Yän
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Post by Yän on Jul 10, 2018 15:33:59 GMT -6
Yesterday I played the demo again to see the things that I've missed in my first playthrough.
One of them was the petrification sword. When I finally got it I was honestly disappointed by the way it works...
How it worked in Castlevania You hit an enemy with your stone weapon. If the enemy isn't immune to it, it will be petrified. Petrified enemies remain in the scene as a statue. If you want to, you can fill an entire room with statue-enemies.
How it works in Bloodstained
You hit an enemy with your stone weapon. Petrification is random and there is no tactical way to influence the outcome. Petrified enemies are almost instantly dead and removed from the room. Bloodstained seems to be obsessed with removing enemies from the screen as fast as possible. (There's a similar issue with beaten enemie's corpses disappearing into orange specks way too soon after their death, leaving me unsatisfied but that's another topic for another thread)
A new proposed system
While I greatly prefer Castlevania's petrification system because there's some tactical finesse on which enemies to use it on and there is a predictable outcome to the attack, I'd actually propose a system that I find a little more interesting. Enemy-petrification should work just like player petrification worked in Castlevania games: You hit an enemy with your stone weapon. If the enemy isn't immune to it, it will be petrified. Petrified enemies remain in the scene as a statue for a limited time. While they're a statue, they can't hurt you on collision. After some time they break out of the statue (shaking a little bit shortly before breaking out) and keep fighting like before. Stone weapons in general should have fairly low base damage stats. Hitting a statue deals normal damage but does not reset the stone-timer. If a petrified enemy dies, the (pretty neat looking) stone-crumbling effect in the current demo plays.
That way, enemies can still be a threat to you after petrification, yet the outcome is predictable and it can be fun to play around with the statues. If multiple enemies are in the scene or killing an enemy takes some time after petrification due to high enemy-HP there is a heightened tactical element that changes the flow of the combat. Now the player would want to hit every enemy quickly but just once. Then, once all enemies are statues, the player can go ahead and try to destroy all statues in order under some time pressure. I think this is not too hard to realize and would create a new strategically different playstyle based on petrification.
Poison In Bloodstained, enemies can be poisoned when using specific weapons or shards. That's so cool! However, the way it's balanced right now makes this initially awesome mechanic ultimately pointless. The poison damage dealt to enemies is way too weak and it's never the thing that helps me win a fight. The base damage per second of just about any weapon in Bloodstained is way higher than the poison effect.
Please balance poison weapons and shards so that the base damage is pretty weak but the poison effect actually does significant damage over time. This, again, would bring a lot more strategic finesse to the combat when using a poison weapon or shard. If you think that this makes the weapon OP, there could be some immune enemies too - or enemies with some more HP could build up an immunity after they have recovered from the poison status effect.
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Post by akuwa on Jul 10, 2018 15:53:56 GMT -6
for the petrification system I prefer the random chance like it is myself. I say so because it better allows progression to improve the weapons that have that effect just by increasing the chance, it already has a good purpose of giving an advantage of possibly one hitting tough non-boss enemies and would be great for any area you are greatly under leveled for there's no need to make low level weapons OP by making it guaranteed.
for poison it sounds to me like you haven't tried using it vs Zangetsu as he has a weakness for poison causing it to do significantly more damage to him, very weak effect vs most enemies but useful when you know when to use it. if you do want a more damage over time type of weapon to use in general it could more easily be some other damage type as poison right now is a hybrid splitting it's damage between physical and DOT so they could both live side by side just fine
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Yän
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Post by Yän on Jul 10, 2018 16:14:22 GMT -6
for the petrification system I prefer the random chance like it is myself. I say so because it better allows progression to improve the weapons that have that effect just by increasing the chance, it already has a good purpose of giving an advantage of possibly one hitting tough non-boss enemies and would be great for any area you are greatly under leveled for there's no need to make low level weapons OP by making it guaranteed. for poison it sounds to me like you haven't tried using it vs Zangetsu as he has a weakness for poison causing it to do significantly more damage to him, very weak effect vs most enemies but useful when you know when to use it. if you do want a more damage over time type of weapon to use in general it could more easily be some other damage type as poison right now is a hybrid splitting it's damage between physical and DOT so they could both live side by side just fine Well I gave some suggestions about how to avoid the petrification effect being OP: Make some enemies immune and give it a cooldown. This can also lead to quite interesting progression as the cooldown can be increased.
As for the poison - that's interesting... I did not know about Zangetsu's weakness. That sound cool but I think if it's all based on weakness there should be more enemies that are weak to poison. Also right now it's rather extremely useless against most enemies. If this is tiered I'd still prefer it to be stronger on most enemies so there's at least a point to it. The current poison damage feels more like it should be applied to enemies who are specifically strong vs poison. The wasps could be one such enemy. |
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Post by Carnack Ketral on Jul 10, 2018 18:54:29 GMT -6
Also, do not forget that most enemies in the beta are essentially trash mobs, easily slain in 1-2 hits regardless. DOTs and ailments are essentially wasted on such enemies.
If there were some tougher non boss monsters that could take more punishment, we would see more use out of these.
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Yän
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Post by Yän on Jul 10, 2018 19:51:00 GMT -6
Carnack Ketral I agree that such ailments or DOT become especially interesting for later enemies and they would still be utterly useless with the current balancing. When poison only hurts the vast majority of enemies with one damage every now and then, later enemies with more HP will especially not be affected by it.
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simon
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Post by simon on Jul 10, 2018 19:57:13 GMT -6
Yesterday I played the demo again to see the things that I've missed in my first playthrough.
One of them was the petrification sword. When I finally got it I was honestly disappointed by the way it works...
How it worked in Castlevania You hit an enemy with your stone weapon. If the enemy isn't immune to it, it will be petrified. Petrified enemies remain in the scene as a statue. If you want to, you can fill an entire room with statue-enemies.
How it works in Bloodstained
You hit an enemy with your stone weapon. Petrification is random and there is no tactical way to influence the outcome. Petrified enemies are almost instantly dead and removed from the room. Bloodstained seems to be obsessed with removing enemies from the screen as fast as possible. (There's a similar issue with beaten enemie's corpses disappearing into orange specks way too soon after their death, leaving me unsatisfied but that's another topic for another thread)
A new proposed system
While I greatly prefer Castlevania's petrification system because there's some tactical finesse on which enemies to use it on and there is a predictable outcome to the attack, I'd actually propose a system that I find a little more interesting. Enemy-petrification should work just like player petrification worked in Castlevania games: You hit an enemy with your stone weapon. If the enemy isn't immune to it, it will be petrified. Petrified enemies remain in the scene as a statue for a limited time. While they're a statue, they can't hurt you on collision. After some time they break out of the statue (shaking a little bit shortly before breaking out) and keep fighting like before. Stone weapons in general should have fairly low base damage stats. Hitting a statue deals normal damage but does not reset the stone-timer. If a petrified enemy dies, the (pretty neat looking) stone-crumbling effect in the current demo plays.
That way, enemies can still be a threat to you after petrification, yet the outcome is predictable and it can be fun to play around with the statues. If multiple enemies are in the scene or killing an enemy takes some time after petrification due to high enemy-HP there is a heightened tactical element that changes the flow of the combat. Now the player would want to hit every enemy quickly but just once. Then, once all enemies are statues, the player can go ahead and try to destroy all statues in order under some time pressure. I think this is not too hard to realize and would create a new strategically different playstyle based on petrification.
Poison In Bloodstained, enemies can be poisoned when using specific weapons or shards. That's so cool! However, the way it's balanced right now makes this initially awesome mechanic ultimately pointless. The poison damage dealt to enemies is way too weak and it's never the thing that helps me win a fight. The base damage per second of just about any weapon in Bloodstained is way higher than the poison effect.
Please balance poison weapons and shards so that the base damage is pretty weak but the poison effect actually does significant damage over time. This, again, would bring a lot more strategic finesse to the combat when using a poison weapon or shard. If you think that this makes the weapon OP, there could be some immune enemies too - or enemies with some more HP could build up an immunity after they have recovered from the poison status effect.
I agree with all of the proposed changes. I hope Iga listens and makes these changes. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that we are wasting our time here and the developer is not interested with including us in the decision making process for Bloodstained Ritual of the Night. They want our feedback sure, but I don't think they will include any of our recommended changes. They look at us as Backers (investors only) so they make all of the decisions........not us. |
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Post by bloodful on Jul 10, 2018 20:01:57 GMT -6
I totally agree with petrification being a little bit boring by being overpowered - its essentially a one hit kill with no interesting player choice about it. The thing I'm most concerned with is how trivial most enemies are in bloodstained and castlevanias in general (I've been meaning to post on this topic on this), and petrification doesn't help with that.
I like and agree with your ideas:
- Petrification status should be temporary and not an instant death sentence
- Damage from the inflicting weapon is increased on petrified opponents
Now I also like your idea of no damage on collision but I'm worried that would also trivialize monsters because once you got them stoned you can just move on. In effect is that any different to a one hit kill other than the fact that you don't even get a drop or experience from them? For this to work I'm thinking that the petrification must have a fairly short duration before they break out, giving you an advantage but not so much that we are back to its current iteration ie. overpowered-one-shot mechanic.
Poison:
I think its ok where it is. It does big damage on certain bigger monsters and on Zangetsu but very little to others. I'm not sure if that's due to resistances or if its % health based damage. So it seems useful for enemies with larger health pools which are usually more challenging, while having little effect on smaller trash mobs, which makes sense because in most cases you'll kill those ones with 2 hits and wouldn't bother spending time waiting around for poison to rack up damage on them anyway.
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Yän
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Post by Yän on Jul 10, 2018 20:03:35 GMT -6
simon I'm glad you agree but I'm not quite sure how you get the idea that feedback like this won't be considered as something to change. After all this game is still in development and changes are likely being made all the time. Why would they ask for feedback if they already know that they'll ignore it? Doesn't seem logical to me. Of course I know that I'm not making decisions for them by writing down my ideas and suggestions. But who knows - if enough people agree, they may consider the feedback as worthwhile and actually tweak and change things accordingly (that is, if the devs don't totally disagree themselves).
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Yän
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Post by Yän on Jul 10, 2018 20:07:27 GMT -6
Now I also like your idea of no damage on collision but I'm worried that would also trivialize monsters because once you got them stoned you can just move on. In effect is that any different to a one hit kill other than the fact that you don't even get a drop or experience from them? For this to work I'm thinking that the petrification must have a fairly short duration before they break out, giving you an advantage but not so much that we are back to its current iteration ie. overpowered-one-shot mechanic. Good point there. From a gameplay-standpoint it may make more sense to restrict your movement by making statues harmful to touch. |
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Post by Yän on Jul 10, 2018 20:11:40 GMT -6
Poison:I think its ok where it is. It does big damage on certain bigger monsters and on Zangetsu but very little to others. I'm not sure if that's due to resistances or if its % health based damage. So it seems useful for enemies with larger health pools which are usually more challenging, while having little effect on smaller trash mobs, which makes sense because in most cases you'll kill those ones with 2 hits and wouldn't bother spending time waiting around for poison to rack up damage on them anyway. This is really interesting and something I haven't considered before. It might just be percentage-based. That changes my viewpoint a bit. Zangetsu may not be especially vulnerable to poison after all. Maybe it's just his far greater health bar that makes him take more damage from the poison. I still think that it's rather low but that may also be tweaked through progression systems - some weapons might have more potent poison than others. |
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Post by freddythemonkey on Jul 11, 2018 6:23:25 GMT -6
Unfortunately status effects were always a very minor mechanic in IGAvanias (except against the player), so while it would be nice for the mechanism to be deeper and more fleshed out I doubt it will be at this point.
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datura
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Post by datura on Jul 11, 2018 6:49:26 GMT -6
I was also let down quite a bit by the incredibly low DOT poison applies to enemies, except for Zangetsu... I personally don't think poison damage is percentage based because, if I recall correctly, almost every enemy in the demo (except Zangetsu) only took 1 or 2 damage per tick, regardless of how much health they have. Could be wrong though  Maybe it's because we only got our hands on very low-tier poison weapons? One can only hope that late game weapons will apply more powerful poison effects. That, or most enemies are highly resistant to poison, save for some very specific ones. |
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Post by CastleDan on Jul 11, 2018 8:33:48 GMT -6
I would just like the sound effect an animation of the stone effect to be a bit better. The effect kinda vanishes as it crumbles and the sound kinda doesn't happen either. Could use a tune up. I love the poison effect.
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Post by caer on Jul 12, 2018 3:05:44 GMT -6
I have no problem with how it works now, and changing petrify to cause a short period of immobility would also be fine and interesting.
However I believe strongly that the effect should definitely not happen every time. That makes it way too good, as it basically just becomes a guaranteed but delayed 1-hit kill, where you have to keep beating up on something that can never fight back. Immunities just make some enemies a non-threat instead of all, which doesn't make it more interesting.
A chance of inflicting it definitely feels like the way to go.
Unless it's from a shard that requires a resource (mana) to use. That could be fine even for 100% hit chance
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anonthemouse
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 23, 2018 3:38:52 GMT -6
I would love for petrified enemies to stick around, but I also think that you should be able to use them as temporary platforms. Basically, think of the use of the ice beam in Metroid. You petrify an enemy and it turns to stone. It's stuck in place but you can stand on it and jump off. After some time, it will break out of petrification. If the player is touching it at the time, it hits them. Simple.
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Post by Hertzila on Jul 23, 2018 15:02:30 GMT -6
About the petrification effect, I worry that having it happen all the time will still make it a bit too powerful. But I also don't like the idea of random chance being the governing factor. So why not (kinda) nick the status effect system from Souls for this purpose?
When you hit an enemy with petrification, it adds to a counter based on the strength of the petrification effect. It wouldn't do much first, if anything at all, but if you keep hitting the enemy and the counter crosses a treshold, then the full effect hits the enemy and it gets petrified. The same counter could be used as a timer until the enemy de-petrifies, by counting backwards.
This would make the effect predictable and depend only on the power of the effect versus any resistance but without being the pure binary of one-hit or immune and without being random. Plus it would make powering the shard/weapon/thing and stacking valuable, to increase the effect and reduce the number of hits it takes to bring the full effect out.
It could also be used for most other status effects, if needed.
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Yän
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Post by Yän on Jul 27, 2018 15:20:52 GMT -6
anonthemouse That's really neat! Circle of the moon did that back in the day and now it's a thing in Curse of the Moon as well (Alfred's ice spell). So yeah, I'd love something like this. Hertzila This is a pretty cool idea for a system that weeds out the randomness and also doesn't make petrification OP. I like it!
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Galamoth
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Post by Galamoth on Jul 27, 2018 15:24:59 GMT -6
I'm personally still waiting to see if there's a Curse status-effect similar to past Igavanias.
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