Balance Notes 2020

Playing through the campaign and especially the Robot Master campaign missions these past couple of years, I’ll be honest in admitting that something about our game feel has been amiss to me. Quite frankly, I’d like to put more thought into the way our difficulty is focused and prioritized in the game right now, and I’d like to make a direct case on why I feel that way. Right now, our Robot Master levels feel too difficult and restrictive to alternative ways of going through the cycle, and our more linear Boss missions feel altogether too easy in contrast, and I think that’s because we’ve made the decision to put more difficulty focus on our Robot Masters and not our bosses.

In engaging a Robot Master, when you think about it there are a lot of elements set against the player from the start -- leveling, field elements, around 3 to 8 units of Mechas (with varying stat boosts), and finally a Robot Master with substantial stat boosts of their own. I’m finding myself as an experienced player severely winded down by Mechas alone, and then failing at the Robot Master battle without having made an attack. Each Robot Master of course has varying degrees of difficulty, but what this has done has pushed me into fighting the same first Robot Master every single time -- Most of the other Robot Masters are just flat-out untouchable. From there, every battle essentially has to be carried out the same way in repetition. Increase the only advantage you can in the form of teammates, and display strength through numbers as you drop stats and hopefully get your shots in, unlocking in the process if possible. Failed? Probably means you need more teammates to beat that Robot Master. Now, this in itself is not a ‘bad’ tactic -- however, a lot of the freedom that a cycle should offer simply just isn’t there because other tactics are ineffective. Using a copy-robot’s elemental offerings and a support robot used to be a challenging but sufficient way to succeed, for example, but with the DevPower at hand I noticed a really apparent gap now; my Bass was 20 levels above the opponent Air Man, for example, and attacked Air Man with a mighty Bass Crush / Baroque. This put him into the green because he has two stat boosts to his defense. He then OHKO’ed Bass with a single Air Shooter. Later, when Cossack’s level 50 Proto Man faced a level 30 Dust Man, he was then also OHKO’ed. Now, not every player will be in that exact scenario, but it’s obvious that not even excessively-level grinding will offer the player the chance to play a different way.

Then when the player gets to the real boss battles, like the rival battles in Chapter, it’s unceremonious. None of the rivals have any stat boosts, they have no army of mechas to wear you out, and their field multipliers are as good for them as it is for the player. The playing field is now even, though now the player has the army on their side… so altogether it’s far easier compared to previous encounters. Why do these encounters not have any stat boosts, and our Robot Masters with existing advantages do? Further disparity arises in that bosses don’t fall under the same neutral-restriction the Robot Masters do, so the player isn’t discouraged to fully utilize their arsenal. Now, that being said, I still find our boss encounters fun! They’re just clearly… not really bosses in comparison to the Robot Masters in the wild grass before them!

Altogether, what I’m trying to say is that perhaps we’ve given far too many advantages to our Robot Master battles in order to make them feel like difficult boss encounters, and shirked our actual boss encounters. I also believe that we underestimated the effectiveness of stat boosts: even a couple stages far exceeds most level gaps, and to hand them out freely to not only every Robot Master but a lot of our Mechas can be really difficult and kinda stressful for how many Robot Masters you’ve gotta actually fight; to be honest, even the mechas by themselves can be a real challenge to get through! Stat boosts are often the most difficult aspect of even our Challenge Missions, and they’re pretty liberally used in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4-- new players have to contend with that right off the bat! Field multipliers, some mechas, a little level difference, Super Blocks (for Cossack), and a neutral-ability restriction makes for a tricky encounter alone; stat boosts, especially at lower levels, is a world of difference alone to stack on top. I like that it encourages more support robot play, but even then it’s more that they’re required to make the battle beatable and not that they’re creating weaknesses for the player to act on. Ultimately, I’d like to suggest just removing them from Chapter 2 altogether and really saving those for special instance battles like Rival Battles and solo battles like the Mega Man Killers; moments where the robot themselves are the primary and sole challenge, lacking surrounding circumstances to give them an advantage. As is, we’re really designing the Robot Master battles with the same design philosophies as the challenge missions, and it doesn’t make for a flattering start for the campaigns.
Of course though, feel free to playtest for yourselves and see how it feels on your end -- balance is naturally a very fickle thing that can often swing wildly, so it’s definitely something worth discussing.