Event Matches#1155

With the addition of items, casual stages, and custom rulesets, I think the game’s in a great place to add a series of dev-curated CPU matches to give new players some single-player content to grind through while learning the game and its cast. The individual matches wouldn’t take much more than a name and a short, one or two-sentence description which could be used for small lore drops or fun what-if scenarios. Basic matches could be something as simple as “The First Rivals” (Zetterburn vs Orcane on Merchant Port) or “Brothers in Arms” (Loxodont vs Zetterburn and Forsburn), or you could do a smash-style All Star Match where the player has to fight through a Crew of all of one element’s representatives. Alternate win conditions or gimmicks can be introduced to vary things up and potentially turn certain matches into their own tutorial minigame for obscure game mechanics. And it’d be a great place to reuse the horde battles that are already featured in arcade mode.

If it’s possible, this could also give players a controlled, single-player environment to try out skins, since I imagine most of these would skip right past a character select screen. This would give the devs more freedom to build matches around different themes, and allow the opportunity to add more with future events and character releases. As it stands, new players don’t have many ways beyond training mode to get comfortable enough to take things online, and I think a regularly-updated list of very basic matches (with a small coin/xp reward for first-time completion) would go a long way towards filling that gap. If a timer is added in, it might even get people speedrunning certain matches.

Sounds like an AWESOME idea

I think some of these things could be good building blocks for storymode and additonal casual modes. More modifiers and win conditions are greatly welcomed. A lot of inspiration could be taken from Abyss mode, smash events, and world of light. They could also serve as less structured tutorials like having the opponent immune to dying unless they’re hit by Kragg Shards, need Maypul tether confirms to clear the event, only burning opponents can be KO’d etc.

^^^I love the idea of alt win conditions and other hard-coded mechanics, even if they’re just there as a fun one-off experiment. A horde mode match as Fleet where your moves deal no damage, but the explosion from NSpecial is a one-hit KO would be so fun, or a Loxodont Meatball Volleyball match.

The inspo from this came from a previous dev stream where someone suggested a limited-time online event, like making everyone Kragg-sized, and they said they liked the idea but didn’t want to dilute online queues any more, which I completely agree with. I think a one-off event match where you play as a Kaiju-sized Galvan against a bunch of Absas would be fun as hell, though! Plus, they can keep adding matches whenever they add a new character, stage, or further gameplay modifiers.