Masters of the Book!
We’re the development team behind ASTRA: Knights of Veda.
First and foremost, we want to express our gratitude for the overwhelming support and feedback you provided during the FGBT in October. Your input has been invaluable, and we’ve dedicated ourselves to making ASTRA even better based on your suggestions.
Today, we wanted to give you a glimpse into some of the improvements we've been working on, particularly in response to your feedback. While we've made numerous enhancements across combat mechanics, UI, game balance, and more, this update will delve deeper into the specific changes we've made to combat.
Stay tuned for future Developer Notes to learn more about other changes!
Combat Feel
The community’s feedback clearly indicated a desire for faster, more immediate combat. In response, we’ve meticulously tested and refined the attack speed of each Knight of Veda. Significant adjustments have been made to the characters' initial skill action and reaction times, enhancing the overall combat feel.
Additionally, in terms of control feel, we are working hard to deliver a much more satisfying combat experience by refining the mechanics of sprinting and dodging.
We've enhanced dodging to be more responsive and cover greater distances, while for sprinting we've tweaked it so that you can reach maximum speed more quickly.
Tackling Gaming Fatigue
Gaming fatigue is a pretty vague term here, but we’re generally talking about many of the elements that make up that draining feeling when you’re playing games. It's a bit of an ambiguous concept with lots of contributing factors, so our team has worked hard to pinpoint and address the things in ASTRA: Knights of Veda that might be wearing you down.
1. Auto-Play for Reduced Stage Fatigue
While the fun of manual action is a core aspect of ASTRA: Knights of Veda, we’ve been testing auto-play with a variety of different options to reduce the fatigue of grinding. Even during auto-play, we are closely monitoring the enjoyment derived from using different skills through character changes, combat visuals, and the convenience and joy of easy item farming.
2. Revamping Level Design for a Diverse Combat Experience
We are reconfiguring the level design of all stages to provide a diverse combat experience through changes in monster placement and patterns. We’re running a lot of internal tests to make sure that these changes lead to an overall positive experience.
3. Monster AI improvements for More Engaging Battles
Monsters that you face on the field now have different traits and AI based on their type. Common undead, as an example, will now come at you in bigger groups, faster and more aggressively than before. Enemies have also been changed to be more intelligent in their combinations, forcing you to think of different strategies. These improvements are not intended to increase the difficulty of different stages, but rather create more interesting fast-paced combat scenarios that are satisfying to overcome.
4. Drastically reduced the overall stage playtime
We've effectively halved the time required to complete each stage. This has been achieved by accelerating monster spawns and eliminating less engaging waves, resulting in a more dynamic and robust combat experience.
5. Automatic Item Pickup
When defeating monsters, you no longer have to press buttons to pick up the items. While our initial design was a nod to the charm of classic games, feedback from the FGBT highlighted that many players found this aspect more tedious than nostalgic. Now, simply moving over an item will automatically add it to your rewards, enhancing the fluidity of gameplay. However, to maintain strategic gameplay elements, food items that replenish HP will still require manual pickup, allowing you to decide which character benefits from the health boost.
6. Improved Camera Perspective to Reduce Fatigue
We’re continuing to test various camera perspectives for the optimal play environment. Notable progress in this area was showcased in the recent G-Star version of the game. Additionally, we’re also working on changes to the staging aspect of signature skills and fine-tuning camera movements to align seamlessly with in-game actions. We're also addressing camera positioning challenges, particularly during combat in map corners, to ensure a consistently smooth and immersive experience.
Overflowing Power of Stars Improvements
The ‘Overflowing Power of the Stars’ mechanic is an integral part of ASTRA: Knights of Veda. It is being revamped in order to grant players more strategic control by allowing them to decide the perfect moment for activation. This adds a deeper tactical layer to the game.
You will still be able to charge the bar based on your hero’s attributes, and now you will be able to use it whenever you feel is best.
We did have our concerns that being able to choose the timing may lead to players only using it in optimal situations, such as when a boss is stunned which would over-simplify the combat experience. However, we decided that the benefits of avoiding unintentional and less advantageous activations far outweigh these concerns.
And besides that, we’re also enhancing the impact of this climactic moment when the Power of the Stars bursts forth, and improving the presentation to create a more complete effect.
Improving Auto-targeting
Many of you pointed out instances where the auto-targeting system would inaccurately aim at non-critical objects, missing the intended targets directly in front of the character. In response, we've meticulously adjusted the range and angle of weapons, and have also rectified several bugs identified during our thorough review.
We’ve improved this by fine tuning the range and angle of weapons, as well as addressing some of the bugs we discovered while investigating.
We’re also working to remove enemy targeting markers that don’t fit with the overall style that we’re aiming for. These changes are geared towards delivering a more intuitive and engaging combat experience.
Other Improvements and Release Window
In addition to the enhancements we've already shared, our team is working on a ton of features and improvements that we’re not quite ready to show yet. This includes refining the effects across the entire Knights of Veda roster for a more impactful and visually appealing experience, as well as upgrading the UI and UX for better usability.
We are committed to delivering a highly polished version of the game. Achieving this level of refinement and addressing all aspects thoroughly will require some more time. However, we are close to finalizing, and it won't be long before the game is in your hands.
Discussions with our publishers regarding the release date are ongoing, and we'll share the exact launch date as soon as it's finalized. We're working hard to get it live in the first quarter of next year.
Stay tuned for more updates! We can't wait to share more about our progress with the community.
Thank you
ASTRA: Knights of Veda Dev Team
