Skullgirls Mobile General Discussion

[*L30N1DAS*]

I'm trying to think of something that fits the cinema theme...Drive-Thru Edition?

Maybe the title should be something that references that the game takes place a little before Skullgirls.
Skullgirls...Origins? Nah.
Skullgrls: Flashback?
Skullgirls: Callback?
Skullgirls: Serial? (Actually goes well with how they're releasing Seasons. It just sounds weird.)
Skullgirls: Smash Cut?
Skullgirls: Tour de Force? ("literally "forceful turn" (French); usually refers to a lead actor's performance that was incredibly skillful, brilliant, notable, masterful, reflecting a very high standard, and perfectly displaying the actor's ability; compare to 'stealing a scene' - the equivalent for a supporting actor role")

Just looking at terms from here: http://www.filmsite.org/filmterms19.html

 

[MightyZug]

Is excess XP supposed to roll over to the next level(s)? I got 2k XP from completing one of the nodes and it was a little disappointing not to become a god instantly.

Yes, it definitely carries over. Did it look like it didn't? Perhaps you happened to get just enough to level up?

Quality of life suggestion: When I finish a match it displays the rewards screen and the Continue button is in the middle at the bottom of the window. When I tap continue it transitions to the XP screen, which currently has 3 options: Feedback, Replay and Continue. Replay is in the middle of this window.

Several times I have tapped on Continue on the Rewards screen, but thought it hadn't registered (generally due to frame drops after any match with Big Band) and tapped again. Then the game catches up, taps continue and then reads my second tap and clicks Replay, starting up the fight again.

Basically the short version is that Continue is in the middle of one screen and Replay is in the middle of the next. It's very easy to mash through continue and hit Replay by accident, forcing you to replay the fight. I would recommend changing the button layout so accidental mashes will quit you out of the XP screen and not force the fight to replay.

Yeah, the FEEDBACK button was a new addition for the Beta, it won't be that prominent (it'll just be on the Options screen in the final game). Sorry for the headache in the interim!

So is the full title just "Skullgirls", with nothing to distinguish it as a spinoff? There should really be a subtitle or something.

We discussed it a bunch, and we ultimately felt that giving it a subtitle diminished it in comparison to the experience we're delivering (makes people think it might be puzzle game or something dramatically different). Our "competitors" (Injustice, MKX, etc) on mobile use a similar technique.

That said, agreed that having to call it "Skullgirls mobile" in the meantime is a bit annoying. :P

Yup, although you can't buy anything yet in the beta it looks like you'll be able to purchase Coins and Theonite. Coins seem to be so abundant, I have more than I can actually spend as skill points are the real bottleneck. Theonite lets you buy Relics (boxes of random loot) and refill energy. And that's where they'll get you, although you get a fair amount of Theonite and Relics from playing too, the thing about RNG is that you'll probably need a lot more to ever find those rares.

Theonite is the only currency you'll be able to purchase outright from the Store (although you can convert Theonite into coins if need be). You'll also be able to get Theonite on a daily basis from Daily Challenges (e.g. Win 5 fights w/ Cerebella, Execute a 50-hit combo, etc), although currently we are granting an average of 60 Theonite as part of the Daily Relic.

And god, don't get me started on fucking energy systems. Please, please, can this please be not be a thing? At first it's infuriating to have a limit on how much I can play, and then after a while it feels like an obligation to keep playing often enough to burn it all off so I'm not missing potential progress while it's full, like there's an opportunity cost to taking a break. I really wish I could just play at my own pace, whether I want to sit down and play for one long session or be free to put it down for a while and not have to think about it.

I'm not too much a fan on the energy thing, but heres why it doesn't bother me: its not relegated to your entire deck its only for certain characters, so if you don't want to pay then its a great incentive to switch up your cards and level them up.

But what if I need my strongest characters, ones best suited to a particular fight due to elements or whatever, or ones I'm specifically required to use due to mission restrictions?

It also makes me inclined to shy away from hard fights until I think I've grinded enough to be on the safe side, rather than tackling a challenge headfirst. And that's not how I want to play! I'd like to able to attempt it, fail, but be able to pick myself up and try again.

Energy time! So, real quickly -- there are 3 elements that are important for a F2P game to be successful -- effective Acquisition (a game that is intriguing/attractive enough that people will download it), followed by Retention (ensuring that player stick around and continue to play), and then finally Monetization (someone actually spending money -- generally a very small portion of players, under 5%).

Energy is NOT intended to serve as a Monetization driver. All characters can have their energy refreshed for 10 Theonite. As noted above, you will likely get 60 Theonite a day. If you really want to play with your existing characters a bit more, then you can refresh a full team twice every day. It just slows your means of opening new Relics and getting more stuff for your Collection. As @Magma442 noted, it's primary gameplay purpose is to encourage you to use your entire "deck", and not just build one super team of 3 characters and use them for everything, ignoring the rest of the game. There are a number of other features (Character requirements for matches, etc) that are also in pursuit of that goal.

Beyond that, Energy exists to help further Retention. Exhausting energy and causing you to take a break and return later (unless you opt to spend Energy), habituates "checking in" on the game, which helps to remind you that the game exists. In a world where every app on your phone is constantly vying for your attention, it's all to easy for a game to be forgotten unless it makes it's presence known. Our competition is as much Facebook and Twitter as it is other mobile games.

As you can imagine, it's not easy finding a balance between making a game with a great, forgiving, accessible UX that will also eventually Monetize significantly enough to support its ongoing existence. This was our take to help strike a balance between the two.

Not shying away from the critique (Energy systems are notoriously notorious!), just trying to be as transparent as possible regarding the reasoning behind our choices.

I think SG has a lot of things set in place for this to have a small of an impact as possible compared to games where you touch 3 things every 8 hours then make sure to come back on the dot.

That's the hope!

(I should note, it's hard to gauge just how bad this game's energy system is since the beta seems to automatically refill, but I don't think it looks good. Characters have a maximum of 10 points of energy, and some fights can cost up to 6 points per character meaning you can't even retry right away if you fail the first attempt. Eugh.)

The fights with a cost of 6 energy, the point where you can't even retry once, seem to be some of the hardest fights in the game, so as soon as I see 6 I just go "welp I'm not even gonna bother trying, I'll come back to this much later."

We refill Character Energy on level up, which is pretty frequent, so you shouldn't feel much of an Energy "pinch" for quite some time.

I don't believe any fights should be 6 energy? The max should be 5. Can you tell me where that is? Might be a bug.

It's also worth noting (since we don't have the Tutorial for this in yet), that there are two types of energy -- 1P Energy [yellow bolts] (Story/Event mode) and VS Energy [blue bolts] (Quickplay/Arena -- in the final game these matches will be against Defense Teams from other real players, and you'll get free Arena Rating points for teams your AI wins on your behalf). Furthermore, if you 100% a 5-match sequence in Arena mode, you get a VS Energy refresh.

As such, every character technically has 20 total energy spanning multiple modes. Just enumerating everything that's in there, since I think that - despite having he constraint - we're pretty generous on this front!

Nonetheless, welcome all feedback. Just let us know if there are any specific instances that feel particularly tight or unfair. All part of why we're doing the Beta!

 

[Cellsai]

I don't believe any fights should be 6 energy? The max should be 5. Can you tell me where that is? Might be a bug.

Speaking of Energy requirements... where can we see how much a fight actually costs to play? For the life of me I can't find it. I only know when I can't play a fight when the game tells me I don't have enough energy.

And speaking of that, it's pretty annoying how when I do run out of energy and I try to play a fight it brings up that window where the only two options are "Change Team" and "Refresh with Theonite". If I don't want to Refresh or change character I still need to go into the change team screen, then back out to fight prep screen, then back to the story select.
Recommendation: add a Cancel button to the Not Enough Energy window that will just close it without needing to go through loading screens.

(Also, sorry I'm not adding screenshots to any of these things I keep mentioning. I'm away from my phone at the moment)

 

[MightyZug]

I don't believe any fights should be 6 energy? The max should be 5. Can you tell me where that is? Might be a bug.

Ah, found 'em! Treasure Nodes in Advanced Events. We'll fix it!

Speaking of Energy requirements... where can we see how much a fight actually costs to play? For the life of me I can't find it. I only know when I can't play a fight when the game tells me I don't have enough energy.

It's on top of the FIGHT button on the Match Preview screen (see lower right corner of the screenshot below):

Spoiler

And speaking of that, it's pretty annoying how when I do run out of energy and I try to play a fight it brings up that window where the only two options are "Change Team" and "Refresh with Theonite". If I don't want to Refresh or change character I still need to go into the change team screen, then back out to fight prep screen, then back to the story select.
Recommendation: add a Cancel button to the Not Enough Energy window that will just close it without needing to go through loading screens.

Good call! We'll check it out -- some UX polishing we need to do for that whole Match Preview > Team Selection > Special Move Equipping > Character Upgrading loop. Will likely see more than a few tweaks between now and Launch.

 

[Cellsai]

It's on top of the FIGHT button on the Match Preview screen (see lower right corner of the screenshot below):

Ohhhh. It blends in so well with the button I completely didn't notice that!

 

[Sciencejoe]

Just gonna take a second to pitch in some names here:

Skullgirls: The Musical
Skullgirls: Straight to DVD
Skullgirls: Relatively Uncut
Skullgirls: The Search for More Money

On a serious note, game is gud.

My only complaint is that relics seem to hate giving you theonite, and relics bought with theonite seem to hate giving you anything that isn't a duplicate. Besides that though, I genuinely like the gameplay better than the other mobile fighting games; the art being ported to iPad also makes look better than them, too! I'm glad that Skullgirls' story isn't over, and I hope to see it expand more in the future.

 

[Magma442]

Alright I beat the story modes and while I will give my thoughts on that in the story thread I figured it would be best here to say what I think about the gameplay

Spoiler

Overall the controls are fine, I had no problem with those but I did have some problems with how the battles went which i will make some notes off

1. Its too loose. Now i get this wont be as tight as a fighting game would be but there are still some instances where things feel very loose, I mean that like say I knocked down an opponent, they get up and I hit them with a super, despite them recovering I still miss when I expected to hit. In short some of the hitboxes are VERY misleading.
2. A lot of things feel unsafe. For example It was never just rush in and then i could block it was always rush in and then attack which would leave me open because the opponent ALWAYS beat me. that and switching out tags, see theres a rock paper scissors mechanic but even when i knock the opponent down and then tag in my character more suited for the fight they recover too fast and know my character still in their jump in animation, which wont allow me to block
3. the AI is rock stupid. I dont want to sound like a jerk but it kinda is, it would just stand there and they became predictable, for example every time they got up I would always blaock because they would either attack, use a super, or tag out, rinse and repat, this made things too mundane and boring fast and cause battles to come to a screeching halt. this will lead into my last point
   
4. Things are too simple, in the worst way. granted i expected that because Beta but there still things like, if I block then what? what I mean is theres no pushblock and if the opponent is put into a corner, they have no options to get out, they cant jump out of the corner, the controls are too loose to counterattack so what would a real player do in this situation. they couldn't do anything except grab which what then? the opponent could just close the gap, leaving them trapped. it ruins the setplay and rock paper sicssors. Heck it became so simple and broken my best strategy was tap tap tap launch wait to fall then repeat.

Thats all I have to say for now.

 

[Zidiane]

Can we block in the air?

 

[Magma442]

I don't think jumping is even in the game yet.

 

[Zidiane]

It's not going to be, I'm pretty sure. What I mean, though, is that on incoming I attack the character but I'm not sure if they can even block. Is it unblockable on incoming?

 

[missingno]

Energy time! So, real quickly -- there are 3 elements that are important for a F2P game to be successful -- effective Acquisition (a game that is intriguing/attractive enough that people will download it), followed by Retention (ensuring that player stick around and continue to play), and then finally Monetization (someone actually spending money -- generally a very small portion of players, under 5%).

Energy is NOT intended to serve as a Monetization driver. All characters can have their energy refreshed for 10 Theonite. As noted above, you will likely get 60 Theonite a day. If you really want to play with your existing characters a bit more, then you can refresh a full team twice every day. It just slows your means of opening new Relics and getting more stuff for your Collection. As @Magma442 noted, it's primary gameplay purpose is to encourage you to use your entire "deck", and not just build one super team of 3 characters and use them for everything, ignoring the rest of the game. There are a number of other features (Character requirements for matches, etc) that are also in pursuit of that goal.

Beyond that, Energy exists to help further Retention. Exhausting energy and causing you to take a break and return later (unless you opt to spend Energy), habituates "checking in" on the game, which helps to remind you that the game exists. In a world where every app on your phone is constantly vying for your attention, it's all to easy for a game to be forgotten unless it makes it's presence known. Our competition is as much Facebook and Twitter as it is other mobile games.

As you can imagine, it's not easy finding a balance between making a game with a great, forgiving, accessible UX that will also eventually Monetize significantly enough to support its ongoing existence. This was our take to help strike a balance between the two.

Not shying away from the critique (Energy systems are notoriously notorious!), just trying to be as transparent as possible regarding the reasoning behind our choices.

Yeah, I know full well why mobile games do this. But knowing why it's there doesn't make me hate it any less, hell in my mind it kind of comes off as a scummy way to deliberately make the game worse because we know it's more profitable to inconvenience and annoy players. And I'd really hoped this game would be better than that!

As you yourself pointed out, spending my Theonite on refills will slow me down on getting Relics, so that's already bad. But worse than that is the fact that the game is dictating to me what schedule I can play it on. I can't stand it when games pressure me to check in at regular intervals, I want to play on my own time. And worst of all is the fact that it forces me into this ultra-conservative playstyle if I want to be as efficient as possible, even if that's not how I ultimately want to play.

Nice to hear that the 6 energy fights aren't supposed to be 6, but I still consider 5 to be 5 too many. I'd like to take on challenges hard enough to make me retry not just once but many times before I finally master it, but with this, I can only get a maximum of two tries and that's it. Challenge is no longer fun when you attach an energy system, now it becomes outright stressful. And that really, really, really sucks.

 

[MightyZug]

As you yourself pointed out, spending my Theonite on refills will slow me down on getting Relics, so that's already bad. But worse than that is the fact that the game is dictating to me what schedule I can play it on. I can't stand it when games pressure me to check in at regular intervals, I want to play on my own time. And worst of all is the fact that it forces me into this ultra-conservative playstyle if I want to be as efficient as possible, even if that's not how I ultimately want to play.

Nice to hear that the 6 energy fights aren't supposed to be 6, but I still consider 5 to be 5 too many. I'd like to take on challenges hard enough to make me retry not just once but many times before I finally master it, but with this, I can only get a maximum of two tries and that's it. Challenge is no longer fun when you attach an energy system, now it becomes outright stressful. And that really, really, really sucks.

I've played games that are more punishing energy-wise than not, and we definitely want to err on the side of being more accommodating. I'd love to get more opinions from folks in terms of how much pressure they've felt from the Energy system as a whole. Based on data we'd gathered pre-Beta, many players we shared the game with didn't even realize there's an energy system in the game at all, given how forgiving it tends to be.

The higher level you get (and the more likely you are to encounter certain fights with higher energy costs), the larger your collection will be and the less valuable purchasing a Premium Relic will be, which helps to free up more of your Theonite for energy refills. It's not a system that's inherently made for binging, but rather for consumption over time. That said, it certainly allows for binging with relatively little sacrifice (given the amount of Theonite we grant you with along the way - on top of energy refills on level up).

5 energy fights are intended to be high-stakes, hence why they're generally optional. We try to keep it pretty limited (currently I believe they only appear in Advanced Event Treasure nodes, and in Arena Mode, which intentionally is intended to encourage you leverage your full collection - which also uses a different Energy type). Higher level content doesn't necessarily mean higher energy costs.

At what point did you start to feel this energy pinch?

hell in my mind it kind of comes off as a scummy way to deliberately make the game worse because we know it's more profitable to inconvenience and annoy players. And I'd really hoped this game would be better than that!

It's pretty apparent that conceptually the notion rubs you the wrong way, as such there may not be anything we can do in order to help resolve this particular scenario for you. That's totally OK - different strokes for different folks.

I happily play a lot of F2P games (the vast majority of which as a non-spender). When I play one with energy (provided it's balanced properly), it gives me an "excuse to leave" and do something else, and builds anticipation for the things I'm going to do when I return. It encourages a certain cadence of play that is well suited to the content itself, so it doesn't bother me.

All that said, there are some "soft energy" options we played around with that simply discourages players to continue using the same characters over an extended session (e.g. "Exhaustion", which debuffs stats and/or limits EXP gain for that character). Energy was ultimately easier to message and felt "cleaner" and more familiar.

Always welcome the discussion though!

 

[Choose Goose]

Yes, it definitely carries over. Did it look like it didn't? Perhaps you happened to get just enough to level up?

The character was like level 1, but its totally possible I read the numbers wrong.

 

[MightyZug]

The character was like level 1, but its totally possible I read the numbers wrong.

Gotcha - I'll keep an eye out on our end. If you see it happen again and/or find good repro steps, don't hesitate to let me know!

 

[Mike_Z]

Yeah, I know full well why mobile games do this. But knowing why it's there doesn't make me hate it any less, hell in my mind it kind of comes off as a scummy way to deliberately make the game worse because we know it's more profitable to inconvenience and annoy players. And I'd really hoped this game would be better than that!

So hey, I hate it too. BUT...if your game is "better than that", then you stand a giant chance of losing your playerbase to games that are not "better than that", because they do force people into that behavior. It's stupid, yes, but it's also factual. And if the game doesn't make money then it was a giant waste of time.

However...

Nice to hear that the 6 energy fights aren't supposed to be 6, but I still consider 5 to be 5 too many. I'd like to take on challenges hard enough to make me retry not just once but many times before I finally master it, but with this, I can only get a maximum of two tries and that's it. Challenge is no longer fun when you attach an energy system, now it becomes outright stressful. And that really, really, really sucks.

@MightyZug
Serious question(s) time. The energy system bothers me, but not because it exists - it bothers me because there's no significant reward for doing WELL, after you've leveled up a few times. It feels only punishing.
I hope there is time to answer these, and address them before real ship:
- Why not make it free to retry a fight you lost as many times as you want, as long as you don't do any other fights? Costing the energy for each retry seems overly harsh to me. If something is difficult and I can't beat it, I WILL play it until I can beat it, but if I am only ABLE to try twice with my highest-level team then I wouldn't bother to even try until I am sure I can win because it would use up half my allowed energy just to lose. Even arcade games do this, 2 coins to start but 1 to continue encourages continuing! I highly encourage this...even if you limit it to "backing out of the retry screen or respeccing or anything forfeits your energy" or "retrying this fight is free for 30 minutes, if you don't try any other fights" or SOMETHING. Losing has so MUCH of a penalty right now that it really does feel like "why bother to try if you aren't SURE you will win?"

AND

- Why not have fights give you back 1/2 or 1/4 of the energy you spent on them if you win, the first time you play them? Maybe even, if you win on your first try you get back half, if you win after that it's 1/4, and if it takes you say 10 tries then you only get 1 energy. Rewarding people for being good keeps them playing.

With these two things you could have fights that cost all your 10 energy per character, and if you're good and win right away then it only costs you 5, BUT even if you suck you can still try it as many times as you want until you win or give up! After all, if the point is to keep people playing, then you should know that allowing them to bang their head against something for an hour because they WANT to will keep them playing...but limiting them to trying only once or twice a day will make them not even try.

Also please see Zidiane's question about blocking in the air on incoming.

 

[MetroKoolAid]

Just gonna take a second to pitch in some names here:

Skullgirls: The Musical
Skullgirls: Straight to DVD
Skullgirls: Relatively Uncut
Skullgirls: The Search for More Money

Skullgirls: Deadly Airport

 

[Zidiane]

Also please see Zidiane's question about blocking in the air on incoming.

On incoming, but there are also certain setups you can do that put the opponent in the air and you can attack before they touch the ground.

My two cents on the energy thing: I shouldn't lose energy for winning and lose double for taking twice to win. If I'm good enough to win every fight without losing, shouldn't I be allowed to do that as often as I want? You can already bottleneck player progression with things like "you have to use bronze/silver/gold characters" or "you have to use this character/anything but this character" so they can't bulldoze through with one specific op team or character. As long as I keep winning, I don't see why I can't save my theonite for loot crates instead of having to use it to keep playing.

Also, Cerebella seems kinda terrible in this build. Her s.mp (first tap attack) has really bad forward velocity, and her dash attack won't combo into it most of the time. Any way it can move her forward more, or be replaced with crouching light kick? I'd like to be able to pick up the combo after Kanchou since they are put right in front of me.

Edit: Do characters have Effort Values like Pokemon? My Bronze Filia got bumped up to level 50 immediately so I could test her tree, but she's been gaining battle power this whole time. She started around 1000... Skull Power, and now she's at 2,600 SP. She hasn't increased in level at all.

Also, to test this, I maxed out the level of my armed forces Bella. She's 4713, while the other gold Bella I was using all the time is 8551.

 

[MightyZug]

@Zidiane I'll respond to your other stuff later today (honest!), but before I head to bed...

Edit: Do characters have Effort Values like Pokemon? My Bronze Filia got bumped up to level 50 immediately so I could test her tree, but she's been gaining battle power this whole time. She started around 1000... Skull Power, and now she's at 2,600 SP. She hasn't increased in level at all.

Also, to test this, I maxed out the level of my armed forces Bella. She's 4713, while the other gold Bella I was using all the time is 8551.

I suspect your other Gold Bella has a maxed out Skill Tree, whereas Armed Forces is _just_ L50. Each Skill Tree node increases the potency of the character by varying degrees, which is reflected in their Fighter Score/Skull Power.

if that's not the case, lemme know and we'll dig into it more.

More responses coming for the other stuff (including @Mike_Z's energy manifesto and @Magma442's general combat notes) tomorrow when I'm more lucid!

Nonetheless, we really appreciate all of the notes and feedback! Super helpful to get a sense of what issues are sticking out to you all the most.

 

[Zidiane]

Oh, you might be right on the skill tree thing. Though, there is some seemingly random fluxuation. That bronze Filia was 2300, and now she's 1900.

 

[EU03]

I have nothing to comment except to mention one example about energy consumption.
I started playing Granblue Fantasy on a very casual level for about a month or so, and I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing (only have one SSR and barely a handful of SRs). I typically use up my energy in about 2-3 battles, and then about 2-3 raid battles with the occasional level up in between, and it recharges in about 3 hours, which is fine since I don't want to really play this game for more than 30 minutes at a time.

A notable thing is if an encounter is failed, as long as the battle has never been cleared before, then the game refunds your energy (and will overflow if any energy is earned during that time). If the encounter is attempted again within two hours, the player also gets a 20% buff to HP and ATK. This is applicable to most of the battles in the game, aside from some special events and raids.
I suspect that GBF is particularly generous as to help push people along the story and to encourage them to not be intimidated by battles that may be higher than their party level while the player is still learning the super convoluted mechanics of GBF. It is completely worthless for high-level play since it doesn't help you to grind the same chapter over and over for materials or clear the extreme level raid battles, though some people intentionally fail a battle over a few hours to "build" up their overflow energy so they can have more to spend in a single sitting later.

I also play the game completely for the girls.

Apologies to Charley if he's already been playing Granblue!

I haven't played SG Mobile since the proper systems have been put into place, so I don't know how relevant this all is!

 

[Kai]

@EU03's suggestion is good, Granblue does a good job of reinforcing player engagement via systems like what he described. A simpler/easier-to-implement solution might be to have a win restore a portion of the energy spent, like 40% or something like that. So, if you go into a 5 Energy fight, and win, you get 2 energy back after the win. This rewards doing well, as was Mike's concern.

 

[CrimsonDragon]

Hi everyone I'm new here I didn't get picked for beta which I was disappointed, hoping to get picked in the next wave of beta if I'm lucky enough can someone please fill me in how good the games is and how much bugs is in the game and wanna hear your opinion on it which do you like better the one for vita or the mobile version and I also Have IPhone 6s IOS 9.3.4 IPad mini with retina display IOS 9.3.4 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 OS 6.0.1

I think for the mobile version of skullgirls should be called SkullGirls Legends

Thanks,
CrimsonDragon

 

[Ninja]

well first thing is The Vita version of SkullGirls is just a port of original game, just converted to be able to run on the hardware. Where as the Mobile version is very... different. Tsk, what's the best way to describe this... uh, SGMobile has a huge card/team building element in it where you collect different versions of the roster. Those different versions hold different stats to them [sorta like an RPG.] and also abilities which can augment their performance in a fight. Combat is fairly simple when compared to the original version of the game, but that doesn't mean it's any less engaging. The goal in the Mobile version of the game is to build a team that works together and can help take down your opponents. Thus these character collecting is important as well as leveling up your current team members and building upon their movelists and combos.

Uh about bugs there are currently a fair amount, you can view the listing here: http://skullheart.com/index.php?threads/skullgirls-mobile-bug-reports.9123/
But this is to be expected, this is just a beta and things do need ironing out before going gold.

Be sure to stick around here to get more updates on the game. I'm sure you'll get into the beta soon, if anything there will be people posting videos about the content in the beta sooner or later.

Also welcome to the SkullHeart Forums! Be sure to enjoy yourself, everyone here is to help each other out so don't be afraid to ask questions.

 

[missingno]

Now that I've spent quite a while with the game I think it's time to write up my full thoughts on everything. And I mean everything, this is gonna be a long one!

Spoiler: Controls

Alrightish, but I don't really like the two finger block or throw. I've found that sometimes my block gets read as a jab and it doesn't always give me throw when I want it.

If I may suggest a possible alternate control scheme, here's what I'd go with:

Divide the screen into left and right half, all actions now use just one finger and are dependent on which side of the screen you touch.

Left half:
: Movement
Tap/hold: Block
: Throw

Right half:
Tap tap tap: Ground chain
x2: Forward attack
, tap tap tap: Launcher and air chain
: Sweep

If we leave it at that, this can just be an option to pick while leaving the existing control scheme in the game too for whichever players prefer. But if this were to be the only control scheme you'd have room to add more things, and as I'll get into in a bit I do think there needs to be more things. Possible ideas:

Left half:
: Jump, possibly / for direction but if you really want to avoid diagonals it could just always jump forward.
Tap right when attacks hit: Just Defend! I think a JD mechanic would fit in well here to raise the skill ceiling without complicating controls. If it negates chip damage, this would go a long way towards making it possible for underleveled characters to stand a chance as long as you're good enough.

Right half:
: Room for one more kind of attack. Not sure what sort of generic category to put here, but perhaps instead of something generic you could try and have something more unique for each character. Actually, that'd be best, since everyone feeling too samey is an issue I'll get into next.

Spoiler: Movesets in general

So we've got ground chain, forward, sweep, launcher into air chain, and throw, plus one special and three supers. Such a tiny, tiny movelist. There's not a whole lot to do at neutral, you're pretty much just gonna poke with either ground chain or forward all the time, with the occasional throw. And combo-wise it doesn't feel like there's very much room to improvise and discover stuff. I can see there's a little more later in the skill tree, but I'm guessing these aren't gonna be massive game changers. If somehow they actually are, then don't save 'em for so late in the game lest people get bored and leave before they ever see them.

And what really stands out to me is that everyone feels pretty much the same, right down to mostly using the same combos. It feels like the only real differences between characters are who can keep going after an air chain, who can combo off of throws and raw tags, and what specials/supers can be comboed into. And that first one stops mattering anyway once you figure out using ground chain after launcher since that appears to just always be better. Maybe there's some more unique stuff I'm missing, but without a training mode it's hard to explore.

If you've seen BlazBlue RR, I feel they really nailed their movelists (unfortunately most everything else about the game they didn't nail, but that's beside the point). They have a very similar tappy tap swipey swipe control scheme to SG Mobile, but not only do they give you a lot more moves to work with, they also managed to make every character vary significantly. They don't all feel like tiny variations on the same template, but faithful adaptations of their playstyles from the original game! Maybe try and take some notes from them, if you can borrow the one thing they got right while actually making the rest of the game good too you'd have a hell of a hit.

Also gonna echo the sentiment earlier about not being able to just dash without automatically attacking, especially since that attack is punishable. If I'm at a distance and they didn't just wakeup super to give me a guaranteed punish, I'm hesitant to go in since that requires me to just cross my fingers and hope the AI lets me (which they often do, but it still feels bad that I have to count on its stupidity).

Lastly, throws. Earlier I heard that throws apparently have invincibility frames to let them beat attacks because it felt better that way, but this raises a very big question. If throws beat attacks and throws beat block, and jumping doesn't even exist, what the hell beats throws? Whenever I come across a Diamond Drop Bella, I always backdash before her wakeup since it doesn't look like there's any other way to be safe, and then in the rare event that the AI doesn't do it see my complaint about dash attacks.

Spoiler: Character specifics

Right now Peacock feels like the most flexible character who can do pretty much everything easily, and the fact that she doesn't even need OTG to corner combo off of air chain is so good. Not to mention Argus is always great. I think everyone should try and be brought up to this level by giving them all a comparable cool thing they can combo with. My one little nitpick is that one of the first things I tried to do with her was throw -> Argus and was super disappointed to see that doesn't work here - would be nice to try and preserve classic things like this.

As was mentioned in the other thread, Band can get hit out of ground chain into launcher, which makes him extremely difficult to use. I've found a nice corner setup off launcher, air chain, SSJ into ground chain or some raw tags (works best with Filia or Painwheel), but I'm always afraid to try it since it since launching means I'm just counting on the AI to hopefully let me get away with this. Band would be amazing if this gets fixed as that'd be his Peacock-tier cool thing. This is why we needed the combo counter to correctly note these things, probably would've been caught right away!

Filia's solid, especially with launcher into ground chain and it seems most consistent on her. Even when I mess that up she can still OTG off air chain with French Twist (though the timing on this is even stricter, would like to see it made more generous), or against Band she doesn't even need that, and unlike the others she can do this midscreen. I've also found she can combo off her raw tag, though I haven't been able to explore this much - when's Training Mode?

Bella's hit-or-miss, depending on the variant. I can't seem to get launcher into ground chain to work with her, and for air chain I've only been able to follow up in the corner with Dynamo or Diamonds are Forever. Which is great damage if she has them, Diamonds are Forever is especially insane. But the variant I have with Diamond Drop and Excellabella sucks since the only way to combo into either of those is to do it very early. Feels kind of ironic that her grappling isn't that good.

Val is like the bad version of Bella. Can't follow up from air chain, can't get launcher into ground chain to work. At least Countervenom is rad though since it does crazy damage. RNG took a while to give her to me and longer still to get a Silver so I haven't spent a whole lot of time experimenting with her, but my initial impression is that there's not much else to see here. Perhaps if I had a training mode I'd try to see if there's anything else I can find...

Painwheel suuuuuuuuucks. Her air chain is extremely punishable on hit, and unlike Band only leaving a small gap this is big enough that the AI gets me for it almost every time I accidentally do air chain. Of course I try to not air chain, but I'm not consistent (maybe if I had a Training Mode to practice), and when my moveset is already as tiny as can be it's that much worse when I have to cross part of it off. Not to mention that it isn't right for Painwheel of all characters to be someone who isn't supposed to ever take to the air! I've also gotten punished for the last hit of her ground chain on a few rare occasions. The only nice thing I've found she has going for her is being able to combo off raw tag, though again I haven't looked into this much.

parasoul is in the game and yet I can't play as her why would you do this to me you cruel jerks 0/10 uninstalled refunded filed a class action lawsuit

Spoiler: Specials and supers

It's very hard to experiment with new specials without a Training Mode. I'm hesistant to try taking a new special into battle if I don't already have an idea of what I might be able to do with it, and the long cooldown makes it hard to keep trying different things. Once I find one good move for someone, I just end up sticking with that.

Bursts seem totally useless. Unless I somehow missed something it looks like you can't break combos with them, they're just like any other special move besides the fact that they don't deal any damage. They're easily punishable and they can't extend combos either. Status ailments don't even seem that useful, and if I want one that badly I have better ways to get one that'll also deal damage on top of that.

Taunts, likewise, just don't feel beneficial enough to be worth it. I don't know if you have ways to make them safe either, even though it's likely the AI would probably let me get away with it most of the time I still don't want to test my luck like that.

Snapbacks seem too situational to be worth equipping. The HUD doesn't show how much life characters have left, so it's hard to keep track of a chance to take off red life (Hell, are they taking off red life? Since I can't see it, hard to verify how it works). It also appears you can only snap their second character in, no way to get the anchor out. Really, if you want the AI to tag out, knock 'em down and they'll probably do it on their own for you! Why spend my special move slot on it? The one thing I thought it might be good for was debuffing those Stone Skin bosses when I don't have access to Armor Break, only to find out that doesn't work. This would've been a good place to give them some application, especially since these fights are literally unwinnable without the right loadout so there ought to be more than one possible solution.

Supers' utility seems to be almost entirely defined by how easily you can combo into them. I can pretty much divide them into two categories, ones I can do a full combo into and ones I have to do early. All the supers that start with launchers are particularly troublesome since they don't work if you've already launched once. Obviously you can just fix it so super launchers don't drop like that, only regular launchers, but instead I think what would just feel cooler would be if they skip the launcher and go straight to the super if they opponent is already airborn.

Hitstop needs looking at (at least I assume this is hitstop and not the game consistently misreading my block input). It appears that every single super cannot be blocked on reaction to the flash, even fullscreen Argus. In SG only some supers do this, and generally only within a certain range. Also, I imagine this might be hella confusing to a lot of non-SG players wondering why their blocks aren't working, perhaps this needs to be better communicated to the player somehow.

Spoiler: Grinding and RNG

Screenshot of my progress. Have not used any of the beta shortcuts, wanted to get an accurate picture of what the progression curve is like.

Despite having gone through all the story, the first advanced chapter and halfway through the second (stopped by the bug I mentioned in the other thread), and each non-advanced event, I'm still pretty low level. I guess that's how it's supposed to be in order to give the game a long tail, but it's a little disappointing to see what a long way away I am from seeing level 3 supers and the fabled "Advanced Combos".

Leveling new characters to bring them up to the rest of your party is a bit of a chore. I've noticed Silvers level much more slowly than Bronzes, and I assume Golds are even worse. It also appears if I stick a low level character in the back to let my strongest ones carry them through a fight, they won't get as much XP.

Only got stuck once in the story, and that was due to that Band fight I mentioned in the bug thread where I couldn't block Timpani. Aside from that, difficulty curve felt fairly smooth. Treasure fights have been much harder and I had to just come back later, but presumably that's supposed to be the case. Events were also kinda frustating, though that's more due to the gimmicks which I'll get into later.

As far as grinding vs. skill goes, it does kinda feel like skill can only take you so far. When you're too underleveled, chip damage can be murder, you can't always get around that.

Skill points have been a bottleneck, especially in the early game, and I'm hesistant to spend what I have wondering if I should save them for a better silver or gold. Perhaps the events could drop a few for each featured character?

RNG is a cruel mistress. Took me a good while to get a Val, longer still to get a Silver. I've yet to see a Silver Peacock or Band, though since the Bronzes were my starter characters and Peacock is just so good in general I've kept leveling them to keep pace with my Silvers. I don't have a single Gold yet. Both times I opened a Shard to Get Relic I ended up getting dupes, which is very disappointing considering the fact that, well, they live up to their name.

I think it would be nice if behind the scenes the dice were loaded a little bit, at least in the beginning to get the player started (of course, maybe you're already doing some things, I'd have no way to know). If you don't have any of a character yet, make them a little more likely to show up. Likewise for when you haven't yet found any Silver or Gold characters (not specifically of a character, just to find your first Silver/Gold period). And for rare/expensive relics like Shard to Get, maybe they could reroll once or twice if they come up dupe the first time.

still don't like energy systems, I do not like it sam-I-am

Spoiler: Miscellaneous other things

Did I mention yet that you should add a Training Mode? I did? Oh, okay.

AI is a joke. Knock 'em down, hold block, and 99% of the time they will wakeup super, special, or raw tag to give you a free punish. I know it's hard to write smart AI, but surely you can at least randomize them a bit so they aren't this predictable. Tell 'em to throw once in a while, or even block.

Earlier I brought up forcing characters to never switch sides and how this results in some odd teleporting and backwards controls after a KO sometimes. Initially I didn't think too much else of this besides those fixable issues, but now I've realized that there's a much bigger problem that can't be fixed so easily. It makes the corner a huge deal because it's so much easier than it should be to get your opponent there and keep them there for the remainder of the match. And conversely, if the AI was good I'd worry about how to get out of the corner myself, though I don't think they've ever cornered me even once. If PvP ever becomes a thing this will definitely be a problem there.

It would be nice if something could be added to the HUD that shows your benched characters' health. As I mentioned before, I can't really tell what's going on with red life. At first I assumed portraits tinted red meant they were still recovering, but since I've never seen them turn back to normal maybe that's not what they mean?

Quick Play could use some difficulty settings, both for harder/easier AI and higher/lower level opponents, with rewards scaling appropriately.

It would be nice if there was some way to go back and review the story, in case you miss anything the first time. Perhaps due to, say, a softlock bug? :^) Or like if you just wanna read the puns again or double-check for secret lore. The advanced chapters do show everything a second time, but they seem to be a much steeper grind to get to the ending again, and what if I wanted to read it a third time?

Some of the gimmick fights in events are interesting, but others are just really bad:

• Bosses that never flinch and randomly become invincible, why? It doesn't seem like there's any real strategy here beyond poking and praying the AI lets you get away with it, knowing there's nothing you can do that isn't punishable if they do decide to. Not to mention hoping the invincibility doesn't trigger, and then having to sit there and wait every time it does.
• Barbed Wire is very frustrating, especially if you're underleveled, since they just need one bit of chip to finish you off. Some characters have it worse than others if they have a lot of multihits. And again there's no strategy to avoid it. I thought maybe projectiles would work, since Barbed Wire sounds like something that would only damage you on direct contact... only to find that using Argus Agony was a very big mistake!
• Stone Skin is literally unwinnable if you don't have access to Armor Break, and since I notice they're all character locked you'll need an Armor Break for each character. As I mentioned above I'd hoped snapbacks could be an alternate solution, but sadly that wasn't the case. It's not much of a fight either, if do you have Armor Break you win.

tl;dr: add training mode pls

 

[PsychotronTM]

Now that I've spent quite a while with the game I think it's time to write up my full thoughts on everything. And I mean everything, this is gonna be a long one!

Spoiler: Controls

Alrightish, but I don't really like the two finger block or throw. I've found that sometimes my block gets read as a jab and it doesn't always give me throw when I want it.

If I may suggest a possible alternate control scheme, here's what I'd go with:

Divide the screen into left and right half, all actions now use just one finger and are dependent on which side of the screen you touch.

Left half:
: Movement
Tap/hold: Block
: Throw

Right half:
Tap tap tap: Ground chain
x2: Forward attack
, tap tap tap: Launcher and air chain
: Sweep

If we leave it at that, this can just be an option to pick while leaving the existing control scheme in the game too for whichever players prefer. But if this were to be the only control scheme you'd have room to add more things, and as I'll get into in a bit I do think there needs to be more things. Possible ideas:

Left half:
: Jump, possibly / for direction but if you really want to avoid diagonals it could just always jump forward.
Tap right when attacks hit: Just Defend! I think a JD mechanic would fit in well here to raise the skill ceiling without complicating controls. If it negates chip damage, this would go a long way towards making it possible for underleveled characters to stand a chance as long as you're good enough.

Right half:
: Room for one more kind of attack. Not sure what sort of generic category to put here, but perhaps instead of something generic you could try and have something more unique for each character. Actually, that'd be best, since everyone feeling too samey is an issue I'll get into next.

Spoiler: Movesets in general

So we've got ground chain, forward, sweep, launcher into air chain, and throw, plus one special and three supers. Such a tiny, tiny movelist. There's not a whole lot to do at neutral, you're pretty much just gonna poke with either ground chain or forward all the time, with the occasional throw. And combo-wise it doesn't feel like there's very much room to improvise and discover stuff. I can see there's a little more later in the skill tree, but I'm guessing these aren't gonna be massive game changers. If somehow they actually are, then don't save 'em for so late in the game lest people get bored and leave before they ever see them.

And what really stands out to me is that everyone feels pretty much the same, right down to mostly using the same combos. It feels like the only real differences between characters are who can keep going after an air chain, who can combo off of throws and raw tags, and what specials/supers can be comboed into. And that first one stops mattering anyway once you figure out using ground chain after launcher since that appears to just always be better. Maybe there's some more unique stuff I'm missing, but without a training mode it's hard to explore.

If you've seen BlazBlue RR, I feel they really nailed their movelists (unfortunately most everything else about the game they didn't nail, but that's beside the point). They have a very similar tappy tap swipey swipe control scheme to SG Mobile, but not only do they give you a lot more moves to work with, they also managed to make every character vary significantly. They don't all feel like tiny variations on the same template, but faithful adaptations of their playstyles from the original game! Maybe try and take some notes from them, if you can borrow the one thing they got right while actually making the rest of the game good too you'd have a hell of a hit.

Also gonna echo the sentiment earlier about not being able to just dash without automatically attacking, especially since that attack is punishable. If I'm at a distance and they didn't just wakeup super to give me a guaranteed punish, I'm hesitant to go in since that requires me to just cross my fingers and hope the AI lets me (which they often do, but it still feels bad that I have to count on its stupidity).

Lastly, throws. Earlier I heard that throws apparently have invincibility frames to let them beat attacks because it felt better that way, but this raises a very big question. If throws beat attacks and throws beat block, and jumping doesn't even exist, what the hell beats throws? Whenever I come across a Diamond Drop Bella, I always backdash before her wakeup since it doesn't look like there's any other way to be safe, and then in the rare event that the AI doesn't do it see my complaint about dash attacks.

Spoiler: Character specifics

Right now Peacock feels like the most flexible character who can do pretty much everything easily, and the fact that she doesn't even need OTG to corner combo off of air chain is so good. Not to mention Argus is always great. I think everyone should try and be brought up to this level by giving them all a comparable cool thing they can combo with. My one little nitpick is that one of the first things I tried to do with her was throw -> Argus and was super disappointed to see that doesn't work here - would be nice to try and preserve classic things like this.

As was mentioned in the other thread, Band can get hit out of ground chain into launcher, which makes him extremely difficult to use. I've found a nice corner setup off launcher, air chain, SSJ into ground chain or some raw tags (works best with Filia or Painwheel), but I'm always afraid to try it since it since launching means I'm just counting on the AI to hopefully let me get away with this. Band would be amazing if this gets fixed as that'd be his Peacock-tier cool thing. This is why we needed the combo counter to correctly note these things, probably would've been caught right away!

Filia's solid, especially with launcher into ground chain and it seems most consistent on her. Even when I mess that up she can still OTG off air chain with French Twist (though the timing on this is even stricter, would like to see it made more generous), or against Band she doesn't even need that, and unlike the others she can do this midscreen. I've also found she can combo off her raw tag, though I haven't been able to explore this much - when's Training Mode?

Bella's hit-or-miss, depending on the variant. I can't seem to get launcher into ground chain to work with her, and for air chain I've only been able to follow up in the corner with Dynamo or Diamonds are Forever. Which is great damage if she has them, Diamonds are Forever is especially insane. But the variant I have with Diamond Drop and Excellabella sucks since the only way to combo into either of those is to do it very early. Feels kind of ironic that her grappling isn't that good.

Val is like the bad version of Bella. Can't follow up from air chain, can't get launcher into ground chain to work. At least Countervenom is rad though since it does crazy damage. RNG took a while to give her to me and longer still to get a Silver so I haven't spent a whole lot of time experimenting with her, but my initial impression is that there's not much else to see here. Perhaps if I had a training mode I'd try to see if there's anything else I can find...

Painwheel suuuuuuuuucks. Her air chain is extremely punishable on hit, and unlike Band only leaving a small gap this is big enough that the AI gets me for it almost every time I accidentally do air chain. Of course I try to not air chain, but I'm not consistent (maybe if I had a Training Mode to practice), and when my moveset is already as tiny as can be it's that much worse when I have to cross part of it off. Not to mention that it isn't right for Painwheel of all characters to be someone who isn't supposed to ever take to the air! I've also gotten punished for the last hit of her ground chain on a few rare occasions. The only nice thing I've found she has going for her is being able to combo off raw tag, though again I haven't looked into this much.

parasoul is in the game and yet I can't play as her why would you do this to me you cruel jerks 0/10 uninstalled refunded filed a class action lawsuit

Spoiler: Specials and supers

It's very hard to experiment with new specials without a Training Mode. I'm hesistant to try taking a new special into battle if I don't already have an idea of what I might be able to do with it, and the long cooldown makes it hard to keep trying different things. Once I find one good move for someone, I just end up sticking with that.

Bursts seem totally useless. Unless I somehow missed something it looks like you can't break combos with them, they're just like any other special move besides the fact that they don't deal any damage. They're easily punishable and they can't extend combos either. Status ailments don't even seem that useful, and if I want one that badly I have better ways to get one that'll also deal damage on top of that.

Taunts, likewise, just don't feel beneficial enough to be worth it. I don't know if you have ways to make them safe either, even though it's likely the AI would probably let me get away with it most of the time I still don't want to test my luck like that.

Snapbacks seem too situational to be worth equipping. The HUD doesn't show how much life characters have left, so it's hard to keep track of a chance to take off red life (Hell, are they taking off red life? Since I can't see it, hard to verify how it works). It also appears you can only snap their second character in, no way to get the anchor out. Really, if you want the AI to tag out, knock 'em down and they'll probably do it on their own for you! Why spend my special move slot on it? The one thing I thought it might be good for was debuffing those Stone Skin bosses when I don't have access to Armor Break, only to find out that doesn't work. This would've been a good place to give them some application, especially since these fights are literally unwinnable without the right loadout so there ought to be more than one possible solution.

Supers' utility seems to be almost entirely defined by how easily you can combo into them. I can pretty much divide them into two categories, ones I can do a full combo into and ones I have to do early. All the supers that start with launchers are particularly troublesome since they don't work if you've already launched once. Obviously you can just fix it so super launchers don't drop like that, only regular launchers, but instead I think what would just feel cooler would be if they skip the launcher and go straight to the super if they opponent is already airborn.

Hitstop needs looking at (at least I assume this is hitstop and not the game consistently misreading my block input). It appears that every single super cannot be blocked on reaction to the flash, even fullscreen Argus. In SG only some supers do this, and generally only within a certain range. Also, I imagine this might be hella confusing to a lot of non-SG players wondering why their blocks aren't working, perhaps this needs to be better communicated to the player somehow.

Spoiler: Grinding and RNG

Screenshot of my progress. Have not used any of the beta shortcuts, wanted to get an accurate picture of what the progression curve is like.

Despite having gone through all the story, the first advanced chapter and halfway through the second (stopped by the bug I mentioned in the other thread), and each non-advanced event, I'm still pretty low level. I guess that's how it's supposed to be in order to give the game a long tail, but it's a little disappointing to see what a long way away I am from seeing level 3 supers and the fabled "Advanced Combos".

Leveling new characters to bring them up to the rest of your party is a bit of a chore. I've noticed Silvers level much more slowly than Bronzes, and I assume Golds are even worse. It also appears if I stick a low level character in the back to let my strongest ones carry them through a fight, they won't get as much XP.

Only got stuck once in the story, and that was due to that Band fight I mentioned in the bug thread where I couldn't block Timpani. Aside from that, difficulty curve felt fairly smooth. Treasure fights have been much harder and I had to just come back later, but presumably that's supposed to be the case. Events were also kinda frustating, though that's more due to the gimmicks which I'll get into later.

As far as grinding vs. skill goes, it does kinda feel like skill can only take you so far. When you're too underleveled, chip damage can be murder, you can't always get around that.

Skill points have been a bottleneck, especially in the early game, and I'm hesistant to spend what I have wondering if I should save them for a better silver or gold. Perhaps the events could drop a few for each featured character?

RNG is a cruel mistress. Took me a good while to get a Val, longer still to get a Silver. I've yet to see a Silver Peacock or Band, though since the Bronzes were my starter characters and Peacock is just so good in general I've kept leveling them to keep pace with my Silvers. I don't have a single Gold yet. Both times I opened a Shard to Get Relic I ended up getting dupes, which is very disappointing considering the fact that, well, they live up to their name.

I think it would be nice if behind the scenes the dice were loaded a little bit, at least in the beginning to get the player started (of course, maybe you're already doing some things, I'd have no way to know). If you don't have any of a character yet, make them a little more likely to show up. Likewise for when you haven't yet found any Silver or Gold characters (not specifically of a character, just to find your first Silver/Gold period). And for rare/expensive relics like Shard to Get, maybe they could reroll once or twice if they come up dupe the first time.

still don't like energy systems, I do not like it sam-I-am

Spoiler: Miscellaneous other things

Did I mention yet that you should add a Training Mode? I did? Oh, okay.

AI is a joke. Knock 'em down, hold block, and 99% of the time they will wakeup super, special, or raw tag to give you a free punish. I know it's hard to write smart AI, but surely you can at least randomize them a bit so they aren't this predictable. Tell 'em to throw once in a while, or even block.

Earlier I brought up forcing characters to never switch sides and how this results in some odd teleporting and backwards controls after a KO sometimes. Initially I didn't think too much else of this besides those fixable issues, but now I've realized that there's a much bigger problem that can't be fixed so easily. It makes the corner a huge deal because it's so much easier than it should be to get your opponent there and keep them there for the remainder of the match. And conversely, if the AI was good I'd worry about how to get out of the corner myself, though I don't think they've ever cornered me even once. If PvP ever becomes a thing this will definitely be a problem there.

It would be nice if something could be added to the HUD that shows your benched characters' health. As I mentioned before, I can't really tell what's going on with red life. At first I assumed portraits tinted red meant they were still recovering, but since I've never seen them turn back to normal maybe that's not what they mean?

Quick Play could use some difficulty settings, both for harder/easier AI and higher/lower level opponents, with rewards scaling appropriately.

It would be nice if there was some way to go back and review the story, in case you miss anything the first time. Perhaps due to, say, a softlock bug? :^) Or like if you just wanna read the puns again or double-check for secret lore. The advanced chapters do show everything a second time, but they seem to be a much steeper grind to get to the ending again, and what if I wanted to read it a third time?

Some of the gimmick fights in events are interesting, but others are just really bad:

• Bosses that never flinch and randomly become invincible, why? It doesn't seem like there's any real strategy here beyond poking and praying the AI lets you get away with it, knowing there's nothing you can do that isn't punishable if they do decide to. Not to mention hoping the invincibility doesn't trigger, and then having to sit there and wait every time it does.
• Barbed Wire is very frustrating, especially if you're underleveled, since they just need one bit of chip to finish you off. Some characters have it worse than others if they have a lot of multihits. And again there's no strategy to avoid it. I thought maybe projectiles would work, since Barbed Wire sounds like something that would only damage you on direct contact... only to find that using Argus Agony was a very big mistake!
• Stone Skin is literally unwinnable if you don't have access to Armor Break, and since I notice they're all character locked you'll need an Armor Break for each character. As I mentioned above I'd hoped snapbacks could be an alternate solution, but sadly that wasn't the case. It's not much of a fight either, if do you have Armor Break you win.

tl;dr: add training mode pls

PHEW!!! What a read! This is all really great stuff, missingno. We appreciate the depth of your feedback and analysis. I won't go through every point of feedback, but I will say that we are aware of many of the issues you've noted in your post. Rest assured we're exploring solutions for a lot of these things. There were also plenty of things in your post that we hadn't identified, so that's super helpful! We'll be distilling your feedback and the feedback of the rest of the BETA testers, and hopefully be making noticeable improvements in the near future.

Ah and one last thing: so you're saying you don't want a training mode? :o

 

[*L30N1DAS*]

Now that I've spent quite a while with the game I think it's time to write up my full thoughts on everything. And I mean everything, this is gonna be a long one!

Spoiler: Controls

Alrightish, but I don't really like the two finger block or throw. I've found that sometimes my block gets read as a jab and it doesn't always give me throw when I want it.

If I may suggest a possible alternate control scheme, here's what I'd go with:

Divide the screen into left and right half, all actions now use just one finger and are dependent on which side of the screen you touch.

Left half:
: Movement
Tap/hold: Block
: Throw

Right half:
Tap tap tap: Ground chain
x2: Forward attack
, tap tap tap: Launcher and air chain
: Sweep

If we leave it at that, this can just be an option to pick while leaving the existing control scheme in the game too for whichever players prefer. But if this were to be the only control scheme you'd have room to add more things, and as I'll get into in a bit I do think there needs to be more things. Possible ideas:

Left half:
: Jump, possibly / for direction but if you really want to avoid diagonals it could just always jump forward.
Tap right when attacks hit: Just Defend! I think a JD mechanic would fit in well here to raise the skill ceiling without complicating controls. If it negates chip damage, this would go a long way towards making it possible for underleveled characters to stand a chance as long as you're good enough.

Right half:
: Room for one more kind of attack. Not sure what sort of generic category to put here, but perhaps instead of something generic you could try and have something more unique for each character. Actually, that'd be best, since everyone feeling too samey is an issue I'll get into next.

Spoiler: Movesets in general

So we've got ground chain, forward, sweep, launcher into air chain, and throw, plus one special and three supers. Such a tiny, tiny movelist. There's not a whole lot to do at neutral, you're pretty much just gonna poke with either ground chain or forward all the time, with the occasional throw. And combo-wise it doesn't feel like there's very much room to improvise and discover stuff. I can see there's a little more later in the skill tree, but I'm guessing these aren't gonna be massive game changers. If somehow they actually are, then don't save 'em for so late in the game lest people get bored and leave before they ever see them.

And what really stands out to me is that everyone feels pretty much the same, right down to mostly using the same combos. It feels like the only real differences between characters are who can keep going after an air chain, who can combo off of throws and raw tags, and what specials/supers can be comboed into. And that first one stops mattering anyway once you figure out using ground chain after launcher since that appears to just always be better. Maybe there's some more unique stuff I'm missing, but without a training mode it's hard to explore.

If you've seen BlazBlue RR, I feel they really nailed their movelists (unfortunately most everything else about the game they didn't nail, but that's beside the point). They have a very similar tappy tap swipey swipe control scheme to SG Mobile, but not only do they give you a lot more moves to work with, they also managed to make every character vary significantly. They don't all feel like tiny variations on the same template, but faithful adaptations of their playstyles from the original game! Maybe try and take some notes from them, if you can borrow the one thing they got right while actually making the rest of the game good too you'd have a hell of a hit.

Also gonna echo the sentiment earlier about not being able to just dash without automatically attacking, especially since that attack is punishable. If I'm at a distance and they didn't just wakeup super to give me a guaranteed punish, I'm hesitant to go in since that requires me to just cross my fingers and hope the AI lets me (which they often do, but it still feels bad that I have to count on its stupidity).

Lastly, throws. Earlier I heard that throws apparently have invincibility frames to let them beat attacks because it felt better that way, but this raises a very big question. If throws beat attacks and throws beat block, and jumping doesn't even exist, what the hell beats throws? Whenever I come across a Diamond Drop Bella, I always backdash before her wakeup since it doesn't look like there's any other way to be safe, and then in the rare event that the AI doesn't do it see my complaint about dash attacks.

Spoiler: Character specifics

Right now Peacock feels like the most flexible character who can do pretty much everything easily, and the fact that she doesn't even need OTG to corner combo off of air chain is so good. Not to mention Argus is always great. I think everyone should try and be brought up to this level by giving them all a comparable cool thing they can combo with. My one little nitpick is that one of the first things I tried to do with her was throw -> Argus and was super disappointed to see that doesn't work here - would be nice to try and preserve classic things like this.

As was mentioned in the other thread, Band can get hit out of ground chain into launcher, which makes him extremely difficult to use. I've found a nice corner setup off launcher, air chain, SSJ into ground chain or some raw tags (works best with Filia or Painwheel), but I'm always afraid to try it since it since launching means I'm just counting on the AI to hopefully let me get away with this. Band would be amazing if this gets fixed as that'd be his Peacock-tier cool thing. This is why we needed the combo counter to correctly note these things, probably would've been caught right away!

Filia's solid, especially with launcher into ground chain and it seems most consistent on her. Even when I mess that up she can still OTG off air chain with French Twist (though the timing on this is even stricter, would like to see it made more generous), or against Band she doesn't even need that, and unlike the others she can do this midscreen. I've also found she can combo off her raw tag, though I haven't been able to explore this much - when's Training Mode?

Bella's hit-or-miss, depending on the variant. I can't seem to get launcher into ground chain to work with her, and for air chain I've only been able to follow up in the corner with Dynamo or Diamonds are Forever. Which is great damage if she has them, Diamonds are Forever is especially insane. But the variant I have with Diamond Drop and Excellabella sucks since the only way to combo into either of those is to do it very early. Feels kind of ironic that her grappling isn't that good.

Val is like the bad version of Bella. Can't follow up from air chain, can't get launcher into ground chain to work. At least Countervenom is rad though since it does crazy damage. RNG took a while to give her to me and longer still to get a Silver so I haven't spent a whole lot of time experimenting with her, but my initial impression is that there's not much else to see here. Perhaps if I had a training mode I'd try to see if there's anything else I can find...

Painwheel suuuuuuuuucks. Her air chain is extremely punishable on hit, and unlike Band only leaving a small gap this is big enough that the AI gets me for it almost every time I accidentally do air chain. Of course I try to not air chain, but I'm not consistent (maybe if I had a Training Mode to practice), and when my moveset is already as tiny as can be it's that much worse when I have to cross part of it off. Not to mention that it isn't right for Painwheel of all characters to be someone who isn't supposed to ever take to the air! I've also gotten punished for the last hit of her ground chain on a few rare occasions. The only nice thing I've found she has going for her is being able to combo off raw tag, though again I haven't looked into this much.

parasoul is in the game and yet I can't play as her why would you do this to me you cruel jerks 0/10 uninstalled refunded filed a class action lawsuit

Spoiler: Specials and supers

It's very hard to experiment with new specials without a Training Mode. I'm hesistant to try taking a new special into battle if I don't already have an idea of what I might be able to do with it, and the long cooldown makes it hard to keep trying different things. Once I find one good move for someone, I just end up sticking with that.

Bursts seem totally useless. Unless I somehow missed something it looks like you can't break combos with them, they're just like any other special move besides the fact that they don't deal any damage. They're easily punishable and they can't extend combos either. Status ailments don't even seem that useful, and if I want one that badly I have better ways to get one that'll also deal damage on top of that.

Taunts, likewise, just don't feel beneficial enough to be worth it. I don't know if you have ways to make them safe either, even though it's likely the AI would probably let me get away with it most of the time I still don't want to test my luck like that.

Snapbacks seem too situational to be worth equipping. The HUD doesn't show how much life characters have left, so it's hard to keep track of a chance to take off red life (Hell, are they taking off red life? Since I can't see it, hard to verify how it works). It also appears you can only snap their second character in, no way to get the anchor out. Really, if you want the AI to tag out, knock 'em down and they'll probably do it on their own for you! Why spend my special move slot on it? The one thing I thought it might be good for was debuffing those Stone Skin bosses when I don't have access to Armor Break, only to find out that doesn't work. This would've been a good place to give them some application, especially since these fights are literally unwinnable without the right loadout so there ought to be more than one possible solution.

Supers' utility seems to be almost entirely defined by how easily you can combo into them. I can pretty much divide them into two categories, ones I can do a full combo into and ones I have to do early. All the supers that start with launchers are particularly troublesome since they don't work if you've already launched once. Obviously you can just fix it so super launchers don't drop like that, only regular launchers, but instead I think what would just feel cooler would be if they skip the launcher and go straight to the super if they opponent is already airborn.

Hitstop needs looking at (at least I assume this is hitstop and not the game consistently misreading my block input). It appears that every single super cannot be blocked on reaction to the flash, even fullscreen Argus. In SG only some supers do this, and generally only within a certain range. Also, I imagine this might be hella confusing to a lot of non-SG players wondering why their blocks aren't working, perhaps this needs to be better communicated to the player somehow.

Spoiler: Grinding and RNG

Screenshot of my progress. Have not used any of the beta shortcuts, wanted to get an accurate picture of what the progression curve is like.

Despite having gone through all the story, the first advanced chapter and halfway through the second (stopped by the bug I mentioned in the other thread), and each non-advanced event, I'm still pretty low level. I guess that's how it's supposed to be in order to give the game a long tail, but it's a little disappointing to see what a long way away I am from seeing level 3 supers and the fabled "Advanced Combos".

Leveling new characters to bring them up to the rest of your party is a bit of a chore. I've noticed Silvers level much more slowly than Bronzes, and I assume Golds are even worse. It also appears if I stick a low level character in the back to let my strongest ones carry them through a fight, they won't get as much XP.

Only got stuck once in the story, and that was due to that Band fight I mentioned in the bug thread where I couldn't block Timpani. Aside from that, difficulty curve felt fairly smooth. Treasure fights have been much harder and I had to just come back later, but presumably that's supposed to be the case. Events were also kinda frustating, though that's more due to the gimmicks which I'll get into later.

As far as grinding vs. skill goes, it does kinda feel like skill can only take you so far. When you're too underleveled, chip damage can be murder, you can't always get around that.

Skill points have been a bottleneck, especially in the early game, and I'm hesistant to spend what I have wondering if I should save them for a better silver or gold. Perhaps the events could drop a few for each featured character?

RNG is a cruel mistress. Took me a good while to get a Val, longer still to get a Silver. I've yet to see a Silver Peacock or Band, though since the Bronzes were my starter characters and Peacock is just so good in general I've kept leveling them to keep pace with my Silvers. I don't have a single Gold yet. Both times I opened a Shard to Get Relic I ended up getting dupes, which is very disappointing considering the fact that, well, they live up to their name.

I think it would be nice if behind the scenes the dice were loaded a little bit, at least in the beginning to get the player started (of course, maybe you're already doing some things, I'd have no way to know). If you don't have any of a character yet, make them a little more likely to show up. Likewise for when you haven't yet found any Silver or Gold characters (not specifically of a character, just to find your first Silver/Gold period). And for rare/expensive relics like Shard to Get, maybe they could reroll once or twice if they come up dupe the first time.

still don't like energy systems, I do not like it sam-I-am

Spoiler: Miscellaneous other things

Did I mention yet that you should add a Training Mode? I did? Oh, okay.

AI is a joke. Knock 'em down, hold block, and 99% of the time they will wakeup super, special, or raw tag to give you a free punish. I know it's hard to write smart AI, but surely you can at least randomize them a bit so they aren't this predictable. Tell 'em to throw once in a while, or even block.

Earlier I brought up forcing characters to never switch sides and how this results in some odd teleporting and backwards controls after a KO sometimes. Initially I didn't think too much else of this besides those fixable issues, but now I've realized that there's a much bigger problem that can't be fixed so easily. It makes the corner a huge deal because it's so much easier than it should be to get your opponent there and keep them there for the remainder of the match. And conversely, if the AI was good I'd worry about how to get out of the corner myself, though I don't think they've ever cornered me even once. If PvP ever becomes a thing this will definitely be a problem there.

It would be nice if something could be added to the HUD that shows your benched characters' health. As I mentioned before, I can't really tell what's going on with red life. At first I assumed portraits tinted red meant they were still recovering, but since I've never seen them turn back to normal maybe that's not what they mean?

Quick Play could use some difficulty settings, both for harder/easier AI and higher/lower level opponents, with rewards scaling appropriately.

It would be nice if there was some way to go back and review the story, in case you miss anything the first time. Perhaps due to, say, a softlock bug? :^) Or like if you just wanna read the puns again or double-check for secret lore. The advanced chapters do show everything a second time, but they seem to be a much steeper grind to get to the ending again, and what if I wanted to read it a third time?

Some of the gimmick fights in events are interesting, but others are just really bad:

• Bosses that never flinch and randomly become invincible, why? It doesn't seem like there's any real strategy here beyond poking and praying the AI lets you get away with it, knowing there's nothing you can do that isn't punishable if they do decide to. Not to mention hoping the invincibility doesn't trigger, and then having to sit there and wait every time it does.
• Barbed Wire is very frustrating, especially if you're underleveled, since they just need one bit of chip to finish you off. Some characters have it worse than others if they have a lot of multihits. And again there's no strategy to avoid it. I thought maybe projectiles would work, since Barbed Wire sounds like something that would only damage you on direct contact... only to find that using Argus Agony was a very big mistake!
• Stone Skin is literally unwinnable if you don't have access to Armor Break, and since I notice they're all character locked you'll need an Armor Break for each character. As I mentioned above I'd hoped snapbacks could be an alternate solution, but sadly that wasn't the case. It's not much of a fight either, if do you have Armor Break you win.

tl;dr: add training mode pls

So, I actually hadn't seen a screenshot until now, there are type advantages too? Huh.

 

[Cellsai]

So, I actually hadn't seen a screenshot until now, there are type advantages too? Huh.

Aye. Red beats Green, Green beats Blue, Blue beats Red. Dark and Light are strong against each other.
Different versions of characters have different types, so not all Filias are Dark type.

 

[MightyZug]

Just posting quickly as a proof of life -- apologies for the lack of responses the last couple of days, been a crazy week with lots of great stuff going into the build that I think everyone will dig.

Will circle back this weekend once the dust has settled (if not sooner) with more thorough responses to the notes that have been shared. Appreciate all of the feedback, looking forward to digging into it further!

 

[*L30N1DAS*]

Aye. Red beats Green, Green beats Blue, Blue beats Red. Dark and Light are strong against each other.
Different versions of characters have different types, so not all Filias are Dark type.

Huh. I like the way dark and light work.
S Y M B O L I S M.

 

[unicowz]

Just posting quickly as a proof of life -- apologies for the lack of responses the last couple of days, been a crazy week with lots of great stuff going into the build that I think everyone will dig.

Will circle back this weekend once the dust has settled (if not sooner) with more thorough responses to the notes that have been shared. Appreciate all of the feedback, looking forward to digging into it further!

any word on when the next wave of people are allowed into the beta?

 

[Ninja]

nothing yet...

but we might see something happen next week?

two weeks max.

 

[NoirCore]

nothing yet...

but we might see something happen next week?

two weeks max.

TWO WEEKS

I'LL TEACH YOU TO TROLL ME

...actually, no, I won't. :P

I sorta wish the original color palettes weren't the "weaker" ones, though, if the titles (Scrub, Bad Hair Day, Rerun) are any indication. I sorta like playing characters in their original colors (at least biologically-wise, such as hair, eyes, and skin).

 

[Cellsai]

So I've been playing it a bunch and have been trying to stick to playing naturally to see how the game flows overall. No using the "unlock everything" items in the shop or whatever. Unfortunately I ran into a bug that gave me 50 special move unlocks anyway, so my experience has been a little skewed. Without that happening though I still feel like I would have run into my issues below pretty quick.

Overall, a serious issue I ran into is how fast unlocking stuff stops mattering. Right now I've got enough Thenoite to buy several of any Relics I could want, but I basically have no urge or need to use them. This happens as a bunch of game systems all grind to a halt at the same time.

First off, the relics themselves.
By the time I'd reached the Advanced story quests I already had every Bronze character unlocked, most specials (even without the 50 boxes I got) and I had several silvers. This meant that basically every relic I opened was just giving me duplicates of every single item contained within. Sure the currency you get for this stuff is useful, but it's not enjoyable or exciting to open them. There's no point buying boxes now until I actually run out of various currencies.

Character leveling.
Silver characters are so much more powerful than Bronzes that it immediately feels like it's a waste of time not using them. Silver's also cost so much experience and gold to level up that it feels like I have to focus on just using one or two of them at a time to deal with how fast the difficulty level rises with advanced missions. This compounds the issue of not bothering opening Relics - why do I really need more silver characters if I can't ever really afford to use them?

Golds are so rare that it feels like I'm never actually going to open one - if I do get one that's awesome, but they don't make me excited to open boxes on the minor hope I'll get one.

Basically my thoughts are this: The game is in a weird place because you get so many boxes so fast (maybe the loot progression will be adjusted in some way down the line. I dunno.) that opening boxes quickly becomes meaningless. However, since characters are so important to the game it would feel bad locking them off behind lower drop rates.

The main mobile games I've played before this were Kingdom Hearts and Hearthstone. In both of those no matter how long I played, opening free booster packs of medals/cards was always exciting and something to look forward to. Skullgirls has already run kind of stale after a week.

 

[gluemchen]

any word on when the next wave of people are allowed into the beta?

TWO WEEKS! Never said this. Also waiting on code.

 

[Zidiane]

Basically my thoughts are this: The game is in a weird place because you get so many boxes so fast (maybe the loot progression will be adjusted in some way down the line. I dunno.) that opening boxes quickly becomes meaningless. However, since characters are so important to the game it would feel bad locking them off behind lower drop rates.

The main mobile games I've played before this were Kingdom Hearts and Hearthstone. In both of those no matter how long I played, opening free booster packs of medals/cards was always exciting and something to look forward to. Skullgirls has already run kind of stale after a week.

I unlocked everything from the beginning, so I never ran into these problems. Thinking about them and the late game, though, maybe there's a solution? What if instead of leveling up to give a character access to branches on the skill tree, you could have a chance at when opening a relic to get a "Cerebella/Painwheel/Big Band/whoever Coin" that could be used to unlock one branch on their skill tree? Example: if I open 5 boxes and get 3 Cerebella coins, I can choose any Bella to buff, unlocking their level 1 super buff, get the level two super, and get the passive. This would make the chance of opening relics exciting, since any of those coins can be used to level up any of your characters, even ones you haven't used much. Having a character level system could still work, to give a reason to use that specific character consistently.

 

[Ninja]

TWO WEEKS! Never said this. Also waiting on code.

dude no... you're late to the joke...

 

[Zidiane]

2 weeks late

 

[gluemchen]

God dammit It's starting to rub off on me. Shoot me!

 

[Enzy]

Anyone know if there are plans on bringing it to 3DS?

 

[Goodbye18000]

I have a question on if this is intended:

When I do a combo, I tap a couple times to do the chain. After the last hit, keep holding my right thumb on the screen and then place my left thumb to initiate a post-combo block. It doesn't seem like simplying holding my right thumb from the combo and then pressing my left thumb initiates the block. Is this intended as the block is specifically meant to be "use both thumbs at once"?

Otherwise I'm really enjoying the game! Combat's wonderful and the game's beautiful. Still needs a bit of tuning in terms of leveling and the gatcha system but I've sent all my feedback through the feedback button.