The game has been in beta for a number of weeks now and it's clear that the gameplay needs some tweaking. With this update I've tried to re-balance a number of things to improve the fight experience.
The biggest problem that has come to light is constant attack skipping in favor of counterattacking. I initially suspected this might happen, but with a game such as this it's hard to predict unless a lot of people play.
So, here's a list of changes and why:
New Adrenaline System
Adrenaline is no longer linked to turn number alone, instead it increases based on number of attacks and number of turns. If a player constantly skips attack turns they will start to lag behind on Adrenaline and will suffer because they won't have access to more powerful cards.
The new system awards Adrenaline in the following way:
Start Per Attack Card Per Turn
Shaolin Kung Fu 1.5 0.1 0.5
Shotokan 1.0 0.1 0.6
Taekwondo 1.0 0.1 0.7
Wing Chun 3.0 0.1 0.3
For example, with Shaolin Kung Fu you will start off with 1.5 Adrenaline. You gain 0.1 for each attack cards used (even if it's a fail) and a further 0.5 at the end of your attack turn.
As you attack you Adrenaline now increases, if your Adrenaline goes to the next value (e.g. form 1.9 to 2.0) all the cards with that value will become available to use that turn.
Hopefully this change should tip the balance back towards attacking. Skipping turns will still be a valid and useful tactic, but excessive use will start to put you at a disadvantage.
Counter Attack Power Bug Fix
I found a bug that meant the fight style power modifier wasn't being applied to the counterattack cards. This meant that less powerful styles like Wing Chun were counterattacking with maximum power when they should have been a lot lower. This bug shows why so many top players using Wing Chun found it more efficient to counterattack rather than attack.
Fixing this will mean counterattacks alone might not be enough to overpower an aggressively attacking opponent.
Matchmaking
Matchmaking is now split into two groups, black belts and above, and brown belts and below. This gives new players fairer fights when playing online PvP.
Body Zone Strengths
The Abdominals were by far the weakest body zone to attack. I've increased the HP on these organs and also made it so you need to disable all four for a KO instead of only two.
Pelvis HP has been dropped as this was too high.
Chi Card Tweaks
I've also made changed to the Chi cards. Most useful is that Power Boosts are higher and Speed, Block Fog, Chi Shake etc all last longer.
So there we have it. A lot of game play changes this time. Feel free to send me feedback on these. It still might not be quite right yet.
Cheers,
Steve