Up Next / Beta 12 then 13? 13 then 12? (Patreon)

Have some no-context graphs! For the most part they're probably fairly self-explanatory, though context will be coming soon when I finish processing the Beta 10 player stats (and finish more graphs), just thought I'd drop some of what I was working on here along with these notes :)

As related in the preface to this upcoming batch of stats, Beta 10 itself was not uniquely interesting from a data perspective considering that much of the work that went into it was of a cosmetic nature, including for example the ambient audioscape and QoL-related features. By comparison I'm sure the future Beta 11 stats will be very interesting when those come out, given how much was changed or added, though that's for a future blog article...

Still having concussion issues and dealing with those, but am at least making some progress in various work areas, too (including debugging Beta 11 for an update to that!). The issues are also affecting my ability to stream, so despite wanting to, I'm currently not yet able to do more than one per week (and they're not the best quality, at that :/)... which also means no 7DRL streams yet, though I guess that's not especially pressing since those are never that timely anyway :P

Regardless, I'm really eager to get past all this and start on the next major beta version. Last year after we hit the threshold I set here on Patreon, I confirmed that we'd be getting the Unchained, a new 0b10-affiliated sub-faction of sorts, one that was described in Beta 10's ARG, and the plan since then has been to make them the focus of Beta 12. Then last year we also hit the other threshold I'd set, for reviews on Steam (Beta 11 sure took a while, and involved a lot more updates than I expected xD), which triggered confirmation of yet another new faction, one which is actually bigger than the Unchained, a full-sized faction probably most similar to Zion. Sounds like Beta 13 is set, too.

Well, after recently releasing Beta 11, and realizing that we now already have two new versions lined up, then reflecting on the nature of Beta 11 which definitely upped the difficulty by buffing Complex 0b10, I started to think maybe we should reverse the original order of those ideas, which were only ordered such to begin with purely because that's the order in which they were triggered :P

If you know more about what they're about you'll understand why.

Unchained

In short, the Unchained are unique NPCs kinda like heroes of Zion, but working for MAIN.C. So yeah they'll similarly come with new mechanics and parts (AKA loot :P), though they'll also be formidable foes who want to kill you, and do it with a vengeance.

There will be various ways to trigger them--they won't just go after everyone, and unlike other enemies in Cogmind, they will track you across multiple maps if they have to, the first threat to be able to do that.

At least that's part of the concept for now. It'll be quite a challenge to design these enemies, and not all design goals can always be satisfied.

They'll almost certainly have their own base of operations you can visit if you have a death wish, or are for some reason overconfident in your abilities ;)

Scraptown

At least maybe it's called Scraptown. That's just the code name for it in some parts of my notes, but it may or may not actually end up with that name. For internal convenience, the fact that its first three letters match "Scrapyard" somewhat draws down the likelihood of using it... (History note: for the longest time the code name for Zion was simply "Derelict Community," but that eventually got a real name when it was implemented.)

I won't go into the lore details here, except to say that this is basically a faction of good derelicts, some of whom are preparing for a long-term guerilla war of attrition against MAIN.C, and developing technology to help make this possible. So this'll be a new faction you can work with, offering more strategic options.

As you can see, #1 is stronger 0b10, #2 is stronger player, so after releasing Beta 11 my thoughts are that #2 might be appropriate to put out there first, before then implementing #1.

Either could work, and each has its benefits, what do you think?

This isn't a binding vote or anything, just giving you all a chance to voice your opinions.

(Oh yeah and we're gonna have to vote on a new optional feature for Beta 12 later, too, regardless of what the main topic is... we'll see if the dreaded combat log actually wins out this time, mwuahaha).