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Umbrella and General Char design philosophy

sheep

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Making a thread just to state some things floating in the boiling vat of water that is my head

I think we know the whole spiel on how umbrellas design was poorly designed red good yellow useless yadda yadda yadda, so first and foremost I wanted to talk about umbrella in her current state and, rather than talk about how her special moves can be changed or modified, instead think more in a general sense about the connection to how to recontexualize art of a move to fit a different playstyle and my personal thoughts on how I would design a new character to fit in with how its too much work to create new move animations and instead use existing assets.

I understand if the devs are following some other design philosophy, and I'm not a game designer lmoaoaooa.

Umbrella as it stands is very feast or famine, usually sitting on 2nd ready to completely snowball the game out of control on 2 bar > ravenous, or come on incoming and is basically dead due to very underwhelming to average buttons close up, which is further insulted by how good red is. You got the meme 2lk/2mk but it still stands that you're in a very scary place getting pressured with poor defensive stats until you can make distance.

By itself this already cements her place in 2nd, or playing point which honestly on paper sounds fine since you can start getting to red but her lackluster movement says otherwise, as well as having to play the game in yellow until you reach red and that's where the problems start to arise with how loaded red is.

The way salt grinder works makes you think you should be cashing out, until you realize that you can AND should be consistently holding red until you know for sure you'll end the game off it and even THEN its a risk to to use up all your pips and then drop and be left at a crippling disadvantage in comparision to what you SHOULD'VE been doing, which is to never use tongue twister and salt grinder, to the point where they feel nearly completely utterly useless, which is fucking dumb I wanna eat people as this character mang.

The worst part is, this character was designed like that, so like,




whats the point of adding grinder and tongue twister?









I hope I don't come off as too much of a little pisser but think about it. They told us that this character was rewarded off maintaining red, and they add 2 moves that just bait beginner players into further screwing themselves by walking in the opposite direction?

This is why I wanted to talk about recontexualizing moves and how I think key moves can be designed to be easily changed to fit a different use down the line for a game with such a long animation process, and when that's how I feel about something I have to say that locking SnS as a special you wanted to add into the game is very decisive. The move is umbrella sliding along the ground. Then theoretically, what if you wanted her to jump during it? Can you make it work? How long will it take? What,if any assets to reuse? Apply that to an actual scenario the devs might even be thinking about at this very moment with someone like Marie.

I don't mean any ill will towards the devs but because of that I feel less like I'm piloting a character with a umbrella that consumes people and more like a sword character that occasionally consumes people

only if it actually kills them




and its potentially risky

Frankly I don't have much hope for this character and would need lots of animation work (no) and, to go back a little on what I said earlier about changing specials and moves, I come forth with this terrible idea that would have the wiki editors flay me alive for. Even as I type they line up around my house with pitchforks and knives (thanks for the big job on umb).

Here's the poorly plotted pitch, its very likely this is the worst idea, but its fun to think on:

Change blue/yellow/red fd, and give each state different unique benefits. Blue can focus more on bubbles and space control at the cost of slightly reduced fd, red can focus on damage through chewing and have nerfed bubbles and slightly better fd, and yellow can act as a bridge to access either state. The idea is unpolished and coming red hot out of the furnace but you get the idea.

Overall though I think I'd accept some qol and swap from umb to Marie/anything else provided they interest me enough.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk I'm big toke from token from ted toke tv

P.S : I think bubbles are completely fine because the focus of their design is to manipulate the hunger bar, and the fault of this characters design is the effects of the hunger bar, not how they are manipulated.
 
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In regards to the grabs, you cash out on damage in exchange for giving up ravenous advantage, which is a choice players can make if they want to, it's not mandatory by any means unless reasons. Personally, I think umbrella is fine as she is currently but I would like her modes give her different advantages whilst still having ravenous as the most rewarding mode.
 
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