HOME

ABOUT

GAMES

EBOOKS

MEDIA

DEV BLOGS





Mechanical changes - Block Heal, L targetting, 4 Custom AI sets - May 21, 2019



A few universal mechanical changes have been added to The Demon Rush: Legends Corrupt over the past few months of work (universal as in the player and their party, NOT enemies) with the aim of making combat smoother and providing more universal combat options, and these are listed below.


Block Heal


The first universal mechanical change is that blocking will heal the blocker at a rate of 2 HP per second (1 HP at a time). While it may sound like a lot, this was put in place to make it something to be used alongside dodging as different defensive techniques. Below is a list of the advantages of blocking and dodging:


Blocking (with new Block Heal mechanic implemented)

-HP recovery allows for a little less reliance on healers (or their presence in the party)

-Mind Effect increases in terms of usefulness, allowing the player to take less damage while blocking (and therefore restore more HP)

-Enemies are Staggered briefly when they use standard non-ability melee attacks on the blocker (with the Body Field Effect allowing linger Stagger periods)

-Unlike dodging, which has brief moments of vulnerablility between dodges, blocking has no vulnerable period and nullifies status effects (Stagger, Stun, Knockdown, Knockback)


Dodging

-Unlike blocking, user is fully invincible to all damage/status effects while dodge is active

-The user can better reposition themselves away from enemies/attacks if they get overwhelmed from their position

-Dodging does not rely on Field Effects to be improved upon


The addition of Block Heal is also meant to be more beneficial and provide more of an edge for early game Story Mode and Endless Dungeon, where the player's party will likely not have enough resources for customization and where the enemies are still weak enough that players will be able to Block Heal a bit for some breathing room as they are learning the feel of the game.


It should be noted that the addition of Block Heal has further character-specific advantages, such as Cherry using Stand Ground (her "invincible while blocking" ability) to gain HP while not suffering any damage while blocking, or Claire using Stealth to shake off enemies and Block Heal while invisible (though more of a stall tactic, it is still an available tactic nonetheless). Block Heal, while useful, is also not a solution to all incoming damage. Due to Legends Corrupt being an action RPG, the rate that enemies attack at and the blocker still taking damage from attacks means that strong or numerous enemies may likely overwhelm and override the blocker's Block Heal gains (and dodging would be more useful in such a scenario).


L targetting


The player can now use the L1 button on the PS4 and L button on the Vita to direct the AI-controlled party members to target a specific enemy, and this enemy will have a red rotation target icon at their feet to indicate whom the current target is. For certain battles where there are certain enemies more dangerous than the others or the better strategy is to pick off the weaker ones before going after a more resilient one, L targetting was a necessary addition to allow more better and more fluid tactics.


4 Custom AI sets


Though an edit was added to the "Character Customization - Soul Triad, Weapons and AI" dev blog page, it will also be noted here that each character can have 4 Custom AI sets, which can be switched between whenever the player chooses from the Field Menu. The original Body/Mind/Siphon presets were not as effective as initially envisioned. Rather than remove them altogether, they were turned into custom AI sets, as they would better benefit players who want to have multiple tactical plans set up. The first set comes equipped by default with abilities that character starts with (so that new players can focus on learning to fight rather than jumping into customizing AI specifics), and this first set can be altered like any other custom AI set.









©