Thanks to everybody who came to the stream today, double-thanks to everybody who followed!
Okay, so here is an unorganized list of thoughts I pulled from today's 3.5 hour playtesting sesh. If you check my past broadcasts on Twitch you should be able to find examples of all these things. I can provide specific video times if needed. (Scroll down for TL;DR)
- Silly bug with Kragg AI when he uses Up-Special slightly below a ledge (apparently this one's already been reported but at the beginning of my latest video you can see it in action)
- There is evidently some sort of relationship between the color you choose and the color that is chosen if you select a random opponent. Like, if you choose Zetterburn, and the opponent is randomly chosen as Zetterburn, they will be Red Zetterburn. If you go the next match as Red Zetterburn, random Zetterburn will cycle to Green Zetterburn and stay as Green Zetterburn for all random picks until the next mirror match where the player is Green Zetterburn, then they will cycle to Grey Zetterburn and so on... you should be able to see what I'm talking about if you start up a session, choose a random character, set the opponent to random, play a match, then change your character to exactly the character and color the opponent was, rinse, repeat, etc, etc, etc, etc,e tcgsdafsdf
- In a match with more than 2 players, Orcane's puddle will be left behind after he loses all stock. Believe this has been reported too
- There's a weird kink with the results screen for Team Battle matches. In a 3v1 match, the team will share the same score. (Ex. P1(Red) P2(Red) P3(Red) P4(Blue) will produce P1(1ST) P2(1ST) P3(1ST) P4(4TH)) However, in a 2v2 or 2v1, it does not follow this behavior. Instead, you could get something like (Ex. P1(Red) P2(Red) P3(Blue) P4(Blue) yielding P1(2ND) P2(1ST) P3(4TH) P4(3RD)). It's just kind of inconsistent.
- Actual extreme-ish glitch bug with Results Screen, I have no idea how I made this happen. I think it has something to do with Team Battle and/or Forsburn? It happened twice, once was a 4-player match and seemed to be a regular match until we got to the results screen, where my character portrait was way higher than all the others and the little box that shows the stats and stuff was flashing rapidly. One was a 1v2 match, with 3 stocks, I think I was Wrastor and the two AI I was against were both Forsburn? Or maybe I was Forsburn and the AI were something else. Either way, it was a three-stock match, and after I died once the match ended, with the enemy team both set to 1st (I think so anyway, this contradicts my previous point about them being different) and my character's box was way higher than theirs, not saying anything, doing the same flashing. This is all very convoluted and I should probably just find the time markers.
- In matches with more than two players, it would be nice if, when one player lost all their stocks, a small message would appear on-screen somewhere saying "Player x defeated!" It's not a huge deal or anything, but it would be a nice quality-of-life thing.
- I have felt super suspicious of parries and how consistent they are and today I figured out why. If one character parries any part of another character's jab combo, the attacker is allowed to complete the jab combo before receiving the parry stun. That is so weird! I know multi-hit moves like Kragg's Side-Special or Wrastor's Neutral-Special do the thing where they don't get the stun until their attack finishes, but I don't think most people would really expect a jab combo to be the same type of deal, since a jab combo isn't really a multi-hit move.
And that was most of what I got out of today.
I do have one more thing though that isn't strictly data-related feedback and more conjecture-based.
If gameplay stays more or less the same as it is right now, I am
strongly worried about this game's single-player. Isn't there going to be something like Multi-Man Melee planned? Unless you are a god at RoA, it is nearly impossible to win a 1v3 game, against AI at least. Or maybe I'm just super bad, which is definitely plausible. But if anyone here has beaten 1v3, then I am super impressed. Anyway, two things make me worry about whatever PvE you guys have planned for this game.
RoA prides itself in the hype of stringing together hits, over and over, whether you're smacking your opponent around the stage to rack up early %, or continuously slapping them upwards in an impressive juggling act that quickly turns deadly, or swiftly chasing down your prey, swipe after swipe, until they are just off-stage and ready for that Dair spike. KEN COMBOOOOO!! The crowd goes wild.
Well, when three characters are all going for one, that one character gets locked down HARD. You just stay in hitstun... like... forever.... Eventually you can get out (usually because at this point your % is so high that simple attacks knock you way back), but with the stages being as small as they are, there's not much you can do in the way of establishing map control, or kiting, or guerrilla tactics before the swarm re-descends upon you.
AI loves to parry. AI loves to generally follow the same path. So, they group up, and normally this seems like a good thing, because you can theoretically just bash them all with one good Strong-Attack and that's big damage. Once in a while, it even works! But if you're hitting 3 AI at once, it is
almost guaranteed that one of the three will put up a delicious, frame-perfect parry. Which leaves you wide open, open for a LONG time against 3 hungry computer-brained animals. And the group beating carries on.
1v2 is feasible, but if you're going to have 1v3 mobs in single-player mode, you're going to have a bad time. Just wanted to bring this up, hoping this is something you guys keep in mind when designing single-player!
TL;DR: You thought you could be saved from the wall of text? I'm sorry
