Arbiter - Monthly Recap - March 2022 (Patreon)

Ahoy! Hope everyone's staying happy and healthy. It's been a long-ass month so apologies for this recap being a bit shorter than usual, but I've still got some fun stuff to talk about!

I had some PC issues at the start of March which took up about a week of my time (which have since all been resolved, thankfully). I also had to do my taxes (fun) which took up a bit of time as well.

On top of all that my entire family got COVID, so that's been fun too! I've been a little concerned as my parents are getting up there age-wise (don't tell my mother I said that) and my sister has a compromised immune system, but thankfully it seems they're mostly on the upswing. I'm doing my best to quarantine, but I'll likely get it within the next couple weeks or so too, hopefully with more mild symptoms. Friendly reminder to everyone that COVID is absolutely not over! Please stay safe, sanitize, and wear a mask whenever applicable.

Anyways! I spent the remainder of my time focused on integrating Scarlet Ashe's ability variants. For those who don't know, Ashe can equip up to 8 different abilities across his light and dark phases. His transformations will then have variants for some of these abilities, either enhancing them or changing how they function in some way. 

In Scarlet's case, her transformation enhances all of Ashe's projectile-based abilities, as well as a few others to reflect her fluent, ever-moving playstyle. Here's an example of how abilities change between forms:

For this ability, Base Ashe shoots straight blasts and can run around while doing it (but not in the air). Wolf Ashe cannot move at all while shooting, but can shoot much faster. Scarlet Ashe fires homing blasts, fires them much faster, and can move fluently both on the ground and in the air. The remaining forms will have additional variations as well!

How much an ability changes is a spectrum of considerations, mostly based on whether or not it fits the playstyle of the form as is and/or if it can't be enhanced in new, interesting ways. In Wolf's case, for example, I tried to make his ability variants more conducive to building combos, whereas with Scarlet I wanted to make them all usable while moving on top of being useful at a distance.

I've planned out pretty much all ability variants for the game, but I allow myself some wiggle room to play with different ability ideas and experiment throughout the process. I showed a few more of Scarlet's variants on Twitter over the weekend, so check it out if you'd like to see more!

Anyways, that's it for March! I'll likely be spending the next couple of weeks finishing up with Scarlet, and then I can start on Omen, the next transformation! Omen is a giant whip-sword-using berserker, so with the absolute shit ton of Elden Ring I've been playing it's safe to say I'm pretty excited! I'm looking forward to showing him off soon, so please stay patient! 

Once again, thank you all for your continued support!

Cheers,
Jordy