Characters Changes and Tweaks: Where I would start

[ghostR]

So I have been going over every variant in the game, testing out a ton and messing around with. I haven't played this game for many years, but I have sunken too many hours than I would like to admit. With the roadmap for 2022 coming out soon, here are some changes I think would benefit the game in a positive light.

WARNING: You might want to grab some coffee as this isn't a short post.

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RIFT​

The game mode we all stress about but still secretly enjoy playing.

First up in the changes I would want to make would be an adjustment to the rift rankings and thresholds.

Legend - #1
Hero - #2
Phenom - #3

Diamond 1 - #4-20
Diamond 2 - #21-50
Diamond 3 - #51-100
Diamond 4 - #101-200
Diamond 5 - #201-300 (NEW): Added rank for those who have always missed out on breaking into Diamond. More in the notes at the bottom.

The rest stay the same.

Rewards & Progression Rewards:​

Rift Tickets - Increase the number of free rift tickets to 5 per day with a maximum cap of storing 10. This should incentivise people to check-in more often. Rift Rewards - I was going to do a whole breakdown on rift rewards per category, but it would get quite repetitive. In summary Rank Legend - Phenom should have more gold shards and rift coins as a reward since it is literally top 3.

Diamond 5 Rewards - 1x Gold Key, 1x Diamond Key, 800 Silver Shards, 300 Gold Shards, 150 Diamond Shards, 700 Rift Coins (slight increase all round on all the ranks).

Progression Rewards (NEW)
Been scratching my head at this one. Trying to incentivise people to actually play rift as the majority play it, I could recommend some major reworks but I think these (not so giant) changes help steer Rift in the right direction till a decent overhaul can be found, so lets begin with some minor ones.

Players will be rewarded canopy coins based on their peak rift rating.

RIFT Peak Rewards (Progression) - Rift score needs to peak above the ratings below.

Rift Rating 1800 - 1,000,000 Coins
Rift Rating 1700 - 750,000 Coins
Rift Rating 1600 - 600,000 Coins
Rift Rating 1550 - 500,000 Coins
Rift Rating 1300 - 400,000 Coins
Rift Rating 1200 - 200,000 Coins
Rift Rating 1100 - 150,000 Coins

These are set rewards to avoid annoying code to try and calculate where your peak was and what rank it falls under. I have used an approximate rift rank for the milestone.

Notes: So I have actually worked on a ranking system for games and systems before with a Glicko-2style which was quite complex, skullgirls has a nice simple, and easy to understand process regarding its ranking system, but I do feel like some larger changes will be needed to fix rift. For now, I am only going to go over minor-to-moderate changes that won't be a whole development cycle to resolve.

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Daily Events & Holodeck​

This deserves its own post but the devs are working on a daily change so not going to do as much of a dive as the others.

It would be nice to see a much harder and higher fighter score daily event, similar to how holodeck has a high XP reward. A buff to coins would be appreciated, but I think with all the other changes I see, it would be better to reward XP and maybe more skill points given the new shop.

Holodeck - Having holodeck reset every hour (a while back) was great, but it did lead to some people going a little crazy with it. We could probably do with holodeck resetting every 6 hours (4 times a day). The alternative is adding in quite a few more nodes and let the difficulty scale even harder near the end of master difficulty.

Extra Note: I had an idea quite a while ago about having auto fight dailies, where you trade in a fighters whole energy to have them play in a node. With node planning (like how you add them to rift), you could plan out a whole daily and click start. Risky as the AI isn't too great and should you lose a fight, you would stop where you lost. This gives you time to plan out a daily, click start and watch the AI battle and advance. An enjoyable idea, yes. Easy to implement? Not even close. The coding and UX/UI changes needed would be too much.

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VARIANT TWEAKS​

Here is my first attempt at a few variants I think need some tweaking. In this one, I am not going to go over major changes, just some minor ones I think could help their niches. I would honestly like to do this and mess around but the majority of the variants in the game are in a good spot. Coming from other games like Overwatch, it's a breath of fresh air to see this great balance act.

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Signature Ability 1:
When any teammate inflicts a DEBUFF (excluding STUN), increase its duration by 1/2/3 1/3/5 second(s).

Signature Ability 2:
When any teammate suffers a DEBUFF (excluding STUN), reduce its duration by 1/2/3 second(s).

Note: Sundae School has the potential to be a great contender for a support character, affordable and would help certain debuffers. The issue with her that I have found is that 3 seconds just feels like too little.

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Signature Ability 1:
Once per match, gain 3/4/5 stacks of REGEN for 10 15 seconds when falling below 25% HEALTH.

Signature Ability 2:
Also gain 1/2/3 stack(s) of ARMOR and is immune to debuffs for 5 seconds.

Note: GI Jazz has always been one of those characters we laugh at. While he isn't exactly weak on paper, when it comes to his regen and armour, it is extremely easy to just blow him up with debuffs right as he dies, defeating his most valuable aspect. Making him (somehow) immune to debuffs for 5 seconds would at least give him a little more to work with as a tanky defender.

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Signature Ability 1:
Gain permanent ENRAGE and HASTE when your HEALTH drops below 25/35/50% 30/40/55%.

Signature Ability 2:
Inflict permanent DEATH MARK when your HEALTH drops below 15/20/25% 20/35/40%.

Note: Raw nerve has always been a semi-decent variant with a tough to use Signature Ability that makes it a little less valuable. Having to rely on getting below 25% HP is extremely risky with a pinwheel, so these minor changes should help out a bit.

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Upcoming variants I want to take a look at that I think need some tiny adjustments.

Armed Forces
Brain Freeze
Time Thief
Night Terror
Creature of Habit
Model Leader is a weird one for me. I think she is in a good place. The game needs something like her and working on a counter for a specific variant is quite fun and part of the point regarding rift and prize fights.

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THE END!
If you managed to make it to the end, well congratulations! I am a tiny...little bit passionate about the game and think it could just keep growing. I was going to make a whole video on these ideas but will air them out here for now.

Let me hear your thoughts!

 

[OWO]

I really like your idea especially the fighter new modifier for *Sundae School*. But instead giving / adding new prize or coins to the system, why not adding new game mode for new prize ? because the game need new game mode to decrease the repetitive events or grinding systems. Most player left the game because itself doesn't have any new game mode to play, only Story > Daily Events > Prize Fights > Rift ,sometimes i hate rift >.<". If player already cleared Story, then only Daily > Prize Fights > Rift, nothing more :'( .

 

[ghostR]

I really like your idea especially the fighter new modifier for *Sundae School*. But instead giving / adding new prize or coins to the system, why not adding new game mode for new prize ? because the game need new game mode to decrease the repetitive events or grinding systems. Most player left the game because itself doesn't have any new game mode to play, only Story > Daily Events > Prize Fights > Rift ,sometimes i hate rift >.<". If player already cleared Story, then only Daily > Prize Fights > Rift, nothing more :'( .

Have already thought of a concept for a new type of game mode, but sadly it would require quite a bit of work on the game development side and not sure if the game would want to go in that direction.

One of the concepts going through my head is basically an endless survival mode.

You have to pick 3 characters and try to fight off waves of characters, 3 at a time with the difficulty increasing with each rotation. It would cost a survival ticket to compete, but you get some good rewards if you are able to survive through enough waves. You could think of it like those old school wave survival games.

You would also get survival catalysts, you can add 3 to your team to help you survive.

Reason? It will create an fun mode that allows people to build evolutions and characters around surviving, helping each other out and buffs etc. It should breathe some life into variants that seemed useless or meh for rift and prize fight, as there is a long emphasis on surviving and taking down the enemy team.

 

[Diony]

One of the concepts going through my head is basically an endless survival mode.

You have to pick 3 characters and try to fight off waves of characters, 3 at a time with the difficulty increasing with each rotation. It would cost a survival ticket to compete, but you get some good rewards if you are able to survive through enough waves. You could think of it like those old school wave survival games.

You would also get survival catalysts, you can add 3 to your team to help you survive.

Reason? It will create an fun mode that allows people to build evolutions and characters around surviving, helping each other out and buffs etc. It should breathe some life into variants that seemed useless or meh for rift and prize fight, as there is a long emphasis on surviving and taking down the enemy team.

PURRMINATOR and FLYTRAP will be god

 

[Nefelibata]

I will like to suggest some changes as well:
Well they should change Painwheel's flying character ability. Its useless. I NEVER use it and guess hardly anyone else uses it. It even makes her vulnerable. Change blood drive sa1 coz u wont want bleed on yourself.
Next will be to add guilds and guild wars(like rifts but in guilds). It will bring back players to play
Another one is add pass (purchasable by theonite) for rewards.
and bring umbrella

 

[Nefelibata]

and yeah add origins of other fighters as well

 

[Nefelibata]

PURRMINATOR and FLYTRAP will be god

yeah they will be one hit kill

 

[ghostR]

PURRMINATOR and FLYTRAP will be god

Aha! But expect the stage to be a little different and there might... Be "bonus" or "spin the wheel" rounds where debuffs come into factor.

Awwww... Reflect crits, heal block, inverse polarity. All bonis damage is reset to marshmallows? Who knows. I haven't fleshed out a story mode add on as my job takes up most of the time now.

 

[Boboflesserdoom]

I like your idea for G.I. Jazz, but I think it could go just a little further, in that like Weekend Warrior, current debuffs are removed at the 25% HP mark. This at least gives the Reserve Tank regen a little time to do work, I however think 15 seconds is overkill and puts him back at 100% HP (theoretically). This makes GIJazz effectively a living wall, and if you don't have the dps you'll be timed out in higher streaks. I'm actually unsure how I feel about GI Jazz being debuff immune for a limited time, but perhaps 5 seconds of Permanent Immune is what you'd want. I would prefer strictly the debuff removal at 25%, and no application of Immune of any type.

I think Sundae School is currently in a good spot for niche support, I find she enables Twisted Mettle very well. I think 5 seconds could be too powerful, it allows even inconsistent bleeders to be very effective.

Likewise, Raw Nerv has been buffed to a point where I think she's currently pretty usable. I think the real trick with her will be to find ways to get Final Stand.

 

[Nefelibata]

I guess the game needs new modes and some changes:
1. New Mode -- Time Line
Player will choose set of 5 fighters (From his collection) and enter the mode. There the player will fight randomly chosen variants by AI. Every Fight will start with a random fighter from the 5 selected.BB will charge 25% faster and SM cooldown will be reduced by 30%. As the player will progress the time allotted for fights will be reduced.
2. New Mode -- Last Standing PVP
(This one is absurd) 2 Players will be matched against each other and they fight opponents defending team. The fight will be of damage dealt or combo count and not of defeating the base.
3. New Mode -- Rampage
Player will select and fight using a set of random fighters(may not be owned by player excluding dias) provided by AI early on with random AI teams. Every Fighter could be used once only and after exhausting all fighters the set resets providing different fighters again. That means you can get a def fighter and you have to manage.BB and SM will not have any stats for convenience
4. Changes:::
i - Buffing of Pea's Charge attack its useless.
ii - Addition of shiny relic thing like the gold fighter relic and dia fighter relic getting a shiny relic would be awsome.
iii - Buffing the old variants : Some great old variants like Xenomorph, Armed Forces, Last Hope etc are now useless against the meta so a bit change with them could be greaaat.
iv - Addition of some more BB3s like for Painwheel, Parasoul, Annie, Eliza, etc.
v - Reducing the cost of leveling up gold moves, One gold move takes more ccoins than Maxing out a Gold fighter requires.
vi - Umbrella incoming and some origin stories. I would love to see double's origin coz she has darkest history as far i guess.