Rethinking arcade catalysts.

[Own]

So, what's the point of arcade? The only part of it that actually matters? Beyond just having fun, the actual goal.

It's either A) To beat the True Final Boss, which requires Catalyst 3.
or it's B) To set a high score worthy of crushing the competition, which largely requires Catalyst 3.

This means Catalyst 2 doesn't matter. It's just there to better prepare you for 3. Just like Catalyst 1 is to ease you in gradually closer to 3. Catalyst 0 is meant to be an easy mode to let you get through the dungeon to begin with. Rescue NPCs, do quests, fight the bosses, learn the challenge rooms, experiment with pins. Catalyst 0 wants you to beat it again, and again, and again if needs be to lay the groundwork for clawing your way to C3 and reaching the end, the only part of arcade that matters.

Unfortunately, most people are going to tap out before ever clearing C0 and seeing what the mode has to offer. Which is why I propose changing the catalysts to better emphasize the fact that C0-2 exist only as training wheels being hammered off one by one, by making the early catalysts much more casual friendly.

Current Catalysts
C0: Normal Difficulty, Healing is Strong
C1: Higher Difficulty, Healing is Strong
C2: Higher Difficulty, Healing is Weak
C3: Hard Difficulty, Healing is Weak

Proposed Change
C0: Normal Difficulty, Healing is Strong, Enemies drop normal health orbs when low on HP
C1: Normal Difficulty, Healing is Strong
C2: Higher Difficulty, Healing is Weak
C3: Hard Difficulty, Healing is Weak

You get health orb drops on C0 on normal rooms to better ensure you can reach the bosses, but otherwise fight the bosses as normal. C1 disables the health orbs but stays at Normal Difficulty. If you can beat C0 and C1 you've proven you're capable of handling enemy patterns and know all bosses, so ramping up to Higher Difficulty + Weak Healing on C2 isn't that far a jump up.

It also presents C0 as a mode for people who just want to screw around with friends and have no great ambitions toward C3.

I don't want arcade to be easier, for note, I think C3 is perfect. I just want people who aren't very good at the game to be able to get a feel for the basics in the hopes that those basics guide them towards advanced gameplay.

 

[Literally Who]

I strongly disagree with this suggestion. You're a longterm veteran with ample knowledge of ins and outs and a strong drive to experiment. I see your perspective on the new player experience and overall difficulty scaling as significantly skewed, and wish to offer my own for consideration, as someone who started playing as recently as post-release.

First, the jump between 1 and 2. It is currently already significant. Catalyst 2 actually increases the difficulty over catalyst 1, and noticeably so, to the point where enemies even get hard mode attack patterns, which they don't in cat 1. You might not have noticed on account of playing optimized builds, or on account of almost never playing cat 2, or even on account of having the skills and experience of someone who has been doing this since Arcade only had one difficulty, that being the equivalent of 3 cat, or so I have been told at least. But someone starting out, and someone with potentially a subpar build (many such cases, me included) will not only feel the bump in the curve, but even potentially see it as a wall. The way I see it based on my experiences, if you make cat 1 even easier, cat 2 is likely to give a new player the kind of whiplash that is strong enough to outright behead you.

Without adding about half a dozen catalysts inbetween, which is likely not happening given the whole lore significance of the trifecta, I just don't see you making cat 0 that much easier while still keeping the difficulty curve increase smooth. It is just barely smooth enough as it is.

Additionally, a player that gives up on current cat 0 because of its innate difficulty (and not because of a dubious build choice) is exceedingly unlikely to persevere through cat 2, let alone beat cat 3. You can see it all over steam forums, if the game grows out of their comfort zone - they just start making complaints. We're operating under the assumption that any player is willing to grow to the skill ceiling given a sufficiently low skill floor enticement, which is not true.

I do, however, see merit in the concept of pandering to the casuals who will stay on cat 0 forever without the intent of braving the difficult content, and want it to be even easier. What I would suggest is perhaps some sort of giga treat to be added to Muffin that does your suggested changes or adds even more casualizing functionality, but debuffs your score by 110% so it has no chance in hell of making it to 100% on cat 3, so those people could just play in the sand box and ride their tricycles in peace, while understanding full well that this is not the intended difficulty of the game, lest they get the wrong ideas.

I made this suggestion on the arcade thread, but since it's on topic here, I'll repeat it. What I believe could benefit the learning process in Arcade for those actually willing to learn is something that would suggest to the new player that it's adviseable to follow certain build conventions. Suggesting that you should, for example, hypothetically, have a skill tagged with High Damage, or a skill tagged as Ranged, etc. I hit the wall in cat 2 because I never knew how much my shadowclones+reaper mark build sucked until I went looking for what I was doing wrong and found out how to properly make a build and how much more powerful a proper build really is. Problem is, the game isn't exactly well balanced, and balance matters a lot more in a game mode focused around high clearing speed and taking little or no damage in the process. It's especially a tough sell to explain to a new player that you should be playing a ranged summoner unless you enjoy suffering. Even an optimal melee build without dumb pin luck backing it up is considered to be excrutiating compared to the summoner mage, because of how muh more dangerous it is to get that close to an enemy to deal your damage, nevermind that sometimes an enemy is just sitting in AoEs without a way to melee it unless you want to eat unnecessary damage. Which, let me remind you, every health point counts in arcade. Hell, I probably would have quit myself from such preposterous treatment of melee, had I not fallen madly in love with this game.