Friday, November 1st 2024

Windblown Early Access Pays Off As Motion Twin Implements Community-Requested Change

Windblown has not even been out in Steam Early Access for a week, and already community feedback is changing the new roguelike. According to an announcement on Steam, Motion Twin will be changing a game mechanic thanks to an overwhelming amount of feedback from the community. The feature in question is Sudden Death, which is somewhat similar to the old Borderlands mechanic, in the sense that it puts players into a downed state when they lose all their health in co-op mode. Except, in Windblown, it's up to the downed player's teammates to revive them by defeating 10 enemies. While Sudden Death isn't usually an issue in standard missions, it becomes problematic during boss fights, when there is only one enemy to defeat. Obviously, this makes it difficult for the remaining players to complete the mission and resuscitate their fallen compatriots.

Fortunately, Motion Twin confirmed in a recent Steam Store news post that it plans to address the difficulty introduced by the feature, although it's not clear that the planned fix will actually solve the problem for everyone who has complaints about it. Motion Twin says it will not remove Sudden Death from Windblown, instead opting to tweak it, admitting that the current state of the feature "feels harsh and maybe even unfair". Motion Twin says that, despite wanting to address the feedback, it wants to maintain the tension and teamwork that Sudden Death brings to the game.
Motion Twin's motivation for not outright removing the feature for boss fights makes sense, given the game's focus on co-op gameplay. Ultimately, the developer wants to encourage teamwork in Windblown and punish players to a degree when they fail to protect their teammates. It also says that it wants players to treat co-op gameplay more strategically than simply using it as a damage boost. Ultimately, Windblown is still in development, and, like its predecessor, Dead Cells, it is likely to change drastically over the course of its early access period.
  • Losing a teammate in battle should have serious consequences for the adventure: we want to build a real bond between players: we win together, we die together. You don't want to die, and you definitely don't want your teammates to die either. But we want to do this in a fair way.
    [*}Our goal is for co-op to feel more strategic than just stacking DPS. Here, keeping your friends alive is key, and Windblown provides tools for supporting not only your own survival but also that of your allies—even if they're a bit green compared to you.
  • We know the current version feels harsh and maybe even unfair for some of you -> we hear you, and we feel the same.
  • Now, we're not looking to scrap it; rather, we're building it into an epic moment where reviving your teammates feels like a true high point. (Please remember this is a work in progress!).
  • Rest assured, we're actively working on it as you read this. We're keeping a close eye on your feedback to make this feature as cool as possible without losing the tension it's meant to bring to the game. (And sure, getting one-shot is intense, but let's admit, it's not exactly fun).
Source: Motion Twin on Steam
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7 Comments on Windblown Early Access Pays Off As Motion Twin Implements Community-Requested Change

#1
scottslayer
Is this even news worthy when the game is in Early Access?
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#2
ZeppMan217
scottslayerIs this even news worthy when the game is in Early Access?
Guess someone's been enjoying the game.
Posted on Reply
#3
Vayra86
What the fck? How is this news. Lmao.

'Devs implemented a change' ..... no way!! Im literally blown away here
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#4
TheDeeGee
Plenty of developers are doing this when they engage with the community.
Posted on Reply
#5
neatfeatguy
Don't listen to the haters. Nothing wrong with posting gaming information.

I like that TPU has expanded out some in the past couple years of including more gaming things. Makes sense because a lot of people here do game, so why not get some of that information in the same spot you get great technical info from. And if I don't want to read about gaming news posted, I'll just skip over it. Simple as that.
Posted on Reply
#6
Vayra86
neatfeatguyDon't listen to the haters. Nothing wrong with posting gaming information.

I like that TPU has expanded out some in the past couple years of including more gaming things. Makes sense because a lot of people here do game, so why not get some of that information in the same spot you get great technical info from. And if I don't want to read about gaming news posted, I'll just skip over it. Simple as that.
There is gaming news with actual substance, and then there is this misguided marketing.

I think its part of our job as readers to provide this feedback and offer insight in what is news with substance and what clearly isn't. We're also allowed to disagree on what we personally feel is important or what's not.

If that applies as 'hating' in your vocab, maybe you need to return to sanity, nuanced it certainly is not ;) Feedback is never hate. Its feedback. If we weren't interested, we wouldn't be clicking.

This whole 'news' piece reads much more like it was yanked straight off social media or a clickbait site, and serves only as cheap marketing for the studio. Bad, cheap marketing at that - if you believe in your mind this is somehow a special event being reported, you've really not been paying attention. I mean sure, if a big patch overhauls a game, report it. That's not what this is. This is clearly a follow up to the earlier piece about how Windblown is taking itself in a new direction, serving as the 'proof' to the earlier statements. We're supposed to trust these devs now, because omg look how they're listening and responding. Yaaaawn... I think the difference here is in the content itself: the first Windblown piece was informative. This piece right here feels like the daily 'Intel announces XYZ' flood of nonsense nobody really needs to care about. I don't personally like those either, and I don't believe tech sites exist to parse all the PR pieces that get pooped out.

In the end the response people give here comes down to 'If you do something, please do it right'. And I really hope that is how TPU approaches what it wants to do, as well. Otherwise, what are we doing here anyway?
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#7
theouto
Maybe there's an article quota that is too high considering the current dry spell of news in both the gaming and tech sectors? It's not the first time we've seen a very odd article being posted as news here in techpowerup, if we recall the post about a gamer's wife beating a black myth wukong boss (Post that was later removed).

I don't mind gaming articles, in fact I welcome them, TPU has benchmarks, so why not articles too. But I do find it weird how sometimes it feels like the bottom of the barrel is being scraped, and as a result we get articles like these, articles that seemingly offer no substance, all because everything as of right now is rather boring.

I am not faulting anyone, since a dry spell is not something any one journalist has any control over, but I am saying that maybe things could be toned down.
Posted on Reply
Dec 9th, 2024 17:20 CST change timezone

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