Separate Steam branch without Floorhug and Drift DI added#1072

Can we have a branch to test how the game would feel with just those changes?

Yes please! At the very least it’ll tell us what’s broken without FH (if anything) and there’d be a clearer path to actually, finally balancing the game. Unlike what a lot of FH defenders might believe, we don’t just want FH removed without any adjustments to the characters. But hey, if the devs are hellbent on the path that’s killing the game, some heroes might step up and mod it out for them.

Would be nice to be rewarded for landing a hit in a fighting game, an outrageous idea, I know.

Lmao

“some heroes might step up and mod it out for them”

This would be the correct path for showcasing what a hypothetical RoA2 would look like without flug. The devs are going to have their hands full with a story mode + console ports, so it would be incredibly risky (imo, straight up irresponsible) to hail-mary into a gameplay style that hasn’t had a single game with legs, so far.

On the other hand, if enough of the community rallied around the development and testing of a non-flug ws pack, that would do a lot to help move the conversation away from hypotheticals. Part of my stance is that a lot of the community pushback against flugging comes from people who are outwardly united under this one idea. But whom (?) may have equally major disagreements on what should be done to adjust for a non-flug RoA2 (think about how many Ult vets agree with RoA1 vets in this discussion, despite RoA1’s pace being too uncomfortable for many Ult players to ever want to play it competitively).

As that is only my hypothesis, however, it is worthless without actual testing. Imo, that side of the community should really get together sooner rather than later, and start collaborating on design docs for this/picking up workshop skills. It’ll probably take quite a few iterations to balance this enough to be a strong argument, so setting yourselves up to start dev ASAP would be important. This endeavor should be one that the entire community supports, because this entire discourse cycle is both tiresome and unproductive for everyone involved.

@DimNetball090 I would gladly participate in this… maybe a discord server to start?

I think currently I am unaware of the capabilities of workshop, so I don’t really understand the extent to which this is even doable there.

@DimNetball090 I’m gonna print out your last sentence and frame it on my wall.

New knowledge is only ever found through adequate scientific testing. If someone is interested in getting real answers, they should be willing to pressure test their hypotheses instead of endlessly reiterating theory, and more importantly, be willing to discard a belief if proven wrong, like a good scientist should.

Anyone in this community who’s ever expressed a “strong opinion” about floorhugging should be chomping at the bit to help explore a mod like this.

@SophisticatedDiagram426 In WS’s current state, the only workaround I can think of that might work is to make a ws character that gives everyone a permenant status effect, then dies. This status effect would modify a bunch of values for all base cast characters. Every hitbox has a variable called “isFloorhuggable” (might be a different name) that you can set to false, and you can fiddle with a ton of individual values elsewhere to try and rebalance everything else.

Though, even if possible, this would be obnoxious to use in online lobbies due to needing a Player 3. I’m sure that someone can come up with a slightly more graceful solution when ws items or stages come out.

There already are workshop items

As a Zetterburn main, I welcome this very much (i am kidding, it will be hell for you if you can’t floorhug zetter anymore LOL)

Hence the need for proper character rebalancing afterwards, of course.

You could also just make it so a short list of specific moves, such as Shine, are still FHable. It’s an idea, anyway.