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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 5, 2019 19:54:17 GMT -6
I'm not sure if you'd call this a bug so much as an unintended interaction, but the game doesn't handle the combination of Standstill with Gebel's Glasses well at all. Using this combination to attack enemies will quickly cause stutters and very noticeable lag spikes as the game struggles to keep up with what's happening. If you happen to be trying to farm enemies for drops - especially using something like Pickpocket, this lag can build to insane levels. To the point that if you keep it up for long enough, the game will freeze for several minutes after the combo is released as it struggles to catch up. That's on PC. I would imagine that attempting this (and it's something that people would very reasonably want to attempt) on consoles could risk crashing the system completely. (Also, I don't think most people would be as patient as I was in waiting for the program to respond.)
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 5, 2019 14:11:18 GMT -6
I hate to say it, but that's just how RNG goes. What you're experiencing is the Gambler's Fallacy in action. It may seem logical that at a 2% chance, you'll be guaranteed 2 drops in every 100 tries, but each attempt exists in a vacuum from one-another. With fair RNG, it's perfectly possible that you'll get a bad run of no drops, or not the drops you're looking for.
...which is why some games opt not to use fair RNG. Now, I personally don't think that there should be a guaranteed auto-drop, but a biased drop rate isn't unreasonable. Luck is already supposed to have an effect on rates, but perhaps it should have a greater one. Perhaps Pickpocket should proc. more often. Most certainly, drop rates should have (if they don't already) a difficulty-based modifier to make up for less-frequent kills, and for Nightmare it needs to be significant. Guarenteeing X drops in Y kills, however, I personally think ruins an aspect of the game - with the exception of the Aqua Stream shard, which should have a 100% first-time drop rate, just like the fireball in the tutorial (that or that enemy should be given a different shard, and Aqua Stream should be moved to some of those breakable crystal objects).
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 5, 2019 11:06:33 GMT -6
Hold on, anon...the map? Surely you can't have a problem with the map! It's the classic, standard map! It's been in every Igavania since Symphony of the Night! How could there be anything wrong with the map?
Well, believe it or not, there are a few problems with the map itself. On the surface, it's the standard map that fans know and love, but there was clearly an attempt to modernize it. You can see that with the marking feature. Yet, for some reason, it looks like work on the map might have been abandoned. Why do I say that? Well, there's certain things missing. Like what, you ask? Well, maps for one thing. The concept of picking up an item that shows you more of the map is introduced on the Minerva, but then never comes up again. For the rest of the game, where are the map items? You don't find them in any areas you visit. They aren't sold in the shop. Not even OD has a map of the castle in his collection. The concept is introduced right in the tutorial, but then after that, it's never used. Then there's the map marking functions. Yes, functions. Quests are marked on the map, but only kill quests (this is understandable, as other quests offer less certainty on where the requirement can be found), and there doesn't seem to be a way (at least that I found) to filter them to differentiate different quests, or at least show just one quest at a time. You can put any number of custom markers on the map, but not label them, or differentiate them from each-other. Save rooms and teleport rooms get colour-coded, but Todd's and OD's rooms have no indicator to show that there's a special NPC there. Every other friendly NPC gets marked, but Benjamin's markers stay in every location he's ever been, even after he leaves. Chest markers are fine, but there's no difference between a marker for a respawning blue chest, and any one-time chest. Plus, they just don't work all the time. To be honest, it's kind of a mess. So, what can be done?- This is cheating a little, as it's not a proper suggestion, but clean up the map errors. Make chest indicators more consistent, and make Benjamin's marker disappear from its current location when he uses a waystone (or at least change to something that indicates he's not there any more). Do something about the glitch that makes map edges disappear and causes people to go crazy thinking there's more to explore in an are they've filled in completely.
- Put item maps into the game for the rest of the castle. At least for the main body of the castle. It's a little late to add them to chests, but having them unlock in the underused Key Items section of the shop as you make progress is still an option, even post-launch.
- Colour-code NPC rooms. With more characters and more modes on the way, Todd and OD may not be the only characters living in the Hellhold for ever, and the map does include Arantville anyway. At least with Arantville, we know that all the NPCs have a role, but just in general, it should be more obvious where there's services to take advantage of. Marking out Todd, OD, Johannes, and the shop in a different colour would be the bare minimum I'd expect here, since they all can be considered a service NPC.
- Add more ways to mark the map. Instead of just popping down a generic stamp on the map, let's have a waypoint interface. Naming points would be ideal, but at the least give a few different types of markers, like one to indicate dangerous hazards (traps), one for powerful enemy/boss, one to indicate valuable items, maybe a few colours of shard stamp, as well as just a general "go here next/come back later" point of interest stamp. Just give us any kind of help in remembering why we wanted to mark that location in particular.
- Give blue chests their own icons. Yes, icons. Plural. One for closed, one for open. Make them default to always on once discovered, with a toggle to turn them off like the player trail can be.
- Give the ability to tag items on the map. I talked about this in my Blue Chests topic. Give us a button on the Items list that will add markers to rooms where an enemy we've gotten an item off before spawns, or highlight blue chest markers in areas we've confirmed the item comes from chests in.
- Make the quest markers more convenient. Say, by tagging the scrolls with the initial of the person to be avenged? Or even colour-coded? Give us some filter options? At the least, have it pop up text saying "Avenge X the Y" when you have your crosshair over a quest marker.
- Offer a bit more explanation on how some of the map functions work. Susie never tells you that your map will indicate where target monsters are, and nothing ever explains the custom marker feature. A line of dialogue and one more bookcase on the Minerva could have saved a lot of confusion here.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 2, 2019 20:09:56 GMT -6
They need to fix the explanation for penetrate. I spent 2 weeks thinking it's broken because it alone, of every other tech in the game, has you hold down X. It says absolutely nothing about this in game, so I was tapping X like everything else and doing no damage. Without the internet I would still think it was broken. Also the text explaining how to use invert has a similar issue. The text in game implies hit down OR up, then A. But you have to hit down THEN up and A. Without the FB group I would never have realized it and stopped playing thinking it was "bugged out". Actually, there's a few techniques that work like that. Rapid Fire and Sickle Moon do as well. I haven't managed to successfully pull it off, but I suspect that Orbital Wheel for spears does too. You're right that it's not well indicated, but the per-second cost serves as a hint. The only one I've encountered with a per-second that works differently is the rapiers' Thousand Blossoms, and that one gives an indicator that its input requires the player to keep mashing by having it end in an ellipsis. I'll concede that this might have been easier for me due to all the hours I've spent failing to learn the moves in various editions of Soul Calibur, though.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 1, 2019 19:08:11 GMT -6
Penetrate is broken on PC. You slide, hit the enemy, and break out of tech. You literally can't deal damage with it, and thus mastery is impossible. I play the PC version, and I mastered Penetrate, actually. You have to hold down the attack button, first of all. Then with some enemies you'll plow through them, they don't die, and you get hit, while others you'll bounce off and keep ramming for damage until they die. With some endgame stuff, I was actually able to turn a Spear Armor into an immortal punching bag for as long as needed and just keep bouncing off of him until it was mastered.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 1, 2019 18:59:32 GMT -6
With the previous two of my "How they could be better" posts, I did a preamble detailing the issues with the things I felt needed changed, and then listed what improvements I would make. However, in this case I don't think I can do that. Enemies serve their roles just fine. The real problem with them is that there's not enough of them. The one thing I always felt playing this game was that the enemies didn't seem as varied as what I remembered in Symphony of the Night, so I did a count. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has 128 enemies, including bosses. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had 146. It may be IGA's biggest castle, but that just makes the fact that it's not as populated as his first stand out all the more. Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia were made for handheld systems, and are only a handful of enemy types off from Bloodstained at 118 and 121 enemy types, respectively. Should Bloodstained really be just barely beating out handheld titles while falling short of the origins of the formula that created it? I know that's a harsh thing to say, but it's a question I feel needs asked. Taking this a step further, while almost all enemies and bosses from Curse of the Moon appear in Ritual of the Night, the boss Focalor is conspicuously absent. In itself, this isn't a big deal. The two games were made by different teams, and Curse of the Moon isn't even considered canon. However, it seems reasonable that with development already begun on Ritual of the Night when Curse of the Moon entered production, that their having the same enemies isn't coincidence, but a result of the Curse of the Moon team having a design document to work from for what should be the enemies. They could still have made up an extra boss, but it seems a bit more questionable when you consider that the Forbidden Underground Waterway, a location one might expect Focalor to appear, is the only area outside of Arantville not to have a boss, and also the only time that a shard needed for progression doesn't come from a boss outside a tutorial scene on the Minerva. The impression here is that there was supposed to be a boss, and that boss was probably Focalor, but it was cut for unknown reasons. More than that, though, I think the fewer enemy types makes for a less charming game. There's not the same sense of always being something new to discover. Overall, it just makes the game world seem smaller, and leaves me wondering if I were to compare maps, would Ritual of the Night really be IGA's largest castle? IGA and his team should have strived to surpass their old record, to have the widest variety of monsters, as befits the largest castle.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jul 1, 2019 9:49:28 GMT -6
That proves that there's graphical issues in the live build. It does not prove what version the screenshots were taken in. Nor does it prove intent. One of them have ps4 button prompt from earlier. Well, first of all, I just looked at Nintendo's website using the link from the thread you're citing. That's not a thing. However, even if it was true (and I have to stress that it isn't) could you prove, definitively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the shot wasn't just taken from an earlier build where they hadn't yet changed the graphics for the prompts?
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 28, 2019 11:45:45 GMT -6
I considered addressing technique variety, and I do think there could be more, but I ultimately decided not to include it. I think I understand why it is the way it is. As I understand it, each weapon is meant to have a particular niche it fills. Greatswords are strong and have the most verticality to their swing. Swords get magic techs and can aim down (though they share the latter with rapiers). I think that katanas were intended to be the "technical" weapon, with more skills than the others. So their niche is that if you enjoy playing around with techs, you use a katana. Maybe not the best differentiation, but it makes a kind of sense.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 28, 2019 7:45:02 GMT -6
I would imagine that it would be. The main thing would be in providing a way to access those new shards. Adding in new enemies for them to come from is possible, but extra work. So most likely anything added would be crafted. That way they can use as few new assets as possible, and just add code.
Although, I question if Resist Physical and Resist Ailment would be necessary. My thinking on the Resist Magic shard was that it existed to catch edge cases, where something wasn't one of the other elements.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 28, 2019 7:39:14 GMT -6
That proves that there's graphical issues in the live build. It does not prove what version the screenshots were taken in. Nor does it prove intent.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 28, 2019 0:16:29 GMT -6
There was a thread on reddit that asked people what they would add if they could design an area, and I have to say that is what I'd most like from mods. There's a decent variety of enemies and areas, but it could be better. In particular, I'd like to see some rebalancing done to smooth out a couple of bumps in the progression, like putting two particular required pickups (I'm sure anyone that's completed the game knows which ones) behind boss fights rather than leaving them where they could be missed.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 20:29:50 GMT -6
This was nice to see, at least...
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 20:14:57 GMT -6
Would love to know as well. I'm not too worried, since I can find the soundtrack on Youtube (and there are already some amazing covers), but it would still be good to have.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 20:10:17 GMT -6
Do you have any proof this is being done?
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 17:34:37 GMT -6
Also, PC has already got a budding modding community, which always helps.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 17:24:20 GMT -6
Basically any gun you can make by the time you have access to Diamond Bullets and the Recycle Hat will be OP. Doubly so if you have Gebel's Glasses and master Rapid Fire.
That's talking endgame, though, where most builds can be made OP. Early game, building Luck can indeed be very powerful, especially as it increases your odds of getting item drops in each area that can push your build to the next level. Some items to look out for would be the Spiral Sword in the Entrance areas, which has a unique effect of hitting multiple times (I think at most I've seen damage tick four times in one swing), and Rhava Búral in the Cathedral, which is essentially a weaker Crissagream and gets an endgame upgrade (save your duplicates). In late-game areas, be on the lookout for Flame Mail, which is one of the best damage-boosting armours. Until you get it, a good alternative is the Assassin's Vest, which while not offering as high of stats as Flame Mail boasts a boost to overall attack speed. Also make sure to get a Ribbon hat, which is tied with a missable hidden item in the second to last area for the highest luck bonus of any headgear (and only sacrifices two points of defence from that item) as well as being the most protective headgear that drops from an enemy. Ribbons can be obtained at around the midpoint of the game, and will see a lot of use.
As far as familiars, I'd actually advise the Carabosse fairy over Dantallion. It may see a reduction in attack power, but Carabosse is able to point out hidden areas, and can be supplied with special healing items that it will use on you automatically, and which have their own max item count so that you aren't cutting into the limit of potions you yourself can carry (although for manual healing, some food items will probably be better and stack higher).
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 16:56:24 GMT -6
What do the symbols meanu? what is "coverage"? How do stats work? THIS GAME NEEDS AN EXPLANATION OF HOW THINGS WORK!!!! As I recall, there's a journal (possibly it was two journals) early in the game that answer these questions. Have you been reading the bookshelves?
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 16:43:49 GMT -6
Just to add to the discussion, let's point out that Gunlord's math shows that Bloodstained is potentially in the black from the sales of just one platform after little more than a week, during most of which time it wasn't even out on one platform yet. That's actually very good. Adding in Xbox and PS4 sales should push that to a "very likely". Switch sales numbers are hard to factor in, since the platform had a late start, but even after an initial cooling, the platform doesn't exactly seem to be doing poorly. Add to that the fact that the game in its current state has generally favourable ratings on Metacritic, and most of the DLC - which will almost certainly boost sales - hasn't even come out yet, and I don't think there's much to worry about. Plus, those numbers don't take into account added sales of the IGA's Backpack DLC, which being not free would bump things even higher.
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 16:24:16 GMT -6
Youtube description: yo just play this game if you haven't already, alright?
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Post by anonthemouse on Jun 27, 2019 16:13:31 GMT -6
I think they are strictly non-essential specifically because not everyone will be able to/will want to do them. That's a fair possibility. Though, I think it's my perspective that if the choice needs to be made between having a detached system and easier inputs, I would take that as a sign that inputs can be made easier. I'd also suggest that something like a sidequest is a good compromise in that case. First, in that it allows for the mechanics to be used without gating progression behind them. I don't think that gating an extra reward behind being either skilled or dedicated enough to perform a technique if you have the right weapon is any less fair than gating one behind being either lucky or dedicated enough to have the right drops if they've found the right recipe. Secondly, because a sidequest can be used as a teaching tool, directing a player to find out what's there, and offering them a chance to practice the inputs in a safe environment.
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