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Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Rivals of Aether is a new game by people I don't know and their other games look bad. I don't care. Sorry. This game is good though, and on Steam. Here's the important stuff:

  • RoA is a game that plays very similar to Smash Bros - Characters take percent damage and fly further the higher their percent is, and you KO people by knocking them far enough off/above/under stage that they touch a blast zone and blow up.
  • Every character has a simple moveset, again like Smash, with one button handling jabs/tilts, another for strong (smash) attacks, and a third for specials (stuff like projectiles and movement tools). However, characters also have very versatile combo trees due to the fairly generous (but not at all frustrating) hitstun. Combos feel really nice.
  • Multiple cool stages that each feel different and let the character's fun movement options (wall jumps, special moves, other stuff) really shine.
  • Related to the above, moving around feels really really good. Movement is snappy and responsive, everyone's tools are a blast to use.
  • Good training mode with hitbox display options and other goodies.
  • Currently supports 1v1s online and 4 players (teams and FFA) offline.
  • No blocking (????). Instead, characters have a roll/airdodge and a parry. Successfully parrying a projectile reflects it, and parrying any other move results in the opponent being briefly stunned, letting you start your own offense. It's basically power shielding, but without the safety of the shield if you mess up.
  • Newly added tutorial which introduces you to a lot of Smash-like concepts (teching, wall-jumping) very cleanly, as well as some higher end techniques. Check it out!

Wow cool game, what characters you got?

RoA currently has 8 characters with a rumored 2-4 more in the (distant) future. This is them. Please note that I seriously don't care about lore or whatever so I won't be talking about that. Also click the name banners to get their full deets including moves and stuff:




Unique Mechanics: Burn Damage and Fire Amp

Zetterburn is a fire lion who likes to get in people's faces and kill them at low percents. He accomplishes this by lighting people on fire which serves two purposes: 1) It does damage over time, and perhaps more importantly, 2) his next Strong attack consumes the burning effect to double its knockback, allowing him to KO people with ease. He's otherwise a very well-rounded character with a good projectile, decent damage and recovery, and a very potent combo game. Play Zetterburn if you've always wanted to play P:M Wolf with none of his weaknesses.




Unique Mechanics: Puddles and Water Amp

Orcane is a weird ink oil whale? I don't know. He's really slippery though and plays like it; A good match for Orcane is spacing people with your amazing disjointed hitboxes and weird movement options then juggling them off the stage a few times until you win. He can also place puddles using his neutral- and down-special which he can then either teleport to from anywhere (including offstage) using his up-special or turn into a bubble trap with his down-special. Additionally, if you perform a Strong attack while standing on a puddle you'll absorb it to significantly increase the attack's range. It's difficult to get used to but once you get it the mobility and spacing is top tier. Play Orcane if you like teleports and disjointed hitboxes on rushdown characters.




Unique Mechanics: Multijumps and Aerial Strongs

Wrastor is a bird with ugly goggles that wants nothing more than to go fast and combo people until they cry. He can place a jet stream on stage in a horizontal line that greatly increases his speed while he's inside it, and this enables a lot of silly combos. He can also keep people off stage with ease, and recover just as easily, thanks to his multiple jumps and large aerial attacks. Weirder still, Wrastor has the unique privilege of being the only character who can perform Strong attack while airborne, and in fact can ONLY perform them while airborne. This makes his aerial combo tree very unique and has a lot of room for style if that's your thing. Play Wrastor if you think it sounds cool to give Metaknight Marth's aerials and smashes.




Unique Mechanics: Persistent Terrain and Armor

Kragg. My boy. Kragg is RoA's heavyweight character, able to KO people with Zetterburn's ease without any sort of setup. You pay for it with speed though, as Kragg is one of the slowest characters and this is true about both his movement speed and many of his attacks. Even his projectile needs primed. Still, his damage is insane and having Super Armor on his side-special allows him to plow through a lot of faster, wimpier attacks. A lot of his combos are more DI-dependent than some of the cast, but if you get some solid reads you can rack up damage safely and easily. He's also able to summon terrain which persists indefinitely, and can be used in a bunch of cool ways that I'll let people mess around with on their own. Play Kragg if you like getting kills off good reads at 50% and being the game's secret zoning character.




Unique Mechanics: Decoys and Smokescreen/Combust

Forsburn is like, a smoke gnoll? I think? Like Orcane, he's a very tricky type of character, but in a very different way. Instead of having disjointed attacks and weird movement, he instead can obscure his movement with clouds of smoke with his neutral-special move or forward-tilt. These clouds last for a bit but can be swatted away, but they fully conceal Forsburn's movement while leaving his opponents fully visible. Additionally, Forsburn can absorb these clouds with his down-special, and if you inhale three clouds you can then Combust with the same input, doing significant damage and knockback to anyone nearby. If that isn't enough, he can also clone himself with his Decoy ability and control the decoy. Like the smoke, simply attacking it will disperse the decoy, but it's still a fantastic offensive tool. His knockback power and damage isn't stellar, but he can easily turn the game into a single player experience if you let him. Play Forsburn if you're cool playing the second character with "burn" in his name, and also you love being fast and annoying.




Unique Mechanics: Hunter's Mark and Plants

Maypul is a big weasel with leaf katars on her arms. Usually a fast, ground-based character with some decent range, Maypul can mark enemies with several moves, and that's when the magic happens. A marked enemy is susceptible to other moves in Maypul's arsenal, such as her Slightshot which instantly tethers onto the marked target and pulls her to them lickity-split. Another option for making a marked foes hate their lives is wrapping them up - When an enemy is marked, her down-special and her Strongs will entangle the foe in vines, making for some pretty oppressive combo opportunities and stage denial. She can also place a plant to constrict people, and you can feed the plant seeds to refresh its duration. Play Maypul if you want to be Dudley mixed with Ivysaur and Squirtle, and also be a weasel.




Unique Mechanics: Lightning Cloud and Storm Control

Absa is a lisa frank goat with lightning powers. She can place a storm cloud on the screen that acts as a hitbox and has some unique properties, like the ability to do a big ol' lightning bolt between the cloud and herself, or to supercharge it and make it explode. She also has sweet spots on some of her moves and honestly just plays a whole lot like P:M Zelda mixed with Pikachu and Mewtwo. Her jumps travel far both vertically and horizontally allowing her to mix people up with her devastating aerials and catch recovering opponents in awkward positions. While RoA has no true pure zoning character Absa comes the closest. Don't play this character, because I'll hate you.




Unique Mechanics: Super Armor and Icy Terrain

Etalus is the most recent (and probably last for a long time) addition to the cast. Like Kragg he doesn't hit as much as other characters but he makes those individual hits count! Unlike Kragg he's actually quite comfortable in the air, having massive hitboxes and an armored forward-air. Several of his moves will coat the ground in a thick layer of ice which enables him to slip and slide around on it, extending combos and letting his dash attack (which can be jump- and up-strong-canceled) cover insane distance. Two of his attacks, neutral-special and down-special, also interact with ice in a special way - If you perform the former while standing on ice you'll gain super armor which lasts until you get hit or perform a Strong attack, and using the latter destroys all icy terrain but freezes any foe standing on it, allowing for tech-chases. This is my main so if you need match-up experience hit me up.

Any other game footage?

The trailer has lots of cool gameplay bits, check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zujDjI_tRBQ

Why would I care about this game if I already play [some version of] Smash?

Well, it's on PC and it seems to have really good netcode. That alone was a big deal for me.

But more importantly(?), it doesn't actually feel that much like any existing Smash title (though individual characters are certainly inspired by different games/smash brothers. I'm looking at you Zetterburn). The defensive changes and removals of throws keep the game moving very quickly and do a lot to separate it from any of the Smash titles. This video does a lot to showcase the differences between RoA and Smash proper including parrying and movement. I highly recommend watching.

Early Access?!

Yep. poo poo sucks. The game is fun though and everything feels real nice. Probably needs work in the sound department and some hit sparks and stuff but the core is really strong. Balance changes will definitely be happening too, though I can't say at what regularity.

Other Links and junk
- How to set up a Gamecube controller to work on RoA (note: this will almost definitely have native support eventually, but currently its just normal usb controllers afaik, I personally play on a 360 pad).
- Reddit FAQ on the game.
- Steam Group for people to find opponents and stuff
- Tutorial on how to add Custom Music, a lot of the music is good but sometimes you want to mix it up.
- Most recent patch notes (0.14.0)

Countblanc fucked around with this message at 20:25 on May 25, 2016

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Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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net cafe scandal posted:

This is one of the worst game titles I've ever heard of. However, I'll play it.

It's incredibly bad and the sound is also bad, but I like basically everything else. Moving around feels so good.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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I made a steam group so people can actually fight each other. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/roagoons

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Reason posted:

Does it feel like it has staying power and a decent sized community? It looks awesome, but multiplayer games on PC always die.

It's hard to say. A good deal of smash people have been streaming it and I know the big PM stream is talking about doing tournaments and such. I can't talk for the wider community but it's been really fun just playing with people here and friends, it's entirely possible it'll end up a small community but even games like Bloodline Champions have dedicated playerbases years later, even if they're small.

Gaffle posted:

Well hopefully the early access stream of content will keep people interested over a long period

Frosburn is really cool but i havent had to play against him yet i wonder how annoying the smoke actually is to deal with

The smoke is as annoying as you let it be. It forces your opponent to approach since the smoke just keeps building and it gives you a TON of cover if you get enough of it out, so your opponent is going to be throwing out hitboxes to try to clear it and that's a great way to bait and punish.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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not quite the same thing, but Kragg can spike people with his rock if he throws it down. A lot safer than using his dair, though obviously more difficult to have ready. Also I just got back from playing irl for like 6 hours straight, good poo poo.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Gaffle posted:

I noticed that you can lose the charged down-b if you do his n-b or side-b, but then it only takes one more inhale to get it back? I guess they really don't want you to be able to have the threat of the explosion and the smoke screen at the same time since you get rid of all the smoke clouds once you get the last charge.

Yeah I assume that's the reason. I should really go through the smashboards thread thats been going since 2014 and look at the changes. Apparently that's the real hotbed for game discussion right now, if people want to check it out http://smashboards.com/threads/rivals-of-aether-official-thread.360443/

Also someone play me, I have an hour to kill

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Eonwe posted:

im guessing you basically need a controller for this right

I'd certainly recommend it, but when I was playing irl today one guy was playing on keyboard since we only had 3 controllers and it only took him a few games to really get used to it. I'm sure he'd have done better on a controller but that might be because this game is basically smash controls and most people are used to that.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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The real Kragg meta is baiting your opponent's parry after the up-B and then destroying them with a charged dsmash

e: the meta-meta is them just nairing instead though

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Cabbagepots posted:

This game looks cool. Needs work on the sound effects though.

the sounds are definitely the weakest part, I hate pretty much all of them other than a few like Kragg's pillar and Wrastor's up-smash. Hopefully it'll get addressed going forward.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Sofia Coppola_OD_ posted:

i will say that the terrible character designs did scale down nicely into sprites. though as many have noted, the quality difference between some of them is pretty major.

they're very clear/legible, but some just are pretty bleh (hello zetterberg and wrastor). i like the six-pack beetle though some of his animations are super lame. the rest don't really bother me, and maypul and absa in particular are nice.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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do NOT play this with a fight stick. i say this as someone who loves fight sticks.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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people I've been playing need to work on their recovery (and so do I), and here's a page that explains this game's unique recovery mechanics: http://bigfriendlygames.net/2015/09/20/recovery-mechanics/

related: http://gfycat.com/BlandJaggedInvisiblerail

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Also someone was poking around in the files and found this;



People are assuming its for Abyss Mode and is basically Smash 4's custom fighters, but the guy who found it seems adamant that it won't split the community and isn't what people think it is (but won't elaborate), so we'll see

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Ptarmigans posted:

Found an amusing bug with Kragg, can't reproduce it though.


now up-b

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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I've been having trouble getting dash dancing to really work right on a gamecube controller, but literally everything else works fine so I'm not really sure what to do to fix it without loving something else up. I might just play on a 360 pad because I've gotted used to it and actually like it now

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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But Not Tonight posted:

I never really got hardcore into smash, hell I didn't even know how to wavedash before yesterday. Picked this up yesterday afternoon and HOO BOY THIS GAME. It's nice having my accuracy go up from 20% to 45% and start to get a feel for the combos/mechanics, I'm not getting dominated nearly as much as I was when I started. gently caress every good Kragg player though.

Playing random other kraggs online has taught me a lot of tricks, we should play sets some time and I can help you with the match-up

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtgYLBZhyfc

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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man the kragg/zetterburn matchup is real weird. it's like designed for either player to 3-stock the other guy and nothing in between.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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I played against a good Wrastor earlier, dealing with marth aerials on metaknight is hard. FOrtunately his kill options are really limited from what I've seen, though that might just be people not knowing confirms into Strongs yet

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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dude made a video on how to use custom music in this game, which is good, because the existing music is mostly bland (i like the water stage though)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S5yR2NjUKk

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Jibo posted:

I don't know what games any of these characters are from.

They're from digimon

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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New jab owns, rip Kragg recovery, all hail new weasel god

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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I agree, but the game has been privately tested for a while now, it's entirely possible they had suspicions from those tests and the data compiled from online matches confirmed them. I did notice that I was regularly at a higher percentage than my opponents despite landing roughly as many combos and stray hits despite ostensibly being the slow bruiser character, and some of those tweaks imply they noticed the same. Still, I'm interested to see what happens with the new mechanic changes.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Crosspost from reddit, I made some music packs if anyone wants to spice up their life

https://www.reddit.com/r/RivalsOfAether/comments/3n6npx/i_made_a_few_music_packs_sf2mvc_sonic_12_megaman/

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Patch 0.0.8 out today, likely with nerfs to your favorite character. Also, it added the NessZelda Goat. Her hitboxes are insane and her ftilt goes the length of the stage. I'm not kidding.

Also my sparring partner took first place at Youmacon apparently, so good poo poo to him and his busted rear end character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT9ZcowA2AI

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Are you in the states,and if so, east or west

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Does the bear have armor on his warlock punch? I tried to test it last night but the cpu just rolled any time I used the move

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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I'll play later once I'm home from work

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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ok I want to play now, add me on steam

http://steamcommunity.com/id/countblanc/

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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I updated the OP with Etalus and the most recent patch notes. If I missed anything that looks out of date please tell me.

Game is also on sale this week to celebrate the launch of 0.14, which has ranked matchmaking and a lot of online play improvements. Also a really good tutorial.

Countblanc fucked around with this message at 20:13 on May 25, 2016

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Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

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Game is now out on Xbox Live

Patch .15 preview is up (out on PC tomorrow)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ncVhtgLvg0

e: lots of balance changes, also changes to make the game feel faster and bring back some old jank (in a good way). you can also make your own color palates now!

Countblanc fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Aug 4, 2016

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