Healer Update Preview & Next Stress Test
Hey everyone!
Work is continuing on the game, and we have two exciting new things to share today.
First off, we are planning to hold another 2 hour stress test this Saturday, December 3rd, starting at 7:30 PM US Central Time. We'll post more information on that later this week, but a quick preview of what's changed since the last test:
- New trackpad locomotion option
- Proximity-based voice chat
- Re-worked Ranger and Healer classes
- New models (e.g. hands instead of controllers)
- Playable fishing prototype
- Support for up to 60 players per shard
We still anticipate a few crashes and that's why we're going to keep it to another short test.
In addition to the announcement of our next stress test, here's a quick look at the reworked Healer class:
As you can see, we've ditched the crossbow for a gun. And continuing with our theme of getting rid of "button presses" for actual physical interaction, the abilities you use are now based around orbs which float around your gun. Right now there are 6 different abilities, and you can have up to 4 ready to deploy at any time. Using an orb is as simple as grabbing it with your hand and loading it into the front of the gun. The orbs are basically like grenades, in that whenever they hit a monster (or the ground) they will cause a small explosion, affecting all targets in a short radius. So you can really set up some great combos where you can poison multiple monsters at once or heal multiple allies.
The orbs themselves are split about half between offensive debuffs (such as poison or slowing) and helpful buffs for your allies (such as straight-up healing, heal over time, or reinforcing armor). The healer class does have some offensive capability, but we want it to be a play style largely set up around making choices -- what orb to use when, what to save, when's the best time to strike, who needs healing immediately, etc.
In addition to your orbs, you have a turret that you can grab off your belt and throw up in to the air, where it will float. It will automatically attack any targets that come within range that you have attacked or that are attacking you. In addition to that, you can fire an orb at the turret. This will sacrifice the turret (so you'll have to wait to deploy a new one until it regenerates), but this will super-power your orb, greatly extending its range -- super useful to cause massive damage to large groups of enemies or mass-heal your allies.
Eventually like the Ranger we'll want the class to have a whole host of orbs to choose from, and part of the class flavor will be "equipping" the six orbs that most fit your own playstyle.
Looking forward to welcoming you all back into the world so you can test these new classes and features! See you this weekend!
If you'd like to discuss this post or the stress test this weekend, you can do so on our forums here: https://community.orbusvr.com/t/healer-updated-prevew-next-stress-test-date/218/1