Character Design

Hello everyone, first off, thank you for the positive feedback we received during the last article and the Livestream, your doubts were compiled as Q & A and posted on discord. We’re now ready to talk about the initial character design.

We’re here to talk about Traits and Perks and Build System combat-wise. So this will be mentioned just after the basics.

From character creation, only race will have an impact on your initial stats, currently, there won’t be anything else that alters them.

The exact values for Perks and Traits are still being shaped, they will be available in-game during the PVP test phase. 100% of perks are implemented, and 90% of traits are implemented.

Level Cap

The player’s soft cap is up to level 30, after level 30 no extra is gained from leveling up.

Trait Points

Players will gain a trait point every 10 levels, so at levels 10, 20, and 30, amounting to max 3 trait points.

Traits do not have multiple levels, you pick a trait, and gain a full effect.

There will be no traits at character creation.

Perk Points

Players will gain a perk point every 2 levels, ultimately ending with 15 perk points total.

Perks will have 5 Tiers/Levels each, which means you can invest 5 perk points into them.

The perk tiers are respectively unlocked at levels 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20.

Perk points are gained on 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28,30 level.

While perks are mainly stat improvements, the traits change your approach by modifying combat mechanics in an interesting way, you’ll see what I mean with the list:

Current Traits&Perks

Below you’ll find a list of Traits and Perks, please remember, those are initial ideas and it all depends on the testing outcome to find out what is kept and what is being removed.

List of traits:

Armor padding Armors break slower when receiving damage.
Bigger Booms All explosions caused by you have a bonus radius.
Bloodthirsty You do extra damage to already bleeding targets.
Bloodymess Humanoid enemies die instantly below 0 HP, but also you do.
Bonehead You have a lower chance for critical effects to be applied to you but your own critical chance is lowered.
Boomer Rockets deal extra damage but they rarely hit the exact position.
Bruiser Your melee damage is increased but the melee critical chance is reduced.
Chem Reliant Your drugs work longer but not being drugged lowers your total Action points.
Demoman Grenades explode without delay after reaching targets.
Drunken Master Your dodge is increased while drunk but your ap regeneration is lowered.
Empathy First Aid cooldown gets reduced by half of the current value when a party member gets knocked below 0 HP.
Fast Metabolism You have no poison or radiation resistance but your passive regen is quicker and you have a higher chance to reduce bleeding.
Fast Shot You cannot do aimed attacks but attacks cost fewer action points.
Final Bullet Last Bullet in a magazine does extra damage.
Finesse You have a higher chance for a critical attack but your critical attacks apply no effects.
Guerilla Your action points generate faster in encounters.
Kamikaze You deal and receive bonus damage.
Light Step You have a high chance of not springing a trap.
Ninja You can run while sneaking but your overall running speed is lowered.
One Hander You can use only one-handed weapons, but you gain bonus damage.
Pacifist Your base damage is significantly lowered but your healing is far stronger.
Prepper Weapons break slower when fired.
Pyromaniac Your targets take extra burn damage but you also put yourself on fire.
Quick Recovery You get up faster from knockouts.
Rad Child You lose passive health regeneration, but radiation heals you.
Sawbones You have a higher chance to fix broken limbs.
Serial Killer Each kill gives you bonus AP but your AP regeneration is slower.
Short Sighted Your vision is significantly lower but you can hear others nearby through solid obstacles.
Small Frame Enemies have a harder time dealing critical attacks to you, but successful attacks have a higher chance to apply effects.
Stone Wall You have a small chance to avoid knockback, knockout, and knockdown from any source.
Tamer You can tame an animal to follow you until death.
Tank You gain damage reduction but move slower.
Team Player Damage you deal to party members is halved.
Tribal You get no bonuses from armor and cannot wear them but you have more action points.

There are some interesting perks that players can choose from, with 3 traits on level 30 a player can make quite the explosive mix.

The perks do not exclude each other, which means even crazy combinations like Rad Child + Fast Metabolism can be applied. As a result of taking Fast Metabolism player has zero radiation resistance so he takes all radiation damage, which now heals him thanks to Rad Child.

Some other traits like Empathy, change how you approach the game, Empathy player with a healing weapon can be an amazing support in a full crew, but his own damage is quite lacking.

List of perks:

Accurate Punches Your chance to hit with melee is increased.
Action Boy Your action points regenerate quicker.
Bonus Ranged Damage Your ranged damage is increased.
CQC Training You deal bonus melee damage.
Dodger Increases the chance to dodge an attack.
Far Sight Increases your sight distance.
Fire Eater Increases resistance to fire damage type.
Ghost Increases your sneak capability.
Gunslinger Reduces Attack AP cost.
Hunter Your ranged attacks have a higher chance to score a critical attack.
Insulated Increases resistance to the energy damage type.
Junkie Used drugs stay active for longer.
Lifegiver For every level of this perk you gain max health points.
Lucky Bastard Reduces the chance for a crit attack to be scored against you.
Marathon Runner This perk increases your running speed.
Medic Decreases your First Aid cooldown
Melee Critical Chance Your melee attacks have an increased chance to score a critical attack.
Melee Critical Damage Your critical melee attack deal more damage.
More Criticals Your overall critical chance increases.
Natural Healing The amount of HP passively regenerated is increased by this perk.
Pain Killer Increases the healing you do.
Quick Hands Reduces AP cost of actions.
Quick Regeneration Increasing this perk reduces how often your health is regenerated.
Radroach Increases radiation resistance.
Rock Solid Increases resistance to the explosion damage type.
Sharpshooter Your chance to hit with range is increased.
Snake Eater Increases poison resistance.
Tinkerer Decreases cooldowns for lockpicking, repair, and traps.
Toughness Increases resistance to the normal damage type.
Weak Point Your critical ranged attacks deal more damage.

With a bigger amount of perks to pick from, and more perk points overall, we are able to create a lot more different combinations, and let players experiment on what does work, and what doesn’t. They can allocate all their points to specific perks or spread them around. It’s up to the player to decide, we’ll just attempt to balance it all out.

An interesting mix can be spotted, like taking a short-sighted trait and max level of far-sight perk will end up with default sight range as malus gets negated but as positive outcomes, you can now see through nearby walls in 3 hex range.

Perk And Trait info

The build UI pulls the perk&trait statistics from the code responsible for setting those changes, so it will reflect numbers that modify player stats. No more outdated descriptions!

One Account Approach

As mentioned before, the goal is for a player not to be forced to have multiple accounts, the build system will be flexible and can be tweaked combat-wise, and the rest, which is utility, achievements, and such will be separated from the combat build and provide beneficial bonuses.

Race

As the rest, the race needs to be something that can be exchanged as they offer different gameplay perspectives. We will implement an in-game way to change your race.

Action Points

By default a player will always have 100 action points, this amount can be increased by drugs or certain traits. Action points regenerate only when idle.

Character stats

Every player will begin the game with 100 hp and gain 2hp per level and 3 carry weight.

The default sight is 35 hexes, which can be altered both positively and negatively by traits.

Skills

Everyone will begin their adventure with all skills undeveloped, first levels are very easy to increase, it gets tougher the higher the skill is though.

Every skill will have a corresponding skill book that will provide a skill gain multiplier for an amount of time.

Experience Gain

Experience gained from kills won’t be the main source of XP income, doing quests and events will net you significantly more XP.

The Experience is rewarded party-wide, if your party member kills an enemy you see, you will gain an equal amount of exp as the killer.

Cover Mechanic

There’s a simple cover mechanic, if the target stands behind an impassable hex or someone, the hit chance will be reduced.

Overhead HP

There was a question about enemy hp information above head, this is implemented and you do not need any perk or a trait to see it.

You can toggle between

No hp over the critters head
HP/MaxHP visible
Just HP visible

Achievements and Masteries

All non-combat traits are separated from combat builds and will be gained by completing achievements or bought out by mastery points. Masteries will be a way to reward players for continuing to gain experience and will be implemented after everything else build-wise is balanced and implemented.