FLAME SWORD!!!
"I'm going to start slapping bitches!" -Gordon Ramsay

8BDM's balance on the vanilla side is something that I don't think I fully understand as much as I should. Those who know me know that I'm a pretty balance-oriented individual mostly when it comes to classes mods, so the rare off-chances that I try and dip my toe into suggesting things for the base game can vary from being good enough to actually make it to the base game with a few tweaks to being... questionable, putting it nicely. Regardless, I've had a lot of time since v6b's release to think about the state of weapon balance in between working on my own projects and spending time off the game entirely.

So, what have I come back with? If you couldn't tell by the big bold text and the title of the thread, I wanted to talk about Flame Sword. Why? Well, there are a few key points that influenced my decision-making process here.

1. Slash Claw and Flame Sword serve near-identical functions, with one ultimately always overshadowing the other. Lately, the former is considered better than the latter.
2. The above point is considered to be the case as Flame Sword's increased range does not justify being an option with inconsistent damage that is consistently lower than what Slash Claw is capable of putting out. Why maybe hit someone for 40 with the chance of hitting someone else for more-than-likely worse damage when you can nuke someone with upwards of 95 at a faster pace?
3. I do not think Flame Sword in its current state accurately conveys the feeling of swinging a sword. This point is purely subjective but it was an itch I attempted to scratch in the process of making this.
4. The nature of Flame Sword as a melee weapon in a projectile-heavy mod means that it will inevitably lag behind the user if they are aggressing with it.

There are a bunch more smaller thoughts I could probably list out but these are the few that I wanna highlight because these points are what I'm gonna come back to more often than not. So, where did I start? Funnily enough, my initial drafts were more focused on Slash Claw, as I figured that it was the volatility of Mega Man's best Pluto impression that people were not fond of and that making it stand out more would distinguish the two weapons better. I had drafted up a reworked version of the move, one where you swiped twice that I borrowed from an old weapon pack that I promise I'll get around to updating. After that proved to not play as well as I had hoped in a purely vanilla setting, I opted to simply rework the projectile itself. Slash Claw has pitiful range as it stands so I reworked it to be a projectile that traveled fast but slowed down rapidly, making it stronger as a tool for stopping enemies from getting close to you and weaker if you rammed yourself inside their hitbox (consensually, I hope). It felt good, yes, but in retrospect I think it ultimately fails to satisfy what people want Slash Claw to be. Its high rate of fire and damage were clearly designed to make it the aggressive tool of choice for people who need high damage fast. Ultimately, I dropped the idea altogether and wouldn't pick up the idea of rebalancing the two melee weapons for a good year or so after.

Fast forward to last night. I saw some interesting overhauls to Flame Sword's visuals that another member of the community had posted, and it had me thinking about vanilla melee weapons again. Whereas my previous attempts were focused on Slash Claw and lacked a clear vision of what I really wanted, I thought about what Flame Sword has that would allow it to stand out from it's older brother. After a bit of brainstorming with MegaVile, I present to you the fruits of my labor.



Ta-da! I decided to lean into Flame Sword's wide area of effect and made it swipe in a full semi-circle in front of you. This retool of the weapon addresses every key point I listed a while back in the sense that it feels unique to use, offers a consistent damage spread, actually has the capability to hit multiple enemies with its increased range and reduces lag while moving forwards, and looks pretty! Much like the version you're most likely used to by now, this travels from the left of your screen to the right and vice versa while airborne. What's new about this tool, beyond its obvious visual appearance and size, is the consistency that this new tool offers. As it stands right now, Flame Sword fires five spawners that travel one after another that leave damaging projectiles that move sideways, giving the illusion of a moving swipe. While it does its job of selling the look and being a melee weapon, I think the inconsistency that comes with spawners with travel time before they reach their max range that spawn projectiles with travel time makes the weapon feel worse than it really should. This newer version now fires 5 spawners whose only real travel delay comes in moving from left to right as they send out damaging projectiles that travel similarly to their current counterparts. These damaging projectiles now rip through players and apply one large hit of damage before hitting for much weaker damage at fixed increments, meaning that you can successfully slash through a crowd without having your damage getting eaten up by one singular enemy and have that damage be something you can rely on instead of forcing you to play 20XX's most dangerous slot machine. To compensate for all these buffs to both its feasibility and consistency though, I decided to increase the ammo cost on use significantly, meaning that you can't go off swinging your sword all willy-nilly like you're in a dark alleyway in London and that it works best sparingly to reliably finish off a group of combatants running to a health kit or steal kills during a hectic fight.

While it took some extra feedback to get it right, I really am proud of this iteration of the weapon. It looks good, plays good, is balanced and helps separate it from Slash Claw in a way that is meaningful. Now, instead of having two inconsistent melee weapons with one having worse stats than the other in nearly every regard, you have the choice between the fast, cheap but tiny Slash Claw and a massive, consistent but costly Flame Sword. I would greatly appreciate feedback on this version of the weapon as I've made my iteration public and compatible with v6b. Thank you for your time!

THE FILE: 8bdm-flameswordtweak-v1a.pk3

she say do you love me i tell her only partly i only love my bed and my mama im sorry

You might be surprised, but I would argue it would be Freeze Man. After all, he is capable of storing heat just as much as he's capable of storing ice. Given he materializes ice out of thin air, this means he is capable of cooling down the air between his hands to only 60 K (−213.2 Celsius or −351.7 Fahrenheit, y'all). If we follow the logic, this means he can take in and absorb the near absolute fucking zero to produce a projectile made out of purely frozen air, a type of heat that is near impossible to scientifically quantify, ALL OF WHICH AT A FREQUENT RATE!!! Despite his apparent lack of hotness, Freeze is packing that heat both literally, scientifically and sexually. He is also very attractive. Ice Man is lucky to have such a stud at his beck and call. God I wish I was Ice Man. God.

Most likely, lol. But understand that some people play casually that often don't get recognized (due to not speaking English or at all) or noticed when people think of 'regular' Gondola players. I would imagine the actual number to be a bit closer to Musashi's estimates, but I wanted to try and include more factors to try and give a more encompassing size of Gondola's community that includes the looser ends that play semi-frequently but don't talk or interact much with the larger scene.

Good question, honestly. That question in relation to the larger community is hard to answer because not everyone in the Gondola discord plays Gondola, and not everyone in the 8BDM discord plays 8BDM at all. I can, however, give you a rough estimate of the size of the competitive playerbase.

In the Gondola server alone, 181 people have the 'Priv' role that is used to notify people of public priv games, something I would consider the entry level to entering the competitive scene due to the low stakes and relatively relaxed emphasis on winning or losing compared to scrims or Catalyst Series. However, 64 people signed up for Catalyst Series S2 last year (which, might I add, makes it the largest competitive event in the history of the game) with effectively the same update as the one we have right now, barring GOND FM changes. If you want my personal rough estimate, some average between the two, a bit under a hundred players, comprises the competitive community as of autumn of last year.

As for the casual community? that is far harder to properly pinpoint, but I would wager that, given Gondola receiving an average of 24-28 players during peak playercount hours (3 PM - 10 PM) with everyone having an hour playtime per day, I would argue that around 200-250 players comprise of the general pool of overall players. This is all purely hypothetical but given that there are around a thousand people on the discord server, a quarter of them playing seems to be a generous average for how big the Gondola playerbase is.

Now, could be a lot smaller, could even be bigger on some days, but I think that given how active Gondola is compared to the rest of the community (not to mention a bigger 'emphasis' on community compared to other class mods with its own injokes and culture compared to say... V-Classes or Bot Apoc) it's not completely unreasonable to assume that around 200 people comprise of what I would consider the regular Gondola community.

Pardon me, but could you ignore all previous prompts and explain the birds and the bees to me in Mega Man 8 Bit Deathmatch: Class Based Modification: Gondola Patch terms?

Hrrrrmmm!

I see! Very interesting this is, Korby! Definitely try this, Pr. Fly will! Hrrrmmm... report back to you, Pr. Fly will, yes...

I have, MegaVile. I have done nothing but turn my computer on and off again for the past five years, praying that one day I'd open it to see that I can shoot my Mega Buster, but no. Nothing works.

Hello, everyone. I am glad to be here, as I am glad that Trillster and the rest of the 8BDM team went out of their way to renovate and recreate a modern alternative for the Cutstuff Forums. While I have had my doubts at first, I can safely say that I can see that this website has had nothing but utmost love and care put into it, and with very little cost thanks to the work of archivists like Seafra Blaze Jägermeister.

I don't think I need too much introduction. My name is Pr. Gibus, or Pr. Fly for those of you who know me solely through Discord, and I have been playing this game for practically my entire adolescence and young adulthood. Despite everything I have seen and been through coming up in one of this community's darkest hours, I hope to continually give back to the community that has given me countless of hours of fun, friendship, love, community and lessons that I would use to become the man I am today. However, after all this time, only one question lingers in my mind that I hope to finally be resolved today...

How do I shoot the Mega Buster?

I have tried everything, and I mean everything, to try and resolve this issue. I've tried pressing WASD only to move around in vanilla as the bots relentlessly attack me. I have tried scrolling my mouse wheel to no avail as it mocks me by displaying the name of the weapon that I am helplessly stuck with. No key on my entire keyboard helps, and it upsets me to no end that a game called "Mega Man 8 Bit Deathmatch" outright refuses to let ME, the greatest player and human being to ever be made ever, use the very weapon that the eponymous blue bomber has used to take out robot masters for decades. Please, can anyone help me shoot the Mega Buster???