Move current shift stones to gear market and bp lock them
D
Darkener
Every single shift stone promotes some kind of bad habit
Surge promotes disk follow up, Guard promotes not dodging, Vigor promotes disk spam, Adamant promotes not not hitting yourself, Stubborn promotes not realizing your taking damage, Charge promotes not learning proper combos, Volatile promotes explo cube spam, And flow promotes not learning better positioning
New players are suffering from having these because they rely on their effects to avoid learning harder topics and completely stunting their improvement.
There is already a shift stone tab, and a system to bp lock things, so not much would even need to be done to make this possible
Personally i think locking them all to 1k bp makes the most sense, thats plenty of time to master the fundamentals without accidentally crutching on stones.
Idealy you make some amount of progression to them. At 1k you get to chose 2 stones, but after you chose 2 all of the other stones require 100 more bp, afterwords each time you unlock a stone every other stone would go up in bp requirement by 100. This prevents the player from being overwhelmed by the options, and encourages them to make informed decisions on what to unlock.
Overall i think making stones have to be unlocked in general, regardless of how it is done, would be very good for the health of the newer player base, as long as the unlocking process is moved a decent distance after reaching black belt
Edit : Maybe 1k is much but i want to preface that im NOT saying that it HAS to be done the way im saying it could be. I dont want to just suggest "Bp lock the stones" without giving an in depth explanation as to why, and giving my thoughts on how i would go about it. The main points to this post are to bp lock the stones, and have them past black belt
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8
8DIV4JDG5FFT
"flow promotes not learning better positioning"
There are literally Arial moves that are impossible to do without the Flow stone. How does it promote bad positioning?
The only stone that I really think promotes a bad habit is the charge stone.
T
TL8VABCZXJUV
if stones create bad habits. why not rework, or remove the stones?
if every stone creates a bad habit. you have to look at the reasons why they all do (some worse than others).. i feel it has more to do with how much they add to playstyles, playstyles are organic and the stone just shoehorn people into playing "archetypes"
but no players should ever be locked from content, the moves behind locked behind the belt progression helps players layer on their moves during their early stages
Y
YourNeighborNat
If this route were to be taken, whether it be at 1k BP or an earlier post-Mountain rank point (this may be preferable), I think just having all the Shift Stones available for unlock at whatever BP restriction would be my preference instead of having them staggered. Maybe even just one unlock that's like "Box of Shift Stones" or something
M
Musical-Memoirs
I don't think this is a good idea. At the very least, 1k BP is way too much!!! Not everyone progresses that slowly. And beginners feel weak enough against experienced players already, having access to the same buffs is not a bad thing. And there is nothing wrong with allowing players to make some mistakes, they will learn eventually anyway. Usually by the time someone reaches 1k BP they have already figured out themselves if they are accidentally crutching on shift stones.
But making unlocking them part of the progression system feels logical to me. At the very least, it makes absolutely no sense to have access to charge, volatile, flow and stubborn until you can actually use the required moves. While locking the shiftstones purely behind BP feels bad to me.
This is my suggestion instead:
- Shifstones have a BP requirement matching the requirement to unlock all associated moves. As it makes no sense to have then earlier.
- When the gearmarket challenges are added, the shifstones are locked behind doing the associated move 50 times in matches. When actively used it will only take a few matches.
- Shiftstones like adamant, surge and vigor are quite harmless enough to a playstyle, we should not want to make beginners feel weaker then they already are, so these buffs are fine at the beginning.
- Guard is unlocked by using straight on an incoming attack from an opponent 10 times. That way players are forced to learn another defensive options before opting to use guard. Because guard is at a weird spot... It is the least understood shiftstone that has definitely held back a lot of beginners. But at the same time it's frequent use by beginners motivates other beginners not to spam disks only.
That way the players have some actual experience with the unbuffed moves before buffing them. Get motivated to try new moves, because that unlocks them something. But doesn't take ages to unlock those shiftstones. Beginners are already weak compared to experienced players, making them even weaker is not the intention, learning them what they can do in a more natural way is.
D
Darkener
Musical-Memoirs While i partially agree that moving them to 1k is a bit much i seriously dont think that they should be available at all before at the very least black belt
I see the belt move unlocks like this games real tutorial and i think the stones access is actively are bad for it
The red belt holding charge walls for 15 seconds isnt learning anything
The basis of my suggestion isnt my specific way of how they should be locked its that they should be locked in general "Overall i think making stones have to be unlocked in general, regardless of how it is done, would be very good for the health of the newer player base" I simply didnt feel comfortable saying "You should make these need to be unlocked" without further elaboration on why or how i personally would go about it
Also the idea of challenges to unlock them is interesting and should be explored, however just "do this thing x times" would not really work out because it would have to be an annoyingly large number for whatever it is to not have been done largely by accident
M
Musical-Memoirs
Darkener
I guess we have a few points we disagree on then. As I don't see a need to overprotect our beginners from all shiftstones until they are blackbelt. Then you could also say that access to disk as one of their first moves is a bad thing, they might develop a disk spam playstyle, so let's remove that until black belt too... Players don't learn how to properly use shiftstones, unless you give them the ability to use shiftstones. You can't learn how to use something by not being allowed to use something.
Yes I also see the progression system as part of the current tutorial. But are shiftstones that much more complex then a whole new move? No, they are quite a lot simpler as you don't need to learn a new pose, with the exception of guard, which is a new move. So only expecting a black belt being ready to learn about shiftstones makes no sense.
A red belt won't hold charge for 15 seconds, so please, if you want your arguments make sense, don't exaggerate! And such a player only needs to fight someone with explode disks once to know how useless it is to be a sitting duck. And all players with the habit of waiting, improved their fighting style almost instantly when I taught them about chambering. With the description change and later the planned visual change people will learn about that on their own way easier.
I do like that you have a good reasoning behind your suggestion, I just don't fully agree on the reasoning, only partially. The system shouldn't be overprotective, it should just be a logical progression to make it easier to learn.
If someone accidentally did 50 times the hold pose in a battle, then after those 50 times they would have definitely learned what that pose does. If they don't, then I am already wondering how they stumbled all the way to red belt and why they would equip a shiftstone for a pose they don't intentionally try to use... This argument makes no sense to me...
D
Darkener
Musical-Memoirs
I agreed with your challenges and that the system should be explored. I just think alot more thought has to go into what they are specifically. Just "do this move x times" is in a weird position because if the number is too high then it becomes a chore and if the number is too low they probably arent consistent with it yet, and on top of that its different per player where that cut off point is. Again i like the idea, but i think alot more thought has to go into what they are specifically is all
And the main reason i think they should be post black belt is because the stones shine when you have good fundamentals, the point is to force them to get at least somewhat consistent with the fundamentals before trying to shake things up with shift stones, because shift stone resilience hinders learning fundamentals greatly
And actually i think that yes the shift stones are as complex as a whole new move, even the passive ones, they all greatly amplify different ways of playing the game in their own unique way.
And so i think they should be unlocked similarly to the belt levels, but this time you chose what order you unlock them in
I dont think the basic improvement of the player should be tied to a friendly higher level player deciding to give them tips. It pains me to see 200s with stones equipped they arent even useing and when asked say they dont even remember what they do while they dont even have the fundamentals down. Equally seeing those players do the same throw a charged volatile wall from the air over and over regardless of constantly getting punished for it and missing every throw, AND STILL dont know which one is which when asked about their choice
I dont see how making shift stones part of the belt tutorial is a bad thing. There will always be an enormous gap between even mid level to low level players thats just how this game works. Infact i think doing this would make the transition from low level to mid level smoother over all and actually shrinking the gap between them