- Author Tyron
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Tyron
I'm probably never going to add toggles to Juicebox—I would never personally use them, maintaining them is extra work, and I'd prefer netgame players to have confidence in what's running (rather than having to guess what's in use and how everything interacts). Would love to hear your thoughts in more detail, though; I'm down to talk about general changes if people find specific problems or pain points. Use the thread or find me on Discord if you'd like.
Tyron
Yo, thanks for the review. I totally agree with you, Juicebox is extremely opinionated and aimed squarely at some v1 pain points that some people just...don't think are pain points, LOL. I'd encourage people who are happy with vanilla+KMP to keep playing that.
Tyron
I appreciate the thought and restraint you put into this review. (Aside: star ratings are fake and I think they say more about who chose to review an addon than how good that addon actually is.)
In high-level lobbies, I think attacking is kind of awful; everyone is pretty cagey and cautious with defensive items, and pushing through those defenses leaves you far more vulnerable than the person you're attacking, especially in the case of 2nd vs 1st. On most courses (midair hits aside), it leads to a pretty stifling feeling, where you're basically only permitted to attack right before the next item set (and only if no one in the area is hiding their item or holding a Jawz!). Otherwise, the reward of passing a single person is rarely worth the risk of getting passed by half the race, often giving the person behind you a substantially easier shot than the one you just took (to say nothing of mid-set checkmate scenarios).
Juicebox "overcorrects" on item punishment in part because of this—I really, REALLY like item play and got tired of feeling like aggressive shots were a flashy way to resign, even if they succeeded. With that punishment lessened, risky and impractical methods of attack and defense suddenly started looking pretty viable, and it opened up a type of fighting that I had never really gotten to engage with, despite it always existing in the vanilla game.
This is basically just a long-winded way of explaining that from my perspective, Juicebox doesn't deemphasize item play—it brings it to the forefront, giving you more targets to swing at and more reasons to swing. But I think if you disagree with my initial assessment of vanilla item play, it's reasonable to come to the opposite conclusion (and while I think I'm pretty strong, I'm by no means a tier 1 player; maybe there's some nirvana beyond my current skill level where suddenly aggression is good again).
I'm not really sure what to do about this. I'm happy with the way the mod functions right now, but I think there are probably ways I can do better while keeping the things I like uncompromised. For now, I'll keep working towards that goal, and stuff like this will be on my mind.
Thank you for the thoughtful review.
In high-level lobbies, I think attacking is kind of awful; everyone is pretty cagey and cautious with defensive items, and pushing through those defenses leaves you far more vulnerable than the person you're attacking, especially in the case of 2nd vs 1st. On most courses (midair hits aside), it leads to a pretty stifling feeling, where you're basically only permitted to attack right before the next item set (and only if no one in the area is hiding their item or holding a Jawz!). Otherwise, the reward of passing a single person is rarely worth the risk of getting passed by half the race, often giving the person behind you a substantially easier shot than the one you just took (to say nothing of mid-set checkmate scenarios).
Juicebox "overcorrects" on item punishment in part because of this—I really, REALLY like item play and got tired of feeling like aggressive shots were a flashy way to resign, even if they succeeded. With that punishment lessened, risky and impractical methods of attack and defense suddenly started looking pretty viable, and it opened up a type of fighting that I had never really gotten to engage with, despite it always existing in the vanilla game.
This is basically just a long-winded way of explaining that from my perspective, Juicebox doesn't deemphasize item play—it brings it to the forefront, giving you more targets to swing at and more reasons to swing. But I think if you disagree with my initial assessment of vanilla item play, it's reasonable to come to the opposite conclusion (and while I think I'm pretty strong, I'm by no means a tier 1 player; maybe there's some nirvana beyond my current skill level where suddenly aggression is good again).
I'm not really sure what to do about this. I'm happy with the way the mod functions right now, but I think there are probably ways I can do better while keeping the things I like uncompromised. For now, I'll keep working towards that goal, and stuff like this will be on my mind.
Thank you for the thoughtful review.
Tyron
UHHHHHHHHHHHH. Right. Battle mode exists.
The way Juicebox functions in Battle is not an opinionated choice, it's an accident primarily caused by me forgetting it entirely. If there's demand, I'll probably fix it up in a future update so that the relevant anti-frustration features can remain enabled while the other stuff doesn't disrupt the game.
The way Juicebox functions in Battle is not an opinionated choice, it's an accident primarily caused by me forgetting it entirely. If there's demand, I'll probably fix it up in a future update so that the relevant anti-frustration features can remain enabled while the other stuff doesn't disrupt the game.
Tyron
I feel pretty strongly about keeping the Hyuu changes, they feel like a net positive even if there are sometimes some unfortunate (but funny) misfires. As for Quick Recovery, next update will include a new visual cue for it as a reminder, so you don't rocket off and freak out. Glad you're enjoying!
Tyron
HEY COOL THANKS. I'm super glad you've been enjoying the addon, and since you wrote a ton I guess I'll take an excuse to write a ton too.
Technical Recovery is one of the more involved parts of the mod, so I guess I'll talk about it a little and explain some of my logic behind the choices that made it into release. I'm generally pretty happy with the way things are working at the moment, but obviously nothing is set in stone.
== QUICK RECOVERY ==
Quick Recovery / "pity techs" are a feature that got added relatively late in development. There are circumstances where hitting a useful tech becomes difficult to impossible, or the angle of your hit simply doesn't allow you to turn away from a wall in time—but more importantly than that, people are bad at video games and teching currently doesn't have perfect conveyance anyway.
Without pity techs, people who wildly miss the window (or don't know what "GO" is implying) would fall seconds behind in every item exchange despite not making any incorrect choices! You used Melee as an example here, and I think teching has the potential to come off like a pretty divisive mechanic from that game, L-Canceling—basically adding extra inputs to every situation, with potential death for a mistake, that don't have anything to do with player choice. (TL NOTE: I can do this with no problems for the most part, but I really wish I hadn't had to learn it in the first place.)
There is a kernel of truth in this idea, but the reason I'm attracted to teching as a mechanic is because it gives the player the feeling of agency; instead of waiting for the game to reassign them control, it's on them to get it back as soon as possible. If you shoot for the earliest possible input, you can recover nearly half a second earlier than normal (varying up or down depending on stats), which I think is pretty dramatic when the whole pack is so close together. The boost is also slightly longer, which helps angle correction and heavier characters a little more.
== TECH-CHASING ==
"Tech-chasing" could be kinda contentious. I don't think the defender actually has super interesting mixup options in that situation, at least in the current version of the mod, and if I stripped more iframes to balance a more "explosive" techboost I think people would eat random body-slam orbitals a lot, especially if wiping out near the gate path.
If I were to do this, my instinct is to leave Quick Recovery as a "safe" recovery option with the current iframes—choices!—but the actual risk-assessment there seems hard to judge and would likely lead to players just taking the safe option every time. Dunno. Since hits strip your items, I don't think there's currently an issue with players taking hits and immediately abusing their invincibility, but I might play around with these ideas indev next time feature updates are on the table.
(An early tech from some types of attacks leaves you relatively near the attacker anyway.)
== TECHBOOST STRENGTH ==
The overall power of techboosting is balanced for overtake hits by necessity; there is no way to avoid the bad lizard-brain feedback if you hit a player from behind and they still end up in front of you. (I know this for a fact because I had to frontrun-duel Trail's Chao indev, when accel characters were basically invincible. Oops.)
I'm currently exploring ways to make recovery more consistent even in extremely unfortunate situations, but the netgame community is highly motivated and very diligent, so I also have to make sure that anything I add doesn't allow for self-hit lawnmower exploits or nonsense like that. (Hell, people were doing this with the original drafts of Haste...)
==
This has nothing to do with the above, but you're the first person to actively mention Hyudoro here and I'm really glad you did—Hyudoro Spy was an idea I instantly loved as a ridiculous high-power concept, and tuning it in a way that didn't feel disruptive or punitive to the rest of the race is a weirdly involved task from a technical perspective.
Again, super glad you're having fun with it. Regarding the changes "putting people off," while this isn't my main area of focus, I have been showing up in tons of Juicebox games to try and get feedback from players who don't vibe with the mod just yet; I've done a lot of tuning on this front, and a lot of people who weren't convinced during public tests seem to be on board with my insane person ideas now, but I'm not convinced this is the final form.
WEW. Big wall. If you actually read all this instead of skipping to the bottom, you're insane but pretty cool.
Technical Recovery is one of the more involved parts of the mod, so I guess I'll talk about it a little and explain some of my logic behind the choices that made it into release. I'm generally pretty happy with the way things are working at the moment, but obviously nothing is set in stone.
== QUICK RECOVERY ==
Quick Recovery / "pity techs" are a feature that got added relatively late in development. There are circumstances where hitting a useful tech becomes difficult to impossible, or the angle of your hit simply doesn't allow you to turn away from a wall in time—but more importantly than that, people are bad at video games and teching currently doesn't have perfect conveyance anyway.
Without pity techs, people who wildly miss the window (or don't know what "GO" is implying) would fall seconds behind in every item exchange despite not making any incorrect choices! You used Melee as an example here, and I think teching has the potential to come off like a pretty divisive mechanic from that game, L-Canceling—basically adding extra inputs to every situation, with potential death for a mistake, that don't have anything to do with player choice. (TL NOTE: I can do this with no problems for the most part, but I really wish I hadn't had to learn it in the first place.)
There is a kernel of truth in this idea, but the reason I'm attracted to teching as a mechanic is because it gives the player the feeling of agency; instead of waiting for the game to reassign them control, it's on them to get it back as soon as possible. If you shoot for the earliest possible input, you can recover nearly half a second earlier than normal (varying up or down depending on stats), which I think is pretty dramatic when the whole pack is so close together. The boost is also slightly longer, which helps angle correction and heavier characters a little more.
== TECH-CHASING ==
"Tech-chasing" could be kinda contentious. I don't think the defender actually has super interesting mixup options in that situation, at least in the current version of the mod, and if I stripped more iframes to balance a more "explosive" techboost I think people would eat random body-slam orbitals a lot, especially if wiping out near the gate path.
If I were to do this, my instinct is to leave Quick Recovery as a "safe" recovery option with the current iframes—choices!—but the actual risk-assessment there seems hard to judge and would likely lead to players just taking the safe option every time. Dunno. Since hits strip your items, I don't think there's currently an issue with players taking hits and immediately abusing their invincibility, but I might play around with these ideas indev next time feature updates are on the table.
(An early tech from some types of attacks leaves you relatively near the attacker anyway.)
== TECHBOOST STRENGTH ==
The overall power of techboosting is balanced for overtake hits by necessity; there is no way to avoid the bad lizard-brain feedback if you hit a player from behind and they still end up in front of you. (I know this for a fact because I had to frontrun-duel Trail's Chao indev, when accel characters were basically invincible. Oops.)
I'm currently exploring ways to make recovery more consistent even in extremely unfortunate situations, but the netgame community is highly motivated and very diligent, so I also have to make sure that anything I add doesn't allow for self-hit lawnmower exploits or nonsense like that. (Hell, people were doing this with the original drafts of Haste...)
==
This has nothing to do with the above, but you're the first person to actively mention Hyudoro here and I'm really glad you did—Hyudoro Spy was an idea I instantly loved as a ridiculous high-power concept, and tuning it in a way that didn't feel disruptive or punitive to the rest of the race is a weirdly involved task from a technical perspective.
Again, super glad you're having fun with it. Regarding the changes "putting people off," while this isn't my main area of focus, I have been showing up in tons of Juicebox games to try and get feedback from players who don't vibe with the mod just yet; I've done a lot of tuning on this front, and a lot of people who weren't convinced during public tests seem to be on board with my insane person ideas now, but I'm not convinced this is the final form.
WEW. Big wall. If you actually read all this instead of skipping to the bottom, you're insane but pretty cool.
Tyron
I'm working on extra tech-timing cues for when you lose the primary visual, and I'm considering my options w/r/t Rocket Sneakers. Midair teching will probably stay functionally where it is, since it's functionally important that you boost the moment you hit the ground—but I can't actually make that the timing cue, or it's not possible to lag compensate and it introduces inconsistency between ground and air teching. There will probably be a second pass on some of the feedback and visuals here.
Agreed that 12p is a little chaotic, I think the genuine sweetspot is 4-10p. Server owners have a weird incentive to keep maxplayers high, since each additional player reduces the chance that people drop out of an empty/near-empty game—servers where the game gets more "chances" before going dead are always going to be more active than servers with fewer chances, so I didn't want to scare anyone off by suggesting that Juicebox was unplayable above 10p. I think everyone who runs 14/15p games has already acecpted a little chaos into their lives, LOL.
As for the rest, I'm keeping an eye on these things. I still get the chance to play pretty regularly, fortunately, and most of my sessions these days are for data gathering—specifically regarding pack-escape dynamics and whether item interactions consistently feel fair. If something comes across to me as an outlier, I'll give it a second look.
Thanks for the comprehensive review, and thanks for playing!
Agreed that 12p is a little chaotic, I think the genuine sweetspot is 4-10p. Server owners have a weird incentive to keep maxplayers high, since each additional player reduces the chance that people drop out of an empty/near-empty game—servers where the game gets more "chances" before going dead are always going to be more active than servers with fewer chances, so I didn't want to scare anyone off by suggesting that Juicebox was unplayable above 10p. I think everyone who runs 14/15p games has already acecpted a little chaos into their lives, LOL.
As for the rest, I'm keeping an eye on these things. I still get the chance to play pretty regularly, fortunately, and most of my sessions these days are for data gathering—specifically regarding pack-escape dynamics and whether item interactions consistently feel fair. If something comes across to me as an outlier, I'll give it a second look.
Thanks for the comprehensive review, and thanks for playing!
Tyron
Eggbox weirdness hasn't happened to me yet, so thanks for the observation. A spinout check is a good idea, but I do wonder about situations where you recover from spinout in the process of dying...I'll iterate on this for a bit and see if I can come up with something that feels right, Extended death combos suck, and it seems appropriate to soften this where possible, but the core behavior has to stay in—without it, it is almost always better to deathpit after picking up an eggbox, which is unintuitive and lame. Consider this on the todo list.
Teching isn't possible during squish because squish isn't credibly reactable, and the effect of squish is so short that the ability to tech would effectively nullify it completely based on a random mash chance. You can still hold Accel to Quick Recover in this situation—I'll see about clarifying this in the changelog or adding some better visuals for Quick Recovery in general, there are a lot of potential directions for better conveyance here.
In most internal test games, and the handful of games I've played since release, Rocket Sneakers still put you within striking distance of 1st basically every time, and often give you a lead of a few seconds. Whether or not they're hugely powerful seems to depend strongly on the course—how cuts are spaced and how much distance you gain—but the higher drain rate requires you to think much differently about how you want to use the limited charges. I'm not convinced they're in a bad place right now, I still personally prefer seeing them to Invinc and Grow most of the time, but I'm monitoring this and will keep an eye on feedback; as one of the only nerfs in Juicebox, it was always going to be contentious, and if this is a common complaint I can think of a few ways to proceed.
The divide-by-zero is resolved in the next version, which will be released basically as soon as I finish typing this.
I'm definitely not finished with this just yet, and conversation more nuanced than "THIS MOD IS SUCKS" is always appreciated, given how loud and abrasive netgame chat can sometimes be. Thanks for your detailed feedback!
Teching isn't possible during squish because squish isn't credibly reactable, and the effect of squish is so short that the ability to tech would effectively nullify it completely based on a random mash chance. You can still hold Accel to Quick Recover in this situation—I'll see about clarifying this in the changelog or adding some better visuals for Quick Recovery in general, there are a lot of potential directions for better conveyance here.
In most internal test games, and the handful of games I've played since release, Rocket Sneakers still put you within striking distance of 1st basically every time, and often give you a lead of a few seconds. Whether or not they're hugely powerful seems to depend strongly on the course—how cuts are spaced and how much distance you gain—but the higher drain rate requires you to think much differently about how you want to use the limited charges. I'm not convinced they're in a bad place right now, I still personally prefer seeing them to Invinc and Grow most of the time, but I'm monitoring this and will keep an eye on feedback; as one of the only nerfs in Juicebox, it was always going to be contentious, and if this is a common complaint I can think of a few ways to proceed.
The divide-by-zero is resolved in the next version, which will be released basically as soon as I finish typing this.
I'm definitely not finished with this just yet, and conversation more nuanced than "THIS MOD IS SUCKS" is always appreciated, given how loud and abrasive netgame chat can sometimes be. Thanks for your detailed feedback!
