User blog:MasterKnight/Ogre Club viability

I will start off confessing that I can be sure that Kid Icarus Uprising isn't having a good setup for valid competitive play. Even if we ignore the inability to customize which items to keep on and turn off (I would be allowing for a lot, but definitely disallowing Daybreak, Smart Bomb, and Power-Up Drop for involving asinine gameplay; Cyclone for example would be fairly reasonable to shut out with an Armor Power like Counter), there would still be the lack of ability to enforce weapon modifier banning without house rule involvement; there would still be a lack of symmetrical stages other than Small Arena and Large Arena, both of which are easily too big without any defilade to check Bumblebee well; there would still be no stage builder feature with which to build stages that wouldn't suck for competitive play; there would still be issue with getting players to have base weapons in the first place to avoid needing to do things like use a frame perfect glitch, repeatedly at that; and there would still be the fact that Kid Icarus Uprising is on the 3DS to limit the ability to even record it well in the first place.

But I still keep trying. At the very worst, where game mods would not allow for a viable solution to alleviate these sorts of problems, and I imagine that game mods would be innately invalid if we want to involve allowing for creating charity work, I can at least pinpoint where Kid Icarus Uprising's mistakes are. I have already for example called out Bumblebee's alleged imbalances as having the culprits be the likes of Evasion+ and Celestial Fireworks and after all these years I have yet to be provided sufficing counterargument that Bumblebee is what would deserve banning even when the full line cost and forced clockwise movement have proven themselves quite significant weaknesses on repeat occasion whereas Evasion+ and Celestial Fireworks have no such valid checks. Of course, what if I can tell you that there is a flagrant bias in favor of range attacks regardless, inflating the popularity of Reflect Barrier? While Kid Icarus Uprising IS a shooter, it introduced melee attacks to incentivize more methodical offense and have better weapon type variety. Taurus Arm and Brawler Claws would still deserve to be banned for mindless gameplay with Raptor Claws also being a borderline case at least, but melee weapon balancing is still sketchy without those 3 weapons, such that melee attacking becomes difficult to achieve.

Enter Ogre Club. On paper, Ogre Club works off of having the strongest melee damage output in the game, barely edged out in the Melee Dash Attack damage department by Upperdash Arm by barely 3.34% and being the only weapon to manage a 2 Combo KO with the Melee Combo without any attack boosts at all. Ogre Club also has the second best mobility of any Club, trailing only behind the Magnus Club in that regard, and in comparison to the First Blade, there's a slight speed deficit but it gets much better Stamina in return as well as the ability to walk faster with Neutral Swing usage. And hey, the Dash Shots have better homing than those of the Babel Club. (And yep, Babel Club having an advantage over Skyscraper Club that isn't raw damage or something niche, better emphasizing Skyscraper Club as a focal damage Club.)

In practice? Well, here's the problem: the projectiles are woefully inept.

If you need a comparison, here's a comparison between the standardized combat Clubs:

As you can see, Ogre Club has practically the worst shot velocity values of the standard Clubs, and quite possibly the worst overall of any weapon type in the game. You know it's so bad when Ogre Club can actually run faster than its own Forward Shots and walk faster than its Side Shots. The Neutral Shot having better shot for Ogre Club than for Black Club is rather marginal and doesn't change that it's the worst of both worlds: shielding and trapping ability is limited by the velocity being still too high, and abrupt tagging ability suffers from velocity being too low and easy to dodge. Atlas Club has significantly lower velocity and a lack of innate Slip Shot property on the Neutral Shot, but gets by on it being a sort of shield while the Forward and Side Shots work off of their much higher velocity.

Do the damage values justify what is going on? Unfortunately, no. Ogre Club has the fastest chargeup of the 5 Clubs that I had just tabled, but it's by such a minuscule amount that it doesn't help. In the meantime, its projectile power is lower than the Club standard at only 85% of the Ore Club's power, with only the Aurum Club and Hewdraw Club having worse projectile power, except those 2 also have velocity on their Dash Shots to allow them to manage consistent threat. Hitting harder over distance doesn't matter either when the velocity is simply bad enough to limit effective range, which does admittedly not change how annoying the 0.25 max damage multiplier Skyscraper Club can be, but THAT is attenuated by Skyscraper Club's Shots actually hitting hard at relevant ranges. With Ogre Club, however, it's still aggravating to see those low velocity Shots practically do nothing and like it, and it ensures that the opponent can all too easily focus on dodging the fighter because the projectile is going to be a joke to direct dodge, since the homing certainly won't be good at guaranteeing a hit. At least Reflect Barrier is a Power with all the implications involved there and can't even be recasted immediately. This problem is so bad that I actually think Counter would actually suck on the Ogre Club, and when Counter is pivotal for the likes of Babel Club and Skyscraper Club in disrupting attempts to win by repeated chipping as it is, it shows how Ogre Club needs to butcher its Power economy to manage its involvement of ultimately being a one-trick pony, because Jump Glide and Super Speed having their usefulness on Ogre Club be sketchy also doesn't help and I don't see any worthwhile low cost replacements. (Brief Invincibility is banworthy where it is, so no counting it.) Ogre Club being suddenly so susceptible to Grid Reading to be competent as a result is, and I can't believe I'm saying this, just vomit-inducing.

You might think that I missed an attack: the Back Shot. This, however, leads into the next problem that I have with Ogre Club, namely that the Back Shot is not helpful. It's rather small by Club Shot standards and it also doesn't stay stationary like the other standard Clubs' Back Shots in general do, instead moving at about 16 meters per second, which could have allowed some modicum of trapping ability, if it didn't expire within 2 seconds. The damage is unimpressive as well, being only 34 at point blank with the same max range multiplier of 1.25. At least Black Club's Back Shot, while moving slower at about 5.3 meters per second, can at least chain hits for potentially high damage against somebody with an Armor Power.

THIS is what kills Ogre Club's credibility with multiplayer viability, because the lack of a competent Back Shot messes with Ogre Club's close range ability. Theoretically, it could use the Spin Shot technique to use the Side Shot, but even then, the trouble to manage as much doesn't change that it's still betting low in its own field after all the trouble it has to wade through to get close. The melee clashing system's true purpose is to ensure that the following RPS triangle holds true: Melee Dash Attack beats Neutral Shot, Neutral Shot beats Melee Combo, Melee Combo beats Melee Dash Attack. It's actually another RPS triangle of Cavalry beats Artillery, Artillery beats Infantry, Infantry beats Cavalry, but if you're wondering, the Melee Dash Attack has a feature of superarmor on its own to ensure that the Neutral Shot is weathered while catching the range combatant, then the Melee Combo uses the clashing system to halt the Melee Dash Attack's singular hit and then launch the counterattack, and finally, the Back Shot gets around the clashing system to go right through the Melee Combo's defenses. This is your summary: the Ogre Club gets suffocated by maneuvers too much.

Not helping is when landing the Melee Dash Attack at long last likes to feel unrewarding. The inconvenience responsible for this? Well, Clubs have an additional messy hit portion for their Melee Dash Attack that is what connects if you happen to be too far. The damage it deals is CONSISTENTLY 45% of what the clean hit would have done. I would be fine with this for something like Skyscraper Club because the Shots more than make up for melee damage issues, but Ogre Club should be hitting like a truck, not having a singleton hit doing nothing and liking it. If the messy hit at least dealt 76.8 damage, that would at least keep the 3HKO consistent. 43.2 damage doesn't even 5HKO without any attack boosts, and coming close doesn't cut it when it can't even pull some chip damage that other weapon families can without resorting to Mega Laser.

Ah yes, I forgot to go into how Ogre Club is, of course, a Club, and thus subject to all the weaknesses that come with it. Brawler Claws and Taurus Arm can use the Spin Shot technique to fire and dodge around stuff, so those two actually CAN marginalize attempts to get around their mindless melee capability. Ogre Club has no such compliment, because Parry Chargeup definitely doesn't have much to bolster with it, and Ogre Club's ONLY standout trait with its projectiles is the VERY long lifespans, which doesn't change how the Shot Cancel capabilities aren't even any better than what Ore/Babel/Skyscraper Clubs have, not that Shot Cancel is well balanced within the Clubs to be sure, but Ogre Club is where these balance problems REALLY spikes.

It's funny, though: Ogre Club and Hewdraw Club are candidates for least adept weapon type in multiplayer and singleplayer respectively, but Ogre Club is still significantly better in singleplayer than Hewdraw Club by hitting targets that haven't exactly heard of creativity with the dodging, whereas it's the opposite in multiplayer because Hewdraw Club has homing and shot velocity that's actually both competent and relevant. This relative balance is a far cry from the comparison between Skyscraper Club and Babel Club: where Skyscraper Club manages a consistent air of simplicity in its usage, singleplayer has Babel Club get higher damage potential but have to put up with Shot Cancel threats and consistent knockback immunity, while multiplayer involves Babel Club's existent homing and ability to do things like actually weaken Pisces Heal to cover for the potential of innovative human players who would lug around Super Armor to survive in hotzones. I become glad when I main Skyscraper Club, particularly when Ogre Club would be associated with some caveman stereotype, but Palutena did I dodge a bullet by not maining Ogre Club.

If I had to rebalance Ogre and Hewdraw Clubs, here's what I would do within the confine of the mechanics:


 * Melee Dash Attacks' multiplier for messy hits for each Club to be changed from 45% to half of the percentage of the Club's melee power compared to the Ore Club (IE Halo Club would deal 7.5 damage, Ore Club would deal 30, Capricorn Club would deal 24.3, Skyscraper Club would deal 27.075, etc.; Hewdraw would deal 50.7 instead of the current 35.1, and Ogre would deal 76.8 instead of the current 43.2)
 * Melee Combo base damage values for Clubs to be changed from 34 + 38 to 32 + 48 (Ogre Club would become able to KO with 1 MC + 1 clean MDA)
 * Neutral Swing base damage value for Clubs to be changed from 26 to 32 with same messy hit multipliers as above
 * Forward Swing base damage value for Clubs to be changed from 19 to 50 with same messy hit multipliers as above
 * Side Swing base damage value for Clubs to be changed from 13 to 40
 * Back Swing base damage value for Clubs to be changed from 18 to 45 with same messy hit multipliers as above
 * Forward Shot base damage value for Clubs to be changed from 62 to 64
 * Standard Club Shot Cancel values to be changed from 5 Shot Cancel/100 Shot Stamina on Neutral Shot and 5 Shot Cancel/50 Shot Stamina on Dash Shots, to 5 Shot Cancel/64 Shot Stamina on Neutral Shot and 6 Shot Cancel/80 Shot Stamina with deviations handled on a case-by-case scenario (Black Club's Neutral Shot for example would remain unchanged)
 * Ogre Club to have 80 Shot Stamina on Neutral Shot and 100 Shot Stamina on Dash Shots to reflect upon the lifespans
 * Ogre Club's projectile damage output to be 80% of the Ore Club's at point blank but with a max range multiplier of 160% (effective 128%) to make up for atrocious velocity
 * Ogre Club's damage output with Back Shot to be 125% instead with the same max range multiplier (effective damage values being 50 at minimum range and 80 at max range)
 * Hewdraw Club mobility increased from 100% of Club mobility to 120%
 * Hewdraw Club chargeup time improved from 122/30 seconds to 105/30 seconds
 * Hewdraw Club Shot Cancel stats changed to 4 Shot Cancel/50 Stamina for Neutral Shot and 5 Shot Cancel/64 Shot Stamina for Dash Shots

It is still worth pointing out, however, that melee is still underdesigned in the game. Remember that RPS triangle I pointed out about the Melee Combo? Well, the thing is that the Neutral Shot is still going to be the popular option, because the Melee Dash Attack can't very well hard counter it, being only one option up against possible replacements. The only worthwhile incentive to use Melee Combos that isn't a very active specialty of a weapon would be to involve flinching, but either you can do that just fine with range attacks anyway and have their safety factor, or you'll be up against targets under Super Armor who won't take flinching to begin with. When the likes of Aquarius Blade becomes an outlier, one has to wonder how this problem could have been curbed better.

A game called Metroid: Samus Returns, while it was released later down the lifespan of the Nintendo 3DS, has a key mechanic called the Melee Counter, and it brings a couple of points to the table. First off, it uses its own button, which is something that should have been involved in Kid Icarus Uprising, particularly when KIU has control issues regardless, and some of them come from primary control buttons getting too many purposes at once, with the only excuse I can think of for not separating range attacking from melee strikes being that the manual Melee Dash Attack has a cooldown timer to prevent the player from using it as a way to move around faster, rather than having it get involved in the stamina system, which has its own host of issues anyway, primarily the lack of direct display of the player's own Stamina beyond that still cursory graphic of sweating that only appears at 25% stamina remaining in how short notice that is. Really, making melee attacking its own button would at worst have been manageable because of custom controls, and would have also taken out some issues with both balance and accessibility in the process of finetuning the idea, because really, who wouldn't also want directional melee attacks like what we already get in Smash Bros.?

The other point, and one that interests me more, is how the Melee Counter provides added Aeion Orbs, which are the fuel for the Aeion abilities. This further bolsters the Melee Counter by flooring its ability to be useful such that it maintains enough usefulness even when upgrades like the Plasma Beam and Screw Attack are in play. This is actually involving a consistently used game design technique as of late, to have melee attacks restore some form of supply, but I can tell you how it works and that Kid Icarus Uprising could have benefited from something similar, by having melee attacks allow for regenerating Power charges by landing a hit even by clashing, a way to allow even Flintlock Staff to treat melee combat as potential risk-reward, but more importantly to not have to tone up melee damage output unnecessarily to make melee attacking actually good. The idea could even be used as a way to provide subtle risk to Trade-Off, Brief Invincibility, and the Armor Powers by having their involvement increase the reward for hitting their users with melee attacks. The regen could also be given a slight bias to the final hit of Melee Combos, both to prevent sudden dominance by Melee Dash Attacks and to reward the risky option of a projectile-centric game.

Yes, I am aware how ironic it becomes to promote melee combat in a shooter, but the interest is in providing depth and actual risk assessment. Truthfully, I was looking into Ogre Club because I was looking into other Clubs in general to see if my assessment that Skyscraper Club is the game's definitive Mighty Glacier is correct to make a point to somebody else about the game balancing Mighty Glaciers reasonably well, which does hold up in general--Ogre Club is simply awful about the mobility advantage over other Clubs. Otherwise, Babel Club and especially Black Club have improved homing compared to Skyscraper Club's being practically nonexistant without Homing Boost, and other Clubs in general have better Dash Shot velocity at least, while Skyscraper Club is still stuck with its minimal mobility. In the meantime, melee attacking is again needed to better emphasize innovation even if it means having to basically play the villain.

There is one more engine change I would do if I were able to rebalance the game, let alone actively, and that would be to have the Clubs' Swing attacks actually reflect projectiles, but based purely on actual Shot Cancel stats with any projectile that clears them just being destroyed as usual. Have the Neutral Swings naturally reflect up to 2 Shot Cancel, Side Swings reflect up to 3 Shot Cancel, and then the Forward and Back Swings up to 4 (+1 for Skyscraper Club and Aurum Club as well as +2 for Halo Club with all of those, by the way), with the base damage value still making the reflection work on higher Shot Cancel projectiles if a percentage of it (50% for Neutral Swing, 70% for Side Swing, 100% for Forward Swing, 125% for Back Swing) would still suffice in clearing the Shot Stamina. This wouldn't be an incredible buff at non-leveled play because this would only touch the Swings, which are hard to use, but it would allow for rewarding skill with the ability to disincentivize overabundance or outright mismanagement of range attacking. This idea could also combine with the above suggestion of Power regeneration on successful reflection based on full effective damage value for managing as much when done by Shot Cancel and surplus when not. Ogre Club would benefit from this via its melee bases that would make surplus high enough.

But hey, these are just rebalance ideas for a game going on 9 years old at this point. Then again, at least the game is a case study anyway.

In closing, I will first point out, again, how I become glad that I mained Skyscraper Club instead of Ogre Club, if only because of the involved coincidence, because par the course of characterization, Ogre Club would have been asking for meathead stereotypes that I like to deconstruct, whereas Skyscraper Club, for all its simplicity in its baseline usage, is practically methodical and inclusionary forever. Still, when I see how painfully inept Ogre Club becomes without broken things like Lightweight or the Speed+ modifiers, I end up feeling bad for it, no matter how much I would not want to see its dominance for fear of involving the same issues with Brawler Claws and Taurus Arm, and the underlying problems come back to poor emphasis on melee combat.

If this can't contribute to rebalancing Kid Icarus Uprising, my commentary can at least be put through consideration for balancing even a Spiritual Successor to make sure that history isn't repeated. Kid Icarus Uprising came reasonably far with the balancing of the Mighty Glacier involvement as Skyscraper Club can attest to, but Ogre Club highlights some of the underlying problems that plague key mechanics.