Update log
Full GladiEATers update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Balance
Crying Powers!
When cut, onions release a chemical called lachymatory factor, which contains sulphur! If you’re like me, this makes me cry my eyes out to a gross extent – even after years of chopping. This was our first design touchstone when it came to designing the GladiEATers roster – crying.
Root Motiff
We think the best roster designs are formed around a central image. For onions, we reinterpreted the Eye of Horus into a simplified crying eye. Blue is a colour that seemed to be associated with the eye in culture and jewllery, which made the blue tear association feel very natural.
Eyes on eyes (on eyes)
Our Raw Onion GladiEATer starts the roster with the motiff strong. Being a bulb with eyes crying all around. It also sets the stage with the most simple cry inducing ability:
- CosmeticTear Up:Enemy Cries . Being a weak, low time to cook, Raw creature, two of Raw Onion’s abilities are sacrificial/ make Raw Onion into more of a consumable, like the Raw Egg.
- CosmeticPeel Feel:Makes an ally’s next attack inflict crying . - But destroys the Onion in the process.
- CosmeticStembutt:Deals a small amount of damage. - Takes a small amount of damage.
How good does this make Raw Onion? I wish there was some explanation of what crying does…
...What crying used to do
Originally, crying made all your abilities target enemies and allies randomly. This was a natural first iteration of the mechanic, but after a few months of testing, we realised this wasn’t the sort of"wow that’s fun"randomness. Instead ,it was the type of randomness that either:
Feels mediocre if a crying enemy hits another, less optimal, target on your team. OR
Feels bad if it hits an equally optimal target on your team (you’d ask, what was the point of me making them cry). OR EVEN WORSE
Feels terrible if your enemy casts an area of effect ability that targets your entire team - making your random targeting debuff completely irrelevant.
What crying does
Instead, we saw crying as an opportunity to partly fix another problem. We were worried that some players would decide on 1 ability of the 3 a GladiEATer has to be the best and continue casting that on repeat - without getting to have a strategic decision every turn. To prevent this, we changed the crying debuff to stop the player from casting the same ability twice. Now the player has the interesting situation where they are forced to change up their strategy, picking the best of now two of their abilities. This felt like a step in the right direction. However, with so many tear inducing abilities and a relatively minor effect that does not stack - what gave players a reason to make a GladiEATer cry twice? Blocking more abilities felt too limiting for the enemy. So, what about an explosion. Everyone loves explosions. Now, when a crying GladiEATer is made to cry again – the tear explodes - dealing significant damage. Thematically, this could be interpreted as the GladiEATer having a tantrum, or getting so sad that they take damage. Poor things ☹ GladiEATers crying is represented by a tear drop under the GladiEATer’s eye, which we’ve set on every single sprite (even
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