The Furtif is playable
The ninth class makes it into a build, the extraction portal changes its rule. A missing shader was painting my effects flat without me seeing it.
Last time I said the Furtif would land in a build once the approach charge made you want to close in. It’s tuned. Whether it makes you want to, I don’t know yet. I’d rather have you try it than wait until I work it out on my own.
The window opens less often and that’s on purpose
The problem I measured last time was that it didn’t fire when you approach the mobs but when the mobs approach you. Two settings moved. You now have to stay out wide for about a second before you can dive in. Once you’re close you have to pull back out for the gauge to refill, not just dance on the edge.
What I still don’t know is whether it makes you want to do the move. The bot doesn’t back off to come in again, so it can’t tell me. On one whole squad theme the window never opens once, because the bot never goes near the shooters. A player will go and get them. Well, I hope so.
The extraction portal can’t be taken by accident any more
Before, flying over the green portal ended your run. You could finish without having decided to, by dodging in the wrong place. Now you have to STAY in it: entering starts a 0.8 second charge with a cube filling up. Stepping out cancels it. Since leaving with the loot is the decision that matters in this game, it shouldn’t be something you trigger by mistake.
My explosions were painted flat for 12 days
This one stings. Impacts, the muzzle flash and the trails are supposed to ADD light on top of the image. Since 13 August they were painting it flat, like a sticker.
The shader that does this wasn’t shipped in the build at all. And in the editor everything looked fine, since the editor has every shader on hand. So for 12 days I watched my effects work on my machine while they were wrong on yours, including in the version you could download. Honestly it took comparing a build screenshot to an editor screenshot to spot it.
While I was at it the Codex finally lights its mobs (they were 4 times too dark). The light halos and the overall contrast got another pass too. Killing the boss fast now pays off as well, which it didn’t before.
What hasn’t changed
5 of the 7 hangar terminals are still gray cubes and the boss is still a bag of HP.
What’s next
Take the Furtif and go hunt a shooter at the back of the screen. If the urge to pull back and dive in comes to you on its own, the class works. If you stay glued to them like with every other class, it doesn’t. And I want to know.