Balance Update #1 - Patch Notes

To call these kinds of minute changes a completely unwelcome practice is just-... that's just bullheaded. I don't think we can agree on this at all. It's insert current year here, developers can reserve the right to update and add to their game post-launch. What will you say about the additional "free DLC" aka updates they plan on adding? Is the utilization of modern technology a dire violation of your precious tradition too?

Also, the fact that games on consoles can be patched either is something that kind of boggles my mind.

Honestly, if you got the game out of the box, balance differences are like-... literally just negligible. If you're trying to play it any way shape or form, I don't care about balance changes. No one should at that point.

I can agree with you on bug patching, however. The Switch port being in such inoperable use from what I've heard, and the bad bugs on the other console versions shouldn't have been a thing, and it's great that they can fix them now, but they shouldn't have been a thing to begin with. Provided, these are for unique platforms for a game that feels like it put a tremendous amount of effort into existing on multiple platforms and adapting its engine. I'm not gonna say anything concrete about the team's design experience when it comes to porting, metroidvanias, or so forth, but considering the very 2D-vania leaning visual style amidst the 3D spaces and models, I'm willing to bet this game with the options provided is kind of a stretch.

We also have to understand that these aren't just sprite-based games anymore. This isn't some low-poly 3D game made in Unity, for the N64, or mid-poly for the Gamecube. This is a game people demanded looked somewhat on par with far more produced and realistically focused games of the era, one that demanded a whole other level of effort in almost every facet of its design. Every environment was no longer as simple as drawing a background, collision boxes and then drawing the enemies; it all had to be time-consumingly modeled, textured, shading adjusted, made relative to the in-engine lighting and then implemented. Every map space now needed to be modeled, have backgrounds, have a huge array of textures not required before for a simple room.

Myself, I think this game would have come out a lot quicker, had more visual charisma, and maybe even looked generally better if it obeyed the 2D concept art made for it and was just a 2D game. But, I also don't observe most graphical defects most people cite with games unless they're glaring, and this is a game where I can appreciate the 3D.

I kind of hope the next thing this dev team makes with its money is a 2D metroidvania, once its done working on updates for Bloodstained: RoTN.

I bring this up because the technical demand and coding back-end for things like the PS4, the Switch and etc. is just unreal compared to what say the Wii demanded, or even the Gamecube. People take it lightly now, but a console generation's difference is the difference between needing twenty more people on the team to even be able to bear the workload of all the design necessary. It becomes easy to see how a project like this can become unwieldy and start falling apart if the slightest breeze hits it the wrong way. Myself, I am thoroughly impressed with how Igarashi's team has managed to make a game with this sort of potential for mismanagement and the following immense workload exist so succinctly and without hitches now. I just wish more players were patient and understanding as consumers.

Still, despite the hardships, I do agree that it's not acceptable that the Switch version is where it is, or that the moderate technical bugs and progression bugs took so long to address for consoles. Wasn't particularly impressive since the changes, at least for the progression with the camera's powder or whatever, felt really minute and simple. The release state will indeed probably mar the out-of-box cart for the Switch. This isn't the only game that can suffer from this sort of thing, and it's somewhat unfortunate, but I already look down on the high-money demand, low-user convenience nature of consoles compared to personal computers. In an era where games like this exist on PC aside ports onto consoles, it must be understood many games now obey the PC's rules of patching, especially as allotted by a console's online capabilities. The capability is there so it will be used. If it wasn't, you wouldn't even see a console release for another year, probably. Maybe that should have been what they went with, but then you must think of it from a marketing perspective. People will want the PC version when it comes out, and if they can't get it, you ARE going to lose consumers who would have jumped on if it was released on console already.

Especially because, when you lose the marketing traction from the initial release, people can and will fall off from later releases super hard. That's just how it is. Less people talk about it, people forget, the hype dies.

So, financially, what was done makes pristine sense. As someone who consumes the product, however, it still feels jank and wrong, because the product could have been presented to them in a better state. Sadly, that's not rewarded in this era. Still, I don't think it's something worth crying over just yet, since developers can indeed improve their product, and I believe they deserve the leeway and respect to use tools at their disposal.

Although, keep in mind, I've never played the Switch version, and it might actually be okay and playable and just need some improvements. I'm just operating off of the scant word down the street I've heard from perhaps less experienced people about how the game handles. I'm making an assumption that it's as trash as everyone's saying it is. But, the Switch is very much a console made not only with unique specifications compared to the PS4 and Xbox One, and made for first-party development. For ports of games like this, I could see it being very, very easy to not be able to grasp the specific technical limitations of it in any timely manner. It also attempts to not subscribe to the technical power creep that other consoles do, even if it still requires a hefty amount of technical work since there is still a lot of high-production jank associated with it being a current gen console / AAA era console.

Let’s be honest for a second. During the development of the game for the switch you knew full well that the game was garbage on the switch. It looks like crap and performs and is nearly unplayable due to the significant input lag. Now you had a choice to make do you “knowingly” release a broken, unfinished version of the game and screw over your fan base, or delay it and release a polished product. Your greed as a developer is showing and your apology means nothing. You understood exactly what you were doing and knew about the issues well before release and you expected everyone to accept your polished turd for what it was or you would fix it at a later time because it was not a priority. So the first patch comes out, again you were aware of the issues long before the game was published. Instead of an offering of goodwill towards switch owners and fix something meaningful you chose to balance skill sets on a broken defective game.
No you do not get a pass with how sorry you are for this. This is a piss poor attempt at a game. This was something that I have followed for a while and was excited when I saw you were making it for the switch. I figured that your studio Would treat your projects with integrity, but that is not the case. I doubt that you will fix the game at this point, you had the opportunity to already do so and chose not to, but moved forward to shill out a broken product. Please don’t bother making any games to the switch, we would prefer not to get your left overs or cash grabs, there are already enough companies out there to claim that title. Save your apologies and we will keep our money for something worthwhile.

I would say, I like the transparency about what's in a patch. Other games or even the system software of console, there is no details at all, nothing, zero transparency that people have to figure out or find out by themselves, or guess and threaten some content will be lost after update.

As to the patch itself, many people are going to hate me saying this but I don't see a big problem, most are only 2 points down, meantime I read many people commented this game is too easy and I also read like thousand ways to get yourself over-powered, anyway.

As to modern gaming, I don't feel very good about it too, and I have lost the interest to follow the trend, such as buying anything new, except a very few exception such as Bloodstained, apparently. I could speak up many things negative but I don't think one guy alone could make any changes to the world, people will keep doing things their way, I mean business people, and fans can only choose to accept it, or force to accept, but life is like that, get used to it anyway perhaps it's just me. Bloodstained the crowd-funded project, the people company, however, is different, and I hope the faith behind making this successful or possible will keep on, and on.

As to the forever going Switch fantasy, I have no comment but I could expect the waiting is worth it. Unlike other waits which may turn out nothing, this wait should be turn out fantastic, it better be.

Appreciate the bug fixes, I think it's my first time to hear a company accept putting out the word bug, meaning something's wrong or mistake before

Then I gotta ask. If they are barely worth noticing, then why bother doing them in the first place? Especially why bother doing them and tying them to patches before the game is finished? And again, keep in mind, according to the statistics tracking sites, less than half of the players have finished the final boss. Now if you want to paint that as, "They just got bored by the lack of challenge, hence the changes" go ahead. To be honest, it's almost as valid as my position that people don't finish because maybe a lot of the people who bought the game aren't that great at video games and maybe need the "easier" game. (My position being stronger simply due to an awful lot of video game players aren't actually that good at it, but still play to have fun. Even if someone might say they aren't playing "correct".) But that's just me reiterating the same point again and again.

Spinning it around to a more direct question about your position, at what point do you draw your line? You say unless the changes were egregiously arcane or bad, that devs reserve the right to change our experiences of our single player content after we paid them, received the product, and already played it. So at what point are we to accept the experience is in line with their vision sufficiently? Traditionally that was when money changed hands, though around 2003 that started to change (technically pc games with such issues predate that by far. But pc games are a whole different ballgame). Or are we to now wait while things get tweaked by scant percentages again and again until it's just right? What about deciding that something made the game too easy in one direction, and simply cutting it completely? Say they decide that grinding is not the way they wanted us to earn anything, and so all drop rates get lowered if the same creature is killed again and again? Or what about some mechanic getting quietly removed because it punished players for having too much gold? Like a certain boss fight that can sometimes take forever if you hoard. Or all the other crazy things some random people are insisting are perfectly good ideas on the steam forums?

I can't help but fear your answer to be some form of "I'll know it when I see it." when unfortunately the real answer is, "Never. It's never done, so long as we're still getting money." And should instead be, "Finish the damned game before making adjustments!" Mostly I mean make sure it's stable on all platforms, but as you pointed out the dlc that's promised to be upcoming. And while the pessimist in me is inclined to believe it'll never come, it'd be nice if that all went out before the re-balances too. If nothing else, so that we had a choice on if we wanted them messing with things /after/ they deliver what we purchased.

Reading over my post, I was reminded. People have a lot of reasons for their playstyles. Some people just like the feeling of power, and some like the feeling of doing the impossible. In saying this, I don't think everyone who powerlevels is a bad player, or unskilled, it's just, I personally kinda get that feeling when they don't understand what I find enjoyable. I don't enjoy their playstyle, and they don't enjoy mine. But, I'm sure both of us can have a logical understanding of what the other person likes. Someone like that might look down on me for playing the whole game in a weakened state when I could've just aced it all and done better by virtue of preparation.

bloodstained.forums.net/thread/4174/top-issue-update-june-2019

it wasn't a top issue in june 2019, it was never a issue but then they forcefully pushed nerf, bulldozed it through despite the backlash. At this point, I strongly believe nerf is just a smokescreen to cover up their inability to fix the bugs. Even though nerf hurts the game, it sparked controversy and allowed dev to deflect the bug issues. They took the easy way out and tried too hard to prove that they are still working on the game.

You guys made fun of Konami but working hard to become Konami 2

I dunno. These changes are so minute and unobtrusive that to use them to cite injustice of the industry or even malpractice when it comes to the transparency of their ambitions or the completeness of the game seems more than a little far-fetched.

Modding exists. Developers are aware, could squash it, but it's nothing but bad PR if they do. Some companies can afford to do that for whatever abstract legal reason they want. I mean, just saying, you can put a "~mods" folder in the BloodstainedRoTN > Content > Paks folder of the game, and the engine explicitly reads from them. This is modding support. Legally they might not be able to claim they support it because legal is sometimes abstract and dumb like that, but this is a pretty hard nudge nudge wink wink.

Admittedly, I haven't been around on the forums, and I don't know what kind of discussion has been circulating. I don't know who among the corporate ladder might be responsible for any prospective miscommunication.

But, what I do know, is that these changes were in the realm of very minor in terms of cost, manpower and effort. I could see these just being instinctively pushed out, depending on how long discussion lasted about them. And, to their credit, I doubt they've heard very many things about the actual game design sense of these nerfs other than people going "omg pls don't nerf it's a single player game damn it!!!!!!!!!!!" from a lot of people who are already conditioned to hate nerfs from actual multiplayer games.

Then we get people who discredit the very idea and effort put forth by development teams based on very minor notions like these. These kinds of balance changes are inoffensive at worst, and until they actually get intrusive and in poor taste, I'm not going to agree that the devs should "shape up" or anything. Consumers are a double-edged sword of competent justice seeking and petty vengeful retribution.

Provided, I believe any corporate team can probably do better than they're currently doing as a rule of thumb, so in that sense, I wish they'd kick a leg up, but I don't actually know the specifics of what it is they're doing outside of changing numbers on spreadsheets for balancing.

I understand it's been nothing but bug fixes since release, but considering the product we got and what we're expected to get, I am totally fine with the base price I paid for. Porting to many consoles, especially for a blooming development team like this, even with millions of dollars at their disposal, is a undertaking no one truly understands the gravity of. Mighty Number Nine, despite have record-breaking kickstarter support, actually ran out of money mid-development cycle because of its ambition to port to what was it, ELEVEN different consoles? Some of those ports were quietly dropped because it was just too much. That's why they needed ADDITIONAL kickstarters for things like voice acting, which understandably pissed everyone off. Mighty No. Nine was just a complete mismanaged mess.

I get the feeling these teams somewhat impulsively throw on porting stretch goals, and perhaps underestimate their cost, but based on what I know of Mighty No. Nine, it's not cheap, timely, easy or in my opinion fully worth it. I can fully understand why there's so many bugs per version now, especially in this era of consoles. Especially pertaining to the Switch in particular, which was not made to conform to the common market of PC-ported-to-console-or-vice-versa games.

I can't advocate modding for the console versions, admittedly. I don't have any of the modern consoles, nor do I even particularly appreciate console gaming outside of the Switch (if only it weren't so darn expensive).

Knowing the design senses of Igarashi and previous metroidvania games, I'm willing to bet at most we might see a few more nerf patches depending, since these changes are all really quick one-offs. Or, because of the immense complaining going on, they've got two options. Silently nudge a few stats down with actual content updates and leave them unreported, which honestly would work since this all feels really heavily of counter-PR hype without substance, or they could just stop implementing nerfs because vague consumer ree'ing in the background. Considering they went through with these nerfs anyway, I have a feeling the team has confidence in its decisions.

As for whether or not the game will be recognizable, I honestly, immensely doubt we're seeing changes that big ever. Why? Because the other modes are supposed to fit the needs egregious changes would make. It's that simple. They won't make the base game feel like a classicvania, because we're getting a classicvania mode.

In fact, I'll say it now. In two years, you will be able to recognize the base game. In four years. You will be able to recognize the game from now until they stop working on it, and I'm willing to eat my words if I'm wrong.

I wouldn't be surprised if they never touched balancing publicly again because of this. Especially if they feel like, if the changes were silent and packaged with something else instead of semi-transparently announced, there wouldn't BE bad PR, not unless people went out of their way to examine the damage values, which only a small percentage of people would even suspect of being too terribly different. Myself, I'd probably just think it was my memory hiccuping again.

It has to be understood that changes like these are "the chef's finishing touches", so to speak. Like fixing typos in a web novel, adding commas here or there, or fixing some lines or shading issues in a finished art piece. Creative mediums have this problem, and if you don't give creators the respect they (potentially deserve) expect from being creators, or if you even vulcanize their market and PR conditions, you challenge the very notion of creating.

We're all human, here. These changes weren't disgusting. It's a strong bet they took little time or effort.

Also, I find the comparison to MMOs and DISTINCTLY multiplayer games disingenuous. Those have far, far, far different reasons for balancing. League is competitive, and while I don't know much about it myself, I am willing to place my chips on the idea that it balances largely for competitive gaming. Its very nature is competitive, as a MOBA. As a competitive game, players are meant to conform to very rigid rules, restrictions and dulled standards for everyone to have a fairly level playing ground.

Myself, I always felt that game design to be muted, boring and frustrating.

Bloodstained's not like that. But wait, y'might say. They nerfed stuff. How aren't they being like League, or TF2 or Destiny or Warframe?

Because you can still freakin' grind and become god anyway, in a timely manner. MMOs are about making the grind and procedure harder because squeezing time and money out of players is money for the team, fullstop. Grinding in games like that is because they have something to gain by making it scummier or more mute or slower. People play that stuff anyway 'cause there's more merits to it than perhaps the really bad or awkward balancing choices. I always looked at MMOs as "half game half marketing half social club", because if you aren't getting the last one out of it, it's just game and marketing, when you could just be playing a game that isn't a marketing tool too.

Honestly, sometimes MMOs have so little gameplay that the balancing care in them just makes me glare at the dev team, 'cause when they make it slower or less fun you know that's almost a full-on marketing decision. Painful. But, I haven't played many of what people consider to be "good" MMOs so I dunno.

There's no perceptible grind to a MOBA (in the core gameplay loop at least), but they're all about the restricted, competitive ways in which players compete. Balance then is very precarious, because you have to still have variance but don't reward things that are too easy to do.

With Bloodstained, these changes are easily defendable. Not hard to mod out, really doesn't break any skills, makes a certain portion of the people playing it feel less guilty, and everyone else basically sees no difference. I see no problems here.

A portion of the team's good at their own game, too. Igarashi had said at one point, every dev who worked on a boss had to no-hit run it with the knife to determine it was viable to play against. They've gotta be good gamers too, they know what they're doing. I thought some of the boss design was a little trash at first, but that really put things into perspective. If they're being honest, that is, I'm gonna assume they are. I don't know why you'd lie about that, as a dev team.

Let it not be unsaid that they BUFFED things in this update, too. Weapon techniques, specifically the ones they buffed, used to not be usable compared to shards, relative to raw DPS. More effort for less DPS, which y'know, I did anyway because it was fun and unique compared to spamming shard abilities, but I'm grateful that they made them comparable to shards. Feels like they actually wanted people to use them and knew the state they left them in, especially compared to Riga freakin' Dohin's 90 x 3.

I wanna talk so hard about this 'cause I don't think the devs are getting the credit they deserve. Don't get me wrong, theme and design wise I have some of my own complaints and I believe they should adjust the esoteric nature of a certain required armor item (because you can fill it its map square by accident and be left to bruteforce its location), but you don't see me complaining that they're not addressed right away.

In terms of the actual issues this game has, outside of game-crashing bugs potentially, I would be complacent if they did nothing design of balance wise. But I'm grateful that they ARE doing this.

I do want to point out that it didn't used to be the nature of software. Especially video game software. It's only since 2003 since that's been an option, and even then, only about the last ten years where it's really become normalized. And the game franchise bloodstained caries the legacy of never had them. At least not that I know of, except for the online multiplayer one, HD.




At this point, it's clearly become back and forth at each other. It's a little bit exhausting because you clearly have your support of the practice, I am in strong disagreement, and never the two shall meet. Tonight, a point by point breakdown to address some things direct:

1. PC modding is a thing, absolutely. And on the PC, I'm happy with the game more or less whatever may come, after all I bought it on pc first. Partially because of modding, partially because it'll last a lot longer (assuming I can keep a set of digital files backed up in some form for however long), and partially because I've long ago accepted the PC gaming market for what it is. Seriously dubious at the best of times, but by and large far more "ours" (the purchasers) to do with as we please, than any other available platform.

2. You seriously don't seem to get how irrelevant the math on the changes themselves are to the issue of them existing at all. They could be .0001 percent changes to the abilities, or 1000 percent. They could be buffing, or nerfing. To a difference of nothing or everything, and it still doesn't matter. The point is that it's ill timed to push these out before the other more relevant content comes out. Once the other stuff is delivered, then balance can be examined, then they could patch it every other day to their hearts content without complaint (from me at least). Not the least of which because we could just choose not to patch. But before then? No! Not the least of which because we can't accept the patches piecemeal, they build on each other, but every tweak and change communicates one more time too many, "Oops, this is totally wrong, we're sorry, you shouldn't have been doing that that way". And it doesn't matter if it cost them nothing to do it. They shouldn't be adjusting those until the game is finished. All the DLC. All the fixes. Ready for prime time. Full stop. End statement. That you don't seem to get that compels me to make this such a longer statement just for emphasis.

3. M.No. 9 was unfortunate. And a concrete lesson of things that can go wrong with crowdfunding and expectations on a project. But it's also not necessarily relevant here, unless you are making the case that this is as mismanaged. I'm not (yet) making that case. So that's all a question you'd have to figre out your own. Well, not completely, there are a lot of people (who I'm sure would agree with a lot of other statements I've made) who would unfavorably compare the two. I can't/don't, cause I didn't pick that up or have much interest in it.

4. There are already promises made flat out that the game as a whole will be nearly unrecognizable in 2 years. With the different modes and options, costume dlc, and bug fixes, it's at least as big a difference as the e3 demo and full retail release. But as for the bare bones base game? I'm going to dare to point out that it's far less likely the game two years from now will crash anywhere near as much as the game today. On any system. But other than that? I couldn't say. I do know it's a damned sight different than the demo, and have no reason to believe the differences a year out won't be just as pronounced. But we'll see.

5. Yeah, they might do stealth balance tweaks from now on. I'd bet on it, in fact. And that's shadier than anything else we touched on by far. Non optional changes to gameplay elements without the courtesy of telling us? How doesn't that disgust you? You, specifically, and everyone else who's reading this? Why are you okay with that? And how do you not think that if that gets out there won't be an even bigger uproar?

6. Chefs finishing touches? Really? You're going to call this post meal garnish and seasoning? At this point that's only comparable if mid meal the chef comes out with an ipecac cocktail to make you vomit what you had out because they forgot this one thing. And even then, they're not serving you a new dish, they're having you re-eat the vomit with slightly less of one thing or with a bit more of another this time. Hope you didn't chew too well the first time, I guess?

7. Online multiplayer games being a disingenuous example because they have different reasons for balancing is something of note. Because the Bloodstained multiplayer has already been used as a justification for the balance patch by some, as though it's already a distinctly multiplayer game. Now, I disagreed that it's a valid justification, which has to be brought up because it's already being used as justification. But it's a valid example to show times that something got removed, adjusted, or otherwise changed because they don't live up to the developers intent, which at this point is now a justified fear for this game.

It may not seem it, but I'm really trying not to be argumentative with you. The fact is, that the frustrations with this game should have never come to this, but they have, and now we have little recourse but to go online and try to voice our frustrations in hopes that better efforts are put forth to fix things.

I get that you want to try to convince people that it's not so bad, or that people are complaining unduly. It's trendy to hate things these days, just as it's natural for some people to try to resist trends. But you are going out of your way to insist this is all fine and we should just accept it. Your advocating of it is frustrating.

Because this staggered release of stuff to be fixed after release, oh and hey we're also changing it too, isn't okay to do, and if the industry as a whole decides it's okay to do, it's one more step toward watching something that could have been much more wither and die. Both this specific game, and the method it even got made in the first place. Especially when issues with previous crowd funding of games has already has people gun shy from past releases.

Regarding 2:

I suppose these changes are ill-timed from a PR perspective, if only for the reaction stirred. Were they padded with content, it'd reduce the attention given.

I seriously think these changes aren't worth making a big deal over. But, let me get this straight:

The effect of the changes don't matter. Them not costing time or money doesn't matter.

The fact there were changes at all, as one-off and plain as they were, needs to be addressed just because of where it was in the post-development cycle?

I doubt the changes will heavily build on one another. If this were a MOBA or MMO, I'd give a hard "well certainly", as those games have very actively changing environments and balance becomes very very important to retain the pleasure of the common player in the primary gameplay loop (combat with other players) as well as provide fair rules for competition and application of technique.

As for this game, asserting that certain options are unique and not just bad because of low DPS or good because of high DPS is important to promote variety. It's not all-important, but it's a variable in the psychology of presenting options to the player.

As such, these changes.

If we want to talk about developer intent, we could. It seems like they want most options to work in most situations, but still maintain a level of situational application that promotes a level of variety. This is amplified by loadouts, elements, physical damage types and projectile properties, not to mention artistic variance of techniques. Does the developer have no right to ascertain the quality of their own product? This should be considering bug-fixing, but even more minor.

Initially, I thought you might not have understand the insignificance of these numeric changes. Not to say they're worthless or unneeded, but I thought you didn't understand their purpose, or their intent, because if you did, I didn't think you'd have disagreed with them.

Right now, it seems like you're superficially disgusted at something that could honestly be put anywhere in the procedure. The fact that the changes are small and not of a serious nature I feel are relevant, because they give context for developer intent, effort and resource allocation. They are not a serious change of how the game is played.

"every tweak and change communicates one more time too many, "Oops, this is totally wrong, we're sorry, you shouldn't have been doing that that way"."

No. Just... nah. Especially because you, the player, in this specific game, can ramp your damage back up as you please. You are free to make things easier.

I can one-up that, even. If this change was never made, sword techniques wouldn't compare as well to shards for a long time. This changes informs me that they cared about the sword techniques, they weren't afterthoughts. Myself, I don't appreciate being given after-thought or poorly thought-out options when they could be cool or fun to use. It leaves an echoing effect worse than that of simply making this change, by far.

That being said, it wasn't a gross offense back then. Just a lack of polish. It made me wonder if they had different people do different aspects of the balancing, because it didn't seem self-aware how the statistics compared.

If context means nothing to this point, then I must ask, who are you as a gamer or consumer? Context and judgment is everything in creation, and though it's not always to put into words or definition, it can be felt and experienced. With such a minor tweak, I can't understand your argument about this simply being poor positioning, unless you're trying to address marketing or public reaction.

I also must ask you to think of the experience of others who enjoy this product. Changes like Valefor's HP and these damage types are so those who experience it can experience a higher degree of polish. Things like this pass even beta playtesters. Computer games in the earlier eras, before we'd even escaped the DOS era, practiced patching their games, but they had to do so by distributing the patches for people to download, which you'd have agreed with more.

That said, I don't believe many changes other than that and the sword skill buffs are going to be cognitively nodded at by newer players. As a replayer, I know I'm going to be giving some of these nerfed skills a legitimate try that I wouldn't have before.

Also, you know what this also lets us do? It lets us make shards weaker if we want to. If we're unhappy with the power of a technique, shards can be sold. You can't do that if the grade is at one. You might argue they cannot be ranked down, but rank makes the shards perform at a better technical capacity. Someone might still be unhappy with that, but I'd hazard that's a far smaller demographic than even myself.

For something developed so sequentially like this, I personally believe consumers like you should be more understanding.

So... I mean, I don't get what you're arguing for here. I believe a developer should be able to change their content like this, completely. If they ever did so in a poor way or in a disgusting or disappointing way, I'd still defend their right to make a fool of themselves, for they reap what they sow, and with a surprisingly active modding scene like this, something stupid could be undone, especially if it caused outcry.

Right now? Nothing to contextually hate, honestly. To hate the mere notion of post-launch, but pre-all content patches I find superficial. I dunno what else to say.

Regarding 3:

I didn't intend to imply Bloodstained's development team is mismanaged. I couldn't say if it was or wasn't to a clinical degree. I'd hazard it's not, because the game is of quality, and they actually got it ported to everything.

I brought it up to discuss the demand on the funding and development of a game to have to port it to multiple consoles. I brought up "this generation of consoles" because of the immense performance requirements imposed on each, the graphical expectations of the common consumer versus their expectation of gameplay or experience, and the different nuances of each hardware. I'm in no way surprised the Switch port of this game suffered heavily. PS4 and Xbox One receive ports from titles that also exist on PC all the time, meanwhile third-party activities on the Switch are rare, and cross-platform games even moreso.

I thought that was relevant, because it puts strain on the development team, and fills their hands, especially when it comes to bug fixing. I wasn't sure if your displeasure was centered on how much time they were taking, and how much of that you attributed to the balancing changes. So, I wanted to nip that concept in the bud and get a discussion on the overall development team's demands to unify bug changes across different console versions. Especially concerning the performance tweaks required to get the game functional on the Switch.

"4. There are already promises made flat out that the game as a whole will be nearly unrecognizable in 2 years."

Regarding 4:

...Have they? I haven't kept up that much with what statements have been made in this forum. What's the context on that? Not testing you, just like, genuinely curious what their plans are.

Considering the context of everything, I highly doubt much of note will be made to the main base game. I feel like they mean this in context of the modes they plan to include. But, honestly? I'd be SUPER down if they added Order of Ecclesia / Portrait of Ruin-esque improvements, in the various explorable areas and whatnot. But that's just like... me fantasizing basically. Considering the immense modeling requirements of such, and the time it took to get the game this far? Unlikely at best. Highly doubt they're going to make that much impact on the base game. If they do, and it's in a good way, then I'm for it. If it's a bad way, then no.

I don't think that'd discredit what I've done so far, or the experiences I've had. I just think I'd get to give the game another playthrough in a couple months. Not a big deal.

As the game stands, I've always felt like, compared to other metroidvanias, the balance was even whackier than usual and there was a distinct lack of polish in some places. Not enough to turn me off, or even distract me too much, but like... it's noticeable. I've attributed this to the game's place. First game in ten years, they wanted to make a splash with something that works, and won't offend everyone/anyone. People expected SoTN 2, Aria 2 and Dawn 2, some people from the more later games wanted some of the nuances from those games, and generally everyone got what they wanted in some way, shape or form.

So, I wouldn't mind some shaking up, myself. Extreme doubt that these balance changes are indicative of anything that betrays extreme disappointing dissent into some weird direction.

Regarding 5:

"How doesn't that disgust you? You, specifically, and everyone else who's reading this? Why are you okay with that? And how do you not think that if that gets out there won't be an even bigger uproar?"

I mean, I wouldn't be okay with that, but I could understand it. I'm not disgusted in the event that they were sensible, because if they were, then they're defending themselves from people who don't get them. If they weren't sensible and were hidden, I'd be disgusted because it'd seem like they knew they were bad, and didn't respect the consumers at all.

Also, if they got out, there's a probability that it'd be a huge uproar or a muffled cry. Probability. What specific probability, I wouldn't know, 'cause I've seen both, but not with any sort of rhyme or reason. Considering the nature here, probably outcry when I think about it. So, no, I don't think there wouldn't be an uproar, but depending on how the information spreads, it could lack oomph, impact or urgency necessary to reach people. Might not be relevant in this case.

Personally, I advocate the transparency, even if it results in situations like this. People will realize they aren't so bad and get over it. Even when they're bad changes, if they're not soul-crushingly terrible, people will forget. They always do.

I don't know if a game like this can't really stomach that, not that I'd want its team to be dumb in the first place.

All this said, if you were abhorrently disgusted by these simple changes made to the product moving forward, despite the context, results and potential intent, I don't know what to say. I feel like you hold astronomically too much sanctity and sacrecy in the order of operations here, and in the formality of the product's assembly and state versus what it actually plays like, feels like, and what the developer intends or achieves with each change.

I still don't know exactly how the discussions about the nerfs went, community-to-manager wise, but considering the results, they did honestly tread carefully, and they really didn't do anything adverse. I don't want this to circulate back to the "slippery slope of further changes" that I extremely doubt will happen. Even if there are two or three more, if they're like this, honestly? Absolutely no reason to care.

I don't think the potential for ill action or results should disallow developers from having the freedom to do these things. For, if we hadn't even the slightest shard of freedom, creativity would be dead. Just as the act of creation can produce favorable or unfavorable results, and talking can make meaning or noise, these changes too are of a safe enough scale to simply let them be.

...Or, uh, in short, I agree to disagree with point 2 again.

Regarding 6:

Well, that's just plain rude.

In all seriousness, I don't think you're really getting what I mean when I talk about the specifics of the game's design. Like, no offense, but I talked about the qualitative nature of the changes and their intent, and on the mere virtue of it being a BAD ORDER sorta change, it's disgusting, awful, egregious vomit and disgracing the base product.

Whah.

Regarding 7:

"the Bloodstained multiplayer has already been used as a justification for the balance patch by some"

Doubtful. Primarily a single-player game, multiplayer with friends has a certain level of understanding. I guess we'll see what they plan, however. Yet, considering how these series approach this sort of thing, extreme doubt.

"But it's a valid example to show times that something got removed, adjusted, or otherwise changed because they don't live up to the developers intent, which at this point is now a justified fear for this game."

No, no, the reasoning just doesn't line up. Multiplayer is a reach. It's hardly MMO or MOBA multiplayer at all. They'd not compromise the base game for that. I've already come up with more sensible context than that. No.

Correlation does not equal causation, and in this case, I'd hardly even consider it pattern-esque. This really doesn't line up with this current patch, or the nature of Igarashi's previous games. If we can be such doom prophets about things like this, why can't we be happy prophets too?

Justified fear? Mmh. More like "in the realm of probability". Which in this instance is a nice way of saying "probably really not", because me falling through the floor because my atoms didn't line up with the chair's or the ground's atoms for an extended period of time is also "in the realm of probability".

Or rather, that could happen. It's not very probable at all, and would go against Igarashi's design habits, their limited budget, the stretched nature of his team having to make its own assets entirely instead of reusing or revamping Rondo of Blood art for once (not that I minded), the spirit of packing things into his kind of metroidvanias, and would portray a suddenly very skewed sense of progression they hadn't adopted for the entirety of the development cycle- where they again, need I remind you, had to no-hit run their own bosses for fairness's sake, then allow players to use abilities that can wipe out a boss in moments, AND designed a soul system reminiscent of earlier games he's directed that allow the player's power to snowball if they like that experience-...

But, it still could happen...! I'm not gonna tell you it's impossible, but...

"But you are going out of your way to insist this is all fine and we should just accept it. Your advocating of it is frustrating."

'Cause as things are, I don't see anything wrong with it. Bad PR move perhaps, as vague and chancy as PR happens to be sometimes. Bad game design decision? No. I've gone on for over a couple thousand words now how it was warranted. As a justifiable adjustment, and a minor one, I just cannot take the idea of this being an overwhelming bad precedent seriously. Games are adjusted and improved all the time. If we can trust an uproar if they make one miss-step, we can trust the modders to undo the damage, too. If anything, this discussion has made me more confident in the Bloodstained team as I've thought over it and considered it way more than I should have.

I will say, it's been nice talking with you, even if we'll probably end up being unable to understand one another. I don't know why, but I like debating with people.

...Oh, yeah, I didn't have anything to say about 1, which is why I didn't reply to it. But, "seriously dubious" is something I'd imagine you'd call the PC market. Ehehe.