The team at Chrono Odyssey have been staying busy analyzing and implementing player feedback into the game after their first Closed Beta Test (CBT) that took place last June. Since then, they’ve shared a handful of updates they’ve made based on player feedback, and just recently shared the most recent round of updates that were made to the game.
These most recent updates include changes to the following topics:
- Controls and Responsiveness
- Combat Impact and Feedback
- Consumables
- Miscellaneous
Controls and Responsiveness
One of the largest pieces of feedback the team gathered from the CBT was that overall character reactions (including movement, jumping, and combat) felt a bit sluggish relative to player key inputs.
To help improve this, the team made the following changes.
Left/Right Strafe Running
By adding strafe running motions, players can now move quickly to the left or right while locked onto a target. This allows a more fluid experience, providing a better viewpoint on when to properly dodge AOE or linear ranged attacks, as well as provide a better viewpoint on opportunities to flank!
The short video below helps illustrate these movement changes.
Attack Direction Changes
One of the largest changes coming to the game is making the overall combat system feel a bit more action based. To be more specific, there is longer camera-locked combat. Normal attacks and skills are now employed in the direction the character is facing, allowing players to check their surroundings more easily while attacking enemies in front of them.
This aligns the character’s movement direction with the attack trajectory, providing a more intuitive combat experience where you hit exactly where they aim.
Sprint Input Improvements
To eliminate the slight delay felt when sprinting, the team removed the starting motion. Sprinting now triggers instantly upon input. Additionally, if the sprint key is pressed mid-jump, the character will immediately enter a sprint state upon landing.
Jump Landing Animations
The automatic roll animation that occurred after jumping has been removed based on player feedback. This prevents the character from moving away from the intended landing spot (and potentially rolling off a cliff – yes this happened to me).
In addition, character motions are being adjusted as a whole in big and small ways to ensure that the character does not look awkward in any gameplay environment.
Combat Impact and Feedback
Additionally, there was a large amount of feedback around the “potential” of Chrono Odyssey’s combat system. After listening to this feedback, the team implemented the following changes.
Hit Reactions
Character hit reactions are now more pronounced when struck by normal attacks. In the previous CBT, combat often felt static for players because only damage numbers were exchanged.
Now, enemy hits will visibly shake the character’s posture, providing immediate visual and physical feedback that you have taken a hit. The overall combat experience will feel a bit more realistic with these changes.
Players will now rely less on simply trading damage while ignoring attacks. Instead, combat will require more active interaction, such as timing attacks carefully or countering after a dodge.
Guard Crush System
The team implemented an entirely new system known as the “Guard Crush” system, and categorized attack intensity levels to ensure that the enemy’s presence is palpable through the player’s controls, going beyond simply blocking an attack.
Blocking is no longer just a way to nullify damage, but a strategic element where you must manage your character’s position and stamina based on the strength of the incoming strike. In other words, if you are blocking against an enemy’s attack, make sure you’re positioned correctly and that they can’t sneak up to hit you on the side or behind you.
Below is a more in-depth description of each of these changes.
- Guard Crush: Blocking attacks consumes stamina, and if your stamina drops to 0, a Guard Crush occurs and leaves you defenseless. Additionally, we added an effect where your block immediately breaks regardless of stamina if you are hit from the side or rear (outside the blockable angle), making positioning during combat all the more important.
- Attack Intensity Levels: When a Guard Crush occurs, different animations will ensue depending on whether the enemy used a light or heavy attack. Stronger attacks will result in a more significant Guard Crush motion that pushes the character further back. Since these larger animations require more time to recover and re-enter the fight, players must make tactical decisions such as dodging heavy attacks or carefully monitoring remaining stamina.
Knockback System
One piece of feedback the team received was how skills and abilities with Crowd Control (CC) worked against opponents. To better balance this system and support more fluid gameplay, the team has removed total crowd control immunity from several powerful monsters and replaced it with conditional systems. This will allow players to strategically use skills that provide crowd control in more strategic (and impactful) ways.
Consumables
One of the largest changes that the team announced was around consumables. There were multiple cases where players were able to stack a great amount of consumables on top of each other to greatly boost their character’s damage output and survivability, and the team made some changes to make it a bit more of a simplified system.
To be more specific, HP potions no longer function as individual consumable items. Instead, they are now a permeant, rechargeable system. These potion swill auto-refill upon death in instanced content, removing the need to go back and forth between towns to stock back up on supplies. How exactly this impacts the Alchemy skill is still not determined.
Additionally, food now functions strictly as long-term buff items, including stats, movement speed increases, and other combat-specific buffs instead of immediate healing.
Lastly, the team implemented “special potions”, which will provide powerful effects over very short durations. These will be intended to be used at critical moments during a battle to take advantage of certain opportunities.
Miscellaneous
Within the miscellaneous topic were two items – duels and throwables. Duels have been improved through the addition of a visible boundary and a bit more of an intuitive UI (pictured below).
When it comes to throwables, the team added a visible trajectory arc to support the aiming of throwables (to help prevent players from throwing items into unintended obstacles).
For full details on these changes (and more), be sure to check out their official “Developer’s Notes #4“. Stay tuned for more updates on Chrono Odyssey, including additional changes coming to the game, important future dates, and more!
