Shortest month of the year calls for a short update! That’s how it works right?
I recently decided on a fairly major change regarding movement within Mythlink battles. As some may recall, previously I had given the option of two different movement styles- a “pointer” movement and a “touch-pad” movement. The pointer movement used the motion controls to pinpoint various destinations within the arena that a Mythlink could be moved to, while the touch-pad movement acted as a more traditional stick-like movement that is present in most games today. That is, you would press up and your mythlink would move up and so on. If you’re curious on more specifics, please refer back to the earlier posts where movement is covered in depth.
Anyway, the big announcement regarding this is the complete removal of the “touch-pad” movement style! Why the change you ask? There are a few reasons, but I think the main one boils down to Mythlink being a VR game. In Mythlink, you don’t play as the mythlink, but rather as the mythlink owner in the first person. This means that in battle it is not YOU performing the actions, instead you are instructing your mythlink to do various things in battle for you. Because of this, the touch-pad movement doesn’t make much sense. The touch-pad style may be more accurate and given the option I believe more people would choose this over the pointer method, but that isn’t the point. Allowing touch-pad or stick movement in Mythlink would make it more of a traditional game that you could play on any console. Instead, I think it’s more true to the nature of Mythlink and VR that the pointer be required for all battle movement. You need to work together to battle with your Mythlink and the pointer movement better represents “telling them what to do”.
Forcing this movement style does have some advantages too! Now that I know everyone will be using motion controls and pointer movement, I can do some fun things with abilities and other related activities. Not only that, but going to a single movement style also increases the number of buttons available to users for other actions! It is a shame that some level of freedom and customization has to be taken away for this goal to be accomplished, but I think sometimes having too many options can actually take away from gameplay vision of some titles.
Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll see a return of the touch-pad movement. Until next month, cheers!