|
Post by Fiera Ferella on Sept 2, 2020 13:19:31 GMT -6
Hi guys!
Now that the PL4 tournament is underway, I wanted to get your opinions on things! We’ve been trying out some neat formats for tournaments over the past year and some have been hits and some have been misses. Because of this, I wanted to find out what people like and don’t like about the pet fighting system.
What do you enjoy doing? What’s tiresome or annoying? What do you like seeing? Specific situations are more helpful than vague thoughts here (such as “I don’t like how having a high “x” stat makes “y” common move useless” as opposed to “fights are too slow”. What SPECIFICALLY bothers you about the system?)
This can help us plan better tournaments and make better (potential! Nothing in mind or being put into the works right now) balances to the battle system. Constructive criticism is appreciated!
|
|
|
Post by Leafy on Sept 2, 2020 15:18:51 GMT -6
As always these are just my personal grievances so they're impacted by my own personal tastes. I hope my criticisms don't come across as too harsh, they're not meant to be a reflection on any person who has worked on these systems. For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of formats like the PL4 tournament and would like to see more of those in the future. Unfortunately, the timing wasn't right for me and I couldn't get a pet entered. :3 I'd say I have two major grievances with the battle system. 1: In its current form, the optimal strategy is to get a high dexterity pet and teach it a move that can one-shot a majority of creatures. It feels like a majority of MML creatures are made of glass and cannot withstand even a single hit from a creature with an injection or otherwise high damaging move. If you want a majority of species to even be passable in combat, you need customs/offspring that have certain abilities or moves tacked onto them (like Survival Instincts). Otherwise the only counter strategy to a faster pet with a one-shot kill move is to get a creature with monstrous stats that can withstand a hit. Unfortunately, I think this also has the effect that this site can feel very pay-to-win when it comes to accessing these powerful moves/abilities. A majority of my pets feel very useless for battles because they don't have a handful of powerful moves/abilities. Injections are at least accessible to all pets, but abilities like Survival Instincts aren't. I'd also like to clarify that my problem isn't with Survival Instincts itself, it's just that without it pets get knocked out immediately which makes me wish that Survival Instincts was the standard rather than the exception. 2: Gym training is an enormous time sink with little reward for it. 10k words for a single point in a stat is just flat out not worth the effort. Especially when there is a firm cap on how much training you can do. It is by far the most grindy area of the site and I don't like that it rewards quantity over quality. That would be the one area of the site that I would point to and say "this is just objectively not fun and feels unreasonable." Honestly, I'd rather gym training be more similar to the regular training system where things have a proportional TP cost but the training itself relies on quality posts. Maybe part of the problem is that I don't really understand why there's an arbitrary word count slapped onto it. I understand it's meant to be difficult, but 50k words to max out gym training on one pet is just kind of awful. =/ That's basically half a novel's worth of writing. At that point it's just like, why even give us this option in the first place? It's not possible for most people to even do and not impactful enough on most pets. Edit: I also know it's not on purpose but this post has always rubbed me the wrong way because having a minimum word count is not different to having a minimum post count. It comes across as incredibly misleading and had me confused the first time when I found out there was a 10k minimum word count required.
|
|
|
Post by Xentus on Sept 2, 2020 15:28:43 GMT -6
I think that the current system is not polished (and I have my opinions on what might help it, but I'll refrain from suggesting them). It's rough, with tendencies toward favoring certain stats(1), moves, and abilities(2) which give the best competitive edge. Counterplay(3) is there, but you need to specifically train for it and there are a lot of things to try to counter if you have no innate advantages. Additionally, stamina values(4) are too low to make for any worthwhile fight. In a lot of cases, the first one to get a hit on their opponent wins. Aside from the battle system itself, the current list of moves includes very lackluster ones (5). And finally, the way effects interact can be ambiguous (6).
1 - Favored Stats Rather, favored single stat. Dexterity. High dex allows the first move, higher accuracy, and higher dodge chance - all in one stat. The current system favors dexterity over any other stat by far.
2 - Favored Moves and Abilities Lumping these two together since they interact more. If Danger Sense, Hardy, Intimidation (when applicable), and a sound-based turn-skipping move aren't on your battle-ready pet, it's probably going to suffer miserably in a battle. They're all 'must haves' on any training list if you're looking to fight in the pit. While it is rewarding to have trained your pet these things, it feels flat if the counter play is always the same. Oh, also the 10 damage FLT moves are kind of intense considering many pets don't have more than 10 stamina.
3 - Counterplay The thing about counterplay in the current system is the need to intensively train for certain situations. Just to avoid the advantages others might have. Intimidation is countered by Hardy. Danger sense is countered by a sound turn skip. Sound moves are countered by silence. High dex is countered by either a 100% accuracy move or getting lucky. Stun locked by Shadow Strike? Hopefully you've trained Dodge and have enough Dex to avoid the next hit. There's a good variety of defensive options sure, but to me it feels like you'll spend a lot more time training them instead trying out different offense options.
4 - Low Stamina Values A vast majority of pets have so little stamina that if they get hit in combat, they're done for. Sure, not everything is made for combat, but even those who are end up getting 1-shot anyway. If 10 damage FLT moves exist in the game, there should be more stamina to go around overall to help avoid a majority of battles ending in a 1-hit KO. This does go on into a situation that if there's HP used instead, it'll just be a game of who can hit first and keep hitting with the same move and have a slug-fest.. Which is also not desirable. Which really shows there's a balance issue overall. Might not be imbalanced inherently only due to low stamina, but it's a contributor. (And Survival Instincts helps those who are able to get customs skirt around this and have an edge, but it's a little gatekeepy that you need to buy your way to get this ability just to avoid getting 1-shot in battle.)
5 - Lackluster moves There's a handful of moves that give very minuscule effects, or have very specific conditions, and little reward for using them. One example is 'Blend-In' Blend-In [Unl] [Lmt #3] Blends in with the surrounding area, altering one's colors like a chameleon, making it harder for a foe to spot your creature. User gains +1 to dexterity if your opponent's most recent attack type was the same as your last attack type. This effect is stack-able. Physical - 6 Not only do you need to potentially get hit first (which you probably won't survive anyway), you get an entire 1 dex out of it. Not to mention that the requirement to gain this reward is only if you're struck by the same attack type as your previous (which would not only mean you've got to survive an attack, you need to hope your opponent is using the same element as you).
6 - Ambiguity in effects To me there's a decent amount of ambiguity in what certain effects do. Or what happens as a result of doing a certain thing. Looking at Snatch for an example: Snatch [DoT - G] Grabs the foe in its hands or talons and then attempts to carry it away. Deals 2 Damage to the foe each round. The foe is unable to use any attacks that require contact with the ground and most physical attacks altogether, although they can still use several elemental attacks. The foe can escape from a Snatch if they have a greater strength than the creature holding them. The user cannot use any other attack while holding a foe, so using a new attack makes the "snatch" stop. Physical - 3 Which moves can still be used? What's the qualifier? It's not always obvious considering different pets have different means to execute their moves.
I feel like there's potential for so much with what's there, but the current system just doesn't allow its full range to be realized - making it fall flat.
|
|