[Suggestion] Ways to improve the core features of Onigiri

[Dream]

I will make this a list of features of Onigiri which can be improved in alot of ways. Others can also list some on their replies and I will edit and put them on this first post and give credit. Others can also tell their opinions.

1. Flinching
While flinch actually exists in this game, I think it doesn't affect enemies much while it gives the players too much disadvantage. Flinching an enemy pushes the enemy back and stops movement for abit but they can still suddenly cast a skill that sometimes leads to our deaths on Hell modes.
Suggestion: Flinching small general monsters should render them unable to move (cannot move, cannot cast a skill, etc.). Don't tell me that it would make the game less challenging because the mobs still actually hurts if they managed to hit you. Also, it doesn't make sense that you're an Oni and the mobs takes your hits as if it's nothing.

2. Super Armor (General Monsters)
When enemy casts a skill, there are absolutely no way to cancel their skill but to kill them before it actually hits you which is really... annoying and lame. There should be a feature in-game called Super Armor. Some are prolly familiar with Super Armor but I would still explain how Super Armor works. Super Armor is your natural shield on every move you do like let's say when blocking, using dodge and casting a skill etc. There should be a fixed amount of Super Armor when doing these actions. Super Armor doesn't reduce incoming damage but instead prevents getting flinched. If your Super Armor broke, it should result to getting flinched which cancels the current movement and prevents you to move for a short period of time. For example, there's this big frog called Gama and when it starts to cast it's flame breath skill, there is no way to cancel it.
Suggestion: There should be alternatives other than face-tanking, blocking, dodging, and that's breaking the enemy's super armor they generate upon casting the skill. For example, Gama has now 100 SA (Super Armor) when casting it's flame breath skill and you now have 100 SA break on your Rank I skills. Obviously, if you cast your Rank I skill on Gama while it's on casting animation, the flame breath skill would be cancelled because you managed to break it's SA.

3. Super Armor (Player)
The thing is, currently, if you cast a skill and the enemy used it's super duper basic attack like "Bite", your skill automatically gets cancelled because you got flinched. This is just ridiculous, how can an enemy cancel an Oni's skill with just a very simple attack?
Suggestion: Same as the enemy, players should also get a fixed amount of SA on certain actions like casting a skill so enemies cannot simply flinch players when they cast a skill. Melees should also be granted much more SA than Ranged and VIT stat should grant SA bonuses.

4. Super Armor (Bosses)
We all know that bosses should be special, they should be granted infinite SA (like what we have currently) but it's still unfair that there's no such opportunity or barely some opportunities to do burst damage because they can retaliate anytime they want which is really dangerous for us players especially melees.
Suggestion: Improve the boss mechanics ALOT. There's actually a boss which has decent mechanics like Kyoukotsu (Black Skeleton Boss). There are obvious mechanics when fighting that boss like,
1. When it glows red, you can actually charge to it and go melee-yolo-mode because usually, it will just jump above you and won't hit you. Though there are times where it will suddenly attack you on melee instead of jumping.
2. If you faint your attacks like going near it and suddenly retreating, the boss will punch the ground multiple times giving you time to attack it on the sides but if you attack it too much you will get hit by it's double ground smash and this is what I call a good mechanic.
Suggestion: These mechanics of Kyoukotsu should be applied to all bosses because it's just ridiculous that sometimes, you actually have to face tank the boss just to be able to land a hit or be forced to just go ranged all the way because going melee is suicide. I'm not saying that every boss should have all the same pattern as Kyoukotsu but all bosses should have some small windows of letting the players attack "safely".

5. Enemy AI (General Monsters)
I'm pretty sure most has experienced running around abit before attacking a Kappa especially when you're a melee. Why? Because the AI is so wierd. Sometimes Kappa would just stare at you when you go near, sometimes it would instantly throw a spear/javelin or whatever once you reach it's attack range or sometimes it would also chase you and attempt to stab you multiple times. Players are forced to see first what these ranged mobs have in mind before attempting to attack and this is NOT challenging at all, it's more of just a hassle.
Suggestion: Give the enemy a pattern. The very first action of general mobs should be fixed like let's say for a Kappa, they should be forced to just throw a spear/javelin once the player approaches, after that, they can be random for all I care.

6. Enemy AI (Bosses) + Skills
Bosses on Onigiri needs ALOT of improvement. Most bosses are just programmed to cast random skills whenever which plain sucks. There are also some imbalanced skills of bosses like let's say that Yatsukazou (Stone Statue Boss), it has a swipe that has an uber huge range that even timing an advanced dodged would not prevent you from getting hit, heck I even tried rolling towards the boss thinking that maybe the swipe's blind spot is behind the boss but no, the swipe still hits me.
Suggestion: When it comes to AI, they should have a solid pattern aka "mechanics". Let's take Tiamat as an example. When behind Tiamat, he will just spam those instant cast tail whips till you're dead and this is so freaking unfair because sneaking behind Tiamat is not even an easy task in the first place. These tail whips should be charged for let's say 2~3 seconds before the sweep animation and there should be a fixed follow up skill for it where the boss will turn around and breath a cone of fire. With this improvement, the player would definitely think that instead of running away from the boss when it starts charging for a tail whip, they should just run towards the boss and go behind it because after the tail whip, they will have a small window to attack Tiamat since it will do a follow up attack after the tail whip. After Tiamat's tail whip + flame breath combo and it detected that the player is still attacking from behind it should escape by flying and do it's usual thing which is dropping those fire bombs. With these kinds of mechanics, at least melees would not be totally forced to go ranged like what I did on Yatsukazou where I just spammed Blue Fangs till the boss is dead.

7. Skill Mechanics
Isn't it boring that there are barely any crowd control skills and debuffs in this game? Even if there is, the chances of the effects of the crowd controls and debuffs getting applied is too low. Also, why the heck are we forced to retreat when using Dancer Strike? Why the heck is falling smash so useless lol
Suggestion: Improve and increase the crowd control skills and debuffs. The chances of the effects getting applied to trash mobs should be high but extremely low against bosses. There are also tricky skills like Dancer Strike which forces the player to retreat after casting the skill, this can be improved by making the retreat jump manually casted. What I mean is let's say you used Dancer Strike, it should not automatically make you retreat but instead, you should press "this/that" button to manually cast the retreat jump.

8. Skill Evolution
Why the heck is Momotarou so picky when it comes to evolving skills? What I mean is there are some weapons that cannot evolve their skills even if you already maxed that certain skill. See image below.

Basically, the game requires you to RNG farm a weapon with high grade, good set of skills and is evolve capable. Now that's just ridiculous.
Suggestion: Remove this random restriction on some weapon that prevents it's skills to be evolved and increase the needed Ryou for evolving skills instead.

9. Jumping
The only use of jumping in this game is to be able to jump on fences, stairs etc.
Suggestion: Increase the height that jump can reach and let some skills work only when you jump. There should also be some stomp skills of mobs/bosses which can be dodged using jump.

Feel free to add/suggest or state your opinions regarding this list. I also forgot some so I will edit this once I remember them lol

P.S. The game is great, just needs some improvements. I hope some moderator let the devs hear about these suggestions and even the other suggestion threads.

[Doguso]

Before I actually fully read this post, thank you OP for not just complaining about how "X and Y" system is horrible and ACTUALLY making a post that offers ways to improve the game... breath of fresh, reasonable air.

In regards:

Flinching: I can agree to this. The recovery time of monsters' flinching is too quick and there is a CD between when a monster can flinch again. When you attack a monster and they flinch on the first or second hit of a 3-4 hit combo, they won't flinch a second time even if you hit them 2-3 more times. This makes it hard, and disadvantageous, to actually use a full combo, it leaves you too vulnerable. Like wise, it seems easier to get hit repeatedly because you don't get the same anti-flinching mechanism unless you roll out of the way. While that isn't bad for the player (I'm ok with that roll-mechanic), it would be nice if the monster couldn't interrupt your combo. I don't see why a tiny Daruma can head butt me as it's being cut and pummeled by my massive odachi.

Super Armor: I can't really disagree or agree on this. I can see in some situations it'd be useful to break an enemy skill, but at the same time, our skills aren't interruptable either (as far as I've noticed). Maybe with some bigger enemies or bosses that are preparing to use a powerful spell, like one that is near or completely unavoidable, yeah sure. But with normal enemies, I think dodging works just fine.. it's not hard to see a gama using it's flame breath, roll to the side, and continue to pummel it while it is stuck in flame breath for at least .5-1 sec (it can stop it's attack but it has a moment that it can't and it won't always, leaving it vulnerable). I do find having a Super Armor mechanic on all enemies to be pointless and would diminish the value of rolling/blocking and put even more emphasis on doing damage.

Boss mechanics: I've actually used melee weapons exclusively on every boss up to Kyoto so far and the only one I've had trouble with are Tiamat (although I've saw a video demonstrating a melee sword strategy on him, I just don't have enough practice using it nor the skills necessary for that dynamic kind of movement) and Ahriman (who I now can beat without a single death with a sword with the new strategy/"abuse" I was told). Every boss has their weaknesses and methods to beat, melee and ranged. Some are easier with different methods sure, but I've had no issue otherwise. I found it hard to beat Beelzebub with a bow but I can do it with never getting hit with any melee weapon; like-wise I've heard the opposite from other people. And I've found that every boss DOES have a safe moment to strike, they're just not that obvious all the time.

While the boss mechanics could be improved drastically to be more entertaining, I haven't found an issue with surviving a boss's attacks. Ahriman is the worst, it seems like every attack of his is instant death, but the trick is to know how to avoid his attacks before he even uses them; thus every boss does seem to have a unique way to approach them. I'm hoping later bosses will be more fun as it seems the Odin fight is a good fight, from what I've heard, so we can hope they improve over time. Adding a super armor mechanic doesn't seem like it'd do much.

Enemy AI: I actually do agree about the AI though. Most games always have a terrible AI and Onigiri seems to be a bit lower on the list of "good enemy AI." If anything should be improved, it's this.

Boss AI: Actually.. I haven't noticed "random skill" AI on the bosses at all... the bosses seem to be scripted to use specific attacks at specific ranges with specific follow-ups/patterns. In fact, they're so heavily patterned and scripted, it's REALLY easy to abuse them to the point of being less fun to fight against because they're so predictable.

Tiamat: Ok, you should NEVER, EVER stand behind a 5-headed dragon-monster-god with a giant tail.. seriously, why would you do that? Let it swing it's tail at you till you're dead, you should've recognized after the first hit that standing behind it is suicide. Attack Tiamat from the side and you're COMPLETELY safe, its' tail will attack you and its' heads will miss you in most cases (it's easy to see the fireballs that might hit you). Granted, the "turn around and breath a cone of fire" would be a nice touch that adds more dynamicness/randomness to the fight, and would make sense for a 5-headed dragon-monster-god to do. Seriously though, just attack Tiamat from his side and you'll be fine... not every bosses' weakness should be his backside...

Yatsukazou I actually agree with, his attacks are murderous on any melee. I feel like if the leveling curve was adjusted properly, he'd be more reasonable for melee characters (despite being ~10-12 levels under, I could still survive most of his attacks barring his easily dodgeable drill). Still, there's probably a method for melee attacking him that I nor you have discovered yet.

If you want boss advice in terms of melee, I'd be glad to give you some; most bosses are easily doable with any melee weapon currently.. if the boss AI/skills has any problem whatsoever, it is not for what you claim, it's the lack of randomness and dynamicness, every boss is too predictable.

Skills: What's wrong with Dancer Strike? I LOVE the retreat aspect of that skill, it's saved me many times and makes hit-and-run tactics more viable, or to set up a bait attack to force an enemy to attack and then safely counter-attacking a 2nd time. If you don't like the skill, don't use weapons that have it... or just don't use it.. I see nothing wrong with skills like Dancer Strike, there are plenty of skills that do the same thing without the retreat aspect if you so wished for a skill like that... like the Void Slash skill.

I would like to see more crowd control and status effects though, there doesn't seem to be much of that which is a little sad. It might make hell runs a bit too easy though, wouldn't hurt to have some skills like that anyway just to see.

Skill Evolution: I heard skill evolution was disabled for CBT (although I've evolved 2 skills) and I heard mages had a lot of skill evolution in CBT. I don't know much about this but I would assume Momo is more useful than he currently is (not very outside of combat). Hopefully OBT makes this better but if not, I do agree that skills should be more evolvable... I literally had a weapon that had Void Slash 1 and 2 on it, both max leveled, but I couldn't evolve Void Slash 1. Maybe because it already existed, but if I had rank 1 on there, why can't I have 2 rank 2's?

Jumping: I feel like this was just added as a basic standard of any 3D mmo. Most 3D games incorporate jumping even if it is useless (WoW...). I would love to see this enhanced and more viable in-game, although if skills had "jump" limitations on it I would be a bit pissed. Weapons already only have 3 skills on them and having a limitation-set-up like that would make it harder to incorporate with the other skills aka chaining skills would be harder if you had to suddenly interrupt the chain so your character could jump. Maybe if jumping was made smoother and better... I doubt that'd happen at this point though.

[Silveryshine]

Actually there is SuperArmor for the player in the game, but the window of it while attacking is rather small. Additionally, the lag makes it all random whether you get hit during SuperArmor or not. But as far I can tell, you wont flinch while getting striked during your SuperArmor. Additionally, SuperArmor decreases the amount of damage that you receive by a small amount, like the damage that you should receive gets cut from 100% to 75% or so. To mention also, using some abilities grants you 100% immunity to flinch for a pretty long time of 1 up to 2 seconds. I especially notice this when using twin swords, there a chance for SuperArmor guarding you while you attack is higher because the attack combo of twin swords is so big. Ranged weapons on the other hand grant no SuperArmor.

[Dream]

Oh hello. Thanks for the replies. As for the difficulty of being melee, I'm actually a veteran (Alpha/CBT Tester both on EN and JP) and I know my way around. I cleared even up to the bosses of Sekigahara Area using melee.

About the boss fights, it's just that even if there are actually very small windows/chances to hit the bosses, it's not really something to consider a legit chance to attack the boss because sometimes there are still risks unlike let's say on Chief Darume, when he uses those tons of daruma explosives, you have a decent chance to burst him w/o high risks. I know this well because I studied/analyzed each of the boss' patterns and created ways to beat them. Although, knowing these, it still doesn't feel like a boss fight in some ways, which prolly is because of the lack of real boss mechanics. Only few has mechanics, notably Odin, Chief Daruma, Ahriman.

Let's just take Dragon Nest bosses as an example. You can clearly see that there are mechanics on how to fight the boss like having some real warnings, legit blind spots, strict positioning etc etc. Even if you memorize the boss mechanics on Dragon Nest, you can still feel the difficulty of fighting the "boss".

Anyways I was testing my staff earlier and saw that Tiamat was nerfed badly again ~.~ Tiamat doesn't fly anymore (from what I've seen) and just spams those tri-fireballs.

[Otonashi]

Tiamat does fly, I've seen it.

I found it hard to beat Beelzebub with a bow but I can do it with never getting hit with any melee weapon; like-wise I've heard the opposite from other people. And I've found that every boss DOES have a safe moment to strike, they're just not that obvious all the time.

With a bow, the strategy is to make him always use his flying skill, since you can hit him while he's flying. You don't want to be attacking from maximum range since that's also the trigger range for his pink charging skill.

Dragon Nest does have really nice mechanics, that's for sure. The feel of playing a Bowmaster there is simply superior to playing one here. SDN and GDN are probably the most fun once you understand how everything works.

That being said I doubt that EN will have authority over Onigiri's combat system.

[RavUiai]

all mobs AI is weird,I find it very difficult to AoE with them :/
like when I hit one and then hit another one, I expect them to follow me and all they do is just stand there :/

[SupremeTentacle]

While I do see some of your points, I have some counter arguments.

>Flinching
As opposed to thinking of flinching as a way to stun lock mobs, I think that its better used as an indicator. All mobs have antiflinch immediately before their attacks, and/or during the attack startups. It gives you a good frame of time to realize you need to dodge. It would also honestly make the game way too easy, unless every monster in a room mobbed on you immediately upon you entering the room.

>Super Armor
Same with flinching. Once they start having this, its a very good idea to dodge. The whole idea is that monsters have the same type of super armor frames as players during their skill casts. I just don't think its right to flinch monsters out of their skills as it greatly decreases the difficulty level of the game. For example, it would be silly to be able to stop a lattern while its charging its fireball, or prevent one of the curse shikigami from teleporting backwards and avoiding your attack. Also, note that the final hit of most weapon's combo will not break the enemy super armor, but push them back, despite them having super armor. This lets you avoid some of the more basic attacks such as the Daruma headbutt, but is ping reliant.

Player super armor.. The only thing we seem to have 100% SA on at the moment is rolling. Most skills do have some, but you seem to have to time it if you want to pull it off. The thing is that the monsters have the same mechanic as your final combo hit on some of their rams.

All bosses do have a pattern allowing players to attack safely, you just have to find it <3. I pretty much went back and looked for counter methods for every boss after clearing the game. They do have them, but alot of them are less obvious. One of the key things to remember is that you should never commit to hitting a boss too much, and that different attacks will have different block percentages. That is, some things will hurt alot less when you block, but some things won't. For example, the Izumo area's second last boss will only do ~1xx damage if I block, but instantly kills me for 1.5k if I don't. (This is on a level 35 with only 112 P. defense).

>AI

I wouldn't say fixed, but they should definately attack. It seems to me that they intentionally took parts out of the AI of lower level monsters, gradually making them have patterns with less gaps as you level up. However, they still do have alot of gaps where they don't do much.

Bosses cast skills based on your distance to the boss. They also have some of their attacks locked unless you are on higher difficulties, and have gotten them below a certain amount of hp. Like I said, that giant stone statue is a boss you're supposed to block against. Its damage against blocking is super low. Alot of bosses actually have attacks that target things that are behind them. The trick that you want to do here is partner up and trade aggro if you want to get behind them. Otherwise, there is no benefit.

Tiamat actually tends to attempt to kite the player, maintaining a set distance between them. It will even jump into the air and fly around for ~15 seconds at times. (This is only when its low on Hell difficulty, and seems like a one time/run skill). Again, you just have to find the trick to beating a boss.

>Skill Mechanics
This is to stop things from behing OP. Even sword does have some AOE spells, but they're not high in number. Debuffs, I agree. Some of the skills such as leaping strike are better when not used on sword, or chained from another skill. You can also *SOMETIMES* use it when monsters knock you into the air, depending on your timing. I do however, think its OP that things like Odachi have infinite mobbing capacity.

Later on, you get skill extraction, so Momo isn't really as bad. Weapons with double borders are an almost must keep. Also, in the image that you provided, that durandal has the potential to get void slash 5 as its last skill... should just evolve that since it does insane dmg, then smelt the rest of the stuff up for broken tier weapon `0`.

>Jumping
Yup. Totally agree.

[Dream]

It's wierd that people are still giving me tips on how to fight bosses when I clearly said I'm a veteran that played both Alpha and Beta of both EN and JP lol Again, I cleared all content as a "melee" in the game w/o being stuck on certain dungeons/bosses.

Okay, to make it more simple to understand. Boss fights doesn't feel like boss fights at all in this game. Boss fights should be more intense and challenging with solid mechanics where there are obvious attack windows where the player can freely attack w/o worrying of risks on getting 1 hitted but of course they need to create that opportunity via mechanics. Am I making sense here?

Just gonna repeat again to make sure. I'm not asking for tips to beat x y z boss because I already cleared all content of Alpha and Beta tests as a "melee". < This is not bragging, it's just that some ppl are misunderstanding me.

Edit:
Okay I think this would explain it better. Let's say you're playing a shooting game, the one where you use a fighter plane. You're fighting a mothership. Now this mothership just spams bullets all the way and you're just forced to keep dodging and barely get the chance to land your attacks. Now suddenly this mothership stops spamming bullets and opened it's core in preperation for a powerful attack. Now you have a chance to attack but you need to do enough damage on the core to cancel it's powerful attack. If you managed to cancel it, the mothership will hide it's core again and starts spamming bullets again forcing you to keep dodging and barely land any of your attacks again.

Now, the red bolded part is Onigiri bosses in a nutshell, well most bosses. While the green bolded part is the thing I want to see when fighting bosses. Mechanics. No I'm not saying that all bosses should be like that where they need to charge for an attack letting the player attack bla bla NO. I'm just giving an example.

[SupremeTentacle]

Every single boss has a good ~5 second opening to attack it after it attacks... It essentially does what you've described in the green text, taking some time, and doing large attacks. Of course, this is given that the bosses in Onigiri mostly do large attacks, and have very few small ones.

None of the bosses mindlessly spam. Every single one has a reward for dodging one of its strikes, and the same applies to monsters other than Amagaeru with its infinite tongues.

There's no such thing as cancelling boss attacks in this game, except with the use of a status ailment, nor do I see the point of adding it.

For the most part, bosses are massive AF. I don't see why you expect to be able to interrupt them in some way.


Besides, the only boss fights that should feel like real boss fights are the ones at the end dungeon of each area, which are

Chief Daruma
Tiamat
Ahriman
Beelzebub
Odin


Arguably, Benkei is also somewhat difficult.

[Doguso]

We're giving you suggestions because, despite being a "veteran," you clearly are missing valid strategies or points that nullify your "this boss is missing X or Y" when they DO have "X and Y" and you are just refusing to acknowledge that you missed it.

Bosses don't NEED a 20 second window to hit them. If every boss had a massive attack window, they'd all be the same and that's really boring. I'm ok with Beelzebub or Yatsu attacking so frequently, it forces you to adapt and use a different strategy than "wait for big attack, run in and attack for 20 seconds, run out." There's no varying strategy in that.

You say Ahriman has a boss mechanic? Really? Ahriman, the guy who sits in the middle of the room and spams dark lightning spells at you that OHKOs you no matter what and forces you to cheese him? Yeah, great boss mechanic compared to Beelzebub.

You say you've "analyzed" the bosses well yet I have pointed out several things you clearly have missed, such as Tiamat (who you claim has no window or vulnerable spot to attack, when CLEARLY I've showed you that he does and have told you that there are plenty of videos emphasizing his weak points).

You're no veteran, you're just someone who has played the game in both testing phases. My biggest evidence if that you claim bosses' just use their skills randomly when it is so clear that they do it based on range (so much for your "veteran" skills).

Yes the bosses in this game can stand to be made better, that is without question. But you're claiming a lot of things that aren't necessarily true... yeah Dragon Nest has a great combat/boss system, but I also appreciate that this game doesn't have as obvious boss mechanics, I'm tired of seeing "here's exactly where the boss is attacking" or "WATCH OUT, in 5 seconds he'll unleash a massive attack." I found (about half) the bosses's warnings were sufficient enough to tell me what to do. If anything should be changed, it should be the AI of the bosses' (they're too predictable).

Either way, bosses in this game DO have plenty of attack windows. They're just not "I'm slamming my head into the ground, attack me" but "I'm doing something that leaves my side/etc vulnerable." It's not a difficult concept that YOU are misinterpreting and is why WE are giving you "boss tips."