Balance Update #1 - Patch Notes

Well at this point I already made my opinion about the nerfs way too clear, but I just want yet again to comment about something just to make it clearer:

I shouldn't have made a blanket statement like that and I have edited that post accordingly. Jinrai is more the exception than the rule (the parries are as well, at least in my experience) and I should have specified that most techniques feel/are numerically inferior to shards barring a few exceptions.

It's fine, I know you weren't criticizing me. I was criticizing myself for making a mistake I shouldn't have.

I don't normally join forums nor express my opinion outside of my group of friends or profession but I felt the need to chime in on this subject. Why?



Bloodstained surpassed all of my expectations, because believe me I was ready to write it off after the demo. Kudos for really turning it around into something with staying power! My only hope is that you fix some of the game changing bugs and leave the rest to history.



Great games leave a lasting impression, they keep us coming back to them long after their intended shelf life. Nostalgia has shaped the video game landscape and super charged fandom but I fear the almighty software update is eroding it. The industry is taking full advantage of nostalgia yet it seems completely oblivious to it at the same time. Coming in weeks, months, years, after the fact to tune a single player game threatens nostalgia as a whole, especially now that fans/consumers don't actually have a choice in the matter. Yeah sure you can turn off your auto updates but that is a rather weak solution to the problem. Go ask Star Wars fans what they think of the special releases. What it comes down to in the end is nostalgia/fandom/experience. I want to relive the game as it was when I fell in love with it. That is the reason I keep coming back to games like Symphony of the Night year after year.



SoTN is a good example of a game I come back to every other year or so and when I do 8 times out of 10 I'm rerunning with my favorite load out. Cover your ears now... My favorite load out contains the crissaegrim.   Every once in awhile I do run the game with all new gear but predominately I don't because I am trying to work through an ever growing list of nostalgic games I play every few year and just don't have the time try something new. Having sunk nearly 40 hours into my first Bloodstained run I feel like it is a game that has the potential to keep calling me back. It could join that growing list of games I love playing (but don't always have time to play each and every year), but change it too much and I won't want to come back year after year.  It will sit on the shelf and gather dust with the rest of my collection. My fandom won't be super charged and when I talk it about it with friends the conversation will end up being more along the lines of, "remember how awesome that game was? sucks they over balanced it into the ground". Not saying this one patch has ruined the game for me, just really hoping this emerging pattern doesn't get too out of hand.
  I would like some semblance of my experience intact when next I return.

In the end I get it.  As an ex professional artist, a professional software engineer, and a perfectionist I see both sides of the story. I know you only want to put your best work out there but it is tough to know when to stop.  Artist can overwork their masterpieces, devs can over architect their software and now game devs can over balance their games.  In the end people create because they love to create and because they love to see others enjoying their work.  I would love to architect the perfect software but you can't and you can't successfully dictate how others use your software however hard you try.  Our experiences as consumers are our own, nobody can and should want to change that.  It is a personal experience.  In the end, if I want to pick up Bloodstained next year and speed run through with an unbalanced Rhava Velar and Welcome Company that is my prerogative.

What is the best of both worlds?  If consoles distributed versions like source/version control.  Consumers could get their favorite version whenever they wanted and designers could still tinker with their creations.  In the end a super fan is going to download and play all versions because they want to immerse themselves in the work, others may not and personally I think that is ok.

Will I be sad if Bloodstained is so different in a year that I can't truly relive my experiences to date?  Yes, can I stop it?  No.  Just hoping the team takes their great ideas and applies them to the sequel and leaves me with something I can relive and replay.


Thanks for reading.
PS: if this is a duplicate post sorry, something seems to have eaten my original reply

First of all, just to play Devil's Advocate, because it's what I do, I'd like to remind everyone of something. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is not, and has never been, a single-player game. Multiplayer was announced during the Kickstarter. It hasn't been implemented yet, but it's a known feature. Multiplayer is coming, in at least one mode, and possibly multiple. That's confirmed to be a part of the 13 free DLC.

That said, I've not noticed any major balance issues that would warrant sweeping changes to the game. I worry about "fixing" the fun out. As a cook, I know what trying too hard to correct the seasoning can do. As someone with a background in both game design and writing, I know that there's a point where you need to say, "This is done. I am not working on this any more."

Finally, as for all the people complaining about people complaining, using terms like "whining" and "butthurt"...what's got you so butthurt? People who are having fun and now hear that their fun is considered something to be "fixed" have a right to complain. Possibly more right than people who aren't having fun because they refuse to use a solution that already exists.

Dullahan heads getting nerfed was a long time coming. With the amount of power you get from grade they crushed Nightmare in half and you had to sell duplicates to maintain a semblance of what they probably intended when they created that familiar. Same with Welcome Company. Fun skills but they were ridiculous. Now they'll be fun and I won't feel nearly as awful for leaning on them. On the topic of nerfing A so B looks better. It's more the case of nerfing A so people even know B exists. People will still use Welcome company because it's still strong. I'll still be using the Riga's because their properties are what makes them strong, not their level of damage.

Versioning is a neat idea I've seen pitched and if the game is even built with the capability to support that I'm all for it. 4A was certainly a better game with the ability to pick and choose. But in the topic of buffs vs nerfs, it's inarguable that the current balancing of spells and some weapons are busted in a very obvious way. In any game I've ever played the arguments against Nerfs are always the same. "Just buff the alternatives." I've never subscribed to that. Especially so in a single player game. You take a problem that could easily be fixed "x aren't balanced against each other" and assuage that by removing even more options for people who like to have a "normal" gameplay experience. I won't be telling people that their method of having fun is wrong. FFT is great fun and most of that fun comes from the fact that you can make unstoppable killing machines from the very first chapter and that it has no idea of what the phrase "balance" even means. But at the same time, if versioning is not an option, I'd rather have parity towards "normal" as opposed to slowly losing more options to even engage with in a normal run as they buff everything else to avoid offending people who like walking about as a super powered killing machine. Which you will still be able to do.

To speak from me personally. I welcome any change that will bring the game closer to what they original envisioned. Buffs and nerfs. Because I feel it will be better for it. Riga Storaema was my go to shard. Even on my technique primarily Nightmare runs I will still make and slot it. It costs nothing to use. Has an absolutely ludicrous range. Is relatively easy to farm to max grade, is relatively easier to max rank, and just deletes entire rooms. It deletes bosses. It deletes everything. The dragons both fall over to it. It's outrageous in strength, requires no aiming, and adjusts to terrain. It hits multiple times, deletes projectiles, reaches far enough up to cleave flying hazards like bats and dullahan heads and there's a total of 1.1 whole zones in the game where it's not the preferable option. Why in the world would anybody even consider Thrashing Tentacle or Draconic Rage when that costs 6 times as much for not even a quarter of the damage. It doing less damage won't make it any less of a god skill, but it will bring other skills up to par comparatively. It still will be the better conjure shards because it's simply easy to level up for a stronger power spike earlier in the games life. The only way for it not to be a god skill is if they nerfed it's MP ratio, which they haven't and probably won't do. It's still a strong ability. It still will be fun to use. But maybe at some point of it's max grade life you'll need to use it 3 whole times instead of 2 now. Which would certainly be nice.

More from me personally, I feel most people bemoaning the nerfs don't actually realize or even care how much/little they will affect the item in question as a preferred skill or weapon. The Rhava's got a bump and they'll still be affected by several passive shards upgrade to skill shards and stacked with passive shards, given damage boosts by books, book familiar, and sacred shade. Requires a bit more setup to get full killing potential but it balances out it's upper limit a bit while still not really affecting how people use it in lower limit runs.

Also, I like these people being like... "it is current year, why are we nerfing things in a single player game"

If the game wasn't released yet, these would be called design changes, not nerfs. No one would care, because it wouldn't be public, and considering these aren't even that extreme of design changes, almost nothing would have changed.

Also, the criticism of "it's nerfing option A to make option B look more attractive" isn't really correct here. On the inverse, if we buffed everything to make it all super gorgeously attractive, suddenly enemies would be really squishy, and would need a buff too. Suddenly, there's a whole lot more work going on, for something that could have been as simple as nerfing a few egregiously silly things.

As someone who appreciates the nuance of a correctly-paced challenge in a game, I see nothing wrong in adjusting things for the sake of the progression. That's what it is: for the progression. Everyone with completed saves, their god-rays, infinite money and limitless mana and pizza feel no tremors or crumbling foundations from this. This is mostly so people going through the game first time don't stumble into a trivially easy cheese strat.

If I wanted to not have a challenge, Riga Dohin and Straight Arrow would have carried me the entire game, hands down. Only shards I'd have ever needed. Summon Portraits, too; really good passive DPS. I've seldom used Directional Shield, but man, that shard is DIRTY. I feel no sympathy for whatever happens to that shard. They could make it use all mana on one received hit and I'd turn the other cheek. It's interesting, and I find it cute that it caters to the supreme tank play style and gives people a way to get past the challenges in a lot of ways, but I could never seriously use that in good conscious. It just... it'd feel so wrong, man.

I hope this lands soon on the PS4. I'm waiting with my first playthrough until patches are in place. I prefer to not have to consciously avoid overpowered stuff, so any help with that is very welcome.

For xbox owners, I really feel your pain
I hope that release pipeline is properly sorted out soon