[Feedback Request] Arcade Mode - Thoughts on long term balance

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Currently the Arcade Mode is very hard. For the 8 floors (soon to be 12) currently in the game, I think the difficulty is only slightly absurd, but the final version of Arcade Mode is expected to be 24 floors long!

So, what I'm getting at is that when the Arcade Mode is finished (length wise at least), only the absolute elite will be able to see the upper floors, let alone beat it! Many players have invested dozens of hours into this mode without even seeing Flying Fortress, so yeah.

We think something has to change a bit for the Arcade Mode balance to be viable long term, but there are a few options available and we're not sure what changes are the best. There are probably other ways to tackle the issue that we haven't thought of, as well!

Note that we're not suggesting to implement all the things listed below, but rather pick and choose to create a good balance. We'd like to improve on the feasibility of succeeding in the mode, but without ruining the tension.

Less damage from monsters

At some points, you barely need to slip up at all to take huge amounts of damage. In Pumpkin Woods, getting whacked by a Halloweed a few times usually results in death even from nearly full HP!

Perhaps some enemies should have their attack values tuned down a bit to prevent this?

More healing

There are only two ways to heal in Arcade Mode currently, and that's from health orbs and the greedy nurse! Both of these could be tweaked:

* Orbs could give more % of MaxHP in Arcade Mode
* Lowering the healing fee at the nurse

Continues

Usually, high scores only become interesting after you've beaten the game in question. In Touhou games (those I've played at least), you start out with a few continues, but using one will reset your score! In other words, "beating the game" and "competing on the leaderboards" gets clearly separated as two different achievements.

Another good thing about continues is that they allow players to spend more time at the floors they have trouble with. If you're getting to the Temple of Seasons (floor 11-12) and keep getting stomped by the Season Hydras, having to play through 10 floors for every attempt at beating them is quite exhausting.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few different ways of doing continues. The first is to simply give players a set number of continues right away, and let them use those during the run.

Another idea is that players start out with no continues, but earn one every X floors (say two). This way, the greater the effort of reaching a floor, the more practice attempts you'll get at beating it.

Lastly, you could use a system where you pay for continues using your score, the cost scaling up for each time you purchase one, having you decide between keeping your high score and keep on playing (until you run out of score).

More Options

This isn't a suggestion as such, as we'll do this regardless, but it's worth noting that we're going to add more 'features' to the mode which will give players more options during runs, especially when it comes to getting gear. The '?'-rooms will have a variety of events and NPCs in them, such as sprites trading an item you don't use for a random other, shrines granting temporary buffs, and so forth.
 

IHeartPie

Halloweed
I prefer the few hits to die but more options for healing and no continues option. One of the most successful roguelites in history, binding of isaac, follows this same formula for good reason.

I love dying a lot and trying over, and I love that one big mistake in a room can really mess with you, but having no way to recover from it other than praying for a nurse or not taking any damage on the way to the next room is way too big a punishment. I think players should be rewarded for skillful gameplay and punished for not paying attention. Those times in binding of isaac where you get knocked down to half a heart and still manage to climb back up to full by not getting hit and slowly recovering HP are among the best times in the game.

Here's some suggestions:

1] I sincerely believe that if you don't take the health orb at the beginning, you should be able to go back for it. It's to symbolize that you are playing SO well in the last level that you get an insurance for this level.

2] Have a separate bar for score that when you get X amount of score, you heal a little. This way, you can actually program in some cool things like near-misses from boar charges or killing something by reflecting a projectile and attach a score value to it; players who play skillfully gets to heal more often. Of course, a diminishing return stat should be implemented so you don't abuse a bloomo's slow attack and perfect guard back to full hp.

3] This was slightly discussed before but maybe having healing based on the score at the end of a room. Every room would be a little overpowered but maybe completing an S room has a 10% chance of dropping a health orb. This way, you REALLY want to go for the S ranking when you are low to get that chance.

4] Another way is just to make the floors bigger but guarantee a shop and a nurse on every floor so that you can sell junk and buy HP back when you need it.

I want to be able to make it up to the upper floors by my own skill, not because it's made easier =P.

Oh, and perks and arcade-mode-only talents could be added to alleviate this. Maybe the healing after S or bigger floors is a perk that takes a while to unlock. Talents such as the potion one is useless in arcade mode so maybe replace it with a healing based one?

Anyways, hope this paragraph helps in some way :3. I love skill-based games and Secrets of Grindea is one of the best right now. I just feel that lowering the difficulty or adding continues may mess with that too much.
 

Own

Moderator
Difficulty

For a viewpoint on the difficulty of Arcade Mode, a guy bought the game earlier this week. He hit Winter for the first time yesterday. I don't think it's ridiculously hard, it just has a learning curve that expects you to learn how to use your shield and learn enemy attack patterns.

I wouldn't go easy on people who don't want to do either one. :p

Healing

I know that Health Potions are still in the game, because my closed beta Story Mode character still has a few in their inventory. Why not add them to Arcade Mode? Purely as a rare, use-when-you-need-it health orb. I wouldn't mind getting Health Potions instead of Health Orbs, honestly.

Monster Damage

I probably wouldn't mind some of the heavier hitters in Arcade Mode doing less damage. It wouldn't make me immediately lock onto them and treat them as a DESTROY ON SIGHT target, taking away some of the tension, but I could live with it.

Continues

I'd personally strongly reccomend against this. Death should mean something, tweak your strategy, improve something.

Lastly, you could use a system where you pay for continues using your score, the cost scaling up for each time you purchase one, having you decide between keeping your high score and keep on playing (until you run out of score).

Giving players this option will just allow them to try and try and try until they eventually brute force a boss with a lucky battle, if they don't care about the score and just want to get to the bottom of Arcade by any means possible. This is okay for Story Mode but it seems a little cheap for Arcade. :p Imagine how popular Binding of Isaac would be if everyone just hit the bottom level within a few days with no drive for improvement due to being able to continue.

Another Thought

In my post about Adding / Upgrading NPCs in Arcade Mode, I suggested Candy as a way to make Arcade Mode harder as a challenge and thereby add score multipliers.

If you do seriously consider adding her, might I suggest adding her sister as well? As an early unlock in Arcade Mode. Candy's sister doesn't seem to share Candy's witchiness, she could allow the player to choose various magical sweets before running the arcade that make it easier. She could be a very, very early unlock, with additional sweets you can unlock to make the arcade even easier - on the understanding that her sweets are disabled when running a quest, I hope. :p Probably make it so you can't mix-and-match Candy and her sister too, you can either make it easier or harder. Examples,

Healthy Honeybun - Each enemy killed regenerates # HP. -5% to ending score.
Gentle Gingerbread - No chance of enemies being Elite. -5% to ending score.
Rich Raisinbread - Enemies drop more gold and have an increased item drop rate. -10% to ending score.
Macho Muffin - All forms of damage dealt increased by 10%. -10% to ending score.
Fortune Cookie - Enemies have a +2% of dropping their card. -5% to ending score.
Dashing Doughnut - HP orbs at the start of each floor restore ALL missing HP. -25% to ending score.

Leaving the difficulty as-sis, but adding two NPCs to determine if players want it easier or harder seems a perfect middleground. Because once people beat arcade mode fully, that's it, the appeal to run again is diminished. But if someone beats arcade mode on what's clearly marked as 'Easy Mode', they have a pride stake in it. They're determined to prove they don't need to run on Easy Mode, they can tough it out on Normal and then maybe move on to Hard.

I want to be able to make it up to the upper floors by my own skill, not because it's made easier =P.

Agree with this 100%. I love the difficulty as it is. People DO get better if they commit to it. Unfortunately, IHeartPie always dies because he multitasks commentary and puts himself at a disadvantage. :( He suffers for making good videos.
 
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sc0tt

Green Slime
My vote goes towards making the monsters deal less damage. It's really discouraging when you lose 50% of your damage from one hit. As far as continues go, please don't :)
 

Dana

Green Slime
I really like the idea of making each floor slightly bigger, but forcing more event floors into each one. Some thoughts:

Shop: Having the shop at least every other floor (either every floor, or once per region) would definitely be beneficial for people who have been having poor luck on gear drops.

Nurse: The nurse doesn't really show up enough. Maybe also add a random event room that is a resting place for a full heal?

Chest room: Maybe instead of just "Here is a random chest" it could be "Pick one of these two items that you can see before you" that way, again, getting screwed on gear happens less (I can't count the times I suffer hard because I get no magic gear)

XP curve in general: Sometimes I feel like there should be a couple more rooms per floor, I always feel underleveled. This may or may not be just me, though.

Crafting: It's nice that it's doable in Arcade now, technically, but the actual recipes are nigh-impossible to get because of enemy counts. The recipes could be adjusted for Arcade, perhaps.

Continues: Very much against this as a standard, less against it as a random benefit (as in you find an accessory that if equipped at the time of death, breaks, and returns you to life)

Arcade Mode is almost good enough to be its own game, in all honesty, it just needs some filling out.
 

TheAngryPanda1

Green Slime
Please, please, and please again.. do NOT change the overall difficulty of arcade mode. I cannot tell you how absolutely awesome it feels to make it all the way to the end of GUN-D4M's absolutely maniacal bulletfest and see his big mechanical face drop to the ground in defeat. It's great, and it feels great as well as a player. I do think some things should be looked at, tweaked, or maybe even re-thought, but in the grand scheme of things, it's honestly not that bad and is incredibly addicting to people who enjoy a good challenge or just a fun grind against the game.

Bees:

So let's have a chat about bees and why I hate them. It isn't because they're hard to hit, I can't block properly, or anything like that really. It's the AI involved and their patterns. To my understanding, they attack from direction A then move to direction B to attack again, unless hindered, in which case they circle back and start from the beginning of the AI's initial direction. This presents problems in timed challenges, kill orders with various other enemies, chicken challenges especially, and generally is irritating as hell because the AI isn't reliable as a predictive measure for counter-attacks. A case I typically run into is that I tend to think 10 steps ahead (and it gets me killed often, for sure, but bare with me here... lol) due to being involved with lots of speedrunning stuff. One of the main things regarding this is knowing what your enemy does, their patterns, their attacks, and the proper method of executing a solid and reliable counterattack. The case for the bees is that you block (preferred perfect guard) and smash them OR you go down/up and swing the opposite direction OR you just smash them if you have enough damage as they come at you.

The problem with the AI for me is the decision is makes to go back to the initial direction it starts at, because this has issues if the player moves and causes MASSIVE delays in kills that cost us score, possibly health, and numerous other things. So, if this is intentional, that's cool because it's just something we get to learn. But if you're looking to change something, perhaps altering how bees operate could be a good start? Maybe give them a triple-dive attack regardless of initial starting position, a blade flurry-like attack from a standstill position that lowers them to the ground and tires them out for player opportunities, or in the case of multiple bees, make it so that some go off and try to form a new hive together so the player doesn't just pin themselves against a wall and actually has to get off their ass and do something about it (ie; not tedious/boring).

Red Slime Pools (not the enemies that drop them):

So this has been brought up elsewhere briefly, but it really is a huge issue and kind of makes other enemies a billion times more powerful/threat-worthy. An example: I'm going through arcade mode, have full health and good equipment/skills, literally no reason to worry about a 2 slime, boar, and hive room, right? Right! I see the slimes and the hive, think the slimes will be fine, so I go kill the hive. The boar happens to shove slimes towards my direction as I'm running, they glue me to the ground, the boar hits me back into the slime, shield is now up until it breaks because I cannot escape due to the movement hindrance in ANY WAY AT ALL, even from damage boosting out of it, because the other slime was on the normal pathing I initially planned it on taking. So needless to say, that ended badly for me and I lost my attempt there.

My point is that red slime should be worse than green slime, but not at a magnitude that it single-handedly can decide when and how you die at any given point. It slows way too much for way too long. So there's three options here for "fixing" it that I've been thinking about.

Option 1 - Stronger slow, less duration on ground. Simply put, it slows to the point you may as well be stopped cold without movement boosting stuff (which would be lovely to have in the game) or when buffed by haste/float (haste - increased movement + it's other stuff, makes sense | float - player no longer affected by ground debuffs for X time, X increases on skill level). While this slow is incredibly punishing, it should only last a very brief, but impacting moment. Maybe give the basic red slimes the ability to hurl it at players from farther away (maybe 1/5th generic map distance in forest? Just a rough guess, I'm unaware of units used to calculate distance for ranges attacks; pixels maybe?) so players have to be aware of this and react accordingly. This does two things, it gives brief control of the map to the enemies based on the player's decisions (which is how quasar beat furious red slime in his video) which also grants the player reliability of AI and enemies based upon their planning and execution. The other thing it accomplishes is possibly some sort of AI combo in which the slimes try to protect other enemies by tossing slime in front of them such as flowers and hives.

Option 2 - Weaker slow, stronger duration on ground. Basically the opposite, the movement reduction is lessened, but the red slime may as well be permanently on the ground until that enemy is defeated. This goes for furious red slime too, unless you can differentiate between the two move-set wise (I honestly prefer furious red slime how he is at the moment, very good challenge/boss design). Anyways, for these guys, I'd give them an ability that lets them merge with another red slime to create an elite red slime and give the elite the ability to create a massive pool (half the size of furious red slime's pools) while reducing their movement capabilities jumping wise. This would imply red slimes couldn't be elite unless there were odd numbers of them on the map, otherwise we're robbing the player of good drop chances and experience they desperately need I'm sure.

Option 3 - Ditch red slimes for a later portion of the game mode and replace with yellow slimes that do everything red slimes do at half the impact (movement reduction, duration on ground, etc...). Give them move health though, for sure.

Regarding Bosses:

Please don't change them. I like all of them how they are, regardless of the nonsense and complete BS they give me sometimes. They feel great to beat and master mechanically. I honestly don't think the bosses are the problem, I think it's the way enemies act together and the way their AI is designed that is pushing people down the stairs when they finally reach their highest steps here. The machine gun snowball frostling in the winter floors is great, it gives youa sense of urgency and super risky play when fighting him to run towards him to avoid it. Then the dash comes and you have no idea what hit you the first time, so you have to constantly think on your toes about time management, enemy placement on the map, and multiple other things. It's great, I'd hate to see that fight changed.

Bit of a novel I guess, sorry for that. Anyways, back to grinding for Pecko card for me. Can't wait to see what you guys do in the future. :D
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Am I the only one around here who wants continues? They could be made optional, like perk giving continues etc.

But what I would really like is a way to start from higher floors. I know Arcade Mode is supposed to be rogue-like and when you fail, you start from beginning. It's fun to die and go again for new experience, randomized floors, different equipment, challenges and all... But I find it frustrating, when I die 30 times in the same place, each time taking more than 10 minutes to get there, only to die again. Maybe it will get better when all Arcade stuff is in (like these buff shrines or something), but still, one mistake may cost too much. I know many people enjoy such challenge, but there are ones that don't (like me).

So as for this way to start from different floor, it could be done with NPC (100% optional). When you reach new area, your progress is "saved", meaning your level, equipment, skills, all is stored, so when you die, you can continue from this point, but with 0 score and full HP. Progress is saved when entering each area, so you can choose what area to start from. You can "overwrite" your progress, by reaching the floor again. There could be also an option to reset skills on start.
To make it a bit harder, each time you want to select floor, you have to pay 1(+?) Essence and maybe floors could be unlocked when reaching them ~10 times or only when coming from the beginning (like in Icy Tower).

I know it's unpopular opinion, but I don't think that making it fully optional would break the game so much, would it?
 

Own

Moderator
You have to think about what sort of game you want Arcade Mode to be. By design it's meant to be the ultimate challenge, where you go after you've beaten Story Mode and want the game to really test you with it's mechanics.

To draw the Binding of Isaac example, how much would it break Isaac if you could simply continue after each death, to reroll your items after each death?

People play it for many, many days and weeks to master every type of enemy, every trap and every combination of items. When you're deep down in a run you feel actual tension, any small mistake can break the run. When you win it's a relief and when you die it's frustrating, but you go again because you know how to avoid death better this time. The many, many people who stream Isaac look defeated when they mess up bad and lose and still they run again with enthusiasm to see how deep they can get this time.

When you know that there's a Continue? waiting for you, in the back of your mind you don't play quite so seriously. You have a safety net there, it doesn't matter if you make a mistake.

There's an item you can find in Isaac, the 1-Up, that's essentially a continue-lite. If you die you're kicked out of the current room you're put in the room you just came from with some of your HP back, but you still need to go into that room again. But the thing is, it's rare and you're no better off than you were going into that room the first time. You have to have gotten better immediately or you're still dead.

If a Continue does get added to Arcade Mode, I'd hope it was something rare that you earned and not a permanent safety net. Because honestly, if I died I'd probably be frustrated enough to keep hammering the Continue button if it were there and brute forcing the room. So would many other people I imagine. :p

Ways of a Continue? system I personally wouldn't mind, all working under the assumption that they spit you back out into the previous room you already cleared:

A) You have a Continue-salesman in Arcadia. You can purchase 1 Continue for # Essence and that's it. So while you can buy it, it's going to leave a bit of a sting in your Essence counter. It's only valid for your next run.

B) I'm leery of it, but a Continue perk wouldn't be the end of the world. It would mean a permanent safety net though, with no cost to using it on every single run after you've purchased it, though. Unlike the option above you don't feel the sting from buying it.

C) An 'easy mode' option for Muffin, as I suggested earlier. Second Wind Samoas, give you 1 Continue for -25% score at the end. That way it's not a part of the 'normal' game and the game shows you this.

D) A ridiculously expensive thing you can buy from the Shady Merchant at shops, that rarely appears. Something you blow practically all your gold on.
 

Sekibanki

Green Slime
While I don't mind the idea of continues I think they should only be useful for practising floors you tend to die on. So if you use a continue you shouldn't earn any essence, that runs score shouldn't be added to the total, and it should cancel any quests you have active. Maybe I'm being harsh but I feel you could just cheese your way through difficult quests otherwise.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Of course continues should cancel quests and all. If the "choose floor" system would be in, it should also make sure not to brake anything. Like the butterfly quest would be pointless if you just could start from forest. But it's just matter of simple restrictions.

When you know that there's a Continue? waiting for you, in the back of your mind you don't play quite so seriously. You have a safety net there, it doesn't matter if you make a mistake.
So maybe continues shouldn't restore HP, so you still have to perform well, but just have more chances. Relying on luck will not be enough at some point, so you still have to be "serious" in playing. Players who don't want it could disable them, but for me, it's annoying to have to repeat previous floors all the time. If they can't give new challenge, there's no point and it unnecessarily make the run longer.

And I'm rather for the "area select system" than normal continues (as I wrote few posts above). Sometimes restarting from current or previous floor with 0 score may be enough punishing (like having to redo Flying Fortress). For me it's more just a time saver than safety net. I know that the vision of repeating all these 10 floors you passed makes more tension, but if it comes to repeating, some people just tolerate it less than the others.
 

GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
Red Slime Pools (not the enemies that drop them):
So this has been brought up elsewhere briefly, but it really is a huge issue and kind of makes other enemies a billion times more powerful/threat-worthy. An example: I'm going through arcade mode, have full health and good equipment/skills, literally no reason to worry about a 2 slime, boar, and hive room, right? Right! I see the slimes and the hive, think the slimes will be fine, so I go kill the hive. The boar happens to shove slimes towards my direction as I'm running, they glue me to the ground, the boar hits me back into the slime, shield is now up until it breaks because I cannot escape due to the movement hindrance in ANY WAY AT ALL, even from damage boosting out of it, because the other slime was on the normal pathing I initially planned it on taking. So needless to say, that ended badly for me and I lost my attempt there.
I don't think the red slimes are a problem. I like them the way they are because they become a higher priority target than the bees which will in most cases result in 2-3 more bees being spawned in the room and the bees are not that big of a problem unless you have 4+ of them. Only problem I see with hives and red slimes are if you get 2 of each kind in a normal room (not a double enemies room challange) since that would be so hard to deal with that it would probably end your round 9/10 times.

My Opinion on the Arcade Mode Difficulty
I'm still struggling with beating the Red Giga Slime and beating the Jumpin Forest floors. I'm not a regular Arcade Mode player but IMO taking damage is the biggest problem in Arcade Mode for me. The only way I can reach the 4th floor is if I take no damage at all on the way there and when I get there I just get killed in either the first room or at the boss (depending on how good my gear is and what enemies I get in my rooms). Since I play Shadow Clone only I am bound to take damage at some point and right now there is no way for me to reach the last couple of floors without adapting one of the ranged skills so that I can stay out of my enemies reach for the entire run. I don't think you should have to play a run flawless in order to reach your goal. As suggested earlier more healing options, stronger healing or even storing your health orbs in some kind of flask to use at a later time would help players to reach the higher floors easier without lowering the enemies damage or lowering the over all difficulty. I think I should be allowed to keep my un used health orbs if I complete a floor without taking damage. Maybe the healing from your health orbs could be based off floor score? Right now if you play Insect Swarm you never get any S ranks since the tactic is to not take damage and just play it slow and safe. If you play with Shadow Clone you can almost get an S rank in every room but the trade-off Health vs Score is not balanced IMO. Just recieving points is not worth the risk of playing melee. It takes more skill to play up close and I think the player should be rewarded with more than just points and I think more healing would be a good reward for the playstyle. High risk, high reward = Clearing rooms fast would mean that you take more risks since you're trying to do everything as quick as you can and the reward would be more healing to either give players some health to bank up in a bottle or to make them go +-0 for their effort (I don't have hard proof but I think in general melee clears faster than magic).

Lastly: I think it should be easier to continue to survive rather than die and then continue. :p
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Thanks everyone for your great feedback (and keep it coming if you get more ideas, or want to comment on some change we've made)!

We're going to introduce a few changes to healing with the upcoming patch.

First off, we're buffing Arcade Mode health orbs, to heal for 35 % of MaxHP instead of 20 % of MaxHP (the Halloweed Card applies normally).

We feel the 20 % healing per floor was a bit harsh, and didn't allow for "comebacks" very well. Also, when you start taking damage, you start taking damage. What I mean by this is that players usually take a majority of their damage on specific floors they're struggling with. I doubt our buffing health orbs is going to trivialize this (nor do we want them to), but it might help players survive a few extra blows before dying, and getting more time to figure out what to do!

In the same vein, we're going to do as suggested in this thread and let players save starting room orbs for later, in case they reach a floor with a ton of HP and want to save the potential healing power! If they reach a new floor with full HP, however...

...they won't get a health orb at all, but a health potion, which has been retooled to give 20 % of MaxHP on use. This way, doing well on early floors will give you an advantage at the floors causing you trouble.

We might very well add health potions as rare drops and rewards, as Own suggested!

It'll be interesting to see how these changes affect the mode, and what you think of it. For the experts it might make things "too EZ", but then again, there are four new floors to beat now!

This is only a starting point, of course, but we'll see where this takes us and proceed from there!
 

Own

Moderator
...they won't get a health orb at all, but a health potion, which has been retooled to give 20 % of MaxHP on use. This way, doing well on early floors will give you an advantage at the floors causing you trouble.

This sounds incredibly reasonable to me. Incentivizes mastering early floors so you can survive later floors, too. :) I can see a lot of people going out of their way to avoid taking any damage so they can hoard up some potions.
 

Sekibanki

Green Slime
I don't want to be that guy cause I'll probably be using as many potions as the next person, but could you make it so that using potions lowers your score by a bit. I just feel that someone who could beat arcade mode without using potions should have a higher highscore than someone who used say 10 potions to beats arcade mode. Maybe I'm just being masochistic.
 

GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
I don't want to be that guy cause I'll probably be using as many potions as the next person, but could you make it so that using potions lowers your score by a bit. I just feel that someone who could beat arcade mode without using potions should have a higher highscore than someone who used say 10 potions to beats arcade mode. Maybe I'm just being masochistic.
I think that using any healing at all during the run should lower your score because it make sense that someone who doesn't take damage should get more points than someone who takes a lot of damage. A more skilled player who takes less damage would lose less points and thus get a higher score.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Players who take less damage are already rewarded - they get S mark for 0 damage each floor. I' m not sure if damage grade alone is scored or only the final grade, but if it was, there's no need for negative points from healing.
 

GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
Players who take less damage are already rewarded - they get S mark for 0 damage each floor. I' m not sure if damage grade alone is scored or only the final grade, but if it was, there's no need for negative points from healing.
Yeah you're right. There is a S-C rank for taking damage on each floor so maybe you wouldn't need to lower the "bad" players score even more.
 

Raeden

Rabby
I love arcade mode!

I thought the "season knights & wizards" were REALLY easy to kill. I would kill them faster than green slimes back on floor 1. The gundam boss is also ridiculously easy.

I also thought that the winter and season temple floors were far easier than the haunted woods and flying fortress floors. They need to be made harder. I forget what his name is. But your rival guy with the blue hair, he's unbelievably easy as a boss.. I killed him in less than a minute, even with his little quick attack.

Other than that, I just think splitscreen coop would be an improvement, changing anything else would make it too easy. If you make it easier PLEASE make an easier mode and leave arcade in it's current form as it is as normal mode.

I don't think it's a good idea to increase the orb health amount, the orb on floor 10 for example gave me plenty of health. It would be stupid and too easy if you could be almost dead and then just go to full health every time you get to the next floor.

Please PLEASE don't change the difficulty of anything else. If it's easier it won't be as much fun :( I currently find it fun because of how challenging it is but the winter floors and season temple floors are already too easy (minus the hydra boss, which I found to be at a good level)
 
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GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
I don't think it's a good idea to increase the orb health amount, the orb on floor 10 for example gave me plenty of health. It would be stupid and too easy if you could be almost dead and then just go to full health every time you get to the next floor.
That's strange because you're supposed to only get around 20% HP back from any health orb in Acrade. If you get almost full HP from close to 0 then there sure is a problem there. Sure 20% HP back per floor is still a lot but if you get hit on the later floors wouldn't you take more than 20% damage since the enemies hit so hard? I'm not as into Arcade mode as I was a year ago so I'm not very good at telling how the balance it right now. We'll see what others think as they get better and they add mode floors. :)
 

Own

Moderator
It's 35% HP right now. He thinks he got a ton back because he had more max HP than he did at lower floors, it's all based on max.
 
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