Shadow Wolf TJC's intro and feedback on Beta 10 Thread - Megabyte Punch

Well, I've posted a little bit here, but I've yet to formally introduce myself, so here goes:

I've been a big fan of Super Smash Bros. since it came out for the Nintendo 64. My personal favorite out of the series is Super Smash Bros. Brawl, though Melee comes a close second. Since then, I've been hoping for more imitators to appear, with their own special takes on the Super Smash Bros. formula, and Megabyte Punch seems to be one such contender.

So far, this looks promising, though it's currently far from what I'd imagine a Smash clone to be. Then again, this is still in beta, so things may change later on.

Comments:

• The characters are so mobile that I never found a need to dash (by double-tapping left or right) because my "walking" speed is already fast enough. Because of this, I've never found the various movement up bonuses all that useful, compared to the attack up, defense up, shield up, and extra jump bonuses. In fact, I wouldn't mind if my walking speed was actually cut in half, as it would actually encourage me to dash more often (which I often do to surprise opponents in Super Smash Bros.).
• I can't seem to place secondary bindings for controller inputs. I would've liked to have been able to move the player, and the menu, through both the D-pad and left joystick.
• Wouldn't it be easier to control if players could press the jump button to wall jump instead of moving away from the wall? I've been getting frustrated when I wall jump when I don't want to, and instead, want to just move away from the wall.
• I noticed that, given enough armor bonuses, damage from ordinary attacks, without damage bonuses, won't do ANY damage. However, I also noticed that damage and armor bonuses don't seem to have any effect on special attacks. Since I mostly rely on special attacks to rack up damage anyways, I tend to favor using parts that provide armor bonuses over damage bonuses. Personally, I don't seem to have much incentive to use poison-inducing abilities, such as Virus Slice or Virus Mine, because of this.
• It's quite possible for players that have accumulated heavy damage to get trapped in an infinite combo due to their excessively long stun times. Examples include when being repeatedly uppercutted into a roof, or tossed around while inside a cage made of dirt. Also, the Rapid Fire and Snipe Shot, as others may have pointed out, seem too spammable, as victims can get stuck in an infinite combo that causes them to accumulate potentially limitless amounts of damage (although it MAY be possible to jump out of it). This kind of problem also exists within the Super Smash Bros. series, though perhaps, as a solution, players that sustain enough damage in a short period of time could enter into a special temporary state where they're immune to knockback (but could suffer from other side effects, such as taking double damage).
• The trip attack (down + attack button while on the ground) seems to have little use. Perhaps it could be changed to a full-body trip instead? (Look at Captain Falcon's crouching attacks from Melee and Brawl for an example.)
• In Super Smash Bros., if I wanted to attack an opponent that was falling towards me from high above, I would sometimes jump, then attack while in the air. This usually catches even level 9 computer players off-guard in Smash, and it also catches opponents off-guard in Megabyte Punch. It would be interesting to see computer players use this tactic.
• Much like Captain Falcon's Falcon Punch, some special melee-only moves, such as Pound, Spinkick, Uppercut, Slice, Viral Slice, Dig, and Pelvic Thrust, can be used more offensively by jumping ahead to surprise opponents. Computer players in Megabyte Punch often seem to be thrown off-guard by this kind of maneuver, though perhaps they could be programmed to use this against their opponents as well.
• I noticed that computer players that are armed with the Blaster will frequently spam it, yet those armed with the Rapid Fire or Snipe Shot abilities don't. Perhaps those computer players could be programmed to spam those attacks as well?
• I noticed that, sometimes, computer players will try to run away from melee range before using the Blaster or Drill. I don't see why they'd need to do so when those moves seem to take so little time to execute, and since running away would be making themselves vulnerable.
• I noticed that shielded players can still perform melee attacks, which allows them to counter enemy moves. However, players don't seem to be able to jump or perform special moves. I'd personally like for that to happen.
• Computer players don't seem to have any strategies for dealing with players that shield often. Maybe they could be programmed to either spam projectile weapons at them, or move up to them before either Pelvic Thrusting them or shielding until the other player drops his/her shields?
• Some of the stage pictures during multiplayer matches are outdated. For example, they show red virus clouds where, in fact, green virus clouds are present.
• Perhaps more of the multiplayer stages, such as the one with the 3 trees, or the one with the Binary Fortress setting, could be used for tournament mode?
• Perhaps, in the future, players would be able to do singleplayer battles against computer players of their choice? I've been getting tired of fighting against the same old Megacs over and over in tournament mode.
• Would players be given the ability to create their own custom stages? I'd imagine that such a thing would be well within your programming capabilities given how all of the current stages seem to be constructed out of sets of pre-set building blocks.

By the way, will this game have online capabilities? If so, then I'd be willing to help you guys with online playtesting.

Hi ShadowWolfTJC,

Thanks for your extensive feedback! First of all, we never had the intention to create a Smash clone. Obviously some mechanics are inspired by smash but this isn't the core of the game. However, I see some very valid points in your feedback and we will definitely play around with those ideas. We did some testing with various ways of wall jumping. We also tried wall jumping with the jump button as you mentioned. Why we didn't pick that way of wall jumping is because of the levels. Most of the levels have quite some height variation. This means you are touching a lot of walls when you are running your way through the levels. What happened a lot was this situation: running from left to right, doing a lot of jumps avoid obstacles. When you are moving right and you touch a wall while jumping you perform a wall jump and jump the opposite direction of the way you want to move. We found out this caused a lot more frustration than some unwanted wall-jumping with the current system since in this case you are at least wall jumping in the direction you want to move to. On top of that the current system is a lot faster! I hope that makes any sense.

Both online gameplay and a level editor is something we are aware of being awesome in this game. However with a small two-men team our priority is to finish the game as it is first.

Thanks!

Have you guys thought about adding other people onto the team, to help with development and testing?

TimReptile wrote: Hi ShadowWolfTJC,

Thanks for your extensive feedback! First of all, we never had the intention to create a Smash clone. Obviously some mechanics are inspired by smash but this isn't the core of the game.

This is actually very good to hear. I feel that many of us subconsciously want it to turn into smash because that's familiar, but it's great to know you guys had/have an entirely different direction planned for it!

@shadow: Obviously, we have local playtests. However the biggest playtesting is done by you guys playing the alpha/beta en providing feedback. Unfortunately we don't have the resources to hire more people here in the office for the development.

We don't want/ can't match up with Smash, ( with all respect ) look what happened to PlayStation All-Stars BR... If we wanted to make clones it was a lot easier for us to just join - one of them big - companies.

That's fine. Megabyte Punch doesn't need to become a crossover fighter like Super Smash Bros. or PlayStation All-Stars anyways.

FYI, I called Megabyte Punch a Smash clone because while its gameplay mechanics are different from Super Smash Bros. (and its cast of characters completely original instead of coming from all sorts of other franchises), it shares the same basic objective of knocking opponents off-stage for KOs instead of depleting HP. (I'm not trying to be derogatory here btw, as I actually like Megabyte
Punch for being a Smash clone with its own distinct features. ) Its gameplay features seems as similar to, yet different from, Super Smash Bros. as Street Fighter is to Mortal Kombat or BlazBlue, or as Quake is to Unreal Tournament.

I don't regard PlayStation All-Stars a Smash clone in that sense, since while it stars a cast of characters from all sorts of franchises, players aren't KOed by knocking them off-stage. Rather, it just seems to be in a genre all its own.

Oh, and one more comment about the game:

• There doesn't seem to be much incentive to collecting parts from golden crates, as they're usually parts that you'd either get from enemies, or that you've already collected. Perhaps each of these could contain a part that can only be found in that particular crate, and nowhere else? If I had a dollar for every Cularjet Core that I've collected from these crates, I'd have enough money to preorder Megabyte Punch for at least 3 friends.

Edited by: ShadowWolfTJC

Haha , in gameplay All Stars was a bad example indeed.

About your comment: We are going to add more unique parts you can only get from the crates, currently it is no reward to get the same items over and over. (There is a small droprate for some rare parts already though) The same for the shop. You currently can't really buy parts you don't have yet.

Would each crate have a unique part? It would encourage players, especially completionists, to find them all, much like with the different color schemes.

What is possible is that we exclude parts in the crates you already own. In this case you always get a part you don't have yet. However, when you already got all the parts from the adventure you would obviously get duplicates.

With the upcoming update you can search the stages for 9 new colors!