(XBOX)cubeof11

I've always wondered why regular tilesets don't have a Free Roam / Free Flight mode that encourages exploration (for sightseeing, Kuria / plant scanning, or social hangout), or at least a clear "exploration mode unlocked" threshold in a mission where it's now safe to explore or extract without pressure (like Exterminate missions after the objective is fulfilled). Often I've wanted to hang around in a mission map after the objective is complete to show a new player how a puzzle works or figure out a new spy vault route for a room that randomly spawned in this instance, but I don't want to hold up the folks at extraction that are eager to leave. And sometimes Golden Instinct takes a while to narrow down the position of loot, and the people at extraction are suddenly scrambling to notice the waypoint and get to it before the extraction timer runs out. Maybe during the "Mission Complete" countdown, we could individually elect to stay on the current map and continue exploring with others that chose to do the same at our leisure with the rewards saved?

I think there's a hidden time limit if no progress is being made (similar to how Exterminate missions have a time limit if no enemies are being defeated to prevent stuck missions from hanging around indefinitely in public matchmaking). After 3 successful Disruption rounds, I found a puzzle room and was trying to solve it for around 15 minutes (having to fend off Steel Path Acolyte distractions), and then Loid suddenly declared all of the untouched conduits had failed and the mission ended shortly afterwards. This could either use a 2-minute warning of imminent mission failure (undisclosed rules are no fun; 1 minute to coordinate with / explain to the rest of the squad and 1 minute to act on a plan) or puzzle rooms that encourage long puzzle-solving sessions should not spawn in missions that have these strict timers.

Since at least 2022 or perhaps even earlier (probably when cross-play was introduced and I opted into it), I always experienced visual frame rate hitches of 3+ seconds whenever someone else joined the squad when I played on Xbox One X. I personally resolved this in December 2023 in an unsatisfying way by upgrading to Xbox Series X, so the HDD loading speeds that led to this hitch became negligible. I'd forgotten about that until seeing this topic because performance has been fantastic --- but about 5 to 12 days ago, I joined a public Ropalolyst Assassination Nightmare mission as a client to fulfill the corresponding Nightwave challenge (I believe 2 or 3 players were on other platforms; 0 or 1 others were on Xbox) and performance was great until the boss fight began with a full squad. Suddenly I was getting about 1 frame drawn per 4 seconds --- the music seemed unaffected, and the sound effects played but didn't reflect changes in what was happening in mission until the visuals caught up. One of the other players dropped from the squad and reconnected later, mentioning in chat that they crashed. I assume the host was doing great performance-wise because the fight progressed easily despite at least 2 of us having an unplayable experience. The hitches cleared up just as the Ropalolyst was defeated and going through their fancy defeat animation. Anyway, if we can investigate that original hitch and resolve it, maybe that will clear up at least some of these reports.

Something I don't feel is addressed yet in enhanced damage numbers is the difficulty of gauging total damage if you are dealing dozens of hits simultaneously. For example, when I'm firing Tigris Prime, I see a dense confetti spray of maybe 30 damage numbers and no way to mentally add them together, which puts me at a strategic disadvantage compared to single-hit, high-damage attacks that show the damage in a single number. I like how CrossCode's in-game MMO CrossWorlds handles this by displaying a separate larger damage number on the enemy that serves as a running aggregate total of the damage you've recently dealt in a combo. You can see examples of this in the CrossCode console release date trailer beginning at 16 seconds, and if you know someone with a playable copy, it can be experienced about 1 minute into the game, but their Web-based playable demo is an older version that doesn't feature this mechanic. This puts multi-hit light attacks on mental parity with single-hit heavy attacks, and it also cheers the player on as you continue attacking to increase the total, which is a unique morale boost that helps keep engagement during long boss fights.

In general, the Shawzin's support for chords doesn't appear to be well-understood or explored; I'm hesitant to publish possibly mistaken information to the Internet about the topic without having it verified first, so I can understand how this controller button binding problem might have gone unnoticed. Only one preset song (Stolen Dreams) uses chords, and the ones used in that song are still playable using the new bindings. I'm wondering what feedback prompted this change in the first place, since if you rotate the Xbox One controller slightly clockwise, LB, RB, and RT form a triangle that matches the fret order columns and note symbol layout on the tracks, the same way that directional pad left, down, and right are arranged using the new bindings. Since default controller button bindings are probably a code change and probably require certification, I guess I'll put together a visualization table for the frets and controller buttons to explain the situation and add it to SideAide.

You can change the controller button bindings by going to (roughly) Options, input tab, Customize Controller, Shawzin tab. That said, I've filed a concern on the new Shawzin controller button bindings that may result in further button mapping changes.

The updated Shawzin default controller button bindings that were introduced in The Duviri Paradox update placed the 3 fret controls on the directional pad instead of distinct buttons, which is physically limited to pressing up to 2 adjacent buttons, and makes it impossible to press all 3 buttons or discontiguous buttons. This means that minor chords can't be played using the default bindings anymore. Here is a Shawzin song memory (that I published in SideAide to teach new Shawzin musicians how to play a scale) that exercises the possible notes and chords (aside from the ones that require playing two strings simultaneously) for the Major scale: This song memory contains the following: major scale, scale covering 3 notes per 4 fret possibilities, chords covering 3 chords per 2 fret possibilities per 2 variations. Historically, this yielded the following button presses on an Xbox One controller (showing 3 notes / chords per line): Using the updated default controller bindings, the button presses are now: The last 6 chords are no longer physically possible to play with this controller button mapping because the directional pad isn't designed to allow opposing directions to be pressed simultaneously. I'm categorizing this as Sound feedback because I think the sound team's staff members are the primary owners of the Shawzin playing experience, and would be best suited to campaign for changes, or compose a new preset song that includes these chords to help testers catch this problem in the future. Update (24 June 2023): As of The Seven Crimes of Kullervo, the original controller button bindings are now available by default through the new "Alt" fret actions, so both the original and Duviri fret bindings can be used simultaneously. Thank you!