Valley 2 Beta .809 "Concentrating On Calibers" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2013/02/valley-2-beta-809-concentrating-on.html

This one is the first of what will be two releases for today.  It basically does a lot of tuning to the concentration and caliber systems that were revised in the prior release, and fixes a few other bugs (such as charge shots not charging at all in the prior version).

There are some other cool spell changes in here as well, such as to bombs/mines timing, blast distance/power.  Also swamp belltowers now work properly on the world map for the first time!

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the  in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game.  If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you.  When you  launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found  if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have the standalone game, you can download that here.  If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!

[Penumbra]

I, for one, am really enjoying the new caliber and concentration dynamic.

I have been wanting to write a suggestion for a while, but I thought we were too close to release to mention it. Now that concentration is even more important, well....

I find that having to look up at my life, and down for my concentration level makes it harder to manage my concentration. Would it be totally out of the question to add a graphical effect to represent your current level of concentration?

I was thinking of something along the lines of the NBA Jam "on fire" effect, but that was actually on the ball, not the player. Maybe a glow?

[x4000]

Great!

In terms of the concentration visuals... hmm, potentially the oblivion crystal could change colors as you get higher concentration or something.  But with six levels, I imagine that would be pretty hard to tell apart unless we went with wildly different colors.  The NBA Jam "on fire" stuff was only an on/off state, so that was much easier.  I mean, I could do a gold version of the oblivion crystal for when you "have concentration" and that would be easy to tell apart.  But with six levels of tiering... I'm not sure.

[Penumbra]

What about varied circles around the crystal, something like:

1: Single white circle
2: Double white circle
3: Single blue circle
4: Double blue circle
5: Single red circle
6: Double red circle

[madcow]

One little particle orbiting the character/crystal maybe.

Or could go with ROY G BIV coloring. It even has one to spare! Might be kind of awkward having a rainbow oblivion crystal though

[Pepisolo]

20 mins of playtime with the new mine timings, and it seems pretty OK actually. They are a lot more easily usable now and a fair bit more powerful. My accuracy with deploying them effectively has gone way up. You can even do ninja-like stuff like jump over an enemies head, deploy, and they will be caught in the blast usually. This type of tactic could either be considered OP or cool. Using them is definitely less thoughtful now, which I miss a bit, but that is made up for to some extent by you being able to use the attack more reactively which suits the recent increase in fluidity of the gameplay.

So yeah, still on the fence a little, but overall seems good I think. I'd need to play a bit deeper into the game, though, to see whether they are a little bit too useful. A bit OP. At the moment I'm on Skilled using the Apoth and I'm tearing up the levels, but I am still very early into the game so that's probably to be expected.

[Nanashi]

I haven't spoken up clearly on the bomb issue recently, but it was always my opinion that bombs, having high caliber and damage, were one of the easiest things to use - they just required specific gearing. Finding any equipment item with the "negative" penalty of -bullet duration made bombs explode ridiculously quickly, and were the core of what I called the "Jihadist" build.

With the recent halving of the bomb time-to-explode, the jihadist build has gone from merely "powerful" to "absurd", considering some of the "compensatory benefits" gear that has -projectile duration tends to spawn with. I can kill henchmen near instantly with kamikaze runs and it's quite difficult for enemy shots to penetrate my bomb explosion shield.

Which begs the question: If rockets do damage to yourself, why don't bombs?

[x4000]

Bomb explosions have a high caliber?

Bomb cooldowns really aren't among the things that are meant to be reduced by the whole cooldowns reduction equipment.  Any objections to disabling that?

Regarding the self-damage, it may be that bombs are ready for that and/or ready for a damage nerf in general.

[Pepisolo]

Just some more quick thoughts as I play. Apoth didn't seem grossly overpowered to me with the new changes. It did raise the usability to be more on par with the better classes in the Tier, though. This might possibly have something to do with the fact that Apoth was always slightly underpowered as a class, though. With other classes I'm not sure yet if the new mine duration will make them OP or not.

[Nanashi]

Well, it isn't so much a high caliber as the bomb generating a lot of "projectiles" which each have their own caliber, so they used to soak a lot of enemy projectiles (not too sure about now, but it wouldn't work on say, Lilith's green projectile spam).

I'm perfectly fine with it getting a nerf (it's not cooldown gear btw, it's negative projectile duration which makes them explode faster), it's a silly playstyle anyway and only something I do as a gimmick. I just thought it was intentional since it was a pretty creative way of using that negative attribute.

[Panopticon]

Apothekinitecist has gone from blech to totally awesome. The primary is fun to fire while jumping, you can set up a nice defensive screen this way that feels effective without seeming overpowered. The Ammo Shot for the class isn't as useful as some others but the enhanced defensive qualities of the primary and the new melee tweaks offset that a good deal in my opinion. Speaking of tweaks to the melee spells, this latest round is really fun. Having them fire projectiles gives it a mystic Kung Fu kind of feel that I enjoy, especially with the sound effect and making them a fast autofire spell makes them much more useful. I love the way everything is shaping up. The text interjections are getting really nice too with a fun sense of humor. I dig the additional pieces of info and bits of lore too.

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12474.0.html

I'm going to wait for further word on the bombs in the current builds before I do anything too heavy with them.