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« on: April 26, 2017, 02:53:07 AM »
The main game is terribly unfocused. The slow pace is kind of a result of that. The game is in the genre of "Arena Shooter", or at least that's my general understanding, but the design choices completely counteract this. There are a few items that cause running away to be a viable tactic.
1.) Slow projectile speed – With some exceptions, most projectiles in the game don’t work well beyond medium range. It’s mostly based on prediction. As a result, the more distance you can put between you and your opponent, the fewer options they have to work with.
2.) Level design – This isn’t so much a fault of the game as it has more to do with the source material, but there’s a lot of vertical movement (jumping up platforms etc) which further compounds the problem listed at #1
3.) Powerups placed in hard to reach areas – How many levels have an Etank placed on a platform that you need a mobility item to obtain? Very few useful items are in areas that are easy to reach. If you have an etank in inventory, running away isn’t as necessary since you can recover health.
4.) Powerups that effectively shut down an area – Treble is a fun item, but run up some stairs and drop him down and no player is going to reasonably follow you. Even Tango can have a similar result since his random bouncing and OHKO by pure luck potential makes chasing a player way too risky.
5.) Lack of counters – This is a problem that, IMHO, has cropped up more and more recently. By trying to remove OHKO weapons, this also means the players are now lacking proper ways to turn the tables. If you’re low on health, but have something that can immediately remove the threat, it makes turning around and attacking a viable option. By nerfing this choice, you’re enhancing this problem.
Look at other games in a similar genre (Doom, UT, Quake) and you’ll find that OHKO weapons were common (SSG, Flak Canon, Rockets, Grenades, Rail Gun, etc). These were usually mitigated somewhat by armor and other powerups that could reduce the damage taken or increase your damage (Quad Damage). Armor and power ups also made it so that exploring the level was rewarding and that just running to fight someone wasn’t always the best option. In addition, the OHKO weapons usually had some sort of drawback (Slow projectile speed, splash damage on explosive weapons, or a close range requirement) to offset their power. So why does this matter here? Well it created a risk/reward setup that’s lacking here. In other games, you could risk attacking the player or you could risk running away? Do you attempt to take out the player and then heal yourself, or you try to grab a health pack first and then turn around?
Let me give one of my favorite examples, Atomic Fire. This was a weapon that was changed in a vacuum. The change was made because of the "pressure" it gave since it could instantly kill a player. As I noted above, this is actually a GOOD thing in most games of this style since it's a tool that player can utilize in the proper scenario. The actual problem here is that there aren't too many counters for it and thus it was overbearing. This is a legitimate problem that should be addressed. A solution would have been to make there more defensive options work against this weapon. Creating a Rock, Paper, Scissors dynamic. (Ex. Reduce damage so Jewel Satellite could reflect it, make weapons such as Mirror Buster more common in stages that have AF etc). The chosen fix, however, feeds into the running away problem. It's just not reliable, and a single shot is all you get. The fact that the relationship that weapons have with the other items in the game is not considered at all is a result of trying to balance it with LMS in mind, since everything is random there.
This is why I call the game unfocused. By nerfing weapons to help balance LMS and Duel it’s creating other problems with the general flow of the game. Sure, nerfing Atomic Fire so it’s not as OP makes sense on paper, but now you’ve removed a tool from the belt of a player to reverse an unfavorable situation. The end result over time is that running away is a valid strategy as it’s incentivized by the weapon balance, stage design, and an overall lack of tools on both the fleeing player and the attacker.
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