[2020] Rocket Arena Update 2.0 Notes

Welcome to Season 2! This Season brings with it some major updates. There’s Competitor and combat updates, a new map, several event game modes, and more!

Ever since Rocket Arena launched, the Combat Team has tried to absorb as much of our Community’s feedback as possible. Feedback on individual Competitors is something we can typically act on quickly, however we try to take a bit more of a calculated approach to significant global combat adjustments. Before making any such change, we want to ensure we’re actually going to improve and/or deepen the gameplay experience for our players. With that said, over the last few months two key pieces of consistent feedback emerged that we wanted to tackle head on for the start of Season 2:

1.      Players want a way to get back to the ground quicker. The lack of an “on command” option to do so contributes greatly to the feeling of being too “floaty” at times.

2.      First time impressions of the Dodge ability are mixed. Many new users struggle to understand its utility, and the movement behavior fails to match their expectations of how a dodge mechanic should feel. Other players (even experienced ones), express a desire for Dodge to have more varied applications and opportunities for skillful execution.

After first considering numerous separate solutions for these two points, we eventually realized there was a promising shared solution that could help address both simultaneously. The answer? Revamp the Dodge ability to support omnidirectional movement.

Old Dodge (Movement Input)

The previous version of Dodge was already useful at avoiding damage, and could even be used in specific situations to safely reach an objective or recover back to solid ground. However, its movement capabilities were restricted to a single horizontal plane. The player could only go left, right, forward, or back. It also barely displaced the player from their previous position, which often left players in the same precarious situation they were in before they Dodged. 

 

New Dodge (Movement Input + Aim Direction)

The new version of Dodge is in many ways a natural evolution of the previous implementation, building off everything it already did well. All elements of Dodge remain the same as before, except for the way the Dodge launch direction and launch strength are handled. Now, instead of simply launching the player in the direction of their movement input (Old Dodge), we also factor in the player’s aim direction! This change introduces a new layer of verticality to the Dodge movement, allowing players to Dodge upwards or downwards in addition to the standard cardinal directions of the Old Dodge. We tried to design this to feel as intuitive as possible, so the way you interact with the new mechanic is fairly straightforward:

• The more forwards or backwards you’re moving, the more the Dodge launch direction is influenced by your aim direction.
• The more left or right you’re moving, the less the Dodge launch direction is influenced by your aim direction.

General movement input examples:

• Moving forwards, you Dodge in the direction you're aiming. 
• Moving backwards, you Dodge in the opposite direction you’re aiming.
• Moving left or right, you simply Dodge left or right (nearly identical to the Old Dodge).
• No movement input still allows you to Dodge in-place.

To go along with this new directionality, we’ve also increased the base launch strength of Dodge so you’ll be able to travel more distance than before. The goal is to give players more opportunities to use Dodge in the clutch as an additional movement option. The New Dodge has one more trick up its sleeve too - the more downwards your launch direction is, the stronger your launch strength becomes. In other words, you can now utilize this New Dodge to fast fall back to the ground. Simply look towards the ground, hold forwards, and Dodge!

The possible applications of the New Dodge are immense, and we’re sure our Community will soon discover even more than we’ve thought of already. Here are a few examples though to get your imaginations a head start:

• Floating high in the air above an enemy Mega Rocket zone that’s about to be captured. Dodge downwards to propel yourself out of the sky and into the zone to prevent the score!
• A teammate passes you the Rocketball from across the map, but the ball’s going to fly right over your head. Dodge upwards at an angle to catch the ball mid-air!
• Trying to recover back onto the map, but you’re out of jumps and already below the nearest platform. Dodge upwards to fling yourself above the platform and land safely.

Lastly, we understand that this new mechanic may take some getting used to for those who were proficient with the previous Dodge. We’re hopeful though that all of you will ultimately love the new gameplay opportunities this mechanic presents you in Rocket Arena. As always, please keep sending us your feedback. It’s greatly appreciated, and we’re absolutely listening.

TLDR: Dodge now has omnidirectional control that lets you Dodge towards (or away from) your aim direction when moving forwards (or backwards). The base Dodge launch strength is also increased, and the strength is amplified the more downwards your launch direction is.

Leef Joins the Tour!

A mysterious competitor from the far reaches of Crater (we think). Leef gleefully flings spiraling Arcane Rockets from his ancient wooden staff. Hitting opponents with these projectiles powers up Leef’s Charged Beam -- a devastating attack that can pass through multiple enemies at once, repeatedly damaging anyone caught in its trail. The Charged Beam is especially effective on opponents snared mid-air by Flitt, Leef’s energetic insect-like companion. Leef is also one of the more elusive competitors in the arena thanks to his omnidirectional Warp Dash that lets him bend around cover or zip through enemies, damaging them along the way. Leef’s frenetic, glass cannon playstyle is ideal for players who like combo-centric gameplay, with an emphasis on cleverly outmaneuvering their opponents.

Flux

The current state of Flux is somewhat of a paradox. Statistically, we know that Flux is both underperforming and underpicked compared to other Competitors. However, elements of her kit can also often cause significant frustration for opposing players due to a perceived power imbalance and lack of counterplay opportunities. So with all this in mind, we need to simultaneously buff Flux to make her more competitive, and also make adjustments to her kit to reduce opposing player frustrations. For this update, the Black Hole Cat got a majority of the focus. 

The Black Hole Cat perfectly embodies both sides of the Flux paradox. It’s an incredibly hard-hitting attack that can feel overpowered when it connects, but it does so too inconsistently for Flux players to truly rely on it in direct combat. To address the former, we’ve implemented damage falloff on the Black Hole Cat’s explosion. Previously, getting hit by any part of the Black Hole Cat’s explosion would result in the maximum damage being dealt. Now, the damage output decreases the farther from the Black Hole Cat’s center the opposing player gets. At the outermost edge of the Black Hole Cat’s AoE, the damage output is only 40% of what it is at the center. The goal is to promote counterplay by rewarding players for taking action to escape the attack.

Next, we addressed how inconsistent this attack was for our Flux players. To do this, we made several improvements to the Black Hole Cat’s auto-homing logic to make it more reliable and better align with the Flux player’s intent. First, we significantly increased the homing acceleration the Black Hole Cat has towards its enemy target. Instead of the sluggish, meandering turns it previously took, the Black Hole Cat will now aggressively pursue its target. We’ve also completely overhauled the target acquisition and tracking logic of the Black Hole Cat to make its homing behavior more consistent and reliable. While scanning for homing targets, the Black Hole Cat’s logic now scores all potential targets based on their distance (closer targets getting a higher score), and prioritizes targets closer to the path of its current direction. This change means that the Black Hole Cat will more frequently target the player Flux intended. Additionally, the Black Hole Cat’s homing target detection radius now scales proportionally as the Black Hole Cat’s size increases. Before now, the detection radius was a fixed size, which made predicting its movement and homing capabilities very challenging for Flux players. This also led to the perception that the Black Hole Cat became more oblivious to enemies the larger it got. To ensure all of these improvements to the auto-homing lead to balanced interactions with opposing players, the Black Hole Cat now has a maximum turn threshold it can deviate from its original course (i.e. the direction it was moving before it acquired a homing target). If the Black Hole Cat turns beyond this threshold, the auto-homing immediately ends. So in other words - the Black Hole Cat’s homing is now reliable enough to make it a consistent threat, and opposing players who take action to avoid it can be rewarded for their efforts by making it miss them.

Finally, as Flux players well know, her Primary ammo count is much lower than your average Rocket Arena Competitor. This is actually crucial to her balance (trust me, an entire map filled with bouncing Rockats is the stuff of rainbow-fueled nightmares), but it can absolutely make navigating the arena with rocket jumps a frustrating and laborious task for Flux. To reduce the necessity of rocket jumping for even the smallest of obstacles, we’ve increased Flux’s ground and air jump strengths. We’ve also reduced her reload time slightly to make her more frequent reloads less tedious, and to help her in scenarios that require multiple consecutive rocket jumps.

• Black Hole Cat explosion now has damage falloff
• Black Hole Cat now has a maximum homing turn threshold
• Increased Black Hole Cat homing acceleration from 2000.0 to 5500.0
• Improved Black Hole Cat homing targeting logic (combined target distance and angle weighting score)
• Black Hole Cat homing target detection radius scales with the projectile’s increasing size
• Leef's Charge Beam can detonate the Black Hole Cat if shot through the center
• Increased ground jump strength from 1700.0 to 1900.0
• Increased air jump strength from 1600.0 to 1800.0
• Reduced reload duration from 1.1 to 0.9 sec

Jayto

For Season 2, Jayto gets a couple small buffs to help improve his consistency in combat. Specifically, we’ve slightly increased the collision radiuses of his single Skypiercer Rocket (Tri-Rockets remain unchanged) and his Rocket Swarm projectiles. The first of these tweaks brings the overall accuracy of his Skypiercer Rocket up to a more competitive level with the rest of the roster, and better aligns the collision of the rocket to its visuals. The adjustment made to the Rocket Swarm projectile collision makes this a more reliable attack, and improves the viability of fanning the Rocket Swarm across a larger area to keep damage on opponents. In truth, both of these changes almost went live in the last update, but we needed just a bit more playtesting time with them to be sure we were on the right path. So thanks for your patience, Jayto players! With these improvements, combined with the larger buffs he received in the previous update, Jayto should hopefully be in a great position for the foreseeable future.

• Increased Skypiercer Rocket projectile collision radius from 130.0 to 140.0
• Increased Rocket Swarm projectile collision radius from 100.0 to 110.0

Mysteen

The previous buffs to Mysteen greatly increased her viability and pick rate. This was awesome to see, and exactly what we hoped for! Unfortunately though, with more eyes on Mysteen than ever, we quickly discovered a pretty gnarly bug with her Mirror Shield that was giving her an unfair, unintended advantage in several gameplay scenarios. Basically, due to an underlying collision issue, we found that the Shield was capable of blocking projectiles from hitting Mysteen’s back (i.e. the vulnerable spot it’s not intended to protect). Even worse, the bug wasn’t consistent! Some projectiles could never damage her, others were more of a roll of the dice. This was obviously a balance issue since the entire counterplay against the Shield revolves around being able to damage Mysteen from her unprotected backside. With this bug, Mysteen and her Phantasm could effectively get 360° of protection while their Shields were active. So, suffice it to say, we’ve fixed this issue entirely. Shooting Mysteen in the back while her Shield is active will now reliably damage and impulse her.

The other change worth noting is that Mysteen’s Phantasm now receives all of the Artifact modifiers that Mysteen has currently equipped. One of the main purposes of the Phantasm is to serve as a convincing enough double to the real Mysteen. The Phantasm is tuned precisely for this goal. For example, with zero Artifacts equipped, the Phantasm matches Mysteen’s core movement traits perfectly. However, with movement modifying Artifacts equipped, players could start seeing unintended differences emerge between Mysteen and her Phantasm in areas like their movement speed or jump heights. This change to grant the Phantasm Mysteen’s current Artifact modifiers keeps the desired consistency between Mysteen and her Phantasm, and also better aligns the gameplay with player expectations. In practice, this is a relatively minor change. The real benefits of Artifacts come from how players cleverly utilize the modifiers to gain gameplay advantages. Rest assured, this level of creativity lies far outside the Phantasm’s personal skill set!

• Fixed a bug that prevented enemy projectiles from reliably damaging Mysteen from the back while she was Shielding
• Phantasm now gets all of the gameplay modifiers from Mysteen's currently equipped Artifacts
• Mysteen can no longer accidentally launch herself out of the arena when jump-Levitating onto air lifts

Miscellaneous Competitor Fixes

• Blastbeard: Fixed Blastbeard's Shockwave not being visible when activated far away
• Boone: Fixed issue causing Vortex spawn effects to be rotated incorrectly on other clients
• Plink: Fixed Boomerang exploding instead of bouncing or rocket jumping when shooting at certain downwards angles
• Topnotch: Fixed issue causing Primary grenade explosion effects to be incorrect in certain scenarios

Play vs AI 

Players can now matchmake solo in the new Play vs AI playlist! This unblocks low population regions for all progression tracks; achievements, challenges, character progression, and just being able to play the game with no wait times. Players in the Play vs AI playlist can now select the same character as teammates as well, allowing for duplicates. The Play vs AI playlist has new bot types like Jayto, Blastbeard, Amphora, and Izell that backfill solo players. They are dynamically buffed or debuffed as human allies drop out or rejoin a match so that its resistant to quitting and a solo player where all teammates quits can still win their match.

• New Bot Types!        
  • Bot versions of Jayto, Blastbeard, Amphora, and Izell have been added to the game
• New PvE Mode! Bot Knockout
  • Battle the new Competitor bots in the Knockout game mode
• New Playlist! Play vs AI
  • Consists of Rocketbot Attack and the new Bot Knockout mode, and replaces the current Rocketbot Attack playlist
• Play vs. AI Playlist
  • Players can now choose the same Competitor in this playlist
    • We know there are times when players just want to play a certain Competitor, be it for achievements, challenges, or even just because they love them.  With this change, players will have a playlist where they can do any or all of those things.
  • Bots will now be debuffed (deal less and take more damage, etc.) if a player leaves the match.  The debuff increases for each player who leaves.  If a player rejoins the match, the debuff will decrease.
    • We're always trying to find ways to give players a better experience when another player leaves a match.  Debuffing the bots will give the remaining players a better chance of winning and hopefully reduce some of the frustrations when a teammate leaves.
  • Competitor bots will now be added as teammates if players fail to matchmake with other players
    • No more going it alone!

Artifacts

With each new season, our goal is to continue to evolve Rocket Arena's combat and give players new ways to express themselves. For Season 2, in addition to regular balance tweaks, we're introducing 3 new artifacts!

Boost Capacitor

Fixed an issue where the Social level 3 was giving more of an increase than intended

Treasure Hunt

Players will now gain a 30% speed boost for 1.5 sec after collecting a coin

• Gotta Go... you know the rest!  Everyone knows collecting coins is better when moving faster.  It's science.  We feel this gives the Coin Round a fun chase feeling as you try to keep your speed up, while also helping players pickup spaced out coins faster, especially on the ground.
  

General Mode Changes

Replaced the Recoveries stat with Assists in the post game report for all modes

• You like Assists more than Recoveries?  We do, too.  

• Post Game Squad Assist: New UI in the Play menu shows teammates from the last match and enables players to easily party up and make new friends
• More challenges and XP per day: Rocket Arena has now increased from 2 to 3 daily challenges and has moved up from 1 to 2 weekly challenges
• Post Game Friend/Party drop-down: When in the Post Game Stats menu, players can now select the drop down tab on a player's name and send a friend request or a party request for ease of access

• Trip Mines can no longer be used to let other trip mine lasers clip through geo
• Fixed Mega Gift sometimes not working when fired at moving shutters in Apogee Acres
• Fixed Rocket Magnet not being visible when activated far away

These new outfits are now available ongoing in the character locker, purchasable for both Rocket Parts and Rocket Fuel.

Epic

• Tangerine Princess Kayi
• Forest Protector Leef

Rare

• Bubbling Brook Leef

Uncommon

• Avocado Leef
• Plum Leef
• Blue Hokkaido Leef
• Blue Daisy Leef
• Vitis Leef

As always, we value your feedback and if you’d like to leave us some now, or in the future, hit us up on the Rocket Arena Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch Streams, DMs, etc. - we read as much as we can!

Thanks for being part of our community and we’ll see you in Crater! #LETSROCKET

The team at FSG