Early Access Update 3: GRA@ND B@Z@@R - Patch Notes


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Lockpick 2.0 is nice, exactly what i expected since i first played this game. Haven't tried the other programs yet, though i've seen data blast. I suppose it has potential. Server farms are more interesting now, especially considering some programs are cheaper.

Parasite is now useless. The reason it wasn't OP is the time it takes to break firewalls. If it really needs a nerf, the cooldown could only trigger after using 2 or 3 times in one turn or it could have no cooldown, cost 2 on first use and 1 on subsequent uses.

Vaults are far less appealing now as to truly benefit from them you have to do an executive mission and sometimes the vault room has 6 cultural artifacts and the money is (i assume) on the other side of the invincible door. If you cannot open that door then you don't get any money and can't upgrade your agent's inventory and must leave half of the artifacts there...

I'm noticing changes to guards' behavior, i don't know if they were added in update 2 or 3 (i have not played much between these two, unfortunately), but sometimes my agents are spotted when they would not in update 0 and 1. And what's with one guard going on overwatch then all the other guards in the world and the previous mission show up immediately?!

Feels like this.

So with vaults being less profitable one way or another (leave with not much or waste several hours going for an executive mission first), nerfed parasite, consumable med gels, odd guards' behavior, hack-locking drones and not knowing which corp you are going against, i can't say i'm having as much fun as i had at first. If the devs and/or community want a greater challenge or some items need tweaking, i'm fine with that, but please, stop doing it downwards, ie crippling everything...

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I played 3 maps today continuing a savegame. The parasite v1.0 nerf is a bit too much. I suggest removing the cooldown, but increase the cost of starting "parasite" by 1 for each thing you apply it to in the same turn.

 

Example:

Turn 1:

Start parasite on a camera: Power cost = 1

Start parasite on a security box: Power cost = 2

Start parasite on another camera: Power cost = 3

 

Turn 2:

Start parasite on security box: Power cost = 1

Start parasite on a camera: Power cost = 2

 

etc ...

 

 

I think this is a really good idea to 'fix' parasite, because yeah, the cooldown on it is absolutely crippling. I played my first game since the patch today and thought I'd try Parasite out... well I'm just grateful I managed to find Parasite v.2.0 in a Nanofab on the second level because otherwise I would have been in all kinds of trouble.

 

The other thing I found out the hard way is that Modulate daemons stack! Yowch!

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Lockpick 1.0 was already balanced with Parasite. Lockpick 1.0 gave you expedience by being able to hack things now and be reactive to your surroundings while Parasite couldn't but stood to save you PWR costs with careful planning. Now Parasite is too hampered. Not worth considering.

Rapier is terrible because it's attempting to do exactly what Lockpick 1.0 does but lacks it's flexibility. Considering the nature of the game, it's far too easy to end up in a situation in which the alarm increases by 2 meaning you very well might not even have those first 5 turns to get any extra utility out of this program. Sure the possibility exists in which you chain random events to lower the alarm level, but even then, odds are you're chaining it back down to Alarm level 1, not 0, meaning it's still no better than Lockpick 1.0 and that's it's best case scenario: you're equivalent to Lockpick 1.0.

 

I can't foresee a single situation in which I'd prefer Emergency Drip over the other two PWR generation programs. Power Drip already kind of hampered end game play because it couldn't generate enough PWR to fuel all the hacking needs in Heavily Guarded missions and up without some serious support. Emergency Drip? There's nothing to support. You're basically saying, "I'm going to max out my Agent's hacking skill first and use Portable Servers, and that's how I'm getting all my PWR." You'd be better off with an empty slot or another hacking starter program -- at least they have the potential to possibly do something worthwhile.
Maybe I'm thinking too 1-dimensional. Maybe the intent of Emergency Drip is to be used in tandem with another PWR generation program, but then how could that be the case? Any other PWR generation program just means you either have less opportunities for Emergency Drip to kick in or when it does kick in to push it out of Emergency Drip range meaning it does even less. The program just doesn't do anything.

I don't know, maybe Emergency Drip and Rapier is supposed to be like the "Wes" of Invisible, Inc.?

 

 

As for the new Chief Executive Suite, I think it suffers from the same problem as Executive Terminals do: I'd rather go to any other mission type. I mean I wanted to enjoy it, but the rewards for a successful mission is the possibility of getting greater rewards in a vault mission. Fair enough I thought, so I went to a vault and used the card key thing mind-probing the chief executive gave me to see what was further deeper inside the vault. About 500 to 700 extra credits. That's not worth it. I was expecting something amazing behind that vault. Granted, it was a very guarded mission, maybe the rewards skyrocket when it's an extremely guarded mission, but if not, why bother? I mean I'm open to the idea for mission types that give you a puzzle piece that leads to another piece which eventually gives you a completed puzzle, but I want to have that puzzle give me something awesome. Otherwise, I'll just not go through the extra hassle and just get slightly less for a lot less work. It's also kicks me out of the immersion of the game. The CEO's priceless antique art exhibit is practically out in the buff asking to be taken, but his lunch money?! Oh noes! We need to put that in a nigh-impenetrable vault that probably cost 10 times to construct compared to the amount that was actually stored in there! I mean come on. Come on.

 

I wish the Executive Terminals either had cool stuff there or unlocked cool missions. I wish the Chief Executive Suite unlocked cool rewards. Neither really do.

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Items left in lift - Offer this as an idea, anything dropped in the lift to be included in the end of level gains (or introduced back into mission select inventory dropbox if agents can use item)

 

Born from the fun new vault idea of the 101 artifacts to pick up and not having inv space, I'd hoped being able to drop them at a safe point, risk getting some more (GREEDY!) would make for a fun against the clock risk/reward mechanic.

 

Rapier - The idea is good, act quickly. The problem is that lockpick trumps it in everyway. For 5 turns only it shines and then after you are better on lockpick because its equal to it for an alarm phase or costs more power the longer the level goes.

 

The window of actual use is so small and the risk so much greater, I can't see why at all you'd pick this over lockpick -_- Maybe keep it at 1 power for 10 turns, instead of 5?

 

Executive Mission - Enjoyed the feel and design of this one. Problem is that if no vault mission generates this becomes a moot exercise and item. Maybe have a safe unlocked by that key at the back of the office as a minor reward for the act of doing it and educating that these types of doors need this special key?

 

Parasite Nerf - Have to agree with many, its a little too much. Think Wizard1200's idea isn't a bad one with increasing power on the turn punishing mass use over being a little patient, or limit to maybe making it a 2 use limit per turn.

 

Oh and enjoying the game greatly, keep up the fab work all working over at Klei! ^^

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Has the daemon sapwning rate increased? I played 2 very guarded missions and in total, i could hack only ONE vault. All the other were protected. That's too heavy.

I find the Rappier programm quite good. I usually find most of the system in the first 10 turns. However, as you in harder difficulties, you get stuck on system that you can hack several imes (shields, drones...), and from the 3rd alarm level on, rappier just become really bad against that. So maybe we culd just turn down the power curve for this programm.

 

Also, I support the idea of reselling/updating programms when adding newer ones. You cannot plan from the start what programms you will find, and often want to change them but can't.

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I agree reward from doing Chief Executive Suite is not enough, given that you need to do two missions, meaning you'll use up more time in the Story Mode for too small a reward in the Vault.

 

Well, additional mission isn't completely waste of time. You also get money, reputation and chance for loot, as in any other mission. Vaults are already the main target if you are playing for high scores, so it may not be very good idea to buff it even more. 

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Well, used the Vault key I had earned yesterday, on an Extremely Guarded, Day 3 Vault mission, and was met by some serious disappointment, in it were a grand total of 3 of those 'money boxes' you need to hack a terminal for to open, and in them was a whopping $330 each, so $990 total. For reference, the 4 Cultural Artifacts I picked up out of the 6 before the door, were worth 1500 total, and guards were carrying from 150 to 250 on their person. Not exactly worth it as it stands right now.

 

In the Final Mission I ran into this doozy of a room btw, that might need a teensy widdle bit of toning down :razz:post-285124-0-10560400-1412244155_thumb.

Basically was just one huge room, with no side doors apart from the ones visible, filled with 2 armor guards. Managed to get through it by having Deckard take one for the team, as he was the only one with a Cloaking Unit, while the rest hid near the elevator. After the discovery and release of the prisoner they escaped, and Deckard and the prisoner met their demise trying to get back through that hellish room. Still, mission 'succes' and 6000 Reputation earned ;)

 

This unlocked me the final program, and all I have to say is meh. It needs to activate at a much higher percentage of your total Power to be worth it. 2 Power recovery per turn if you're at below 3 Power is just really useless. Only way I can see this work is taking both Fusion and Emergency Drip, and then praying for a good piece of hacking software in your first Nanofab, which sounds like an exercise in frustration to me.

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I have some questions about the chief executive thing : 

 

1) I always got the same sequence of dialogues and events whenever i hack a brain. Is there only one or am I just unlucky?

 

2) Isn't it strange that the same memory chip can works regardless of the corps you take it from and use it in?

 

3) Instead of putting the locked room in a vault mission, isn't it possible to make it a random room that can spawn in any mission? I think that could make this a bit more exciting.

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Well, additional mission isn't completely waste of time. You also get money, reputation and chance for loot, as in any other mission. Vaults are already the main target if you are playing for high scores, so it may not be very good idea to buff it even more. 

It's possible to rebalance the artifacts to cost less (how much is up to debate) and increase money in deposit boxies by that amount. It should be more lucrative money-wise to open deposit box, because it takes an extra effort to obtain the pass codes.

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Have I just been extraordinarily lucky or do Detention Centers give out agents more often? Currently 3 out of 3 for this patch, while I was at like 1 out of 20ish before that. Actually ran into trouble because of that, lack of credits was really hurting me in my final run, and hoped to get a prisoner escort only to find Deckard in there :p

 

Speaking of credits, I'm not sure I like the new vaults, the ones with the 6 Artifacts in them. Maybe it's time for a mission item inventory separate of the spy tool inventory? Room for stuff like those artifacts, keycards, etc. I wouldn't mind if that meant the amount of inventory slots would be reduced to compensate. Say, start out with 2 slots for tools, 2 for mission items. Every second level of the Inventory stat would give out one more mission item slot, while tool slots would still go up at 1 per level.

 

Would allow for more missions in which you have to steal items to bring back. And maybe I should post this on the suggestions forum as well. Guess I'll go do that too.

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Hot Fixes

 

Build 112576

* Fix the board room table prop

* Fix animation bug with female agents

* Fix a corp turn lock up bug

* Fix a shut down bug

* A number of fixes to reduce the occurrences of the guard overwatch instant shooting.

 

 

I find myself getting instantly shot more often now, compared to before the quoted hotfix build. Three times it happened just in the last 2 hours. I stopped playing out of frustration, when it happened the third time.

 

The last time it occured was when I was in melee overwatch mode in front of a door. In the guards' turn, one guard comes through, gets taken down, and another guard spots it behind him further down the hallway, goes into overwatch and shoots instantly.

 

Can't remember if it was the same case the other two times.

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  • Developer

I find myself getting instantly shot more often now, compared to before the quoted hotfix build. Three times it happened just in the last 2 hours. I stopped playing out of frustration, when it happened the third time.

 

The last time it occured was when I was in melee overwatch mode in front of a door. In the guards' turn, one guard comes through, gets taken down, and another guard spots it behind him further down the hallway, goes into overwatch and shoots instantly.

 

Can't remember if it was the same case the other two times.

 

Thanks for the feedback! This is a known way for it to happen, we're working on a fix for this. 

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Thanks for the swift response.

 

I searched to see if the issue had been mentioned after the hotfix, but didn't see it mentioned in any of the forum categories, so I wanted to mention that it's still not fixed.

 

Looking forward to a definitive fix. :)

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First, like the new missions. Still loving the game.

 

OverwaBANG!

I have not gotten past the second mission deathless after 4 games since the update. Every time EEEP Bang. I was shot directly after clearing the "you are in overwatch, you can move once" modal once even :) I'm not sure, but I think I might have been double discovered each time. This had happened before, but only once or twice. Now I'm 4/4 games.

 

RE: Fusion

Just wanted to give my two cents. I had always used Fusion to start. Now I feel I can't. For example, the first game I played (after update 3) had 1 guard walking in and out of the first "in play" room. It took a couple turns to discover there were two cameras in there, then 2 turns to disable, then the guard patrolled back in, and then out. So I was on Level 1 Alert before I even stepped into the first "in play" room. I don't feel like it's a very good starting program for that reason anymore, and I won't take it. I spent a lot of time on that level just burning turns on cooldown waiting to move. 

 

I do believe Fusion was a little OP. For me, it was just a no brainer to take it before. I like the idea of an increasing PWR cost which resets each turn that someone mentioned previously.

 

Thanks again for the great work. I did get to hack into a CEO, and that was great.

 

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I'm a beginner but after reading many comments I think I'm starting to see why parasite was nerfed. Previously I could hack most things (almost all cameras). Now I have to carefully choose and fire off cameras sometimes on purpose. More interesting decisions are forced by a reduced hacking ability

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Just wanted to know if you guys will let us know when the overwatch bug is sorted out! Hopped in the game only to be shot repeatedly and had to stop because of that shenanigans. Also could anybody briefly explain how to get codes for the Vault missions? I understand you have to hack a CEO's brain or something like that but where are the CEOs? Many thanks to both the community and the developers!

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