Mono balance

[0VERS33R]

I searched for the topic, but nothing necessarily on these lines came up...


Mono players have been asking for balance with all puzzle characters for a long time now and, frankly, I'l like to see a few mono characters on the scoreboard of popular songs. It occured to me... if pusher can get a 100% clean match bonus, why can't mono? I think that a percentage bonus (maybe not 100%) on clean matches would put pro monos on the scoreboard and ninja mono's would need a little bit more skill to integrate the shoriken with play (one gray block would no longer give this % bonus). Anyone to second this?

[Ko-Tao]

Id say no. Well over 99% of mono tracks can be stealthed by a strong player on the first run, with clean finish added on the second, because the execution required to do so is minimal and the strategy needed is generally nonexistant. The other 1% of tracks (mostly those with very high traffic or unusual traffic / track layouts) may merit some consideration, perhaps in the form of a dynamic stealth bonus that increases sharply as a traffic~time equation exceeds a certain threshold, or some skill intensive way to hold chain across the vast seas of grays that often occur in such tracks, but just granting mono a greatly increased scoring potential with minimal risk or skill required is a terrible idea.

Youll hear the top puzzle players claim that mono is the easiest mode, and with the 1% killer track exception mentioned above withstanding, they are correct. Consider that the most (over)played competitive song, TTFAF, is still seeing noticable top puzzle mode score increases some 2 years after the games release. Now also consider that the top possible mono scores (top as in, the max- theres zero room for further improvement) were likely all posted on that first day... i hope you get the picture.

Mono-only boards are available, btw. You can access them by clicking on one of the mono symbols at the bottom of the main online scoreboard.

[Hammer]

I also say no. Mono plays entirely differently than the puzzle characters and should be on a different scoreboard, if anything. A clear bonus would just be silly, because the people on the top of the mono scoreboards would be getting clear bonuses always (since not getting stealth is in fact, usually a bad idea). Mono only has one (two I guess if you count greys) color to worry about - any character with a clear bonus has to at least worry about five (pro tier has four color blocks + whites).

Also, mono scores will peak out much quicker than puzzle characters, due to people just getting better at puzzle characters and stuff - as the post before me mentioned, you will likely find several mono scores on popular scoreboards that have kept the number-one mono slot on the mono-only scoreboards since the game came out. (Even though this is unlikely, as mono has been buffed steadily through release).

There are only a few cases in which I would consider mono to be as difficult as a puzzle character, and they were also mentioned - keep in mind that most of the other classes end up playing similarly to Mono at that stage anyways. While strategy does have exist in Mono, it isn't as deep as the puzzle modes.

To sum up things, mono ends up capping itself on most scoreboards at the maximum fairly quickly. I would even guess that the majority of the deviation comes from different .ash files, heh.

[blue_h3x]

I'd also say no to this for the same reasons as above.

[0VERS33R]

Gee... thanks, h3x. Your input is very valuable to me...

[blue_h3x]

Gee... thanks, h3x. Your input is very valuable to me...

You're welcome.

Mono != puzzle character. It does not score like one, doesn't play like one, it isn't one. So saying it should compete just causes unbalance. See reasons stated above.

Now something that should be done about mono, is ironmode. Why does iron mode decrease Mono's scoring ability? surely it should raise the score ceiling whilst making it slightly harder to gain that score.

[Ko-Tao]

Now something that should be done about mono, is ironmode. Why does iron mode decrease Mono's scoring ability? surely it should raise the score ceiling whilst making it slightly harder to gain that score.

Subject ive expounded on a few times, definitely agree.

[0VERS33R]

Ironmode makes it harder to hit each block. So if you select ironmode and don't pick up as many blocks, don't hit stealth or whatever, you'd lose more points that without ironmonde. On the other hand, Ironmode gives you more blocks to hit. Personally, I've noticed to get MORE points with ironmode.

[blue_h3x]

Iron mode decreases the match timer, and thus in mono where chaining isn't an option, you loose the chain more and thus gain less points.

[Passerby]

there is now way that mono could ever be balanced  against puzzle characters with mono there is olny ever 1 or 2 ways to get the top score but with puzzle characters scores have just been improving on some songs since the game came out and they are still improving.

[blue_h3x]

There is a definitive best way to play each song for mono, but with puzzlers there isn't.

[Ko-Tao]

Ninja mono non-ironmode can also 1-chain alot of higher traffic songs via strategic gray collection / destruction, which on many longer tracks exceeds the lost stealth + cumulative hit boni (not to mention gaining an m21 bonus on many tracks where such is impossible for ironmode, reducing the effect of the other lost boni even further).

This method of play also tends to have a greatly decreased execution requirement (extra grays here or there become mostly meaningless) with minimal increased strategy needed- it plays like an overly forgiving 2-color eraser variant, where a very sloppy 1-chained run can often outscore a perfect nmi stealth.

Of course all that said, perhaps it was meant to be this way. Though i hope not!

[Vapula]

What I'd like to see is this.  On each of the scoreboards, there are little icons of the different modes at the bottom.  It would be nice to be able to click on one of those icons and it shows you the top players of that particular mode.

[Passerby]

click on the mono icon when looking at the online scores and it will show mono olny and hit any puzzle to show everything again. this olny works in the online scores section not on the ingame scores

[TheBandit]

Meh, no need to change the mono character.  I like it the way it is.