The Community's Patch Wishlist

[Viscera]

*long preamble, skip this part if you just want to read the list*

This is a post, where I (with a small team of friends behind the scenes) catalogue the things that we, the community, and the commenters down below would like to see improved upon in future patches of Repentance.

We will be updating the list daily with the commenters' suggestions, and refining the existing positions in accordance to the feedback I recieve. We would like this to be the definitive post of this kind, so that the Isaac team notices it, and hopefully, in its infinite grace, gives us the improvements we crave.

So be sure to give your thoughts and suggestions in the comments


[Let me preface our grievances by saying:
We absolutely adore Repentance, and are eternally grateful for all the hard work Kilburn, Ed, Sagittarius, Tyler and the rest of the devs put into it. That being said, there is nothing in this world that couldn't be at least slightly improved. If we sound a bit harsh at some points in this post, keep in mind that it's coming from a place of genuine love.


WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

The list of things we would like to see improved in the next patch:

High Priority:

• Greedier
To say that Greedier mode needs a complete overhaul is a very uncontroversial. It's just Greed mode but less enjoyable, because you have less money. It doesn't bring anything to the table, aside from the Ultra Greedier fight.
Honestly, the best way I can think of making it work, is put the repentence x.5 floors instead of the regular floors, and make each wave give more money. More powerful enemies but more potential items. That way it may actually be fun, like regular greed mode.



• The ??? fight
WIth the awesome graphical and balance changes introduced to the Satan and Isaac fights, one has to wonder what happened to ???. Every player has some amazing and intense experiences with the other three default end-game bosses. They all have something challenging but also unique about them. ??? however, is just kinda there. It spawns some flies, teleports 2 times, and then it's dead. I think everyone agrees that it's just an easier, worse version of Isaac. I believe that the boss of The Chest, one of the most fun locations in the game, deserves to be more than just a boring pushover reskin of a far superior boss.



• Make The Void more interesting
The general consensus is that The Void, in terms of visuals, is not very interesting at best, and downright lazy and soulless at worst. I have 3 half-baked ideas to how it could be remedied.
a) Make the D12/room sprite change effect more frequent, and maybe make it happen off-screen as well, to add to the feeling of confusion and, dare I say, delirium, when a player backtracks through the rooms they've just beat, only to discover that something feels off when the room's sprites change. Or you could just copy+paste the various effects and tileset swaps from the DELETE THIS challenge.

b) Wasn't the entire concept of Delirium inspired by the Eternal Update for flash isaac? Why not make The Void into an eternal-esque floor, with beefier versions of regular enemies. You could even just give white Delirious skind to the Tainted enemies if you don't want to design new enemies. Also, in terms of aesthetics for the reworked Void, maybe add some delirium goo to every room, in the form of mold-like growths on the walls and floors, that intensify in density the closer you are to delirium's room. That would make the floor visually distinct enough
c) Give delirium a unique boss room. It could be themed around the purple portals that are closely associated with the void, around the red spiral-like floor of the void transition screen, or it could be a glitched amalgam of many previous floors, like the basement, womb, etc.

• Make the Dellirium fight... Good

Time to Repent for AB+'s greatest sin...
It's no secret that the dellirium fight is broken, and is the least polished part of the entire game. The idea of it taking forms of the bosses you have encountered on your run is cool, but in practice, nobody is really going to care. We think this feature of the fight should be scrapped or at least reduced, and in its stead, a regular, "scripted" fight should take place. It will allow the fight to be fair, and allow the team to make smooth transitions between each state, and maybe even combine certain states (which would be really awesome).



• Mudeth's soundtrack
Yes, we have seen Ed's response to the question of whether Mudeth's music will be in Repentance.
But what he doesn't seem to realize, is how passionate people are about the original antibirth soundtrack. It goes above and beyond the call of duty, and its effect on the game's intensity and mood is immesurable. In an ideal world, Mudeth's soundtrack would just be a togglable alternative to the "canon" soundtrack, but honestly, we could even settle for Mudeth's soundtrack being added as a DLC, for the people who love it as much as we do. I am sure there are many. It really doesn't seem like a big deal. The songs already exist, people are willing to pay for them to be in the game, why not add them and enjoy all the benefits that it brings?

Mid Priority:

Character Sprite Improvements:

(link to visualisations: https://imgur.com/a/y9xvH4I )


•Apollyon's horns

They, much like Azazel's horns pre-Repentance, are just pure black. And that just makes him not up-to-par with the Repentance characters. And it's a very small change too, I could totally see it taking less than 10 minutes to do. Also, it wouldn't hurt to add some dimension to his mouth, given that he is a hollow husk.


•Shadow Judas

I love how the black-red character costumes look, that aspect is great. But... The pitch black just doesn't look great. It looks lazy and cheap. What I would propose, and I have absolutely no idea if it could work in practice, is something like this:

•Tainted Eden's VS sprite

While I get the idea behind it, there should be *something* there, so that people don't think it's an actual glitch (like I thought at first)
If making a regular VS sprite is out of the question, then what about a png of a 'broken image' symbol? It communicates the idea, but is also, in my humble opinion, quite funny and cute.


• Lazarus' blood (and sprite in general)

When you unlock starter Anemic for Lazarus, it makes him really ugly. It's just a bunch of red pixels. It really breaks the character's look.

Additionally, I would love to see his sprite get the same makeover Maggy, Samson, Eve etc got, especially given the fact that his floor transition sprite has alreafy been substantially improved. Lazarus was always quite fun to play, and having him be the worst looking char by a landslide just seems a bit unfair.
I admit, that one might be a bit of a longshot, given the fact that Tainted Lazarus' living form looks very similar, but I am sure the team can still tweak it just a bit





Character Balance Fixes:


• Tainted Jacob

Right now, tainted Jacob feels really muddled.
The concept is amazing, both narratively and from a gameplay perspective, with the demon Esau chasing you through the entire run
Having him be a constant threat, but also a potential source of damage is great. However, him essentially turning you into The Lost is a bit iffy. And him exploding after taking damage, even unintentional, is extremely iffy
Those both seem like bad solutions to the problems this character's great concept. The fact that Esau will inevitably take damage from your tears, means that in the late-game you are just essentially playing as Tainted Lost, except overcomplicated, with worse items, and generally less fun. Playing as Tainted Jacob is really fun, but the second Esau dies, or you accidentally touch him, it becomes a chore.

• Jacob, Esau, and the Ctrl button

We believe that having the Ctrl key serve so many functions at once is very inconvenient. I believe we should get an option in the keyboard settings to bind controlling Jacob to a separate key. And also, adding one for moving only Esau would be really cool too. Maybe also add a way to make the two 'stick together', so that dodging is easier. Double-tapping the drop button, maybe? Or simply shrink their individual hitboxes?
Also, as an aside, the spike button puzzle thingy rooms... Is there a way to just blacklist them on J+E runs? They are honestly nothing but a pain, and make playing the character a lot less enjoyable and unfair.



Boss Improvements:



• Bumbino
It's janky, reading his attacks is really hard, the attack that makes rocks fall on you is just plain annoying and unfair, and the fight in general is a chore. Everyone loves Bum-bo, but this boss just reeks of the AB+ Big Horn-esque jank.

• Sisters Vis
Another AB+ boss. They look cheap, and are generally way too easy. If they kept their original movement and attacks, then alright, they wouldn't be great, but they wouldn't be terrible either. But they definitely need a graphical overhaul, because right now it's just two Cages with a png of Gimpy plastered on top.

• Mr. Fred
What is this boss. It has always felt so out of place. It's one of the easiest bosses in the game in terms of patterns, but is in the womb,

• Mama Gurdy
Her fight itself is completely fine. But- I believe it would be cool if there was *something* behind her, so that her sprite isn't just completely cut off like it is now. There aren't many situations where you can see the cut, but there are some, and they make the game look pretty bad.

• The Frail's split tears
This is a small one, but I think that The Frail's splitting tears should be at least a tiny bit larger before they split. Whenever I fight him, the fact that the tears stay the same size after splitting throws me off a bit. Then again, maybe that was the intended effect.

• Champion bosses
The champion colors from antibirth have been implemented, and they are great. However, champion bosses are still, well, kinda ugly. Also, some champion bosses might need some tweaking, because now, some champions are far easier than the regular versions (eg. Carrion Queen) while others are just extremely unfair (eg. that one stupid version of The Gate that just shoots big spiders directly at you at 100 miles a minute)



Misc:


• The Bookworm transformation
The bookworm synergy is far too easy to get when you stumble upon a library. We think that all books picked up in one library should only contribute as +1 to the transformation. That way there will be no need to nerf the libraries themselves, or make the very fun synergy weaker.


• Live-time map pickups
The pickups shown on the map don't update for the current room you're in, and only do so after you exit. It doesn't benefit anyone, and is quite irritating.

•The Victory Lap popup

It should appear only after you've touched the chest, instead of immediately after killing The Lamb. It's such a simple fix, I don't know why it hasn't been done sooner.

• The Thing's sprite
With the amazing character resprites, including the resprites of the Sins in the latest patch, it baffles me how nothing has been done about The Thing's tongue. It's just the default nerve ending but shrunk down a bit. I think it should at least be tinted red like the rest of The Thing's body, so that the recycled sprite is less noticable.

• The Needle
It's arguably the worst enemy in the game. Not in terms of how challenging it is, but in terms of how badly it works. It's frustrating and it appears everywhere. Their jump height needs to be reduced, their vulnerability frames need to be greatly expanded, their telegraph should be more obvious (they should poke their head out when you enter the room so that you know they are there). It just feels like something from pre-booster-pack AB+

• Brimstone Sheol

With all of the new amazing looking floors in the game, Sheol is one of the least memorable ones in terms of the tileset. It just kinda looks like Caves but tinted black. It should have red brimstone seeping out of the walls, and replace the ground hole tiles with pools of brimstone, akin to the ones found in Mines but more red and aggressive.


Wow, you made it all the way to the end!
Feel free to post your thoughts as well as your wishes in the comments :,)

[XZero]

Originally posted by S.R.:

Some of these propositions are... very questionable(good luck finding 3 libraries in one run)

I agree. Don’t nerf Bookworm.

Let’s not nerf transformations any more.
(Rerolling no longer lets you keep them, and no longer counts previous items towards activating them.)

[WitchAmy]

Originally posted by CrippledCosmog2005:

i got one: make it so the spirit sword does damage as well and not just the swoosh effect

it... does damage tho.

[Danizk0]

Bob and Fun Guy transformations need a rework. They're too hard to get and are simply boring. Spider Baby belongs here too, except it's not as difficult to obtain.

[Sirius]

Originally posted by XZero:

Originally posted by S.R.:

Some of these propositions are... very questionable(good luck finding 3 libraries in one run)

I agree. Don’t nerf Bookworm.

Let’s not nerf transformations any more.
(Rerolling no longer lets you keep them, and no longer counts previous items towards activating them.)

Oh yeah, the rerolling transformations thing is pretty iffy as well. I don't really ever use rerolling items, but it does remove quite a lot of the appeal of items like D4 and D100. At least I imagine it does.

[Danizk0]

Originally posted by S.R.:

Originally posted by XZero:

I agree. Don’t nerf Bookworm.

Let’s not nerf transformations any more.
(Rerolling no longer lets you keep them, and no longer counts previous items towards activating them.)

Oh yeah, the rerolling transformations thing is pretty iffy as well. I don't really ever use rerolling items, but it does remove quite a lot of the appeal of items like D4 and D100. At least I imagine it does.

D4 and D100 are the only items I consider to have been killed by Repentance. The fact that they remove your health on use is just awful and I've already died on the chest because of this. D4ing on the last floor used to be a fun way to spice up the easiest part of the game, but now that's gone.

[Revalopod]

Originally posted by Blind, the Bound Demon:

Originally posted by CrippledCosmog2005:

i got one: make it so the spirit sword does damage as well and not just the swoosh effect

it... does damage tho.

in fact it can do too much damage and could use a rework. it's very cheesy with an autoclicker, the dps is like 10x higher than doing charged attacks. maximum attack speed for light attacks should be much lower so it doesn't reward using an autoclicker or giving yourself carpal tunnel if you're on controller.

[HazoVigi]

I mean, who's gonna do that? If you get to the point of using an autoclicker or whatever I don't think you care much about balance.

Originally posted by XZero:

Originally posted by S.R.:

Some of these propositions are... very questionable(good luck finding 3 libraries in one run)

I agree. Don’t nerf Bookworm.

Let’s not nerf transformations any more.
(Rerolling no longer lets you keep them, and no longer counts previous items towards activating them.)

On the other hand duplicate items now count towards transformations so that's a slight buff.

[Revalopod]

Originally posted by HazoVigi:

I mean, who's gonna do that? If you get to the point of using an autoclicker or whatever I don't think you care much about balance.

Originally posted by XZero:

I agree. Don’t nerf Bookworm.

Let’s not nerf transformations any more.
(Rerolling no longer lets you keep them, and no longer counts previous items towards activating them.)

On the other hand duplicate items now count towards transformations so that's a slight buff.

something that can attack as fast as you can click is just begging for an autoclicker. thats why these sorts of things usually have limits...