I_AmTheReaper
Player
As the title suggests, here are my thoughts on some of the elements of smash.
First and foremost, I'd like to say that I'm very happy with how the team balanced the items. Reducing the trident to only 2 uses, making the bomb relevant, making grenades arc instead of fly in a straight line, all great. Well done. I also like the change made to the rettungsschleim, although it often bugs. Sometimes you get the bounce, and your double jump doesn't reset, other times you don't get the bounce, but your double jump does reset. I'm not 100% sure what the intended functionality is, but either way, it's inconsistent.
With that out of the way, there are a few things that I think could be a little better.
1. Explosions affect items from too far away.
Rocket launchers, bombs, and grenades all destroy items that have spawned well outside of their blast radius. Players and blocks only seem to be affected within around 10 blocks, but items seem to get destroyed from much farther away. It would be nice if the item destruction radius matched the player/block area of effect.
I also think explosives destroy too many blocks in general, and on some maps, especially small maps like marble and mudpunk, you very quickly end up with almost no where to land in certain areas, but I already made a separate post about that.
2. Booty slams cancel (most) horizontal momentum.
Something I've noticed since the update is that when a player jumps to a platform you're on and does a smash attack, they seem to not take knockback shortly before and very briefly after. This is frustrating, as if you're able to get an air hit on a player, that should kill them (assuming there's nothing behind/below them for them to land on,) but often times if they're doing a slam attack, even if you hit them (especially if you hit them just before they slam) they make it into the ledge and don't take any knockback for that hit. This does not make a lot of sense, as sometimes you'll put yourself in a vulnerable position in order to land a killing air hit on a player, and then even if you succeed, they're completely safe, and are able to kill you anyway. The slam attack is supposed to be high risk, high reward, and if a player does it at a poor time, you should be able to punish them for it. Right now, the slam is a bit too strong and too versatile.
I think the easiest solution to this is to have the slam attack only affect your vertical velocity, and not your horizontal velocity. I.e. if you're taking a certain amount of horizontal knockback, then slam, the added downward speed may result in you landing on the platform instead of missing it, but then you will take the adequate amount of knockback (minus some friction from the ground, of course) immediately thereafter. This is good because 1) it means a player that is hit in the air will not be saved by slamming, and 2) even though the player doing the slam will die, their attack could still hit and kill the other player, should they have over extended and put themselves in a vulnerable position by going for the air hit.
3. Sometimes double jumps don't give you any height.
This one is just a simple bug, rather than feedback about design choices. Every now and again, when doing a double jump, it's like you stick to the ground. You get launched forward, but not upward. This very often leads to jumping straight into the void, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, is not ideal. This can be reproduced reasonably consistently by doing a double jump right before you hit the ground, (I imagine because you're not as far off the ground when you jump there's a better chance of your feet "catching" the ground and applying friction.) It's easy enough to avoid doing that, but sometimes it happens even when you do a completely normal jump, and then there's not really anything you can do to avoid dying.
I'm sure I'll have more to say at some point, but that'll likely be in another one of my low effort, 2 sentence posts. For now, that's all.
First and foremost, I'd like to say that I'm very happy with how the team balanced the items. Reducing the trident to only 2 uses, making the bomb relevant, making grenades arc instead of fly in a straight line, all great. Well done. I also like the change made to the rettungsschleim, although it often bugs. Sometimes you get the bounce, and your double jump doesn't reset, other times you don't get the bounce, but your double jump does reset. I'm not 100% sure what the intended functionality is, but either way, it's inconsistent.
With that out of the way, there are a few things that I think could be a little better.
1. Explosions affect items from too far away.
Rocket launchers, bombs, and grenades all destroy items that have spawned well outside of their blast radius. Players and blocks only seem to be affected within around 10 blocks, but items seem to get destroyed from much farther away. It would be nice if the item destruction radius matched the player/block area of effect.
I also think explosives destroy too many blocks in general, and on some maps, especially small maps like marble and mudpunk, you very quickly end up with almost no where to land in certain areas, but I already made a separate post about that.
2. Booty slams cancel (most) horizontal momentum.
Something I've noticed since the update is that when a player jumps to a platform you're on and does a smash attack, they seem to not take knockback shortly before and very briefly after. This is frustrating, as if you're able to get an air hit on a player, that should kill them (assuming there's nothing behind/below them for them to land on,) but often times if they're doing a slam attack, even if you hit them (especially if you hit them just before they slam) they make it into the ledge and don't take any knockback for that hit. This does not make a lot of sense, as sometimes you'll put yourself in a vulnerable position in order to land a killing air hit on a player, and then even if you succeed, they're completely safe, and are able to kill you anyway. The slam attack is supposed to be high risk, high reward, and if a player does it at a poor time, you should be able to punish them for it. Right now, the slam is a bit too strong and too versatile.
I think the easiest solution to this is to have the slam attack only affect your vertical velocity, and not your horizontal velocity. I.e. if you're taking a certain amount of horizontal knockback, then slam, the added downward speed may result in you landing on the platform instead of missing it, but then you will take the adequate amount of knockback (minus some friction from the ground, of course) immediately thereafter. This is good because 1) it means a player that is hit in the air will not be saved by slamming, and 2) even though the player doing the slam will die, their attack could still hit and kill the other player, should they have over extended and put themselves in a vulnerable position by going for the air hit.
3. Sometimes double jumps don't give you any height.
This one is just a simple bug, rather than feedback about design choices. Every now and again, when doing a double jump, it's like you stick to the ground. You get launched forward, but not upward. This very often leads to jumping straight into the void, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, is not ideal. This can be reproduced reasonably consistently by doing a double jump right before you hit the ground, (I imagine because you're not as far off the ground when you jump there's a better chance of your feet "catching" the ground and applying friction.) It's easy enough to avoid doing that, but sometimes it happens even when you do a completely normal jump, and then there's not really anything you can do to avoid dying.
I'm sure I'll have more to say at some point, but that'll likely be in another one of my low effort, 2 sentence posts. For now, that's all.