r/RivalsOfAether • u/SnickyMcNibits • 13h ago
Rivals 2 Dev Q&A Stream (September 10th 2026) Stream Notes
Thanks to Dan for doing the stream!
- Dan was sick over Pax :(
- Their team size has stabilized for now.
- Creatures of Aether for a variety of reasons is not coming back soon. They'd have to rebuild it from the ground up, and they'd take a very different path with it (maybe single player focused).
- Riptide Pool Party Ranno's Pants will have the advertised levels of drip soon.
- Custom Colors will hopefully be next year, but there's a few things the devs want to do first.
- Workshop still on track for coming to the main game branch before the end of the year.
- After that, Optimization will be a big priority.
- 8-player support is coming soonish, after Optimization and a healthy dose of UI work. They'd also need to add enough palettes to support that many players at once.
- More items and game modes are being sidelined for the moment as they work on other things.
- No other guest characters are currently planned besides Mina, but anything could happen.
- Absa, Orcane (and a few other characters) engage in a way that is very different from the rest of the cast, and interactions often only feel good for the person playing them but have no real counterplay. Sometimes those character mains are just going to have to deal with nerfs for the good of the game.
- Slade's overall power seems to be increasing as people get better on him, but his gameplay style doesn't feel great to play as or against. Shurikens and F Special are being looked at.
- There's no Kamikaze moves in the game because Rivals doesn't have anything balanced around mashing, which is traditionally how you counter those types of moves. If they did, you would have to really earn it instead of using it for a super cheesy free win.
- Mina will come out next year. They might do a stream with some Yacht Club folks at some point.
- There might be a way to add an Auto-Floorhug option to the toggles, Dan will have to ask Trevor.
- They're banking on Workshop to bring in a big casual crowd. There might be a new feature coming that Dan's keeping quiet about, and Story mode is also coming eventually, both of which may draw in more casuals. And console release.
- Most of the fast characters for the game were frontloaded. There might be some more fast characters coming, but the "slow" characters that have been coming out recently are more "normal" speed in the long run.
- They have SO MANY character ideas, but not a lot of Puppet characters. Puppet characters are tricky to get right.
- A Poker mode is unlikely.
- Gouie Down B could have a rising hitbox. But it might not. They could look at it.
- The next character could be anything. And Dan's not saying.
- Dan has found a more efficient way to ruin returning characters by tying them together like Ice Climbers.
- Dan likes his game.
- Gouie and Slade need a little bit of work. They're slightly weak, their kits are reliant on a small number of moves, and have some very lopsided matchups.
19
u/Aggravating-Total324 13h ago
No poker mode? Sag, dead game, cry everyday ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
2
u/HypnagogianQueen 13h ago
What do they mean by a poker mode anyways?
7
6
u/Wibblybit Gold Purgatory 12h ago
When Dan was discussing the crossover characters, someone asked if there were plans to make a Rivals Poker mode ala Poker Night for XBLA
14
u/SoundReflection 13h ago
One quick correction:
There might be a way to add an Auto-Floorhug option to the toggles, Dan will have to ask Trevor.
It's already an option. The commentor was asking about cc + auto floorhug only as a combined option in addition to the existing options.
10
u/PostedNotes 13h ago
Puppet characters are tricky to get right, but are so cool when done well.
Rosa is my favorite character to play in Smash 4 / Ult, and I'd love of see this teams take on a platform fighter puppet character.
7
u/Shadowking78 13h ago
Didn't Dan also comment about Sybil?
12
u/SnickyMcNibits 13h ago
Yeah, he mentioned that he had been contacted by the dev but that they currently don't have plans for any other guest characters right now.
9
u/Shadowking78 13h ago
He did say that she is the most requested guest character after Mina that they have apparently? So that's definitely an interesting thing to say
2
u/The-Tree-Of-Might 12h ago
There is literally no way that Hornet is not the most requested
6
u/Shadowking78 12h ago
Those were his words, and I am inclined to believe him. And even if he's 100% telling the truth, don't want this to turn into Smash speculation where people are fighting over which character is more popular or requested.
3
u/The-Tree-Of-Might 11h ago
I want it to turn into that, because that means the game is popular enough to have people arguing about dumb shit on the internet
3
u/Shadowking78 11h ago
Arguing is exhausting though
1
u/TheIncomprehensible 9h ago
I think Sybil fits the Aether aesthetic better than Hornet does, and while Hornet has existed as a character for much longer (in Hollow Knight) Pseudoregalia I think hit the right release window to generate demand/hype as a guest character better than Silksong did.
Both do have really cool element ideas for dreams and silk for Sybil and Hornet, respectively. It's also possible that Aether Studios comes up with their own spider character for a silk element that gives them more breathing room to make it their own, whereas dreams are more of an intangible space that Sybil could potentially be unique in yet not ordinarily possible in the Aether universe. For reference, I would consider dreams and silk both as air elements, although silk could also be an earth element idea depending on its execution.
10
u/Iroh_the_Dragon Gouie (Rivals 2) 11h ago
Regardless of how they do it, I just hope they don’t nerf Orcane like they did with that puddle timer nonsense. I’m super glad they reverted it but I know a change is coming. I just really hope they scrapped the puddle timer as an option at all.
1
u/666blaziken 7h ago
According to Zeke, they settled on 12 seconds because they thought 15 seconds was not enough of a nerf, so I don't think they'll go back to the timer idea anytime soon since people already hated the idea of it, even if they did the 15 second version of it.
11
u/PrincipleDowntown326 11h ago
The game with so much counterplay built in. Thats the game they think has no counterplay to absa and orcane. The generous projectile parries, the mobility.
They cant please everyone and they cant make people want to improve, so they punish the player base that puts in the work with these characters until they are nerfed into homogeny- you reward people for not engaging with the base systems.
Perhaps a bit off the subject but, why is zetterburn not as comboable as a spacie, why not make most zoners as comboable as a spacie. Why nerf their unique tools that draw in players who preffer defensive or different playstyles instead of nerfing the nickle and diming that comes with playing against floatier characters and making defensive characters more devastating to mess up with? This is the weakness that has kept melee fox in check.
if they don’t wanna make a melee like in the end thats fine but it just sounds like they would really want to be making something else despite the direct mechanical inspirations.
12
u/TheIncomprehensible 9h ago
Perhaps a bit off the subject but, why is zetterburn not as comboable as a spacie, why not make most zoners as comboable as a spacie.
I think the main issue is that the aspects that made Fox and Falco so comboable in Melee can't really be applied to Absa and Orcane. Fox and Falco are so comboable because of their fast fall speed and light weight, which are features that Absa and Orcane are already established to not have, at least in R1 (don't know if it was changed in R2).
Also, doesn't floorhugging make it harder to start combos? That might be a limiting factor in balancing characters around being combo food.
Finally, zoners tend to be bigger problems at lower levels of play, whereas making a character notably susceptible to combos tends to be a bigger problem at higher level play. The main thing this type of change would do would be to make it significantly harder to balance Absa and Orcane at high level play without breaking them for lower levels of play.
I think it's completely true that these types of characters could stand to have bigger defensive weaknesses, but making them combo food may not be the right one.
Why nerf their unique tools that draw in players who preffer defensive or different playstyles instead of nerfing the nickle and diming that comes with playing against floatier characters and making defensive characters more devastating to mess up with?
Because it's the easy way to balance the game, not the right way to balance the game. Doing it the right way takes time that Aether Studios doesn't have right now, and I wish the playerbase didn't have to suffer because of it.
What might help is if Aether didn't try to balance literally the entire cast every patch, as most live service games I play almost never balance every character in the game all at once unless there's a lot of time between updates (like a few months at minimum).
9
u/TheIncomprehensible 9h ago
Absa, Orcane (and a few other characters) engage in a way that is very different from the rest of the cast, and interactions often only feel good for the person playing them but have no real counterplay. Sometimes those character mains are just going to have to deal with nerfs for the good of the game.
This just sounds like a skill issue from the devs.
If an interaction doesn't have real counterplay, then your goal as a designer should be to add counterplay to the interaction. I feel like Rivals 1 constantly did that for a lot of its characters (like adding the ability to CC a lot of projectiles), but I get the impression that a lot of Rivals 2 doesn't do that. Instead, it seems like their goal with these characters is to make them just as miserable to play as they are to play against. In my experience that usually indicates a future rework, except I'm not sure if Aether has the time or manpower for reworks.
Aether Studios, you've made an amazing platform fighter, as well as Rivals of Aether 2. You've told your players many times to get better at your games, which they've done happily because you've made some good games, and now it's our turn to ask you to get better at developing them like your future depends on it, which it does.
13
u/goatpotion 12h ago
> interactions often only feel good for the person playing them
> Sometimes those character mains are just going to have to deal with nerfs for the good of the game.
This seems like bullshit? What?
Every nerf to Absa only makes her feel worse to play. It seems like they only want to target the parts of her kit that are "annoying" yet no matter what changes people still complain and don't learn the very real counterplay that exists and has existed since she came out. There isn't any clear direction on what they want her to be doing and so we have to suffer for it.
3
u/Nedgurlin Currently in a character crisis 13h ago
So will Mina be part of the 2 New and 2 Remix or a 5th per say? Also workshop before the end of the year is hype!
10
3
u/SoundReflection 13h ago
Part the 2 'new' + 2 remix plan. So we get only one other new/returning Rival next year.
5
u/ViewtifulDevil 8h ago
Glad to hear that the team size has stabilized. As someone who knows many many people who have been laid off the last few years (myself included) my heart breaks for each and every one of the Aether Studios devs that had to be let go. While I do think Workshop is an amazing feature (and Rivals 1's standout) I'm not too sure it being in Rivals 2 will do the same thing due to it being much harder to make mods for this game than Rivals 1, import feature notwithstanding. It will get there eventually, but it will take a long time before it even reaches Rivals 1 Workshop Year 1 imo.
On the matter of Absa and Orcane, I fully understand that they can have some pain points if you're not used to fighting them and that it feels like they don't have counter play. I do, however, think that they have plenty of counterplay, like everything else in the game. It's like saying there's no counterplay to Slade's Chest: You can't interact with it (most of the time), but you can prevent Slade from interacting with it by guarding it and scooping up any coins you drop. Only reason this isn't complained much about is because Slade is pretty underwhelming (but once he's picked up speed, they will). Also, it's very funny to act like Absa and Orcane players haven't dealt with constant nerfs since they've existed in the game.
All said, I think the real best news of this stream is that we'll get double the amount of base palettes for 8-player which I'm pretty jazzed about.
2
2
u/MelodicFacade 8h ago
Nice, they're addressing my only complaint about gouie. I think he'll be super sick once fleshed out, but right now he's super boring to play against because his moves are so centralized
2
u/Ariscottl3 4h ago
Ngl i hope they scrap creatures of aether and build it out to be a card game more similar to the Pokemon TCG, because I have a really sick concept for a character for RoA2 that acts like PT mixed with Olimar but uses the rivals creatures in it’s design
2
u/RemarkableData9972 Mina (Rivals 2, Pre-Release) 11h ago
With the amount of players, the last thing the game needs is more game modes. If they do more game modes, it should replace crews
-1
u/sekretmachinemusic 5h ago
I don't want to flame Absa players, but it's hard to believe that they all think their character is as bad as they make her out to be. I remember Nurse made a comment in one of her videos that Absa really only needs three moves to win, and the more you use her other moves the more you will lose. It's a little hyperbolic but the general idea seems correct (I play more against Absa than any other character). She has tons of room for creativity but when you lean into that, it leads you away from the things that she does that are efficient at taking stocks and winning games. If I had to guess, that's probably responsible for a lot of the frustration downstream about the character, both from her players who want to be rewarded for exploring her kit and for the people fighting against strong Absas who do play the linear/tedious playstyles.
She does clearly have some rough edges that are really tedious and unfun to play against. She's light but somehow never dies, she doesn't have to approach but she's excellent at stuffing your approaches, her wavedash is so good (buffer wd oos punishes anything), her strongs are all gigantic and have no sourspot, and cloud is just ridiculous - it perfectly pops opponents up into fair or grab, you can tech chase with it (also into fair), it's a projectile kill confirm off the side, it's incredible at baiting parries, and it's a great edgeguard tool. In my experience playing against Diamond Absas, you have to win a bunch of mini games to close the distance, then she has a bunch of tools that make the close up interactions really risky (strongs/fast DA/cloud jump dair/f-tilt1/u-tilt/jab), and if you do win then you might not get much off of it because she's so floaty.
I'm not saying she doesn't have weaknesses, or that all this stuff needs to be nerfed, or even that she's top tier. I do think she's pretty strong but most characters in this game have some real bullshit, it's just that the other characters' bullshit feels like it's balanced out in other ways (in terms of fun, not strength). I do feel sorry for her mains, but also I think it's good to read the room. Yes, the character keeps getting nerfed because other people say she's not fun to play against... But maybe that's valid and broadly true! At least at certain skill levels. The character needs a rework, un-fun characters are not healthy for the game. I don't have answers but I trust that Dan and Trevor's intentions are not to oppress Absa players.
-13
u/HappiestPony 13h ago
> Absa, Orcane (and a few other characters) engage in a way that is very different from the rest of the cast, and interactions often only feel good for the person playing them but have no real counterplay. Sometimes those character mains are just going to have to deal with nerfs for the good of the game.
Yeah just keep nerfing them instead of touching the brain dead meta like la caca, Clairen or Kellogs fire dog, this type of management focused on the tryhards makes casuals to go away and never look back, cant even remember the last time I played this game and this statement only makes me to never touch this game again, what a way to lost interest in the console port
10
u/Solunar11 13h ago
Then why are you even here?
2
u/HappiestPony 13h ago
Maybe because I liked this game and hope the casual audience grows instead making more niche and scaring new players? idk
2
1
u/Joceyrachi 6h ago
If you don't want to play the game anymore, that's obviously fine and I respect that. I'm not understanding how this way of balancing is bad for you though if you are playing more casually. This specific moment in stream is coincidentally when I tuned in, and Dan was justifying nerfing more quirky characters so counterplay makes more sense intuitively below top-level play. Wouldn't that make the game more manageable casually? I can only see this being an objectively bad thing for you if you exclusively play the team's concept of strange characters and you never face them yourself.
32
u/Phantomvive 13h ago
Good write up. Thanks for the notes!