Skullgirls Mobile system suggestions

[Chaos]

Hi guys, I'm currently playing Skullgirls Mobile (Lv 18) and it's really a nice game but it has some opportunity areas. What do you guys think about the following suggestions.

1. PvP battles/duels against Friends, similar to Clash Royale (Duel players in real time, not AI). Some mobile games like Pokemon GO and Fire Emblem Heroes are great but the lack of real time battles vs friends/online its big downside.

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2. Factions or Guilds. Another interesting characteristic of Clash Royale are group of friends that create a guild and try to get a good ranking (or just for fun xD), in the case of Pokemon GO there are teams (Valor, Mystic, Instinct) where the players can feel part of an group and compete against rivals.
PvP Leaders, Guild Ranking or Factions/Team that control certain areas are good system that motivate players (Skullgirls mobile already has some location on the map those could be some locations to fight for, something like the game "For Honor" - Faction War). Also the Guild chat is a nice add.

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3. Hordes of Enemies. Special fights/special events would make the game more interesting. It could be done in two different ways, the first one a survival mode against a lot of rivals, the second way it's a fight agaisnt two or three weak enemies (soldiers, medici mafia) at the same time (Total enemies = 20~30), similar to Smash Bros polygon team.

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4. Boss Battles. It would be great a battle against giant bosses at the end of some chapters to bring diverse game modes to skullgirls. Check the incoming updates of Fire Emblem Heroes, game modes like survivor and defend the base will be a great improvement.

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5. Characters combos. Adding some customization to characters combos can create interesting move set for characters.

6. Alternative costumes. Alternative costumes by quests or events should be a must for a mobile game of this kind. An example of this is the recient event of Fire Emblem Heroes (Easter), I would suggest not only add a visual custome in battle but also change the image of the character.

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7. Event Maps with choices. Special event where the players can choice a route and change elements of the story are interesting. Think about a story mode where you could decide the final, it adds a lot of replay value if the choices really matter.

8. Small details like the "beep boop meow" of the coming soon message and the kaomoji that appears in the notification of full stamina are funny, maybe the kaomoji could be different for others messages like a relic notification.

9. Weekly Event. This idea is based on a game named Ragnarok Online, where every week there is a guild war event (War of Emperium). Ragnarok online is an mmorpg but what is really important is the War of Emperium, this event consist on every guild of the game fighting over castles where there is a giant stone (Emperium) that a guild should break and defend from every other guild on the server during an hour. I haven't completly conceptualized this but I think a weekly event of this kind would be a awesome aspect of the game.

 

[Doongle]

I'm all for these ideas but I think optimization should be the priority currently. I also think there might be game engine limitations on a survival/horde mode (dev pls confirm thx)

 

[moisterrific]

I've played this game since it soft launched and just reached level 50, so far my only 2 suggestions are performance improvements and some type of multiplayer. Compared to the console/PC versions, Skullgirls mobile has reduced a lot of graphical quality to make sure it runs well on phones and tablets. Hopefully in the future as mobile devices all become more powerful, this game can be better optimized to run at a smooth 60fps and look just as good as the PC version. As for multiplayer, it would be cool if we can battle opponents online in real time. Local multiplayer would be great too.

 

[Cellsai]

3. Hordes of Enemies. Special fights/special events would make the game more interesting. It could be done in two different ways, the first one a survival mode against a lot of rivals, the second way it's a fight agaisnt two or three weak enemies (soldiers, medici mafia) at the same time (Total enemies = 20~30), similar to Smash Bros polygon team.

I like this! As others have said, I don't know if the game would be actually able to handle dozens of character on the enemy team though. Maybe a system where they don't leave corpses, and are just the same 3 characters over and over. Every time a character repeats it could get a buff so the survival chain gets harder and harder.

4. Boss Battles. It would be great a battle against giant bosses at the end of some chapters to bring diverse game modes to skullgirls. Check the incoming updates of Fire Emblem Heroes, game modes like survivor and defend the base will be a great improvement.

I imagine boss battles are planned for this. Marie is a pretty obvious choice, but even super powered versions of others could be fun. A problem with actual big new boss characters is...

6. Alternative costumes. Alternative costumes by quests or events should be a must for a mobile game of this kind. An example of this is the recient event of Fire Emblem Heroes (Easter), I would suggest not only add a visual custome in battle but also change the image of the character.

...adding new costumes or characters is a LOT of work for a game like this. In Fire emblem, a new character is just 4-5 major new pieces of artwork, plus the few tiny new animation frames they need for battles.
In Skullgirls, almost every frame of animation is a full new picture that needs to be drawn. Even adding a hat, or a pair of bunny ears to a character means they need to draw an entire set of new animations for that character - that's hundreds of new pieces of art. Basically, new costumes can never be added to Skullgirls. New colors *can* be, as they are vastly simpler to do.
New characters are a possibility, but again, they still need hundreds of new frames of animation, so if they do add brand new characters, it won't be for a long time.

 

[Chaos]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm aware there some limitations but I believe real time interaction its a must now days.

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Costumes are a lot of work but it could be worth for the company if players vote for their favorite characters and only top 3 get an alternative costume. An example of this was done by Fire Emblem Heroes.

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Maybe two types of Boss battles would be better, normal size bosses and giant bosses.

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[Cellsai]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm aware there some limitations but I believe real time interaction its a must now days.
Costumes are a lot of work but it could be worth for the company if players vote for their favorite characters and only top 3 get an alternative costume. An example of this was done by Fire Emblem Heroes.

I'd obviously love more costumes for the characters, but I really think you're underestimating how much work it would take to do an alternate costume like this.

In Fire Emblem Heroes the characters are tiny, simple shapes. They all basically look the same - same poses, same animations, etc. For the most part, all the animators have to do is separately draw new heads, arms, legs and torsos. The animation style of the game means all they need to do is then rotate these pieces to have the characters animate. (This is a simplification of the process, but it's the gist) FE Heroes still looks great in my opinion, but the art style is incredibly simple and very easy to produce new content for.

Skullgirls however, has large, very detailed and ridiculously animated characters. Looking at the the Digital Art Compendium here, the characters look to have an average of around 1,500 frames of animation each. Most of those frames are completely unique and need to be drawn individually. Someone said elsewhere on this forum that the mobile versions of characters need far fewer frames to make (I think it was 1/3?)

Those numbers means it's not impossible to make new costumes for characters. But why make an alternate costume when it's basically the same amount of work to animate a brand new character?

Of course, having said all that, Skullgirls actually sort of already has an alternate costume character: Robo Fortune. From what I remember, she cost far less to make because most of her design work was already finished with regular Ms. Fortune. Maybe down the line there will be alternate costumes and I'm just talking out of my butt!

(Fukua is an example of an even cheaper route for alternate costume/character)

EDIT: Sorry for the wall of text! I don't want to sound like I'm attacking you! I actually really enjoyed reading your suggestions!

 

[Magma442]

Lets please never do voting again, especially not for costumes. Those were dark times.

 

[Cellsai]

Lets please never do voting again, especially not for costumes. Those were dark times.

But but... your avatar! ;_;

 

[Magma442]

Heres how the voting results for costumes will go.

top 3 will be
1. squigly
2. val.
3. peacock.

The rest will be a lot of yelling. Mostly coming from me, but still a lost of yelling.

 

[Chaos]

It's ok about the costumes, now I understand a little bit more about the character making process of Sg xD
There are 2 more systems/mechanics that I like to share with you, so let me know what do you guys think. I tried to adapt some ideas from Crusaders Quest to Skullgirls, maybe devs can refine them and apply some concepts in their own way.

10. The first one is a 10-level series of difficult stages where the player have to survive waves of powerful enemies, it could be something like a Medici tower. I'll try to explain this with the image below; there are some minions at each floor/stage and at the end there is a boss waiting for the player, but the bosses of the stages 1 to 7 are top players of the previous week ranking so... at 7th stage the player will be fighting the 1st team of the pvp ranking (controlled by AI of course). The other 3 stages have "normal" AI bosses, for the enemies distribution of each floor think about something similar to a Super Mario game.

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11. This one is easier to explain, Co-op Maps. It could be difficult co-op bosses, stages like the Medici tower explained above ^ , but it should have 2 modes:
- 2 players are assigned as a tag team by the random matchmaking system and must cooperate in order to defeat the formidable boss/enemies. At the end of the match, a player will be assigned as an MVP, and will receive 2x of the rewards offered by the dungeon he is in. MVP is calculated based on the sum of damage done throughout the duration of the boss fight and some other factors like debuff/buff.
- 2 friends cooperating in order to defeat the enemies...

 

[Magma442]

while I dont the co-op could work Something like the tower mechanic could. I like it.

 

[JDude330]

While we're on the topic of some sort of multiplayer mechanic, could we get something similar to Blazblue RR's versus? If you don't know, Blazblue RR keeps your characters unlocked abilities and skills, but keeps every character at balanced stats to lead to fair and strategic fights. This mode could be played locally or online. Playing with my brother, I really enjoyed that mode (until microtransaction hell), and I'd like to see it with Skullgirls as well.

The tower mode suggestion is something I would consider almost necessary for replay value. One of the biggest issues I have with the current daily events is that they don't give you boxes to open, OR Theonite to buy boxes. A tower mode that rewards you with these things based on your current level (maybe using Quick Play Energy?) Would really make the game last longer.

 

[Hypertripp]

If Skullgirls were to implement some subspace-emissary type game mode alia Super Smash Bros then I would be more than ecstatic.

 

[Cellsai]

while I dont the co-op could work Something like the tower mechanic could. I like it.

Kingdom Hearts X was originally a solo game with some semi-multiplayer aspects (I think they've recently added in full multiplayer, but I don't play it anymore).

It worked by putting you against a ridiculously powerful enemy. This enemy is so strong it basically one hit kills you every time, but you can delay its attacks by dealing enough damage. Eventually it will kill you though, and that can't be avoided. However, this enemy's health doesn't regenerate after the match ends. When you replay the fight, it still has all the damage you did in your previous attempts. You and your friends can all challenge this same boss enemy, with all of the damage you each do in your separate fights contributing. Once the boss is dead, another one respawns with higher stats, so you can keep fighting it over and over and over.

 

[MightyZug]

@Chaos Thanks for sharing your ideas!

I can't go into tons of detail on exactly what we have in store, but I will note that we will be having some asynchronous competitive "ladder" style modes coming in future updates (where you fight AI controlled versions of other players' teams). Excited to see what you think!

We have also been thinking about Sync PvP for some time...