Drifting is such an unmanageable pain in the ass in a game with already not-great driving controls that it was not worth the stopped clock to do it
It's not that hard.
Yeah, even while I was playing the bug laden version, drifting was pretty easy, I just had no idea of its usefulness in races.
I'll probably go in and do a bunch of those, with that in mind.
Caulk Bite 6 on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
I don't get the batmobile hate
i used 3rd person camera, i beat everything, i didn't intentionally drift
i dunno, I play a lot of racing games, maybe it's good practice
+1
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
unlike basically every other gameplay mechanic in the arkham series, the car has a learning curve
most of the learning in arkham isn't about learning how to use a skill but when to use a skill.
so its definitely the odd duckling.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
The game was on sale, so I'm finally taking the plunge.
And after the first Riddler race (and the nearby challange), and the first afterburner jump...
Well, my initial impression on the car is already not good. And you know what they say about first impressions. And given how people have gone on about it... it's not going to get much better, is it?
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
The car is largely superfluous to the gameplay, except when the game forces you to use it, yes. But it still can be fun, if you let it.
Also, first person driving mode is much easier. Don't know if you were using that or not, but I gotta say it each time.
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Try changing Battle mode to a toggle, it makes it a lot better. (Switches brake and accelerate to triggers for starters)
I grabbed this from Redbox this week and played through it. I liked parts of it a ton. Some forced batmobile bits were a bummer (especially that boss fight ugh). I had fun, but it was probably my least favorite of the Arkham games.
Ending spoilers
I really liked the Joker. I thought they really hit you over the head with foreshadowing the Arkham Knight's identity.
Game is so broken I can't even download it- it's just stalling out. Sigh. And here I have the discs and figured there was a massive patch anyway, may as well download it...
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Switching to first person for the Riddler races really helped. I beat the third lap of the last one on my first try!
Since I couldn't play Halo 5 or Destiny MP with any sense of stability, I got into the challenge races for this. They're pretty fun. I gotta learn how get larger variation bonuses in my freeflows again though for the combat ones. Really no real reason to mix it up a bunch outside the maps, but gotta get those scores!
Noticed I didn't do the 15 mover yet either, for some reason.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
The vehicle trophies are a ton easier now that there are 3 vehicle packs out. I got Speed Demonz last night with only a couple of 3-star races. It actually makes it way more fun for me to take away the stress of "get 3 stars on these 11 tracks and that's it." Hell, I don't even have one of the city time trials unlocked.
Yea, I need to start doing those vehicle specific ones, and at some point NG+.
The Tumbler track was a real pain at first. But all the other ones that I've done I liked.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
Some of the dlc packs you can do insanely long drifts.
Like just keep the button held down, swing the car around mid drift, and then drift around the next corner as well. Those kinda long drifts. It's crazy.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
So it took 20 days, but Steam has finally removed my copy of Arkham Knight after I got a refund on it at the start of the month. It has been playable on my account during the whole time. That was a pretty generous return policy though I'm sure the delay was not intentional.
Can't speak to other platforms, but these just showed up on PSN:
2016 Batman v Superman Batmobile Pack
A Flip of a Coin (Arkham episode featuring Robin)
Crime Fighter Challenge Pack 4
Riddler Themed Batmobile Skin
Robin and Batmobile Skins Pack
WayneTech Track Pack (making those vehicle-specific trophies even easier)
Catwoman's Revenge (Arkham episode featuring Catwoman)
Can't speak to other platforms, but these just showed up on PSN:
2016 Batman v Superman Batmobile Pack
A Flip of a Coin (Arkham episode featuring Robin)
Crime Fighter Challenge Pack 4
Riddler Themed Batmobile Skin
Robin and Batmobile Skins Pack
WayneTech Track Pack (making those vehicle-specific trophies even easier)
Catwoman's Revenge (Arkham episode featuring Catwoman)
I can verify that these are also on the PC version.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
I never got any of the goodies they promised for participating in the Arkham Knight PC beta test, and a free copy of Origins and MORE HATS are hardly something to get worked up over but geez this was not handled well.
Sterica on
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
edited November 2015
I don't think anyone's got their beta payout yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it takes til the end of the year for that to roll out.
I just hope they are giftable because else I'm getting some hats and fecking Blackgate which is apparently garbage.
*Though from my pov anything is just a bonus because AK works alright for me.
So I got the trophy for 33 stars in the 1960s Batmobile this afternoon, and in the process I tried out the new WayneTech tracks. Holy shit the tube one is hard for me. If I could figure out how to drive in first person, I think that is the track for it.
Also, since I'm not playing them back to back I can't really tell the difference between the 2016 Batmobile and the 2008 Batmobile.
I don't get the batmobile hate
i used 3rd person camera, i beat everything, i didn't intentionally drift
i dunno, I play a lot of racing games, maybe it's good practice
The batmobile is one of the best handling and feeling mounts/vehicles in an open world game. I can understand people not liking the combat, but the handling itself is superb, especially with the alternate control scheme
Honestly this game was one of my favourites of the year and I just do not get the hate (I understand the PC hate of course)
My love of it primarily stems from superb cinematic elements. The way the cinematics are integrated into the game, ie there is no "load" or "separateness". There are just an endless list of elements I wish more games would adopt, the sense that you never lose "control" of your character, of your sense of place, when the story kicks in. Half the time youre not sure youre in a cutscene, or not sure you have the control to end it. It didnt get enough praise for this in my opinion
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
The only things I really disliked about this game (outside of challenges) is saving instantly after finishing a setpiece, so I can't practice them like I could previously, and the extreme close up camera during various takedowns that completely destroys your situational awareness and force you to basically guess blindly as to what you should do next, since you can't just wait for the sluggish camera to zoom back out or your combo drops.
I can live with the first, although its really annoying.
I will probably never forgive them for the second one. It drives me up the wall. It's such a stupid rookie developer mistake. I expected better.
Loved most of the rest. There's a few things I'm a bit iffy on, like removing double takedown outside of fear, double ledge takedowns being removed, lack of crowd control move for Batman, stuff like that, but they're all things I can live with.
Not liking the shitty performance on PC is a given.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Playing through NG+, doesn't seem so bad so far. Been focusing on advancing the plot only. I expect a certain sequence at the end will be particularly annoying though.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
Catwoman's revenges final fight is atrocious. This is easily the worst fight in the entire series.
What the fuck were they even thinking?
This is worse than Bane in AA.
It's worse than Ivy in AA!
It's worse than The Force Unleashed. On the highest difficulty. Prepatch.
Did they playtest this fucking fight at all?
I do not recommend this DLC. Skip it.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
What was wrong with Bane in AA? He wasn't a good boss fight by any stretch of the imagination...just very dull.
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Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
Pretty sure you just answered your own question, from what I recall of the fight, flymo
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
The problem with bane is that he was a more annoying titan.
He wasn't really hard. He was just badly done and didn't fit with the system, much like the other titans. Keeping your combo to the end of that fight was basically luck.
How they did titans in city was much better.
Balance isn't really about difficulty.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Catwoman's revenges final fight is atrocious. This is easily the worst fight in the entire series.
What the fuck were they even thinking?
This is worse than Bane in AA.
It's worse than Ivy in AA!
It's worse than The Force Unleashed. On the highest difficulty. Prepatch.
Did they playtest this fucking fight at all?
I do not recommend this DLC. Skip it.
What was wrong with The Force Unleashed on its highest difficulty prepatch? I don't recall any issues.
What, other the fact the game was a hot mess? I loved the game but I could write an essay on its flaws.
We'd have to necro the thread for it first! ;P
IDK though, was mindless fun to me
Just trust me man. It really wasn't well designed at all. Balance isn't about fun. It's how parts of a game weigh up against the other parts of the system. Generally when you get this right you get fun out, but not always. Sometimes unbalanced games are fun despite themselves. I had great fun in The Force Unleashed despite the fact that it is a terribly unbalanced combat system.
Regardless, this DLC is both brutally, brutally hard, as well as ridiculously cheap and asks precision and speed from a combat system that isn't designed for those two things.
I'm dying constantly here and this hasn't happened in an Arkham fight since I first started playing AA....
Those Who Rage At Video Games: Stay Awaye
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
And the Bane fight is pretty good, just spoiled by the fact that the strategy is repeated by Titans
I don't think AA or AC had a single bad boss fight, honestly
And then AK had...none
Sigh
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
Sure, but I'm not talking about how much fun you, me, or anyone else had. I'm talking about how it fits into the rest of the combat engine.
The combat system in these games is based on having options: multiple choices available to you at any one time, and building your combo opens up more options with takedowns. It's up to you to choose the best option from among many at any one time. That is the "free" part of "freeflow". The "flow" part is turning those choices into an uninterrupted attack sequence.
In both Bane and Ivy using takedowns is a death sentence: you are stuck in place and have no i frames against their attacks. Bane can charge straight through your takedowns, Ivy can hit you with the vines through them. You also can't use your batarang freely in the Bane fight, because you need it for Bane and you can't use it twice in a row. Your options are heavily restricted, and hence the free part of the "freeflow combat" is heavily restricted. You can still flow, but you aren't free.
That is why they don't fit.
Bad, good, like, dislike, they're all basically irrelevant. I shouldn't have called it worse or bad, it set people off. I really mean they just don't fit into the rest of the fights: they're the antithesis of the usual combat design.
You can still have mad fun with a fight that doesn't really fit into the rest of a game of course. You can adore it, love it to death, it doesn't mean anything to an argument about balance. Fun is hopeful outcome of good balance, but it isn't a causal relationship. Good balance doesn't always mean more fun, bad balance doesn't always mean less fun. Fun is a subjective state that relies on far more variables than mere game balancing. Personality is a much bigger part of fun than anything else. Many people use the words interchangeably (including me! its an easy thing to slip into!), but they aren't equivalent. They're talking about very different things.
A good rule of thumb to think about Balance is the childrens song: "One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong."
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Catwoman's revenges final fight is atrocious. This is easily the worst fight in the entire series.
What the fuck were they even thinking?
This is worse than Bane in AA.
It's worse than Ivy in AA!
It's worse than The Force Unleashed. On the highest difficulty. Prepatch.
Did they playtest this fucking fight at all?
I do not recommend this DLC. Skip it.
What was wrong with The Force Unleashed on its highest difficulty prepatch? I don't recall any issues.
What, other the fact the game was a hot mess? I loved the game but I could write an essay on its flaws.
We'd have to necro the thread for it first! ;P
IDK though, was mindless fun to me
Just trust me man. It really wasn't well designed at all. Balance isn't about fun. It's how parts of a game weigh up against the other parts of the system. Generally when you get this right you get fun out, but not always. Sometimes unbalanced games are fun despite themselves. I had great fun in The Force Unleashed despite the fact that it is a terribly unbalanced combat system.
Regardless, this DLC is both brutally, brutally hard, as well as ridiculously cheap and asks precision and speed from a combat system that isn't designed for those two things.
I'm dying constantly here and this hasn't happened in an Arkham fight since I first started playing AA....
Those Who Rage At Video Games: Stay Awaye
Your request for credulity has been denied. :P
I don't agree with your statement that that game was a "hot mess", nor do I agree with your assessment of it being "unbalanced" in any fashion. I played it through on its highest difficulty first run...no problem. I played the DLC on its highest difficulty too and, iirc the DLC started you w/o any of the perks you had from the normal play-through (that could be 2 that did it, it was a while ago since I 100%'d them) to boot... beat the base game like a few days after it came out... so... yeah. Though I guess the other factor is that I'm actively involved in great metagame that is achievements, so my perspective is pretty likely just different from yours.
What you have earned is maybe me playing the DLC a little sooner than when I complete this NG+ run that I've been delaying doing in favor of playing every other game I have. I'm about halfway through the story mode redux, so we'll see how it goes.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
I had absolutely no difficulty playing The Force Unleashed. I was extremely good at it.
My ability to play that game and the amount of fun I had while playing are completely unrelated to my opinion of how balanced it is.
I played that game so much it gave up, glitched out, and gave me infinite health and force in a vain attempt at hoping I'll get bored and go away and stop hurting it oh god please. I played it for hundreds of hours and had a ball every minute.
The only difference between you and I is that I do not consider my personal enjoyable experience to be relevant to game balance, and you do. This makes it a little difficult to express my point because you keep conflating these two very different ideas and treating them as the same thing when they are not. Game balance is a very broad topic, there isn't really a consensus on its definition, and fun is only really a way to gauge if you've done it right if you are looking at your target audience on average, rather than individuals who vary too widely.
Having a good time and having a well balanced game are not directly related. I dunno how often I can keep hammering this point until I just give up because it isn't sinking in.
Have a look at this article for example. Notice how the conversation isn't really based around how much of a good time the author is having.
This is just one take, there are many others. I don't agree with him that an imbalanced game is necessarily bad, for example. But I do think an unbalanced game that is considered fun by some people but not others is basically leaving things up to luck and the whims of your players, and a responsible developer should be trying to make a consistent system in order to keep as many players happy as possible, which is much easier with a balanced game.
I did a game design short course recently and a very good example of an imbalanced game was taking rock paper scissors and changing scissors to shotgun, which can beat everything but shotgun, which draws.
Instead of a system where every element is equally likely to win or lose you get a system where shotgun is the only logical choice.
In terms of game design, what often happens is given fights are basically constrained so that, in our rock paper scissor example, one or more of the choices are weakened so much that only one of them becomes a viable strategy. For example, reducing the effectiveness of rock and paper, leaving only scissors: this essentially turns that fight into a game of rock paper shotgun. Your only logical choice is scissors, so you only get to choose scissors. You are no longer playing the same game anymore: you are simply making a constrained choice over and over. Now, some players quite like picking shotgun in such a design. They're happy to pick it all day. But that doesn't change the fact that the game has been changed from a consistent rock papers scissors to a different game, with unbalanced options, that is inconsistent with the previous version. When that happens suddenly and unexpectedly, its usually a sign that you need to take another look at your design, otherwise you risk alienating all those players who aren't happy to pick shotgun all day, because when they bought the game, they thought they were buying rock paper scissors.
That is what happens in Catwoman's REvenge.
In this fight, you get lasers moving around the arena, and an electrical floor that slowly electrifies, one panel at a time, in a spiral around the edge of the arena, that ends up enclosing you in only four safe areas with everything else being electrified.
You are damaged if you touch the electrical plates or the lasers hit you, even if you are doing a takedown. The robots are immune to both. The lasers move around the arena semi randomly, following the outside edge of the panel. When it fully encloses you, even doing a counter can sometimes leave you outside the safe area, even if you were standing directly in the middle.
You have to destroy all the robots quickly enough that the electric plates don't all fill up, otherwise you are quickly overwhelmed. you aren't killed by the robots, you are killed by the floor and the lasers, because the game space becomes so small that you can't stop your attacks, counters and takedowns from causing you to touch the environmental obstacles that damage you. Since you have no control over which animations plays, or how far she travels when doing them, and have to wait for the rng, the only thing you can really do is sit there in the middle, counter, and hope you don't get a counter attack that takes you into the danger zones. This happens often enough that if you reach this state with enough robots left, your death is guaranteed. You have to destroy enough robots so that there are either none or hardly any left by this point.
You also have default unupgradeable health.
With the way Catwoman's attacks works, the only ability she has that is fast enough to destroy them all before this happens is completely focusing on chaining critical strikes. No counters, no takedowns, no special alternative combos, no gadgets. They're all too slow. They take up too much time. They can cause you to accidentally touch an electric plat or a laser because you can't control them enough.
You just punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punchp unch etc ad nauseum.
In this fight, Arkham's incredibly lavish and layered combat system devolves down to only one choice: who to attack next. What to attack with, the actual depth in the system, the choices and freedom in the flow, aren't just missing: they're a pathway to a slow and aggravating loss.
To make it even more confusing, there's a challenge fight that takes place in the same arena, that has electrified walls and the lasers, but not the floor plates. In this challenge you do have invincibility from the lasers when doing attacks. You only get hit if you try to dodge through them in open ground.
For some reason they thought turning that off in order to turn Arkham combat into a game of rock paper shotgun was a good idea. It's certainly unique, but not in a very interesting way. It's dull and aggravating, since the best way to do it is to not even bother aiming and just let Catwoman aim herself. All you have to do is occasionally aim her at another group if she runs out. Otherwise all you have to do is sit there pressing the attack button with a steady monotonous rhythm for three minutes. Doing this was always an option in these games, but it was never the only option. And worse, the vast majority of Arkham fights take place in wide open spaces that give you plenty of room to move around if you need to. They also picked basically the worst character to do this with, since all her moves outside of the special speeded up state are slower than average and cover more ground on average than other characters. She's the least precise character in the game at fighting in a confined area.
I'm frankly baffled they actually released this as a paid for DLC.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Posts
It's not that hard.
I got the bluest sparks on the Batmobile, man. :P
Yeah, even while I was playing the bug laden version, drifting was pretty easy, I just had no idea of its usefulness in races.
I'll probably go in and do a bunch of those, with that in mind.
i used 3rd person camera, i beat everything, i didn't intentionally drift
i dunno, I play a lot of racing games, maybe it's good practice
most of the learning in arkham isn't about learning how to use a skill but when to use a skill.
so its definitely the odd duckling.
Finished the round at about 245k
Steam ID: Good Life
And after the first Riddler race (and the nearby challange), and the first afterburner jump...
Well, my initial impression on the car is already not good. And you know what they say about first impressions. And given how people have gone on about it... it's not going to get much better, is it?
Also, first person driving mode is much easier. Don't know if you were using that or not, but I gotta say it each time.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Ending spoilers
Fuck!
Noticed I didn't do the 15 mover yet either, for some reason.
The Tumbler track was a real pain at first. But all the other ones that I've done I liked.
Like just keep the button held down, swing the car around mid drift, and then drift around the next corner as well. Those kinda long drifts. It's crazy.
http://www.pcgamer.com/uh-oh-batman-arkham-knight-wont-support-multiple-gpus-after-all/
2016 Batman v Superman Batmobile Pack
A Flip of a Coin (Arkham episode featuring Robin)
Crime Fighter Challenge Pack 4
Riddler Themed Batmobile Skin
Robin and Batmobile Skins Pack
WayneTech Track Pack (making those vehicle-specific trophies even easier)
Catwoman's Revenge (Arkham episode featuring Catwoman)
I can verify that these are also on the PC version.
I just hope they are giftable because else I'm getting some hats and fecking Blackgate which is apparently garbage.
*Though from my pov anything is just a bonus because AK works alright for me.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Also, since I'm not playing them back to back I can't really tell the difference between the 2016 Batmobile and the 2008 Batmobile.
The batmobile is one of the best handling and feeling mounts/vehicles in an open world game. I can understand people not liking the combat, but the handling itself is superb, especially with the alternate control scheme
Honestly this game was one of my favourites of the year and I just do not get the hate (I understand the PC hate of course)
My love of it primarily stems from superb cinematic elements. The way the cinematics are integrated into the game, ie there is no "load" or "separateness". There are just an endless list of elements I wish more games would adopt, the sense that you never lose "control" of your character, of your sense of place, when the story kicks in. Half the time youre not sure youre in a cutscene, or not sure you have the control to end it. It didnt get enough praise for this in my opinion
I can live with the first, although its really annoying.
I will probably never forgive them for the second one. It drives me up the wall. It's such a stupid rookie developer mistake. I expected better.
Loved most of the rest. There's a few things I'm a bit iffy on, like removing double takedown outside of fear, double ledge takedowns being removed, lack of crowd control move for Batman, stuff like that, but they're all things I can live with.
Not liking the shitty performance on PC is a given.
What the fuck were they even thinking?
This is worse than Bane in AA.
It's worse than Ivy in AA!
It's worse than The Force Unleashed. On the highest difficulty. Prepatch.
Did they playtest this fucking fight at all?
I do not recommend this DLC. Skip it.
He wasn't really hard. He was just badly done and didn't fit with the system, much like the other titans. Keeping your combo to the end of that fight was basically luck.
How they did titans in city was much better.
Balance isn't really about difficulty.
What was wrong with The Force Unleashed on its highest difficulty prepatch? I don't recall any issues.
What, other the fact the game was a hot mess? I loved the game but I could write an essay on its flaws.
We'd have to necro the thread for it first! ;P
IDK though, was mindless fun to me
Just trust me man. It really wasn't well designed at all. Balance isn't about fun. It's how parts of a game weigh up against the other parts of the system. Generally when you get this right you get fun out, but not always. Sometimes unbalanced games are fun despite themselves. I had great fun in The Force Unleashed despite the fact that it is a terribly unbalanced combat system.
Regardless, this DLC is both brutally, brutally hard, as well as ridiculously cheap and asks precision and speed from a combat system that isn't designed for those two things.
I'm dying constantly here and this hasn't happened in an Arkham fight since I first started playing AA....
Those Who Rage At Video Games: Stay Awaye
And the Bane fight is pretty good, just spoiled by the fact that the strategy is repeated by Titans
I don't think AA or AC had a single bad boss fight, honestly
And then AK had...none
Sigh
The combat system in these games is based on having options: multiple choices available to you at any one time, and building your combo opens up more options with takedowns. It's up to you to choose the best option from among many at any one time. That is the "free" part of "freeflow". The "flow" part is turning those choices into an uninterrupted attack sequence.
In both Bane and Ivy using takedowns is a death sentence: you are stuck in place and have no i frames against their attacks. Bane can charge straight through your takedowns, Ivy can hit you with the vines through them. You also can't use your batarang freely in the Bane fight, because you need it for Bane and you can't use it twice in a row. Your options are heavily restricted, and hence the free part of the "freeflow combat" is heavily restricted. You can still flow, but you aren't free.
That is why they don't fit.
Bad, good, like, dislike, they're all basically irrelevant. I shouldn't have called it worse or bad, it set people off. I really mean they just don't fit into the rest of the fights: they're the antithesis of the usual combat design.
You can still have mad fun with a fight that doesn't really fit into the rest of a game of course. You can adore it, love it to death, it doesn't mean anything to an argument about balance. Fun is hopeful outcome of good balance, but it isn't a causal relationship. Good balance doesn't always mean more fun, bad balance doesn't always mean less fun. Fun is a subjective state that relies on far more variables than mere game balancing. Personality is a much bigger part of fun than anything else. Many people use the words interchangeably (including me! its an easy thing to slip into!), but they aren't equivalent. They're talking about very different things.
A good rule of thumb to think about Balance is the childrens song: "One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong."
Your request for credulity has been denied. :P
I don't agree with your statement that that game was a "hot mess", nor do I agree with your assessment of it being "unbalanced" in any fashion. I played it through on its highest difficulty first run...no problem. I played the DLC on its highest difficulty too and, iirc the DLC started you w/o any of the perks you had from the normal play-through (that could be 2 that did it, it was a while ago since I 100%'d them) to boot... beat the base game like a few days after it came out... so... yeah. Though I guess the other factor is that I'm actively involved in great metagame that is achievements, so my perspective is pretty likely just different from yours.
What you have earned is maybe me playing the DLC a little sooner than when I complete this NG+ run that I've been delaying doing in favor of playing every other game I have. I'm about halfway through the story mode redux, so we'll see how it goes.
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/7295329/#Comment_7295329
My ability to play that game and the amount of fun I had while playing are completely unrelated to my opinion of how balanced it is.
I played that game so much it gave up, glitched out, and gave me infinite health and force in a vain attempt at hoping I'll get bored and go away and stop hurting it oh god please. I played it for hundreds of hours and had a ball every minute.
The only difference between you and I is that I do not consider my personal enjoyable experience to be relevant to game balance, and you do. This makes it a little difficult to express my point because you keep conflating these two very different ideas and treating them as the same thing when they are not. Game balance is a very broad topic, there isn't really a consensus on its definition, and fun is only really a way to gauge if you've done it right if you are looking at your target audience on average, rather than individuals who vary too widely.
Having a good time and having a well balanced game are not directly related. I dunno how often I can keep hammering this point until I just give up because it isn't sinking in.
Have a look at this article for example. Notice how the conversation isn't really based around how much of a good time the author is having.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134768/understanding_balance_in_video_.php?print=1
This is just one take, there are many others. I don't agree with him that an imbalanced game is necessarily bad, for example. But I do think an unbalanced game that is considered fun by some people but not others is basically leaving things up to luck and the whims of your players, and a responsible developer should be trying to make a consistent system in order to keep as many players happy as possible, which is much easier with a balanced game.
I did a game design short course recently and a very good example of an imbalanced game was taking rock paper scissors and changing scissors to shotgun, which can beat everything but shotgun, which draws.
Instead of a system where every element is equally likely to win or lose you get a system where shotgun is the only logical choice.
In terms of game design, what often happens is given fights are basically constrained so that, in our rock paper scissor example, one or more of the choices are weakened so much that only one of them becomes a viable strategy. For example, reducing the effectiveness of rock and paper, leaving only scissors: this essentially turns that fight into a game of rock paper shotgun. Your only logical choice is scissors, so you only get to choose scissors. You are no longer playing the same game anymore: you are simply making a constrained choice over and over. Now, some players quite like picking shotgun in such a design. They're happy to pick it all day. But that doesn't change the fact that the game has been changed from a consistent rock papers scissors to a different game, with unbalanced options, that is inconsistent with the previous version. When that happens suddenly and unexpectedly, its usually a sign that you need to take another look at your design, otherwise you risk alienating all those players who aren't happy to pick shotgun all day, because when they bought the game, they thought they were buying rock paper scissors.
That is what happens in Catwoman's REvenge.
You are damaged if you touch the electrical plates or the lasers hit you, even if you are doing a takedown. The robots are immune to both. The lasers move around the arena semi randomly, following the outside edge of the panel. When it fully encloses you, even doing a counter can sometimes leave you outside the safe area, even if you were standing directly in the middle.
You have to destroy all the robots quickly enough that the electric plates don't all fill up, otherwise you are quickly overwhelmed. you aren't killed by the robots, you are killed by the floor and the lasers, because the game space becomes so small that you can't stop your attacks, counters and takedowns from causing you to touch the environmental obstacles that damage you. Since you have no control over which animations plays, or how far she travels when doing them, and have to wait for the rng, the only thing you can really do is sit there in the middle, counter, and hope you don't get a counter attack that takes you into the danger zones. This happens often enough that if you reach this state with enough robots left, your death is guaranteed. You have to destroy enough robots so that there are either none or hardly any left by this point.
You also have default unupgradeable health.
With the way Catwoman's attacks works, the only ability she has that is fast enough to destroy them all before this happens is completely focusing on chaining critical strikes. No counters, no takedowns, no special alternative combos, no gadgets. They're all too slow. They take up too much time. They can cause you to accidentally touch an electric plat or a laser because you can't control them enough.
You just punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punchp unch etc ad nauseum.
In this fight, Arkham's incredibly lavish and layered combat system devolves down to only one choice: who to attack next. What to attack with, the actual depth in the system, the choices and freedom in the flow, aren't just missing: they're a pathway to a slow and aggravating loss.
To make it even more confusing, there's a challenge fight that takes place in the same arena, that has electrified walls and the lasers, but not the floor plates. In this challenge you do have invincibility from the lasers when doing attacks. You only get hit if you try to dodge through them in open ground.
For some reason they thought turning that off in order to turn Arkham combat into a game of rock paper shotgun was a good idea. It's certainly unique, but not in a very interesting way. It's dull and aggravating, since the best way to do it is to not even bother aiming and just let Catwoman aim herself. All you have to do is occasionally aim her at another group if she runs out. Otherwise all you have to do is sit there pressing the attack button with a steady monotonous rhythm for three minutes. Doing this was always an option in these games, but it was never the only option. And worse, the vast majority of Arkham fights take place in wide open spaces that give you plenty of room to move around if you need to. They also picked basically the worst character to do this with, since all her moves outside of the special speeded up state are slower than average and cover more ground on average than other characters. She's the least precise character in the game at fighting in a confined area.
I'm frankly baffled they actually released this as a paid for DLC.