Tai Ming Arcade Floors Design Poll

Which Option Do You Prefer?

  • Option #1 - Fewer rooms, backtracking in opposite timeline

    Votes: 16 55.2%
  • Option #2 - Regular amount of rooms, some are past, some are present

    Votes: 13 44.8%

  • Total voters
    29

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
The Tai Ming Arcade floors poses an interesting challenge that none of the other floors do. After all, Tai Ming is a town, and a town you can explore both in the past and present, so how do we properly convey that over a set of not-overly-decorated rooms where you battle a ton of monsters?

The first thing we decided was that there would have to be enemies in both past and present state rooms: we definitely want to include the time travel aspect in some way, and keeping the past rooms enemy-free (as they are in Story Mode) just isn't an option.

As for the layout of the floors, we have two options.

Option #1 is to have the Tai Ming floors be about half as long as a regular Arcade Mode floor. That means there will be half the amount of rooms, and your goal is to find a specific room which contains a time rift that allows you to travel forward in time, passing through the rooms once more in another time!

For example, say you begin in past. You battle your way through a set of different rooms, all decorated in Tai Ming's past style with cherry trees, statues and whatnot. Then you reach a big room, which is empty. This is the boss room, but you're not yet able to battle the boss because you're in the wrong time. You go back and find another room containing a time rift which you pass through. Now on your mini map the empty room gets the boss icon, and you start making your way back there.

Now that you're in a different time, all of the rooms have transformed into Tai Ming's present state instead, with the statues broken and cherry trees bare. In each room you pass, new enemies will spawn: you essentially battle your way from the portal room back to the boss room you found before. Once you reach the boss room again, you can finally battle the boss and get to the next floor.

There will of course be cases where you find the time rift before you reach the boss room, and in those cases the floor will be shorter than normal, since you don't have to backtrack through as many rooms.

The upside to this version is that you'll get to see each room you already went through in its past and present state, and that it makes these floors a bit more unique compared to the other floors of Arcade Mode. The downside is the backtracking, which might not feel as interesting as going through a unique set of rooms, and the fact that you have to find a specific room (the rift room) before you can progress through the floor as usual, which might feel annoying to some people.

Option #2 is a bit more straight forward. This idea is simply that certain rooms have a time rift you pass through as you go between one room and another, so some rooms will be past and some will be present. This means the floor will be the same length as and work in the same way as the other Arcade floors (when you find the boss room, it will always be in the correct timeline and you can battle the boss at once). What rooms will appear and whether they are past or present rooms will be randomly generated by the map rather than you going through a set of past rooms first, which then transform into present rooms.

Perhaps not as interesting mechanically, but might be more so visually (more unique rooms rather than two versions of the same, shorter floor).

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Since we can't really decide which one we prefer, we'd like to hear what you guys think. Would you prefer Option #1 or Option #2? This game is designed to be enjoyed by our players, so we're very interested to hear which one of these you'd like to see!
 
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Own

Moderator
Now that you're in a different time, all of the rooms have transformed into Tai Ming's present state instead, with the statues broken and cherry trees bare.

I take it this means there's going to be no 'indoor' rooms in Tai Ming to mimic how Tai Ming is a town, like how Flying Fortress has both indoor and outdoor rooms? Evergrind Woods, Pumpkin Forest and Seasonne have the room-surrounded-by-trees thing a bit over represented, but I guess the aesthetics aren't the most important thing in arcade. :p

Option #1: Fighting the same exact enemies in the same room, only visually different, would be a bit... repetitive, I agree.

Option #2: Different rooms, but the visuals are different. Hrm.

Neither really utilize the mechanic of Tai Ming in a mechanical way, like how in Arcade Season Temple you can still change the seasons to effect.

Thinking up ways to actually use the time travel in a mechanical way would be interesting. Like...

1: Tai Ming floors are half as long, but you're still fighting the same number of enemies. Time is on the fritz in Tai Ming, every # (10-15?) seconds, time in the current room shifts between Past and Present (provided there are still enemies left in the time you're not currently in). Each with their own enemies. Clear both Past and Present to proceed from the room. Essentially, Tai Ming rooms become a two wave battle room you ping-pong between. Maybe grant players 0.5-1 second of invulnerability when shifting between past/present, to prevent getting damaged from reappearing next to an enemy.

2: Tai Ming floors are the normal floor size, but every room you enter is in the Past. After # seconds, you are transported into the Present. Any enemies you haven't killed in the Past are now turned into Elites here, or get an HP refresh. Or both.

3: At the start of the floor you're presented with a time warp. You have a choice. Time travel back into the past, where the floor has more but weaker enemies and unlikely side-rooms (shop/fishing/etc), or the present where the floor has fewer but stronger (elite) enemies and guaranteed side-rooms. What does your build favor? Large or small numbers of mobs? The choice is yours! :D If you choose not to go into the time warp, it closes when you proceed into the first room.

4: You start in the past. Randomly while you're fighting in rooms, a time portal has a chance to spawn. You can attack it. If you don't kill it in # seconds, the room switches to the Present and the monsters become stronger.

If I had to pick between the two options presented, I guess I'd go for... 2? No real opinion one way or the other.
 

Sogomn

Rabby
I think that the chance of finding the time travel room before the boss room is too high, especially when the floors are half the size. That would mean you'd have to switch between rooms a lot to be able to clear everything.
 

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
I take it this means there's going to be no 'indoor' rooms in Tai Ming to mimic how Tai Ming is a town, like how Flying Fortress has both indoor and outdoor rooms? Evergrind Woods, Pumpkin Forest and Seasonne have the room-surrounded-by-trees thing a bit over represented, but I guess the aesthetics aren't the most important thing in arcade. :p
There will be indoor rooms, but we don't know how frequent they will be yet!

Option #1: Fighting the same exact enemies in the same room, only visually different, would be a bit... repetitive, I agree.
The enemies will spawn in new lineups the second second time you go through so you won't face the exact same enemies twice in the same room. I've edited my original post to clarify this a bit better :)
 

Jenkolegs

Rabby
So am i right to think that the statues can be placed with no function then if you go through the rift they'll become ancient statues and attack?
 

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
So am i right to think that the statues can be placed with no function then if you go through the rift they'll become ancient statues and attack?
No, the ancient statues will attack regardless of which timeline you're in - you'll battle all of Tai Mings enemies in both past and present. The "only" thing that will change when you pass through a time rift here is what the background graphics look like (and in the case of Option #1, the boss of the floor won't spawn until you've gone through the rift)!
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
I'd pick #1, but change it in a way that we have multiple portals across the floor and not all rooms would be in both times. The portals would appear on the map and map itself would be 3-colored, to mark which rooms are in which times.

Also, some rooms could have twists like Own suggested, but randomly. Or, they could be challenges.
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
How would you handle special rooms in case #1?
Are they the same rooms in both times? Do I get twice the treasure?

But all in all I prefer #1
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Hmm, this is a difficult one for me. The first idea sounds great, but I'm reconsidering based on what the experience might be like if I wanted to do the minimum amount of rooms possible - say I was doing a speedrun or was trying to get double S ranks, for argument's sake.

So, Arcade floor generally aren't linear. There tend to be a couple offshoot room branches, normally leading to a dead end or special room. Another thing is that the boss room can only be entered from the bottom. This mean that, if you're searching the floor for the boss room, it's not a bad idea to take the room that goes up if presented with a junction. I'm wondering how this strategy might change if we have a time rift room to find.

It probably dilutes the strategy a little, simply by the fact that we have both left and right room options to pick from, as I'd assume the time rift wouldn't be along the linear path to the boss (or we end up with zero chance of going in all the rooms in the past).

With the situations I've been thinking of, we get two different options. Assuming (lots of assumptions here) that it's possible to enter all rooms in both past and present, the quantity of optional rooms or obligatory rooms must be greater than in a standard Arcade floor. For arguments sake rather than lack of information's sake this time, I'll make the assumption we have to go through like 12 obligatory normal fighting rooms minimum, with 6 offshoot normal fighting rooms in various branches. This is just to help me explain my point.

We're still trying to go as fast as possible, just to make that clear.

Situation 1: The number of rooms is halved, such that we have the same total number of rooms in the past and present when combined - 6 obligatory, 3 offshoot. Let's say, by chance, I happen to go into all of the offshoot rooms in the past, finding the time rift in the last one. I've explored 6 obligatory rooms and 3 optional ones. When I go into the present, I already know the map and therefore won't have to do any of the offshoot rooms. Totalling it up, we instead have 12 obligatory rooms, yet only 3 optional ones. Actually this will technically be even less total rooms as this implies you've gone through the boss room, as it's obligatory to complete the floor.

Situation 2: Only the number of obligatory rooms are halved, such that we have more total rooms - 6 obligatory rooms and 6 option rooms, 12 of each when doubled. While this now means, as a person trying to go fast, I still 12 obligatory rooms and 6 optional ones according to the situation above. However, people who aren't trying to go fast, and possibly want to go through the extra rooms for loot/EXP/monies, have more rooms in which to do so.

One final thing I will bring up is the impact of this is slightly lessened if we don't find all the option rooms (and the route to the boss room) in the past. We don't have them on our map, and therefore we still have one extra room guess to make.

All in all (and tl;dr), with option 1 and assuming half the total number of rooms, players are more likely to enter half off the offshoot rooms by chance than in a normal arcade floor, and are less likely to enter fewer or greater than that amount. I'm not sure if I like this variation or not.

Is this actually an issue? Depends on your point of view really. However it is at least a situation open for consideration. The best solution? Probably tackling some of the assumptions I've made. It would be a lot smoother if, for instance, the offshoot rooms can only be accessed in the past and are blocked off in the present.

Or alternatively vote for option 2, as I have done for now.
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
How would you handle special rooms in case #1?
Are they the same rooms in both times? Do I get twice the treasure?

But all in all I prefer #1

So, I have put more thought into this and I still prefer #1.
Because you(the Devs) have essentially the option to either make a standard floor with the Tai Ming theme, or make a Tai Ming floor (and now I hate myself because it took me forever to notice the wordplay in Tai Ming...).

For me it is the difference of an actual place or a different wallpaper.

And arguing with speedrunning I'd say it is way more entertaining if there was at least one floor which has a slightly different tactics than all other floors. Timings that dictate the ratings can be adjusted so speedrunning will still be possible.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
wordplay in Tai Ming
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Mind. Blown.
 
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