A bit weird to explain but you likely won’t NEED to hit another long range shot if you hit the first one. Either you direct and it’s not an issue, you get the chance to finish with short range mode, or combo with your sub. S’Blast is far more unique in that it’s meant to be much more of a skill shot weapon than any other blaster while also having a large short ranged AOE mode as a crutch.
YES. I didn't know how to explain this, but you did it perfectly.
This is why I’d rather keep the AOE of the long ranged mode as small as it is but have it be terrifying.
The long range mode doing very good damage and splatting on its own should be a reward for having very good aim, either from a direct or two close indirects. Riibalanced currently does this part very well.
However, due to requiring such aim, it can't consistently do any damage at all, so burst bombs and the short range mode can't combo with it like you said above, because there's essentially nothing to combo with. This is a big problem.
The dilemma is this: how can we make the long range mode be able to more consistently combo with the short range mode without requiring extremely good aim, without making it easier to get the very good damage that is supposed to be a reward for said good aim?
The buff solves this. By adding a larger blast radius that does 40 damage and giving the short range mode 60 damage minimum, it makes the long range part of the combo hit more consistently, without making the strong damage and two shot hit any more consistently.
I see your point but I don’t think he meant wanting to buff the radius itself, rather make that radius init of itself more valuable to hit, to again, keep the weapon very difficult but still be rewarding, hence why I feel a minimum of 50 is as necessary as it is.
I wasn't saying that Chara wanted specifically this buff; I was just using the video as evidence that a larger radius would indeed help the weapon.
I agree with you and chara that having that level of aim should be more rewarded, but I also don't see any reason not to give a much smaller reward for aim that's slightly off, especially if it would fix one of the weapon's biggest issues.
That’s really not a good way to think about it. It’s like you’re trying to say you can read when a goo is at lethal charge without that indicator. You could but if Nintendo went out of their way to put an indicator, did it make sense to?
An indicator for the 50 damage radius would be a helpful addition like it was for goober, but that doesn't mean not having an indicator is a reason to not add it. Goo didn't have an indicator at first, and it wasn't a problem; it just took some practice. Just because we can't add an indicator for the 50 damage radius doesn't mean a 50 damage radius is a bad thing to add.
Also, an indicator makes fundamentally more sense for goober than for s-blast because it marks a big change in what your shot can do. The difference between 99 and 101 damage is huge. I don't need to explain this. For s-blast though, the difference between 49 and 51 damage is that... you can hit 0.1 units further away for the next shot to kill. This is hardly a noticeable difference. So although it might be a useful guideline, it wouldn't be nearly as practically helpful as goober's.
That said, it might be possible to put the visual effect for the explosion at the 50 damage radius, effectively making the explosion its own indicator. I'll see if I can figure it out.
I’d see your point here if something didn’t contradict. And that’s the fact the point of this is for consistency and yet the risk of an extra shot needed to kill that came with the consistency buff is the epitome of inconsistency
It's not a contradiction; it's simply a question of which thing we want to be consistent. The two shot, or the combo. I think the combo is more important here partly because the short range + long range combo
should be stronger than two long range shots (see quote at the top), and partly because the consistency issue with the two shot wouldn't be a problem with the damage itself but with the player's awareness of it, and this awareness will get better with practice, which isn't a problem considering it's a high investment weapon anyway. An indicator could potentially help with this, but again, I don't think the lack of one is a good reason to not do the change.
In terms of consistency, I’m actually okay with it being as inconsistent as it is right now. As for why, it’s because the inconsistency here unlike Ballpoint, has nothing to do with Rng or anything with indirect damage, rather just being a very difficult weapon to use. Same reason weapons like Squiffer, Tent, and Stamper haven’t been touched much in terms of the weapon despite very few using it, and why mitigating a weakness is kind of boring as a potential option of buffing.
The two shot being as inconsistent as it is right now is fine, and it looks like that's what you're talking about here. So I agree with you on that. But the combo has another problem that hasn't really been talked about yet.
The two explosions are pretty far apart from each other, and they're useful for different types of terrain. The short range aoe really likes being under ledges, behind large blocks of cover, etc. while the long range mode likes flat, open ground a lot more. This is also a weakness of the weapon, that makes it so that the short range + long range combo specifically is harder to pull off. Because of this difficulty of doing the combo (in addition to the other reasons) I think it's okay to make the combo more consistent.
As for buffing a weakness, if the options were to buff a strength or weakness and that's all the information I had, I'd choose buffing a strength. And I think in general, that's the better option, because it makes weapons more unique and interesting. But buffing weaknesses isn't inherently bad; each potential change needs to be assessed on its own merits. In fact, unlike a lot of potential weakness buffs, this change would add to the weapon's identity instead of removing from it. The long range aoe would still be very weak, like it is now, but would combo easier with the short range mode, giving that unique aspect of the weapon an actual chance to shine. Also, it would be the first blaster to have a long range aoe that can poke around corners but does damage very slowly when doing so, giving it even more utility and even more unique things about it.
Besides, you didn't even argue that it would take away from the weapon's identity or something, you just said it would be "boring". That is
entirely subjective, but I believe the end of the above paragraph gives several reasons why it wouldn't be boring.
If the long ranged radius is not meant to be the way to splat people, then why buff the radius in the first place? Plus, if even with a radius increase it’s still a chore to get an indirect, then why shouldn’t it do 50 consistently?
It’s a cool thought but again, what would be the difference if the long ranged firing mode just had a minimum of 50? 40 damage indirect just feels like such an unnecessary inconsistency
I explained this at the beginning.