Hello folks, Arno here!
In this devlog, we’re talking about new systems, difficulty, replayability, reworks, as well as a lot of new cool visual things to look at while we’re preparing for our Halloween update!
⚠️ Everything below is WORK IN PROGRESS and might not ship as shown. We’re still cookin’ for now! ⚠️
🃏 JOKERS CHOICE!
A small change, but one that feels BIG! The pool of Jokers keeps getting wider, which means your chances of landing one that fits your build keep going down. Since melee and gun weapons often have their own specific Jokers, it happens more and more that a Joker is completely useless to you and has to be either broken down for Uranium or swapped at the Refiner. Well, you’ll now get to choose between 2 Jokers every time one drops!
Design and implementation by @Spinker
Obviously, having more choices also means that you’ll more often have a build that fits you, and thus the game will be easier in general. Well, don’t worry, difficulty is also a big topic of this devlog and of the next update! Let’s go to the second topic ⏩
⛈️ DISTURBANCE SYSTEM - DIFFICULTY / REPLAYABILITY
We’ve been wondering about the current state of the difficulty in Far Far West for quite some time, and considering we have a diverse range of players, everybody has a different opinion on what the difficulty should be. Before making any change, we thought it was wise to ask you on different platforms whether you felt Far Far West needed to be more difficult. The poll answers as well as discussions that ensued were extremely interesting, and just as planned, pretty much everyone wants something different. We are also aware that a big part of our community is made of casual players who do not follow us on socials, and that, being casual players, they would probably lean towards not wanting the game to be harder. We’re taking this into account too! So how do we please everyone? We can’t. But we’ll do our best to make as many people happy as possible!
[carousel autoadvance="true"]
Discord vote / Reddit vote / Twitter vote
Both a replayability and difficulty system at once, the Disturbance system will arrive with the next update! Disturbance will take into account what you accomplish on the map, and at some point will apply a modifier to your game. What, you thought the Overseer was just sassy and not doing anything all this time, just waiting for his minions to be defeated? He was preppin’ his modifiers, indeed!
Modifiers will be separated into two categories, “Easy” and “Hard”, and the modifiers that are applied will be based on the difficulty of the mission selected and the tier of Disturbance reached. In practice, the higher the difficulty you choose, the harder the modifiers you get. This allows us to make sure the base difficulty of the game is not impacted too much at any difficulty level, while still adding a ton of replayability for everyone. Along with the Joker choice coming in the next update as well, we believe this increase in difficulty is going to balance itself out and make most people happy!
Thanks to everyone who participated and shared modifier ideas in our Discord, we read everything and a bunch made their way into the game!
Disturbance & modifiers can be tracked next to your minimap
Gary’s modifier. He’s Gary. Programmed by @Spinker
Farmyard modifier. They’re bad, bad chickens. Programmed by @Spinker
Still, this update on difficulty is not enough of a challenge for a bunch of people, and we hear ya! At this stage, we’re still considering adding a new difficulty level above Nightmare that would be extremely difficult and unfair, and not supposed to be played by most people. The goal of this difficulty would be to offer a real challenge to the best Far Far West players, without touching all the other difficulties, and therefore all the players who already find the game hard enough. Stay tuned!
This is the first step towards end-game content, but definitely not the last!
☠️ CRYPTIC BOSSES REWORK
As stated in our 🚅PUBLIC ROADMAP, Cryptic bosses are getting reworked, considering how the game has evolved since release and everything we’ve learned from your feedback. You can expect them to have more patterns, to be less frustrating and overall more interesting! Here’s a deeper dive into our changes for the Saloon and the Vulture, and you can expect the same level of work on the Necromancer and the Train.
Rig by @Adrian, animation by @Calu, patterns by @Jonathan, Gameplay by @Arno
⭐ What is wrong with current Saloon?
It can be damaged only through its planks, rendering most builds inefficient and frustrating to use against
It has no evolution between difficulties
The second phase with the saloon spirit is boring but also confusing for first-time players
Not really a monster house fantasy?
⭐ What do we change?
It can now be damaged everywhere, planks remain through the fight and are now used as weakspots
New patterns for Very Hard and Nightmare, the boss cycle through attacks with a speed based on difficulty
No second phase anymore
New animations, new patterns and overall more visual clarity!
Rig by @Adrian, animation by @Calu, patterns by @Jonathan, Gameplay by @Arno
⭐ What is wrong with current Vulture?
The boss never moves
It has no evolution between difficulties
It has some frustrating patterns, such as the shield that can take some time to destroy
Some attacks are borderline useless, such as the summon of ravens (did you even know it existed?)
⭐ What do we change?
The boss now has new patterns that make it move around the arena
New patterns for Very Hard and Nightmare, the boss cycle through attacks with a speed based on difficulty
Frustrating patterns have been adressed and are now more regularly counterable
New animations, new patterns and overall more visual clarity! Some patterns have been combined to make the fight more interesting
👵 GRANNY’S QUESTS
The Woodlands have been out there for so long, and they still don’t have a single quest. Wtf right? Well, this update will have you meet Lady Granny and her weird shenanigans, right in the middle of her Woodlands side job! I wonder if this questline will unlock the Redwood map though… (It does)
VERY WIP!! / Very not-frustrating gameplay! / Programmed by @Spinker
Concept and 3D by @MashArt
🎃 THE SPOOKYFICATION
The lobby is getting ready for spooky season! This year, we’re going for a weird laboratory vibe, along with the classic field of pumpkins!
[carousel autoadvance="true"]
Level Art by @Borealis, atmosphere by @Spinker
As we stated in the previous 🎃DEVLOG - SEPTEMBER - 01, we wanted to make the game a tad more spooky overall! Lucky for us, Area 41 was just waiting for it, and got even stranger!
[carousel autoadvance="true"]
Level Art by @Borealis
Spooky season means spooky characters! All of these characters will be available to unlock through our upcoming Halloween event, then vaulted until the next spooky season!
Concept and 3D by @MashArt
Rig by @Adrian
Concept by @Capp
3D by @Capp
WORK-IN-PROGRESS!! Concept and 3D by @Capp // might be a boss? who knows? (me, I know)
👢 FEMALE HERO SKINS TO THE FRONT!
In line with our goal of balancing out the number of skins between male and female characters, 3 new female skins are making their way into the game for Halloween as well!
Original concept by @Shoony (community), reinterpretation and 3D by @Capp
Original concept by @EarlGoupil (community), reinterpretation and 3D by @Capp
Concept and 3D by @MashArt, rig by @Adrian, animation by @Calu
🔫 WEAPON SKINS
On the side, we’re still researching themes for all of our weapon skins, and making sure we’re ready when the time comes! Here’s a bunch of new models made since the last devlog.
[carousel autoadvance="true"]
Concept and 3D by @MashArt
Concept and 3D by @MashArt
👻 DISCONNECTIONS, CRASHES & FRAMERATE ISSUES
We’re still hunting the disconnections and crashes that have been happening since the game launched, but we’re also aware that the recent update brought new issues of the same kind. Thanks to the new tools presented in our previous DEVLOG - SEPTEMBER - 01, we’re doing all we can to hunt them down as well! A lot of things are being reworked internally (for the greater long-term good!), which unfortunately means a few new issues have appeared along the way.
As for optimization in general, we found new ways to increase your framerate by fiddling with our different systems! These improvements apply to everyone, but people hosting lobbies, especially on higher difficulties, should see the most difference when the update comes around.
We’re doing all we can to fix disconnections, but obviously they can still happen. Because of this, we’ve implemented a feature that has been asked for a LOT! -> If you reconnect to a game you’ve been disconnected from, you will now get your found Jokers BACK!
⛳ VERY IMPORTANT LAST NOTE
We’re playing Kinda Hard Golf (you should try it!) every week with the team, and since I am the one writing the devlogs, I can do whatever I want. Thus, it’s only natural that I post last week’s results, since I won and I am unequivocally the best g@m3r at Evil Raptor. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
👋 SEE YOU LATER!
New fanarts have also been added to the lobby, the halloween event is shaping up and more! Stay tuned.
THANK YOU for playing Far Far West and sticking with us <3
See you in the next one.
