Season 2 of Mediatonic’s smash hit Fall Guys is less than a week away, and while the developer has explained some of what players can expect to see, there is still plenty of new content left to surprise players in the coming days. However, while new events like Wall Guys are what most players are looking most forward to, the new season and the update coming with it is a prime chance to address some issues fans have had with the game up until now.
Tuning Fall Guys is no easy task, considering that each event is at least one player’s favorite, even ones that others would assume are universally hated like Team Tail Tag. So removing or reworking the least popular levels will wind up alienating those players, meaning that keeping the game’s player base regularly active will require wider quality of life improvements.
One thing that makes certain levels like Team Tail Tag or Royal Fumble so unpopular is the fact that players can hold onto their tails for 85 seconds straight, but if they lose it in those last five seconds, they lose the event. A fairly common fix for these types of events is to track points according to how long players have a tail or how well individuals perform in team events. However, this removes some of the randomness factor that makes some of these games exciting for less competitive players and extend the gap in crowns Fall Guys rewards casual players.
A different fix could be shortening the time limits on some of these matches, making them closer to a minute or as low as 45 seconds as opposed to 90, in order to make the time spent playing an event just to lose less stressful. Similarly, adding timers to other events that can sometimes take too long, like Roll Out, which can take anywhere between 15 seconds to several minutes depending on how long it takes for players to be eliminated. New timers can both streamline some of these older events, as well as help consider the development of new events coming with future Fall Guys updates.
This is something that more competitive players would be more interested in and can easily have a negative effect on more casual players if this turns into a scoreboard that displays every player’s stats all together. However, by giving players individual scores for team games, like time holding the tail in Team Tail Tag or number of rings jumped through in Hoopsie Daisy, more people can get an idea for how well they performed. As season 2 of Fall Guys approaches, even giving casual players a way to track their progress as they get the hang of new events could add to the experience without having to really tweak the mini-games themselves.
Some of the more competitive players would see this as a half measure, but the player base for Fall Guys clearly isn’t comprised only of competitive players. So, to make sure that each show can regularly grab enough players to fill a 60-player game, Mediatonic needs to continue to cater to both casual and competitive players in the same way that it is now. In that case, an individual scoreboard that shows how well a player has done that they can compare to previous attempts can drive competitive players forward, while players who don’t care about earning crowns in Fall Guys can ignore it and be fine.
Another feature that would be a tightrope walk for Mediatonic is adding a way to customize level preferences, in order to let players choose the events that they want to play on more often. In no way should the game allow players to completely veto any particular event, but by weighing the preferences across all players, it can help adjust how players respond to their least favorite event. This could help player input affect the game to make selecting an event a more positive experience, from helping competitive players hunt for Fall Guys‘ Infallible trophy, or just make jumping in for a casual night to play more enjoyable.
One of the best ways to implement this would involve giving each level a star rating from one to five, where the game would then decide the weight of each map based on the collective scores of each player. It would be a much more complicated process than just adding another page to the menu screen, as to best apply the feature would require being able to dynamically change the collected scores based on who is eliminated and who qualifies. However, giving players at least the illusion of affecting Fall Guys‘ events through preference weighting, even to a minor degree, could greatly change how fans feel about their least favorite events without having to ruin these mini-games for those that enjoy them.
One of the best new implementations that appeared in an update that came during season 1 was the introduction of Big Yeetus to Fall Guys, as a dynamic addition to certain events. It’s the type of thing that can greatly affect a match by either adding an extra level of difficulty to certain obstacles or giving some players an opportunity to launch forward if they time their jumps correctly. These dynamic additions that can add a whole new level of complexity to familiar levels is exactly what Mediatonic needs to lean in on in season 2 in order to keep the game evolving as players become too familiar with each event.
The list of ideas to add are endless, and the community has already suggested some, like a spinning plate that twirls at hyper-speed, or cannons that launch slime instead of balls and fruit. So, while everything Mediatonic has already committed to, such as nameplates in Fall Guys season 2, are already enough to keep players excited to keep playing, diving into some of the crazier ends of their design is exactly what the game might need. Whatever the next Big Yeetus that comes to the game is, the game can only benefit to adding new levels to the craziness of each chaotic event.
Fall Guys is available now for PC and PS4.
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply