In this log, I will be documenting my design reasoning behind certain changes made per version. These reasonings will be in italic.
I am doing this largely to document my development of this mod in a 'professional' manner, but also because it might be fun to reveal and reflect on how and why I reached certain implementations of these enemies and what I learned while making it, similarly to the DevDiary for LCGoldScrapMod.

v0.2.1

• "Increased the volume of The Beat's footsteps when really close, and slightly reduced the range of the sounds"

  • The Beat's primary gameplay mechanic revolves around its footstep sounds, as players usually use this to confirm enemy presence before being able to visually confirm it, but no (vanilla) enemy really played into it yet. On top of that, in testing players noted its sounds to be intimidating albeit a bit soft, and couldn't really tell the difference between "at the end of the hallway" and "around the corner", so I hope this first fix reaches its intended intimidating effect a bit better. Finally, I reduced the range of the sound, to hopefully be less intrusive, as I don't want this enemy to hog all attention away from other enemies.

• "The Beat will now stand upright and still for a second when first spotted and before going into its dash"

  • At first, The Beat just ran away when spotted. This made it feel scared of players, but it's supposed to feel scary TO players. Then I added the dash, to give players a good scare and establish it as a threat. But with the above-mentioned "can't tell if it's around the corner", this made encounters more of a cheap jumpscare. But I believe Lethal Company is not about cheap jumpscares, but about standing face-to-face with dangerous creatures whose territory you are stepping into. Encounters with The Beat have already gone through many iterations by now, so I hope this finally reaches the intended feeling of encountering a wild beast that's not happy to see you in its home.

• "The Boxer will now taunt upon starting combat and killing a player, and added a remark about The Boxer's vulnerability to its Bestiary page"

  • Not only do I hope these minor changes to be a nice touch that add some personality to the enemy, I also hope they introduce its vulnerability a bit better, since people are used to spamming the attack button to kill an enemy, while this one suddenly blocks those hits. The taunt leaves it open for long enough for players to notice a positive reaction they want to evoke when hitting the enemy, and thus also distinguishes the lack of positive feedback if a hit is blocked, really pushing people to read its attack animations and react to openings to counterattack. Also, if you're wondering what inspired The Boxer, its inspiration comes from Punch-Out for the Wii.

v0.3.0

• "Changed The Beat's roaming behaviour so it now hopefully encounters players faster and spreads out more"

  • A bit of backstory: The biggest challenge in creating LCBeatBoxerMod was gameplay-scope. In the initial concept, there was only going to be one enemy, The BeatBoxer, who would first do what The Beat does and then do what The Boxer now does if its ambush was unsuccessful. However, this took far too long for an average Lethal Company-day, and with the enemy spawning late, you wouldn't even see the second half of this loop. By splitting it up into two enemies, I got two smaller, much more manageable game loops, but The Beat still sometimes couldn't complete its loop if it spawned in the corner of the map and nobody found it. I didn't want to make it omniscient like Brackens and popped Jesters, as I think this would make it feel less like a natural beast you would encounter in nature. So, I now tell it to roam a smaller area, starting midway between itself and players, to push it to encounter players faster, and to keep nudging itself towards players every time its now-smaller roam completes.

• "The Beat will now spawn with a Monkey Toy already in its hand"

  • This is meant as some classic external motivation. The toy is already the risk-reward of the enemy, given its high price while also enraging the enemy, but you wouldn't know about this reward until 1) you encounter the enemy, 2) it runs off to set up its ambush, and 3) you go into its ambush-area to where the toy is. That's a bit late to introduce the reward, while the risk of the enemy was already established (see v0.2.1's second bullet point), so I hope it now being in the enemy's hand tips off players to some sort of reward if they scan the enemy and scan this scrap item at the same time.

• "The Boxer will now try to fight enemies when attacked by them, or if the person who tamed it got attacked"

  • I loved making this. It was difficult getting it to work, but I think this enemy now makes so much more sense, following its Bestiary description. It now feels like so much more of a threat if it picks a fight with other enemies. It now feels like so much more of an ally if it tries to protect you from Forest Keepers and Baboon Hawks. And in testing, it was the funniest thing to spawn 30 enemies and 10 Boxers and then seeing them pick each other off and then the Boxers even fighting amongst themselves. This change was mostly to have fun with further fleshing out its personality.

• "The Boxer will now try to fight enemies if it feels like it"

  • THIS one, however, was not so much for fun, but for another pillar of this project I am very proud: absolutely no RNG. There is not a single reference to Unity's Random.Range in the enemies' code, and I am extremely proud of that, as I thought it was a bad habit of mine during LCGoldScrapMod that made balancing it and creating intentional gameplay moments very difficult. It now follows a graph that determines how threatening the enemy it sees must be to pick a fight with them. This so-called ThreatThreshold gradually decreases the later in the day it is, so at first it won't think much of Baboon Hawks, but by 10:00 PM it's going to fight them and theoretically even passive enemies. And I can fully edit this graph which, combined with the complete predictability, allows for much more control than with something like the Cat o' Gold's Gold Fevers.

• "After taking enough damage, The Boxer will now go into a state of rage where its attacks are more powerful, but leaves itself vulnerable for longer, and increased its HP to 35"

  • The latter change was one point I was wary of, as I got feedback that 30 HP was already too much. But had I lowered The Boxer's HP, it would have just been the same enemy but easier and with the same level of reward. But I believe a "make the game objectively easier"-button is not "fun", so instead of pulling back the risk to match the reward, I increased the risk and further increased the reward. Managing to dodge its even-deadlier attacks will now reward you with even stronger counterattacking, and I increased the value of the reward for killing it way up. So, my mindset towards balancing this enemy is to make it even more tempting to kill it, while also needing people need to prove themselves by making it much more deadly to do so. It IS called 'Lethal' Company after all...