The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Tractor Beam 2.0
Synthro Jun 26, 2022 @ 2:25am
Sharing Feedback
Having looked at the mod, as well as the comments, I wanted to share my thoughts. While I find most of the synergies brought forward are fun and refreshing, I must echo the notion that homing shot, as implemented, goes against the core purpose of this item.

As I see it, Tractor Beam's purpose as an item is to constrain tears to a set path, and the notion of certain items augmenting that path, such as Rubber Cement and the worm trinket synergies, is genuinely interesting and doesn't interfere with that effect. On the other hand, I find that applying Spoon Bender (i.e. homing shot) to the beam effectively nullifies that which the item aims to do. Despite that, I still think that Tractor Beam could still work well with Spoon Bender.

What I propose is, instead of giving Tractor Beam the same homing effect as beam items like Technology and Brimstone, have tears from Spoon Bender break away from the beam when an enemy gets close to it. Homing tears already try to do this normally, but since they are cannot break free of the beam, they are unable to move towards the enemy, so they just end up slowing down instead.

Assuming it is possible, I would find this to be a far better synergy since Tractor Beam would still work as intended. The tears would move along Tractor Beam's trajectory until the enemy draws them out, at which point Spoon Bender would be able to work as normal. Still, I am but a simple plebian on a discussion board, and I know little of what is truly involved in accomplishing such a thing. So if it's infeasible, or you just don't have the time, then at the very least I thank you for your time taken away to read my ramblings.

One more thing. I would like to see the return of the Marked synergy. It's supposed to follow the cursor similarly to Technology and Brimstone, but the mod appears to disable this. Not sure if this was intentional or not, but it is something I am personally fond of (in keeping with what I said about Tractor Beam earlier.)

That's all I have to say on the matter. I know I saw a couple of comments mention these issues, but I wanted to bring something to the table other than just "homing bad". Hopefully there was some merit in doing so, because I spent all of my playtime crafting this post instead.

P.S. I think it would be interesting if Strange Attractor synergized to make Tractor Beam magnetic instead of Isaac's tears. Then it'd into a literal tractor beam, pulling enemies straight into your line of fire.

P.P.S. I did have a suggestion for a new Marked interaction that would work differently than the Analog Stick item, but I decided to cut it for brevity given the post-length. I'll come back and share it if there's any interest.
Last edited by Synthro; Jun 26, 2022 @ 2:44am
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
jnadler Jun 27, 2022 @ 1:39pm 
this should be compatible with mod config menu
Ghostbroster Connor  [developer] Jun 27, 2022 @ 7:14pm 
Hey there, thanks for your interest and feedback!

I understand the reservations many people have with the homing interaction. However, I do not currently have any plans to change it.

While it does run counter to many people's interpretation of Tractor Beam, the core of this mod is essentially letting the tractor beam behave like any other laser when it comes to synergies, and making sure the tears will obey that pathing. So I essentially change the focus of Tractor Beam from "tears locked onto a straight path" to "tears locked onto a laser".

Actually playing with the homing synergy, the way that the path twists and bends and quickly snaps between targets, while keeping all the tears locked onto the beam no matter how it moves, is neat to me. It's far from identical to just regular homing.

As for adding configurations to disable certain synergies, I'll be honest in saying I don't really feel strongly about going through the process of setting up configurations just to allow the option of making tractor beam go back to doing nothing with homing.

As for changing the homing synergy, it probably wouldn't be trivial to do. Would be a new interaction I'd have to implement from scratch, whereas the current interaction just lets the laser do whatever it wants. And like I've implied, I don't really want to change it, personally. I have other things I want to work on!!

Again, I definitely understand where people are coming from, and respect it, and sincerely appreciate the feedback and your interest.

Btw, thank you for pointing out the missing Marked synergy! I went ahead and just fixed that one!
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