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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 Yän on Jul 9, 2018 16:29:29 GMT -6
There's such a thing as too much time. Much longer than early 2019 and I'd start to worry. The team could end up getting sidetracked with other projects, release on certain platforms could become jeopardized *cough-cough, Vita*. I just wish we'd get some specifics on how much more work needs to be done, how much more they'd like to do, and how long it would all take, even a ball-park estimate. Publicly releasing an estimate seems like a bad PR move to me. Estimating gamedev work is notoriously difficult. Estimates get made and broken in gamedev all the time. Risking this publicly would be problematic. I can already hear the "DELAY!"-shouts in the distance just thinking about it
I agree tha too much time could be a problem too. Vita is on its way out and this will likely be one of its last titles. I wouldn't worry about other projects. As long as Bloodstained's not released I trust in IGA and team to fully focus on it. That's what he said in numerous interviews.
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Post by Yän on Jul 9, 2018 16:22:03 GMT -6
I fully agree with this post. I'd rather play without the shadow. It seems ok to sometimes have your character obstructed partially or briefly.
I also like Jogur's idea. The mockup Jogur did looked way better than what's currently in the game.
Another way to achieve more consistency while potentially avoiding clipping meshes and always showing your character would be to use the same trick but instead of just showing a solid color in the obstructed space, render the character normally. Basically this would let us see Miriam in front of platforms she passes through and walls she clips into due to some sort of attack (I still hope that running against walls won't be a thing in the final version). When foreground objects or other characters obstruct Miriam, I think she should not be rendered through or in front of them. Just render the foreground object. It's okay not to see 100% of the character at all times.
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Post by Yän on Jul 9, 2018 16:11:57 GMT -6
Angel-Corlux Thank you for the post. It's reassuring to read that these things are being discussed in detail.
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Post by Yän on Jul 7, 2018 14:15:42 GMT -6
I don't really think it'll be available before a second jump is acquired. If that's the case, then it's fine as it is. The only time I saw that it had a great benefit in terms of air time, was in the village with the falling roof. Without it, you can't reach the chest from the left side of the building after the roof has collapsed, but you could with the Speed Belt. You can actually reach it without the belt but having the belt sure makes it easier. Without it's a really tight jump.
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Post by Yän on Jul 7, 2018 6:55:24 GMT -6
One suggestion I've heard is to replace the character models with static portraits, a la SoTN, but Angel-Corlux mentioned they already put a lot of effort into getting the models in, so they don't want to waste it. Sounds like sunk-cost-fallacy at work... Not really a convincing argument if you ask me. If it looks bad, it looks bad and needs to change, no matter how much effort was put into it.
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Post by Yän on Jul 6, 2018 18:54:24 GMT -6
To me when I found this in my playthrough it was very clear that this was an intentional reward for exploration and it made me feel pretty clever, haha. I want more of this kind of secret stuff in the full game!
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Post by Yän on Jul 6, 2018 17:25:06 GMT -6
Yep, that was really cool in OoE too! I think they perfected this system in OoE with one weapon or glyph per hand and three equip sets to quickly cycle between.
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Post by Yän on Jul 6, 2018 15:25:19 GMT -6
While this is certainly true, I'd urge the devs not to mess with this. Making the player slow when they are in the air feels really bad and flow-breaking. Instead they should carefully build the levels so that the longer jump distance doesn't allow sequence breaks. I like the item and hope that it stays in game the way it is.
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Post by Yän on Jul 6, 2018 8:26:49 GMT -6
Zangetsu in the background? I never noticed this! Does someone have a screenshot of that?
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Post by Yän on Jul 6, 2018 8:24:35 GMT -6
Switching weapon sets has been a thing in Igavanias and I always liked it. Shoulder buttons for that would be pretty nice.
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Post by Yän on Jul 5, 2018 17:22:32 GMT -6
Astaroth Yep, closing the book would fix this and look better.
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Post by Yän on Jul 5, 2018 17:19:32 GMT -6
I actually remember several instances of my two-handed sword having its arc displayed right across an enemy without the enemy being hit when doing air attacks like this. That was pretty confusing when I played.
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Post by Yän on Jul 5, 2018 14:44:38 GMT -6
This one was awesome. I felt really accomplished when I found these! Rewarding exploration like this is something I'd like to have more of.
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Post by Yän on Jul 5, 2018 14:42:52 GMT -6
As far as I know there are no such plans. That's why it's a backer demo.
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Post by Yän on Jul 5, 2018 4:45:16 GMT -6
I think that purifyweirdshard is onto something! How so? Well I dug around the assets through means of black magic and umodel viewer and in the garden of silence-folder I found that the blood red moon in this room is actually mapped onto a sphere! It's a 3D object! This is most likely Gremory's moon. Something Gremory-related is probably going to happen in that room at some point.
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Post by Yän on Jul 5, 2018 2:35:04 GMT -6
What if... you come across a huge, locked treasure chest, and slumped over it is a corpse dressed like a thief, and he's holding a journal. The journal says something like "I finally found the key to the chest; I managed to swipe it off of that giant minotaur-looking demon in the Castle Entrance. Now I just need to wait until the coast is clear before I make my move on the chest; I gotta get the treasure without being seen, or I'll be killed." Miriam would then comment, saying, "He doesn't have the key on him. That demon must have reclaimed it." Then you get a quest to venture to the Castle Entrance, find the special monster somewhere in the zone, kill it, retrieve the key, and then return to the chest to get the loot within. I love this idea. It makes for a feeling of great anticipation as you're eager to see what may be in that mysterious chest. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 18:37:24 GMT -6
Loved the portraits! Great job on those, Mana! Lion demon's death is indeed something else! Really cool. I want more unique death effects like that. Katana is really cool with its special abilities. Zangetsu fight was epic! The fast paced combat, learning his patterns, countering his moves felt amazing. Boat generally looks way better than it did in the previous demo. Sky on Boat is way prettier with those blues up in there. Crafting system seems quite in-depth and looks like it could give me hours of fun game-time. VO is awesome across the board! Speed belt is a greatly appreciated item! Movement in general feels really good. Large enemies are intimidating. I like the gameplay of the archer-enemies. Dodging their arrows is a lot of fun. I'm getting used to the directional shards (in the beginning it was really weird that I had to use the right stick in a platformer but now I'm better at it) I like that keys are rebindable. Opening cutscene atmosphere, VO and music had exactly the right feel to them. Fully animated cutscenes are cool. IGA said it was the first hour of the game - for me it lasted 3 hours because I took my time enjoying every little detail I could find. I loved the fact that you guys put rewards on top of the drawbridge! I felt so accomplished when I went up there, haha! Many places are unique, there seems to be relatively little copy/paste. That's really cool! I liked the great variety of enemies. Plume Parma is so absurd, I love it! The rippling effect on the leaves of the floor-plant enemy looks damn cool! I really like the look of the scene-transition-rooms. Beautiful!
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 18:16:05 GMT -6
No worries, it's all good on my end. Didn't mean to cause you any trouble.
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Post by Yän on Jul 4, 2018 18:09:54 GMT -6
I liked the boss! Wish it had a little more HP and dealt just a bit less damage though. The fight was over quite quickly as I used the gun with SP rounds on Vepar. You shouldn't be able to hit it while it's in the background in my opinion. That doesn't seem right for a 2.5D game.
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