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Some Reason I thought I posted this and turns out I never did..
minor upodates to some ponies and enemies. And healing overhaul
-NERFED Rarity (Fashion shield now costs more magic)
-NERFED Rainbow Dash (Rainbow Flash shoots slower at low magic levels)
-NERFED Rainbow Dash (Sonic Rainboom now costs more magic)
-BUFFED Rainbow Dash (Sonic Rainboom does more collision damage)
-BUFFED Applejack (Z now gets bigger with more energy to compensate for almost no spread)
-BUFFED Rarity (Z now has higher damage when magic is at least half full)
-Eggs are now much more nasty
-Archon movement altered
-Psionic storm is now a bit different
-Magic capsules no longer heal you when your magic is full
-Cutie marks heal twice as much
Next update will be bigger with new terrain that will make it so I can make some land units without it looking rediculous
Ah, Zerg stage is MUCH better now!
ReplyDeleteBut I still have the exact same problems with the character bombs--some are not useful because they are not defensive! (And Fluttershy's doesn't seem to be very useful, maybe I'm just using it wrong.) If I get Pinkie or Twilight and 6 Phoenixes show up on Trollestia, I am literally guaranteed to take half my life bar in damage (as far as I can tell after 15+ runs, it's impossible to dodge without moving up so the second set of lasers hit you for sure). If I am Rainbow Dash, I take none and hypergraze some arbiter shots to get back to full magic. Your magic level is your offensive power--it doesn't make sense from my point of view to lower your attack power for an long period of time to do just a little more damage. Absolutely no one experience bombs in a bullet hell to do damage.
I'd really suggest fixing the phoenix attack pattern instead, though. True homing is bad for bullet hells (don't confuse this with your banshee missiles or mutalisk shots, they aren't what I mean). Unless you know some secret trick to dodging enough waves to kill everything on the screen when there are stasis fields sitting around (this is the other reason you need Dash; only she and AJ can shoot out of stasis fast enough, and AJ relies too much on precise movements like in a boss battle, while phoenixes cannot be micrododged).
Regardless of balance issues and nitpicks, this is still a very fun game and I hope you someday find the time and motivation to add more content to it!
Eh, I might be overreacting to Phoenixes a bit above; they CAN be dodged for about 3 or 4 shot waves (since you lose vertical space each time), enough time to kill them; just not if there are stasis fields on screen.
ReplyDeletePlayed through again experimenting more. I'm curious as to why you thought Rarity needed a buff; she could already kill half of the minibosses in each set before they actually attack, but now she kills them all in that time. Her range does kinda make it hard to close on the bosses when they initially start their spells, but every boss has a lull in the biggest parts of their attack patterns where she just immediately drains the whole health bar--and she's the second best character defensively anyway, so she can wait.
Twilight's shot would make more sense if the two shots were reversed and both used the faster shot speed, IMO. You need to macrododge with unfocused speed a lot against enemies in the last stage so that slow, straight shot sucks (like AJ's), but you generally can stay directly under each boss the whole fight and still dodge everything while focused. Applejack's buff puts Twilight as the absolute worst character at literally every aspect in the game.
for phoenixes, only the tip of the laser hits you. there is an invisible bullet at the tip and the laser is actually a particle effect. otherwise collision would be a nightmare or the laser would be able to hit multiple times. that might help with dodging. Knowing this, you should be able to dodge them horizontally as if they were banshee missiles. They use almost identical code but they move slower and home a bit longer. I might make the lasers shorter and do more damage someday.
ReplyDeleteI started playing this today...about 10 hours ago...and I haven't been playing that whole time (I even napped in between). Yet I worked my way up through from not being able to beat Derpy Mode to beating Trollestia Mode. xD
ReplyDeleteI'm a Touhou fan and not experienced with other Danmaku, yet I know that I'm not a very good player. I still have difficulty beating PCB (Touhou 7.0) on Easy Mode, with the strongest character IMHO (Sakuya).
In other words, this definitely still needs to be harder. One thing I'd recommend is more levels. Perhaps two for each Starcraft race, maybe a 4th (or 7th if you take the above suggestion) where all 3 team up against you? Apologies if I'm not making sense; I've never played Starcraft. xD (Then again, Ponies fighting an alien invasion doesn't make much sense to begin with -- but that's alright, danmaku rarely does make sense, as I'm told by non-Touhou danmaku players.)
Two other issues I've encountered: Cutie Mark powerups and character balance. Since my comment was too long, I'll include my feedback on character balance in another comment.
Cutie Mark powerup issue: The Cutie Mark changing your pony is extremely annoying; I find myself dodging them until they show the mark for the pony I'm playing (usually Rarity, as she is the best p0wny :3). Perhaps instead of forcing a change if you pick up the Cutie Mark, you could make it so that while the power-up is on-screen, a specific button changes the character (and the mark to match)? Just a suggestion. If the switches are intentional to make you need to understand all ponies' movesets and increase difficulty, ignore this part and skip to the next issue. [Next Comment]
Last issue: character balance. I'm sure you've heard this before, probably many times, but the characters aren't balanced. Rarity is, IMHO, the strongest, but because of her limited spread, takes quite a bit of practice to master -- That's a perfect tradeoff. I think the other characters need some better stuff.
ReplyDeleteI personally have a hard time with Rainbow Dash, but I've seen others seem to be able to use her alright, so I'm not gonna say anything about her.
Applejack. I would recommend something like giving her a spread of smaller apples for unfocused mode, and then make the larger apples stronger in focused mode (rather than withholding them). Non-spread characters' attacks NEED to have penetration qualities (e. g. RD's laser-like Rainbow Flash, Marisa's Illusion Laser in Touhou), or they're very weak, especially if they're slow.
Twilight. UGH. How can you make the most powerful magical creature in Equestria the least powerful character in the game? Also, her attacks lack something crucial to danmaku: FLAIR! They even LOOK wimpy. If I get Twilight by accident, I die, period, even in Derpy Mode on level 1. And this saddens me greatly. I personally would give Twilight multi-directional penetrating purple lasers, with a wait time between shots like Applejack's current setup. Another road to go is to have multi-directional mini-magic blasts (the kind you have now) with -homing- abilities. The goodguys seriously lack homing attacks; the only one I see is Pinkie's streamer throw. Also, I would make the magic bursts be Twilight's focused attack instead of her bomb. And as many others have said, bombs are usually used defensively in danmaku -- I would make it her -teleport- spell (Like RD's Sonic Rainboom, but a much lower cost and no collision damage). She moves around the screen freely (and faster than normal), flashing to show she's invisible -- but firing her normal attack ends the teleport effect.
The things I pointed out are just stuff I think could stand to be improved upon; the ideas I presented are merely personal suggestions on how to make improvements -- they are things I'd personally like to see in the game. If you choose to improve in different ways, of course that's your right as the developer! And since I can't program something as complex as this myself, please don't see this as me looking down on you. Instead, it's meant to be a fan of Ponies & Touhou trying their best to make this game provide more hours of lasting fun!
And I have to say, great work so far! I love the 8-bit pony songs, and the pony voices. I also like how the side of the screen graphic changes when getting hit or dying, and it's extremely cool to be able to use ponies to...well...P0WNY the enemy! XD
There are a lot of pony games in development (including fighting and RPG genre ones) that I can't WAIT to play; one great thing about shooters is that while the developer improves it, you can play demos! I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game and will definitely look forward to updates!
@LongAssNumberForUsername
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thanks for the detailed feedback
I do agree that character balance right now needs a LOT of work. In regards to the cutie mark switching, that was basically taken from Raiden games and I like the additional challenge and the decision-making required in choosing when to pick it up.
I have been working a bit on applejack. I believe she has the second highest dps of the ponies. Her apples penetrate enemies depending on her magic level at full magic, her apples should be bigger and should steamroll enemies.
Same concept for Twilight. She is truly a ranged carry type (if you play LoL (Sivir to be exact)). Her shots ricochet and target other enemies. But when magic is empty, her shot is kinda dinky. This, along with her magic attack that drains ALL magic, represents twilight's raw power. Did you use Twilight at full power? If so, do you think its still too weak? Twilight is the pony that has seen the most change in her attack behavior.