loadout challenge flavor might nead a rework

[Gray Blacklight]

the main thing is that it usually (although it may be the other way around based on your rng) heavily favors ace over Nina, they both have some weapons that are really situational that you probably don't want to do the whole run with (nina has 3; the shorter range of the scattershot is a trade-off, the arcbeam is almost useless anyway and you never want to be stuck with an arcing weapon as you primary damage, and the toy beam is entirely a downgrade when core points are irrelevant) but while nina is forced to use whatever weapon she gets, ace could always go back to the base a-saber, with one exception; the secondary issue is the vagrant set.

the vagrant core set is amazing don't get me wrong, but you really need to build around it. and being stuck with corruption at the start hurts. the arm part in particular also forces the use of the base weapon, which is the one sort-of advantage for nina for the wrong reasons.

and while i love that nina and ace are more distinct in this game, i feel that they should be on an overall even level of strength, especially because of the daily challenge; they share the same leader-board after all, and you can only attempt a daily once.

i'm not going to pretend i have a perfect solution, but i have some potential suggestions;

-removing weapons from loadout's effect; far from the most elegant solution, but it does address the main issue directly.
-an extension of this, having them get the same cores for each challenge. i get the
feeling that the weapons are the reason that this isn't the case in the first place
- a even further extension of this, reworking the flavor to just give one or two
full sets that your stuck with. that might be to extreme, but it would address
both issues, as they can easily be the same for both ace and nina and would
allow use to effectively build around the vagrant set

-allow nina to turn of her beams; also not really in the spirit of the challenge type, but does balance things with ace.

-force ace to use one weapon; more in the spirit of the challenge, but does less for balancing on account of ace not having the strictly negative weapon that the toy beam is in this context, or the arcbeam is in nearly every context (seriously that thing should come with a damage buff like the wavebeam or something)

-removing vagrant cores from the challenge flavor; really, really far from the most elegant solution, its not nearly as big of a problem and like i said, i do like the vagrant set, but it would work. just not sure if its really worth the trade off

[lslkal2]

Im confused, cant nina turn off her beams as you discribe?

[Deathraven13]

This is ankward but.... you can equip/desequip cores.

So there is no issues here right ?

[FlameHricane]

I agree with most of this. It could be argued that the point of loadout is being forced to use whatever wacky set you get, but it can sometimes be unfun, especially in nina's case.

[Gray Blacklight]

Originally posted by lslkal2:

Im confused, cant nina turn off her beams as you discribe?

Originally posted by Deathraven13:

This is ankward but.... you can equip/desequip cores.

So there is no issues here right ?

under normal circumstances yes, but i am referring to the specific challenge flavor loadout, which disables the ability to do turn them off.

[batterystaplegames]

Agree that Loadout probably needs a little iterating before it feels great - think that's true of a bunch of Challenge flavors atm! Definitely open to suggestions. (I think I agree with removing Toy Beam from the rotation - maybe Nina should even be allowed to get a few Beams sometimes instead of just one.)

[Kiruka]

I think the simple solution would be to just allow the player to unequip/re-equip any of their Loadout rolls (as Ace can already do with his Loadout weapons), while still preventing them from getting any different core augs or weapons for that run. The challenge of the "this is all the core augs and weapons you get for the run" part of the modifier would still be there, but there would be less pain along the lines of Vagrant parts or the Oxjack Helmet or terrible Nina beam combos making a run more difficult than it realistically should be.