Unchained Theory

ALERT: Unchained "KY-Z71" authorized to operate in Patreon, avoid or assist as necessary.

So the last Beta 16 patch went out last month, and in the time since there's been lots of run data coming in, which interestingly also marks the first time I've ever actively monitored run stats. Like, in the past there were a small handful of releases for which I may have compiled stats to examine some individual new feature, mainly stemming from ongoing player discussions and purely out of curiosity. But this time is different, as I've actually proactively kept an eye on run data, and not even just during prerelease, but even well into public releases and post-patch updates. This includes the usage of multiple new analysis tools I mentioned having developed for this purpose, as the Unchained are very much a feature that requires both close attention to how it's playing out, and absolutely access to more data to better reflect what's going on behind the scenes.

To that end, there is actually additional data being uploaded alongside-but-separate-from scoresheets, but only from certain players. I didn't want to have just everyone uploading a bunch of likely irrelevant runs, yet we also want to see relevant data from runs that are not necessarily seeing Unchained, in order to analyze for example "how close some dispatch was to occurring." This is the kind of thing that goes beyond the level of data collected via scoresheets, and I wouldn't want to permanently pollute or bloat the database with all this extra data which won't matter in the future (and is encrypted anyway).

It's with this data that I've been able to look at specific runs that have come up in Discord and examine the general trajectory of different triggers throughout the run. "Triggers" again referring to the reasons for which Unchained will come after players, a system that was first covered a bit back in Unchained 101, a less advanced subject than Unchained Theory ;)

Fairness

The first thing I want to address here is the... controversial nature of it all!

Unchained are certainly a "destabilizing" force in the world of Cogmind, which is otherwise both relatively predictable and survivable given sufficient skill, outside of self-imposed challenges of the more extreme variety (or some more difficult achievements). To a degree I covered this aspect of their presence in the other article, as that was of course the intent--they're supposed to inject a sudden challenge into certain runs, be the wrench that forces players to react to a more extreme threat, keeping runs interesting and at the same time hopefully giving enough leeway to at least make avoidance a decent option in many cases if necessary.

Now that they're a reality, how has that been working out in practice? In general I've seen a lot of good stories coming out of Unchained encounters, so that's reassuring, everything from close scrapes and untimely ambushes to outright direct confrontations and victory, or even proactively triggering and hunting them.

I know some player first impressions of Unchained have not necessarily been great, depending on the circumstances of their encounter(s), but if there's anything to take away from this post today: DON'T WORRY! Beta 16 is, after all, only a small portion of what's to come, in many senses.

For an apt Cogmind analogy, see Beta 14, the introduction of the UFD which included plenty of lore and shiny new content, but obviously in several respects didn't yet perfectly slot into the meta design. As a result it could feel underwhelming from certain angles. In hindsight it's easier for players to see (or understand what I meant when I said) that was because the UFD was literally unfinished--no civil war in the equation, nothing to do long term aside from using Scrapoids, and so on. Since then with its completion in Beta 15 it's become a good contender for a faction alignment, offering different types of runs, balanced and interesting, and eventually its own ending in a new map that has its own separate challenges and benefits as well.

So anyway that's where we stand with Unchained right now, Beta 16 just the beginning, with some smaller updates to come and finally the release of Beta 17 which will cap it all off :D (I'll say up front that sadly there will be no way to join the Unchained, which would've been nice and I entertained the idea and designed a concept for it, but it really doesn't fit at this time and would also be quite a lot of extra work to do it justice, so not worth the delay or potential impact on just getting their fundamentals right.)

Evolution

As the Unchained content and systems expand, we're going to be seeing a lot more nuance than we have now, which will provide the design levers necessary to resolve any current perceived issues. After all, we only have five Unchained at the moment (likely increasing to 9 in Beta 16.1), and a simpler system for dispatching which did get a few minor updates during patches, though with some bigger changes to come as content allows.

For example, I'm sure one of the bigger factors contributing to a feeling of unfairness for certain builds/runs would be the fact that simply hacking lots of machines is one of the triggers, but 1) there is currently no way to gauge when that might occur, and 2) you will likely be attacked by what could be a really deadly threat to your build if you're a hacker. Now in a some cases one might be able to resolve this threat by fleeing ASAP, but the negative potential is sometimes a bit over the top given the current setup. This happens to be a very prevalent trigger, as clearly a fair number of players do a lot of hacking, which in turns means a greater chance of such negative outcomes.

You can see this prevalence reflected in the trigger data, revealed here in full for the first time (tallies as of Dec 14):

That's an excerpt from one of my data analyzers, showing different trigger types and how many times they were hit in the runs that were checked. Remember that this is not representative of all Beta 16 runs, as it excludes special/challenge modes, any runs ending prior to -7, those from players who don't have a long history of runs... Other caveats include the fact that some runs hit multiple triggers (even many for those actively hunting!), and importantly, not all of these triggers actually resulted in a dispatch. In fact since triggers are generally long-term factors, many are not finally tripped until later in the game where there are fewer and fewer opportunities for Unchained to appear anyway :P

Back to the data, as you can see close to half (43.3%) in that list there are just from hacking.

Looking at a separate broader set of data for greater accuracy, of 3,450 Rogue runs submitted and that reached at least -7 depth, 400 (11.6%) triggered Unchained, 288 (8.3%) had at least one dispatch, and 67 (1.9%) killed at least one of them (a few runs even killed 3-4 Unchained in one go, or the majority that currently exist xD). Distribution in terms of which were dispatched is pretty even, since again we don't have any nuance there yet, though numbers are naturally slightly lower for the couple Unchained (Queen and Glados) only allowed to spawn in a smaller minority of maps due to design restrictions. Worth noting is that 204 runs examined from this set tripped the hacking trigger at least once, therefore accounting for 51.0% of triggers, a better reflection of the real ratio (even higher!).

For comparison sake, of 375 winning runs, 48.8% triggered Unchained, 40.3% had at least one dispatch, and 13.9% killed at least one. 26.7% tripped the hacking trigger (a significantly lower ratio!).

Anyway, there is almost zero nuance to the hacking trigger system, and actually zero nuance to the relevant Unchained dispatch, so when these are fully implemented (as they are that much closer to being in 16.1!) you'll be happy to know that the experience will be quite different from the current state :D

With regard to hacking in particular, different hacks will have a different level of impact, you will be somewhat aware of that impact over time before it becomes meaningful, and when it does become meaningful... well, Cypher is probably going to have something to say about that. Couldn't really add that system before adding Cypher, but they're on the way, albeit... somewhat slowly xD

In the earlier stages (<-- You Are Here) it makes little sense to spend a lot of time on building out the overarching systems without having realized the breadth of Unchained to come. Each new one tends to explode in complexity and possibilities, and we'll need to take this into account, while also taking advantage of those resulting possibilities.

Explosion

So yes there's an explosion in progress, one that also happens to be a slow-motion explosion due to that complexity :P

Like we've got this guy

who was going to have a couple new parts, and it ended up being four unique parts, one of which has multiple brand new functionalities that took some doing, but will be pretty fun. You, too, can "enjoy" being on either end of that fun! :D

Certainly it's nice to have some rewards for having overcome a challenge, aside from simple bragging rights or a murderous satisfaction. While some rewards are shared as a possibility between all Unchained, it's even nicer when they instead involve theoretical access to unique Unchained parts themselves by having bested the one using them.

In some cases Unchained do, however, use their parts "better" than Cogmind is capable, which makes logical sense. This is something I always avoided before with other uniques, but with the amount of power I want to give some of these bots, for balance purposes it's better if Cogmind doesn't use them at full identical power. That doesn't mean Unchained gear isn't good--some are wonderful and may even enable new play styles (!), but in order to best balance both types of experiences (versus Unchained as well as using their parts), a bit of differentiation is required in some cases.

To expand on the idea of access to Unchained tech, I will say that there could also be alternative means of obtaining some of these items in the future.

Closure

In summary, the blunt instruments that are the Unchained of today will gradually be further refined into the intended challenging and fear-inducing but also even potentially rewarding experience. I see it taking shape already, so we're on the right track. Have faith in the process ;)

For the next release, a 16.1 update, so far we have at least three new Unchained essentially confirmed via recent sharing and chats in the Discord channel. Coincidentally they're the ones I mentioned here before, namely Cypher, Vader, and Blink. You'll love 'em! Or love seeing what they do to other people on Discord, second hand. Or maybe salvaging their gear and being a menace yourself. Existing general Unchained systems have also gotten some incremental improvements and fixes.

As for the actual release time, I'd wanted it to be later this month, but unless I shrink the total count, I don't see that happening xD. As usual, some features naturally grow larger than planned as the details are filled in (can't help myself--if it's feasible and make the experience that much better, in it goes). I found myself adding so much stuff to support Cypher recently and out of curiosity checked the lines of code (not a good metric, just a metric, of course), and in that sense they're already 0.37% of the entire game, hahaha. What's more, that's at only having completed the first half of their implementation...

Progress is also slowed a bit this week in particular by having to take time out to do my typical end-of-year annual review, both internally and also for my regular post. While these chores aren't necessarily something I'm keen to do at the moment, it's always a good idea and I'm sure I'll be happy I did so after the fact. Certainly more motivating to be working on Unchained these days though! The sheer possibilities...