KI: Uprising Ways The Game Could Improve in Kid Icarus: Uprising

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  • Sure weapon fusions are neat but why not just be able to buy mods with hearts. It's hard to keep the mods you want unless you go farming for a specific weapon for the fusion you want or happen to find a mod at the shop.
  • Get rid of evasion mods on weapons or at least ban them from online play.
  • Sorting weapons by mods as an option.
 
Hmm , those are some good ideas but I was thinking of
  • New Stages and Items
  • New Weapons / Mods / Classes
  • New Chapters
I never really believe Evasion was really quite bad but the game can do with some improvements because I've been playing the game since forever :p ( recking noobs )

But I doubt they might change it , probably gonna add those in a newer Kid Icarus game most likely
 
i wouldn't mind a minigame or something to help get hearts faster...
 
I really want to know how to do jack <censored>! sorry about the foul language, but i cant do crap on this game! can someone tell me what to do with stuff? Thanks! Oh,and can someone tell me what the jet gliders do? they seem like the let you glide through air without using your wings but i cant tell.
 
I registered so that I can at least respond to this, particularly the frustration the TC has about Evasion+.

Yes indeed Evasion+ is the most broken thing in Kid Icarus Uprising. I have a 7000 word blog post about weapon modifiers in general here:
https://warriorsuprising.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/weapon-modifier-banning/
Even with that in mind, Evasion+ STILL stands out. Why? Because it causes many, MANY auto-loss scenarios from the character select screen and simultaneously adds boring gameplay just to try to fight back against it. It wasn't even fun when I beat a Japanese team of Evasion+ abusers when using a Skyscraper Club. It's disgusting anybody can consider it worth allowing to be legal even if we were to believe weapon modifiers are balanced, and the math alone should tell you that they aren't. I would only even consider Evasion+'s effect balanced on a power with significant enough shape problems to make it feasible to do Grid Reading on it without ridiculous effort, not a weapon modifier at all, let alone a 30 Value one for the +4 level. (+2 is enough for the brokenness.)

Getting past the weapon modifiers, however, KIU does in fact have some ugly, UGLY core mechanic problems. Play it and either Hyrule Warriors or the original SSB back to back and see which one has the better core mechanics. KIU has a painful, PAINFUL reliance on the power system to try to hold it together, but it doesn't do it a lot of good if matches just drag out so badly, which is way too likely to happen in a 100V 1V1. Even worse, projectile spam and unconditional flinching do not mix well.
(that's an SSB4 video)
The only reason I can even try to handle Sheik's needles in that video is because the full volley deals only 6% each time it's used and Sheik is far from able to spam them in comparison to KIU's projectiles. Even with that I wouldn't exactly complain if a future patch provided further weight gap widening than what we got.

So here are my suggestions for the core mechanics:
  • More melee attack moves for all weapon types, just so people don't use the Melee Combo all the time and call that melee (and since this is the company that made SSB, this isn't beyond their capabilities)
  • Prevent general neutral rapid fire from causing flinching.
  • Nerf the damage values in general and let law of diminishing do its thing, which is basically what Smash 4 did to useful effect.
  • Increased chargeup time for general charged shots. They still charge up too fast for their general damage outputs.
  • UI telling us how many shots are available in a clip and how much chargeup we have. Battalion Wars had this and it was made by a 3rd party company.
  • Armor piercing values based on weapon type and attack type, with the riskier ones getting the better values. These values would ignore up to a certain amount of defense gained from each defense boost. Also have the armor piercing treat the invincibility from Brief Invincibility and Trade-Off as a defense boost that would otherwise be strong enough to naturally nullify damage if the armor piercing value isn't high enough. (There, no more Trade-Off pulling invincibility h4x against clubs)
  • Accuracy values for certain attacks that work on dodging invincibility if no more than a given number of invincibility frames are left (standard club shots would probably pierce 16 frames this way)
  • Fix the Shot Cancellation, especially for standard clubs. 50 base damage is not hard to manage.
  • Hyperarmor frames for club dash shots lasting from input to right after the shot is already released and providing its hurtbox to get in the way.
  • Significant mercy defense to further punish spam, ala what Kirby Triple Deluxe did.
  • Capture locations that provide more reason to control given locations than simply controlling space.

As for powers:
  • Generally nerf the higher levels or buff the lower levels to where the lower levels are generally more cost-effective. Energy Charge is actually fine in this regard but other powers aren't.
  • Recharge rates should NOT be based on weapon Value at all. Powers should recharge at rates absolutely individual of Value.
  • Also provide recharge ability without having to die, preferably with the above capture locations suggestion.
  • Have each power that costs at least 5 spaces provide a boost for each and every power the player has, but for each missing space on the player's grid, 2 powers worth of these boosts would get nullified.
  • Casting powers' tanooki invincibility should be nerfed to 50 frames to prevent arbitrary Black Hole protection. 80 frames is ridiculous.
  • Energy Charge should reduce the user's mobility considerably to prevent the user from escaping easily with it. It has no Counter Play otherwise.
  • Reflect Barrier should cost a full line at ALL levels. It suffocates melee clubs as it is. It's not ridiculous to overcome, but it can cause OTT punishment for triggering Counter.
  • Warp should have only 1L charges and a full line U shape costing 8+2L spaces. Leveled Super Speed should have the same U shape requiring 4+2L spaces as well to make the two powers contradict each other at a level sum exceeding 4.
  • Make Angelic Missile cost a full line but have an L-shape so that it still can cost 10 spaces at L1. Buff its damage output to reward its more legitimate uses in return.

There are more suggestions I have than this, but I'm not for adding more yet. And weapon modifiers, I'm not sure where to start because the whole thing is a God awful mess. I do agree with Artisan's first and third suggestions in general though. Players shouldn't absolutely need to deal with that &%$*%&#$*&^#*$%$ fusion system to get what they could want (obviously within reason but still).
 
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Definitely a great increase in Stamina. Especially when you're using a club.
The game needs to either have more chapters of the same length or longer chapters.
 
Definitely a great increase in Stamina. Especially when you're using a club.
The game needs to either have more chapters of the same length or longer chapters.
Ah, I can't believe I forgot about stamina.

A better idea would be to reduce stamina usage, but only allow regen when idle, and make the regen rate less incredible while basing it on a percent. Also, dodge moves should be forced to expend stamina, and seriously, being in tired state shouldn't fully restore stamina, that's dumb.

Also, charged shots should be possible to hold for chargeup, in the same manner as smashes in SSB. I don't know why KIU doesn't have that.

Oh, and Artisan, anything to add?
 
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Ah, I can't believe I forgot about stamina.

A better idea would be to reduce stamina usage, but only allow regen when idle, and make the regen rate less incredible while basing it on a percent. Also, dodge moves should be forced to expend stamina, and seriously, being in tired state shouldn't fully restore stamina, that's dumb.

Also, charged shots should be possible to hold for chargeup, in the same manner as smashes in SSB. I don't know why KIU doesn't have that.

Oh, and Artisan, anything to add?
I think KIU doesn't have a hold to get a stronger charge shot style of gameplay because it would either make the game really complicated or hard when you want to move the camera but the enemy keeps moving offscreen and therefor make difficulty be even harder in story mode and story mode would be more important because most of the game wraps around the challenges and a majority of them have to do with story mode. Dodging being limited to using up stamina would made story mode challenges super hard. Especially the ones I have never beaten yet (beat chapter such and such 9.0 with Club and receive no damage on play as Magnus chapter) although I haven't tried with proper modifiers. All in all I think Sakurai should've thought less about difficulty in story mode and more on Vs. gameplay because he doesn't seem to pay attention to balance at all sort of like he only wanted Smash to be a party game. I think he'd need a clean slate in terms of weapon stats and a change in stamina effects in order to balance this out which is why we'll never see a patch for this game.
 
That does bring up why I'd provide suggestions to improve KIU's balance in the first place: so that aspiring game designers who want to work with something as welcome as KIU's power system can learn from KIU's mistakes. And good GOD it made a lot of them. Which is a shame, because the power system was welcome for the concept of Grid Reading among other things.

The stamina issue....actually, Skyward Sword reduced the burden with that with Stamina Fruits. Have something like that available in the simple 1P levels, though don't have it around too frequently so that players still want to consider managing their stamina.

Really, though, KIU needed better level design, period. It's still remarkably lazy.
 
  • #10
That does bring up why I'd provide suggestions to improve KIU's balance in the first place: so that aspiring game designers who want to work with something as welcome as KIU's power system can learn from KIU's mistakes. And good GOD it made a lot of them. Which is a shame, because the power system was welcome for the concept of Grid Reading among other things.

Really, though, KIU needed better level design, period. It's still remarkably lazy.
I was ashamed of the level design and was expecting something less linear and with a little more platforming and jumping and not have it just be a power. The grid was a great concept but the powers and the ability to combine them made them OP. It was just a shooting gallery with a few hazards and some conversation to keep you from falling asleep but they should've had more options rather than just listening to the music because the levels were too boring. The really long cutscenes/walking part of the beginning of that one hard chapter were frustrating and that's why I gave up on that challenge. The one thing the game reminded me of which I liked was the battle against Pit's Body. It reminded me of Punch-Out!! because of it's forced close range but the AI was cheap.
 
  • #11
I was ashamed of the level design and was expecting something less linear and with a little more platforming and jumping and not have it just be a power. The grid was a great concept but the powers and the ability to combine them made them OP. It was just a shooting gallery with a few hazards and some conversation to keep you from falling asleep but they should've had more options rather than just listening to the music because the levels were too boring. The really long cutscenes/walking part of the beginning of that one hard chapter were frustrating and that's why I gave up on that challenge. The one thing the game reminded me of which I liked was the battle against Pit's Body. It reminded me of Punch-Out!! because of it's forced close range but the AI was cheap.

About the power combining, you can see why I'd be making sure when making a game of my own that ANYTHING has its weaknesses as much as its strengths. Intel can only do so much to check things like Energy Charge, which should have given a significant movement penalty to make sure dodging everything with it active couldn't be done without sufficient effort to not irk people.

As far as level design goes, I'll give Kid Icarus Uprising credit: it did TRY to have a sense of scale and mixed it with agency, with Chapter 4's Reapers being the standout. It could have had good level design if it didn't decide to be lazy, but instead, KIU's level design irredeemably jumps the shark at Aurum Generator. Highlights like Possessed Palutena are lost in things like Chapter 17 speaking for itself (EVEN WITHOUT THOSE %&$*%&#$*^&#$ BARRIERS AND THEIR BOGUS HURTBOXES), the Centurion swarm in Chapter 20 because of ridiculous durability, ridiculous Power Creep especially prevalent in Chapters 21 and 22, Hades' Heart, and Great Sacred Treasure which could have been decent design don't get me wrong (tornadoes simply punish range camping, if you're wondering) but less than welcome attack spam messed it up.

Funny how when I told Boss Battles Hard the other day to humor me with its inevitable failure to be non-beeswax (because it IS beeswax, and an absurd amount at that even if you accept the Power Creep issues) I figure that club forward shots are supposed to be a control tool to reward increasing the distance from the opponent through generally inferior mobility, by having distance to decrease when firing one off. Too bad Project Sora had to half-effort the bajeezus out of the concept. Seriously, be a part of Hades' dinner, 50 Shot Stamina on club dash shots.

If nothing else, we can at least dig up the good design philosophies, and know and bury the bad ones.
 
  • #12
The control scheme scared people off initially, so fix the control scheme...

Give an option for Dual analogue, as well as being able to dash/ dodge by simply pressing a button (many peoples circle pads were completely and utterly destroyed by dashing too hard... also their L-buttons were basically goners as well...(
 
  • #13
Even though I love the controls they should have an option to use the circle pad pro for aiming, or maybe make a switch port and have that be the control scheme
 
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