A few Arcade Mode tweaks and balances.

[Own]

A few thoughts I had across my last Arcade Mode Run:

1. Wow, I'm really hurting for a new weapon. Really, really hurting. [Challenge 1: Essence. Boss: Essence. Boss 2: Essence. Challenge 2: Essence.] OH COME ON!

I believe that Essence alone should never be a reward from a bossfight or a chest in Arcade Mode, except for possibly early floor challenges, and even then I get frowny if I took damage from a challenge and got an Essence for it. If it has to be awarded, let it be something that drops rarely as an additional bonus. When you're far in Arcade Mode, you'll take just about anything that actively contributes to your run. The Toy Machine drops a random stat potion 100% of the time and I'm always happy to have it, regardless of what it is.

(But mainly I'm just salty 'cause I have 400 essence and nothing to do with them. >_>)

If Essences absolutely have to be awarded for bossfights on later floors or challenges on later floors, it seems like they ought to award Golden Essences worth 5 or something. A challenge on floor 1 shouldn't award the same prize as one on floor 12. I'll take a Stat Potion over an Essence any day on floor 12, honestly.

2. Okay, two Summon Crystals, I can do this. Rush over to them, BANG BANG BANG, both dead - damn, they summoned things first. Run around, kill them, and... Time: B?

2b. A yeti, some frostlings and a present? Dodge the snowballs, pound down the frostlings, then circle slice around the yeti avoiding his attacks and... Time: C?

I'm not sure exactly how time score is calculated in the Arcade. I assumed it was something like, every enemy in the game is assigned a number of seconds on average it takes to kill it. When you go into a room, all those seconds are added together for every enemy in there. If you kill them all under that average time, you get an S Rank?

Because if it works like that, the time for Summoning Crystals, Peckos and Yetis are way off. I immediately start moving the instant I enter the room, weave around the first volley of projectiles and kill everything as quickly as possible with a high damage burst build. But Peckos have so much HP that if you try to shield block their attacks - or even if you perfect guard them - you still won't hit S-Rank. Same with Yetis. Summoning Crystals always summon at least one extra thing you'll get an A or B-Rank trying to kill.

Or maybe you're supposed to recklessly take every hit without shielding if you want S-Rank?

3. Oh look, it's Marino playing Darude - Snowstorm... again. Dududududu... wait. This is the fourth time in a row.

Did Bossling + Block get patched out when Marino got put in? It seems strange I've always gotten Marino+Toy Factory. Bossling and Block were a fun boss.

4. Fantastic! A shopkeep on floor 11-12! You sell... a single green wizard hat. Or a single scale boots. What?

I'm not sure if this is bugged or what, but there's always only one thing ever to buy on floors 11 and 12. I think the selection could stand to be a little bigger. Or shops on the last two floors of Arcade Mode should also sell a bunch of purely cosmetic items from Story Mode, like the mask or ski goggles. If you're gonna set a high score you wanna decorate your statue in style, yeah? Though maybe that's better saved for if we do get a Mr. Fabulous hat NPC to unlock all cosmetic hats and face items with.

 

[GarlicJelly]

+1 for the Mr. Fabulous NPC in Arcade for purely cosmetic unlocks to pimp your character so you look fresh as f*** when you get your picture taken for number 1 on the scoreboard.

 

[Own]

5. Okay, seriously, every other room is giving me an Essence. Bosses that I used to be guaranteed at least a potion on (Toy Factory) are giving me essences in favor of anything actually beneficial to the run. PLS STOP GAME.

Was the Essence drop rate from enemies and bosses increased or something? Because, jeez, this is ridiculous. Getting an Essence in place of an item or potion is really harsh. Is there some 'No Essence Pls' option somewhere to turn all this off? Taking a bit of damage doing the "Kill In Order" slip'n'slidy challenge in Winter and getting an Essence payout makes me want to avoid lategame Challenges like the plague, too much Essence! I can't even sell this to try and recoup some of my HP losses.

6. SSSSSAS room ranks. Average: S-Rank. Damage: 52 damage, 1 hit taken. Average: A-Rank. Combination Average: A-Rank. ... Huh?

I thought the scoring mechanics were changed so that, if your averages were S and A or A and S, it defaulted to an S rank for the floor. Or is there a bug and only A+S results in a Floor S, not S+A?

7. ... these scores seem lower than I remember.

Am I missing something, or are score payouts significantly reduced from what they used to be? To the tune of 300,000 to 400,000 points? Something major got changed in the process of the last few updates.

I... think, but I'm not sure, that in older versions you used to get a score bonus for every single room at the end of each level. And now that score bonus is gone? So no more +20,000 Points: S-Rank Room, +20,000 Points: S-Rank room, etc when transitioning between floors. Was this intentionally taken out or did it glitch out? Or was some other major source of points nerfed?

8. Bossling and Block!

They finally showed back up. Just RNG that they were missing for so long, I guess.

 

[Teddy]

Hehe I forgot to actually post my reply to your first post after writing it

1. What floors was this on? Challenges have a 10 % chance of giving essence, but bosses should only give only essence if everything from its item pool has been exhausted! It seems a bit weird that you'd exhausted the pools and not found a weapon.

2. Agh, I had forgotten to add the Rift Crystal to the list of kill times, giving it a very reasonable 2 seconds to destroy it and any adds!

I've given the Yetis and Peckos a bunch of additional time, too!

3. You must've had some bad luck! I think KoBeWi managed to pooshoo~~

4. That bastard! This should probably get tweaked, ya

5. This is all very weird! As I said in reply to 1, bosses shouldn't drop only essence unless the item pools have been exhausted, and the item pools are the same as before...

6. How it works is that you get a floating value between 0-4 for both room clear time and damage taken. Your example would give you 3.857. I don't know what floor you were on, but if you took enough damage to get a pure A, that means a score of 3.

(3 + 3.857) / 2 = 3.4285

Which rounds down to 3 = A

It is easier to get total ranks of S, but you don't have much leeway. Before, getting an A in one room would rob you of the rank, despite taking 0 damage. Now you could get an A in one or two rooms if you took 0 damage, or take a bit of damage as long as you got a solid "pure" S on the room times.

7. The scores are lower than you remember, mostly because the base score got lower! That is, the score for beating a floor on the worst rank possible was pretty decent before, but now it's very low. This affects higher scores as well. Individual rooms get scored only upon completion (just like before), and S rank is actually worth more than it used to be!

8. Congratulations!

 

[Own]

1. Typically the Essence storm comes from around Flying Fortress onwards. I'll get the occasional one around Flying Fortress, then more and more in Winter, then a ton in Season Temple. I get a peppering of them here and there in the Woods, too. Having beaten Arcade Mode about 10 times now, I can notice there's a gigantic Essence spike in the game that wasn't there before. In my last run, Toy Factory and Hydras both gave essence, as well as 2-3 challenges around Winter and Season Temple. A lot more throughout the run, too.

It would be much more helpful if Essences weren't a part of loot pool, but just had a 10% chance to award as a bonus after each boss kill or challenge completion alongside something that contributes to the run. I'd be happy if, when the loot pool is emptied, it just spat out a random Stat-Up Potion. That or it starts tapping into the loot pool from the next floor, or unearned loot from past floors. But from the sounds of it there seems to be a potential glitch in the loot pool generation. Odd.

7. So in order to be able to get scores like I used to, I have to actually S-Rank all the floors? Hrrrm. I think I'll hold off on aiming for highscores until the new enemy timers get put in, then.

You might also want to look into Season Temple rooms with Hydras in them. I distinctly remember one room that had 2 mages and a hydra in it. I charged up, smacked both mages down, turned around and perfect guarded the Hydra. Wailed on it, waited for it to come back, shielded, wailed on it. I killed it in 14 seconds (if I remember correctly) with non-stop perfect guards and damage bursts and got a B or a C for that room. Is Hydra-time funky too?