Jacob and Esau Need a Serious Rework.

[Viking Mana]

Yes. We need to have a conversation about this.

These characters do not work. In the sense that at a basic, mechanical level, they do no function. They are not playable, and they are certainly not fun. They add nothing positive to the game. Amping up the artificial difficulty to ridiculous levels by introducing a mechanically broken character is just not the way to go at all.

You cannot control these characters when they are spread apart. You simply cannot. If you only had to deal with them being close together andhaving an unusually large hitbox, that would be one thing, but that is not the case. The potential benefits of splitting them up are tiny, to the point that the mechanic is mostly used (and required as a result of the game not being designed around this character concept in the first place. There are so many rooms that are simply impossible to navigate safely with two characters standing next to each other.

This problem is then compounded by the fact that you can't reliably keep them together, even when you try. The environment is, as stated, not designed around this idea, and they will constantly get stuck or pushed and thus separated, often simply ending your run as one character is swarmed by enemies and the other is utterly incapable of doing anything about it. Not only that, but trying to manually get them back together doesn't work either - at least not if you have any kind of speed or momentum - as their hitboxes can collide and push each other away. Yes, your attempts at putting the pair back together can literally make matters worse by knocking one or both characters away. That is not to mention the fact that they can collide randomly while you are playing. You can be doing a boss, turn around and go in a different direction, and their hitboxes will collide, knocking one character, typically Esau, away from the other and thus forcing them apart. And, as stated, it is simply impossible to play in this state, as most attacks are designed with one character being able to squeeze through gaps in bullets on its own, but not two. Let alone avoid environmental hazards or other things.

And I'm not even going to get into the myriad of issues that you can run into if one character gets flight and the other doesn't. Or how the addition of enemies that move erratically or randomly poses a significantly greater threat to these guys. Or how the addition of spiked rocks seems deliberately designed to counter them.

These characters do not work. They are not fun to play and the only cure for this ailment is to take them back to the drawing board. Personally, I would propose that they stick together unless the player is specifically splitting them up, but of course that makes their one gimmick, the dual bomb drops, irrelevant. But maybe it's better that way.

Emulating a co-op experience with two character but just one player doesn't work.

I'm not going to assume that anyone associated with the team is ever going to read this, or that they won't simply brush it off as toxic negativity, but I can hope. They should certainly not just willfully accept that a feature of their new expansion for their hit title is a clunky mess like this. It reflects extremely poorly on the game as a whole.

And before anyone questions my credentials: I have played these two for hours. I have done the 20/20 challenge. I have beaten the Dark Path with these two. But it was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had, and this is literally one of my favorite games of all times. It should not be miserable.

Don't leave it up to modders to solve this. Please take responsibility and fix these characters. Make them playable. This just won't do. You are so much better than introducing a broken feature like this and leaving it, lest of course you implemented them to troll your fans. If you really are that cynical about your own product, I don't suppose there's any way I could reason with you, but here's to hoping that you guys will actually look at this issue and take it seriously.

[edger]

no they dont lol

[Cherewen]

You're absolutely right, I have over 3000 hours in BOI and these two... make me really hate the game and rage-quit more often than not, one wrong item, one wrong step... one of them dies and it's over... they're just badly designed and no fun at all

[HazoVigi]

Git gud.

No seriously it's a challenging character and you need to deal with it. They already have a lot of advantages like taking double items, dropping two bombs at the cost of one, higher dps from the start, you can hold two items/cards/trinkets etc that they don't need a rework.

[Zombine]

Too bad, edmund made repentance just for people to suffer. Double hitbox and poorly designed rooms? None of their concern.

[Death Grips]

Jacob and Esau are fun.

[Zamir Bezgeev]

AHAHAHAHA.... i thought same,until t-lasarus...

[garlic_muncher_93]

They'd probably be more enjoyable if items could synergy between the characters. So like, if jacob has curse of the tower and esau has curse of the tower then every time you get hit it says "get owned" on screen in giant red letters

Mind you, who'd want to spend time implementing like a million new interactions for a character the community is so split on

[Spicybullfrog]

The problems you're talking about can be completely worked around with proper play.

Can't dodge when controlling them separately? then don't do that, they can be stuffed extremely close together, that's the best way to use them.

Can't reliably keep them together? learn to reposition them. It only takes a quarter of a second at most and once you learn how to do so its not that big a deal.

Can't dodge boss patterns because of the increased hitbox size? put one behind the other, 99% of all bullet hell patterns can be dodged by simply repositioning one behind the other.

Flight isn't really an issue either once you learn how to handle flight with one character; when pathing simply act as if you're only controlling the non-flight character and the flight character will never contact with anything and bump away.
Yes, you're going to take a couple more hits then other characters, this is inevitable, and splitting your health 2 ways makes it extra difficult, but you get:
-a free extra item every alt floor you clear
-doubled bombs
-doubled base DPS
-potentially an extra angel deal item, as well as an extra item from boss rush and 2 extra items from hush
-both the polaroid and the negative once you kill mom

you start the thread with the tagline that they need a rework, then state that the only solution is for them to be scrapped entirely. It seems like you're just mad that you can't beat them easily...

[Shadowlet]

The one thing they need to do is to sync their movement speed.

[Spicybullfrog]

Originally posted by Shadowlet:

The one thing they need to do is to sync their movement speed.

They are synced. Jacob and esau share a speed stat, at the cost of recieving half the benefit of speed upgrades. The only times when the speed stat isnt synced is i believe when you get extra characters through items such as strawman or with runes such as skeletal protector.

[kone]

If a character is too challenging mechanically or conceptually, more than the Lost or Keeper, it's objectively a mess it seems.

Of course they're new and something to get used to. I find them alright, fun, challenging for a lot of reasons yet not THAT hard. It's fine to admit struggling with them, I don't really see it trying to 'objectively' dissect this character when they are fine.

[Noelle Suplex]

J&E might be the hardest non-tainted character but honestly I'm glad that challenge is there. I've gotten nothing on their post-it note yet and that excites me. It's certainly more of a fun challenge than Tainted Lost.

[PreLife]

Originally posted by Spicybullfrog:

The problems you're talking about can be completely worked around with proper play.

Can't dodge when controlling them separately? then don't do that, they can be stuffed extremely close together, that's the best way to use them.

Can't reliably keep them together? learn to reposition them. It only takes a quarter of a second at most and once you learn how to do so its not that big a deal.

Can't dodge boss patterns because of the increased hitbox size? put one behind the other, 99% of all bullet hell patterns can be dodged by simply repositioning one behind the other.

Flight isn't really an issue either once you learn how to handle flight with one character; when pathing simply act as if you're only controlling the non-flight character and the flight character will never contact with anything and bump away.
Yes, you're going to take a couple more hits then other characters, this is inevitable, and splitting your health 2 ways makes it extra difficult, but you get:
-a free extra item every alt floor you clear
-doubled bombs
-doubled base DPS
-potentially an extra angel deal item, as well as an extra item from boss rush and 2 extra items from hush
-both the polaroid and the negative once you kill mom

you start the thread with the tagline that they need a rework, then state that the only solution is for them to be scrapped entirely. It seems like you're just mad that you can't beat them easily...

-lots of room layouts don't work with these characters. how do you reposition with spikes between them cause Esau got caught in a rock?
-you can't reliably put one behind the other, unless you control them separately. something that will usually cost you a hit in a fight, and often not help
-flight i agree with, just don't ever give flight to esau if jacob can't already fly
-doubled bombs and greater dps is good but the game is doubly scarce with hp and items when going down the regular path. That alone should be the downside of the characters, not the weird and bad control scheme.j+e should feel more like running a race with double speed and half the stamina instead running a 3-legged race against the Olympic athletes of the rest of the cast

[Zamir Bezgeev]

Originally posted by Aka_Prom:

J&E might be the hardest non-tainted character but honestly I'm glad that challenge is there. I've gotten nothing on their post-it note yet and that excites me. It's certainly more of a fun challenge than Tainted Lost.

I'm almost done with t-lost complition mark and want to say that j'n'e felt harder for me.

[Spicybullfrog]

Originally posted by PreLife:

1-lots of room layouts don't work with these characters. how do you reposition with spikes between them cause Esau got caught in a rock?
2-you can't reliably put one behind the other, unless you control them separately. something that will usually cost you a hit in a fight, and often not help
3-flight i agree with, just don't ever give flight to esau if jacob can't already fly
4-doubled bombs and greater dps is good but the game is doubly scarce with hp and items when going down the regular path. That alone should be the downside of the characters, not the weird and bad control scheme.j+e should feel more like running a race with double speed and half the stamina instead running a 3-legged race against the Olympic athletes of the rest of the cast

1- You absolutely deserve to get punished there. One of the main mechanics of the character is keeping track of where both characters are and losing sight of one character in such an extreme way is something you should try to avoid at all costs.

2- as i said before, you can reposition them safely and quickly, although it takes some practice. You don't need to be precise and stuff them together, just get your hitbox as thin as possible for the dodging.

3. it's not that bad... esau will never get hooked on rocks or pits as long as you pay attention to the non-flight character so you can play the game like you have a clotty with flight.

4. You can semi-control who gets hit by positioning before you enter a room. If you want to protect someone, have the other person lead the charge. Also, what do you mean by doubly scarce with items? i could understand less synergy between items, sure, but you also get slightly more items due to choice pedestals and there's nothing stopping you from stacking lots of upgrades on one character anyways.

I don't agree that the control scheme is "weird and bad", they're pretty fun to maneuver.