lionslayer mode)
Stamina Rebalance
This all required a dramatic stamina balance overhaul.
Most AI will now go back and forth between energised and gassed out (at varying durations) but it still depends on lots of other factors such as their health or the weight of their equipment (just like the player.) Stamina for both player and AI has seen some general rebalances (mostly providing more, but also playing with the ratio of Max Stam vs Stam Regen.
TL;DR: the simplest way to show is to show an uncut fight!
Difficulty
In the first version of the overhaul it was kind of crazy how competent they were. I've been playing my own game for over 10 years now and I straight up lost 1 vs 1's against low level enemies. We had to tone it down a lot, but I still think the game is more challenging, and we'll have to probably further balance after your feedback.
Balancing in a very complex physics and animation-driven game like this
Source