A question to the devs about stages.#458

I watched the rivals 1 riptide today (thank you Ep1c) and realised something about the stages in rivals 2.

Where did the character go?! What i mean by this is most noticable with julesvale. In Rivals 1, it was set in a residential-feeling area, and both platforms were moving to transport stuff between citizen characters. It was cute, it made the city feel alive, and it justified the platforms moving from a world-building standpoint.

Cut to Rivals 2. It’s set in an… industrial area? I think? But the building we play on still looks like a house… The citizens are nowhere to be seen. In fact, NOTHING other than the platforms move in the background, not even the crane or the giant cogwheels on buildings. Speaking of the platforms, theyre now basic, moving across the screen with seemingly no purpose, powered by a few cogs that dont even seem attached to anything.

Okay, well what about other stages?

There’s actually a few that I feel have had an upgrade since Rivals 1, one of which being my favourite; Merchant Port. The fluid water, the colourful city in the background, the moving sealife under the water. It feels so alive!

Another one that this applies to is Aetherian Forest. The petals and leaves falling, the glowing lights from the treehouses, even the sylvan monster thingies that appear when both players are at one stock. It’s so full of life! (granted, it didnt technically exist in rivals 1, but i think it’s an upgrade from treetop lodge, the maypul map counterpart)

So again… what happened to the others? Fire capital doesnt feel like a capital city at all. Why did we get hodojo instead of aether high? Why did we get godai delta instead of aetherian gates? Why didnt we get anything like clairen’s fire capital reskin? What happened to Etalus’ map?! (Like seriously, how did we lose Frozen Fortress for Hyperborean harbor?!)

Now, all of this isn’t meant to degrade the dev’s abilities to make stages. The ones we have are amazing, I love almost all of them. (Im looking at you, harbor.) I also understand that 3D and 2D are vastly different when it comes to design and effort.

With all that said, I’d love to see some touch-ups to the stages we have to simply give them more life, more character, more “wow this stage is really pretty” feelings.

Thank you devs for making this game <3

Just an addition. I only say all this because I miss the feeling i had seeing rivals 1 for the first time. Being wowed by The Forest Floor, being hyped at Ori being in the game, watching the fire dance in the burning hideout, always wanting to drag out a game on clairen’s fire cap reskin purely because i loved it and didnt own it myself.

I know the devs havent been reading this often recently, but I hope they at least read this, even if nothing comes from it.

The stages are comparatively simple compared to R1, and my guess is that it’s an optimization thing. For example, if they add too much (bunch of characters, etc), we might get some nasty frame dips in an already resource intensive game.

But I remember hearing that the devs are going to do some heavy optimization work in the future, which could allow room for more complex stage backgrounds and effects.

Yeah definitely, optimisation is one of the many struggles with swapping to 3D, but I have hope that they’ll figure it out