Blog Posts (2022)/Article 96

# **v1.3.0 Gag Rebalances**

Goood afternoon, Toons!

As promised (and as expected), our upcoming v1.3.0 release is going to feature some major rebalances to the existing Gag tracks! Now, we've gotten particularly \*overzealous\* with these rebalances. We are expecting these upcoming changes to cause far more discussion and debate than even the changes made in v1.2.0, because frankly, there's a LOT of changes!

We know players love to customize their builds, but sometimes, trying to manage your tracks and prestiges can be confusing or frustrating, given how unintuitive the Gag Training page currently is. No problem, we'll get that fixed up for v1.3.0.

*No more accidental refunds! Support on the left, power on the right.*

As a quick disclaimer, none of the following Gag changes have had any kind of formal playtesting yet. They're all conjectured balance changes, fresh from our Game Design department. Our upcoming Partner QA server will be the ecosystem where we test and play with all of the new Gag changes, and we will be looking to make any changes as see fit. Without further ado, let's get right into it! We'll be going through EVERY Gag Track in order, and then wrap up by talking about yet another new SOS rework!

# **Toon-Up and Trap**

Both Toon-Up and Trap are the only two Gag tracks to not have planned substantial balance changes for v1.3.0. Yes, we know there's six other gag tracks – we'll get into them. We have fixed a few visual bugs with these tracks, such as weird placement or cloning for Trap gags and animation issues with High-Dive. In addition, any self-heal from prestige Toon-Up now shows when the Toon-Up actually heals other Toons, and not at the start of the turn.

However, Wrecking Ball has received one significant buff: the ability to send those Cogs flying out of their shoes!

*Sponsored by: Gag N' Go.*

# **Lure**

The Lure Gag Track is notorious for being both too powerful and too frustrating in Corporate Clash. Good news first: **Lure Decay has been completely removed.** Yep, you heard that right; the Lure Gag Track will now always provide 100% accuracy against Lured Cogs!

What else has changed? Well, there's a few issues that our Game Design Team identified with Lure. Namely, there is a lack of any kind of scaling while training Lure, and there's very little variance between the Lure Gags, either! Most players have absolutely no need to bother using Hypno Goggles when Small Magnet accomplishes the exact same job. Really, the only reason most players have to train Lure for is to increase its accuracy.

As of v1.3.0, **the knockback damage dealt by Lure is now dependent on the Lure itself, rather than the Gags used.**

*Knockback damage of a $10 Bill.*

The knockback damage dealt is equivalent to the number of Throw or Squirt Gags used against a Lured Cog! For example, $10 Bill has 55 knockback damage. If you were to use two Whole Cream Pies against a Cog lured with a $10, it would deal 180 damage from the Throw Gags, 36 throw combo damage, and 55 damage **twice** from the Lure knockback! This is enough to take out a standard Level 16 Cog, of course. Do note that single-target Lures have much higher knockback damage values than their multi-target counterparts. And yes, Prestige Lure boosts this knockback damage by 20%.

We've also tweaked Lure Gag accuracy a bit more! Single-target Lures now have 5% more accuracy, while multi-target Lures have 5% less accuracy. In addition, we've reduced the duration that Lure lasts for each gag by **one round.** Hope you didn't need that extra round for anything!

In summary, the new Lure Gag knockback, accuracy, and rounds lured are listed below:

* $1 Bill: 5 Knockback, 70% accuracy, 2 rounds
* Small Magnet: 10 Knockback, 60% accuracy, 2 rounds
* $5 Bill: 15 Knockback, 75% accuracy, 3 rounds
* Big Magnet: 25 Knockback, 65% accuracy, 3 rounds
* $10 Bill: 55 Knockback, 80% accuracy, 4 rounds
* Hypno Goggles: 40 Knockback, 70% accuracy, 4 rounds
* $50 Bill: 100 Knockback, 85% accuracy, 5 rounds
* Presentation: 70 Knockback, 75% accuracy, 5 rounds

Remember, none of these Gag Changes have yet been playtested! Keep an eye out for any of our Partners streaming the new gameplay changes for our upcoming Partner QA server.

# **Sound**

The Sound Gag Track is notorious for being somewhat divisive in the community. Not having Sound makes you unable to participate in any combos, while having unprestige Sound makes most combos be barely enough to defeat certain Cogs, forcing most players to pick up Prestige Sound.

Some might say that Sound is in need of a nerf, while others would be up in arms for any nerf to Sound. We feel as though Sound is in an extremely disjoint position right now. However, we decided to rework it in such a way that it is better than it was before, while reducing the community divide around Unprestige Sound.

The big change? **Unprestige Sound now deals similar, if not better damage than former Prestige Sound** in the general case. In addition, Sound Gags will **no longer inflict combo damage** to improve its viability in solo usage. For example, Aoogah now deals 30 damage. Four Aoogahs would deal 120 damage total, without the 20% bonus. Sound Gags have had their base damages adjusted to ensure that most Sound Combos can still be used:

* Kazoo: 4 -> 5 damage
* Bike Horn: 7 -> 10 damage
* Whistle: 11 -> 16 damage
* Bugle: 16 -> 23 damage
* Aoogah: 21 -> 30 damage
* Elephant Trunk: 32 -> 50 damage
* Foghorn: 50 -> 70 damage
* Opera Singer: 65 -> 90 damage

In addition, Prestige Sound now provides a new buff entirely: Encore! Whenever you use a Sound Gag, you will gain 10% increased gag effectiveness to all non-Sound Gags for the next turn.

*The new Encore effect!*

# **Squirt**

Have you been wishing for Storm Cloud to deal 82 damage for all of these years? How does 95 sound?

Prestige Squirt has had a bit of a strange drawback to it in usage for Zap Combos. Having Prestige Squirt can be good, but sometimes, you might not want to soak more than one Cog, especially if you don't want Zap to deal weak jump damage onto a lured Cog and wake it up! As such, we've made a couple of adjustments to the Squirt Gag Track.

First: Prestige Squirt now no longer provides area-of-effect soak. Instead, it buffs the damage of all Squirt Gags by 20%! Secondly, we've made **Glass of Water, Water Balloon, Firehose, and Geyser now provide area-of-effect soak, regardless of prestige.** Squirting Flower, Squirt Gun, Seltzer Bottle, and Storm Cloud still soak only one cog, but have boosted damage to make up for it.

* Squirting Flower: 4 → 5 damage
* Squirt Gun: 12 → 16 damage
* Seltzer Bottle: 30 → 40 damage
* Storm Cloud: 80 → 95 damage

*Power Creep*

# **Zap**

Zap has been one of the most controversial tracks in Corporate Clash, and for good reason. Let us be clear: just because something is difficult to use, does not mean that it is necessarily good game design. Our vision for Zap is to keep it as an asymmetric area-of-effect damage Gag with a high skill ceiling, like it always has been. In fact, complex mechanics for Gags can work well, but complex mechanics are only most satisfying when they're expressed as clear, intentional game mechanics.

In its current state, Zap is undeniably the exact opposite of this. Most of its mechanics are obscure, and rely on elusive ordering techniques. The fact that a successful Zap combo can fail simply because two Toons needed to switch what order they used their Gag in is not acceptable. Nothing about this reads well to players. But, to make matters more complex, a lot of more technical-savvy players love the study of Zap jump mechanics, who take advantage of its quirks in order to perform Zap combos that are able to clear inconsistently-levelled Cog sets.

We urge the reader to think carefully about what it feels like to watch a X-X- Zap combo in action – not what it's like to set it up or how it feels to defeat Cogs with it, but what it is like to witness it. The first Zap will (generally) clear the left three Cogs, as expected, but then the second Zap is able to make it all the way to the rightmost cog and damage it. From an objective perspective, this feels less like witnessing an intended feature and more like witnessing a mistake in the game's logic, and to most players, this is what it feels like: nothing about this combo expresses itself well as an intentional mechanic. We feel the same way as well. We enjoy the high skill ceiling of Zap, but we believe that the skill ceiling should be determined solely on the player's strategic ability, and not on their ability to reverse-engineer edge cases in extremely outdated targeting logic.

There is now only one rule for Zap jumps: **Zap will jump left across adjacent soaked cogs. If it cannot start by going left, it will instead start by going right**. That's it. Nothing else. As a consequence, the following side-effects have been removed:

* Zap switching directions while jumping (e.g. x-X-x is no longer possible)
* Zap jumps ignoring Cogs that have already been hit by a Zap Jump in the same turn (e.g. X-X- no longer hits all four Cogs)
* Zap jumps ignoring Cogs that have been killed by other Zaps in the same turn (e.g. Xxx with four Kart Batteries will always deal the full damage of each Kart Battery to all three Cogs, regardless of health)
* Zap jumping over destroyed Cogs in general (e.g. Zap will no longer jump over cogs destroyed by Trap, Sound, or Squirt earlier in the turn)
* All emergent behavior regarding manipulation of Zap behavior with order and level of Zap Gags used (e.g. "cross" zap no longer makes a difference, nor is it necessary)

In addition, we've tweaked various mechanics and behaviors of Zap. The soaked damage bonus of Zap is now rolled into the base damage of the Gag, so Lightning now reads as having 240 damage as opposed to 80, while still dealing the full 240 damage on soaked Cogs. Dry zap now has a guaranteed chance to miss. Using Zap on a soaked Cog will now remove the soak entirely at the end of the round.

Zap's jump damage now acts as a "pool" of damage, which is split between all of the Cogs that it jumps onto. For example, the pool damage for Lightning is 200. When using Lightning against two soaked Cogs, the first Cog will take 240 damage, and the other Cog will take 200 damage. When using Lightning against three soaked Cogs, the first Cog will still take 240 damage, but both the second and the third Cog will take 100 damage; half of the damage pool is split onto each Cog the Zap jumps onto. The total damage pool for Zap is 80% of the Gag's base damage, which can be pushed up to 100% with Prestige Zap.

We've also slightly adjusted the damage curve for Zap Gags at lower levels:

* Level 2: 18 → 22 damage
* Level 3: 30 → 40 damage
* Level 4: 48 → 62 damage
* Level 5: 72 → 90 damage
* Level 6: 120 → 140 damage

*Triple Zap*

That wraps up all of the balance changes we've made for Zap. However, Zap has also gotten some gracious visual upgrades! First of all, give a round of applause for our two new Zap Gags: Lightbulb and Broken Radio! They will be replacing the Balloon and Taser Gags in the Zap Track. We've tweaked the level order of Zap a bit as well. Lightbulb is the new level 3 Zap Gag, Broken Radio is the new level 4 Zap Gag, and Kart Battery has been moved up from level 4 to level 5. Cool!

In addition, the Zap beams themselves look more like flowing electricity, as opposed to great yellow triangles. There have been lots of animation changes done for Zap as well, from reworked movies for Kart Battery and Broken TV to a quick-kill animation for Level 5+ Zap. Not to mention the brand new reaction animations for zapped Cogs!

# **Throw**

Marked for Laugh is bad? Yeah, ok, that's fair. **Instead of applying Marked for Laugh, Prestige Throw now heals the user for 20% of the Gags base damage upon usage.**

*New Throw Prestige*

We also realized that Whole Fruit Pie wasn't dealing quite enough damage as it was supposed to be doing when we had originally buffed the damage of Throw Gags, so, it has been buffed to deal 55 damage as opposed to 50!

# **Drop**

We hated how frustrating it was watching a four-Drop combo to miss, so we've made it less likely to happen! This is because **Drop Gags now roll for accuracy individually per Drop Gag used on a target, instead of being "all or nothing"**. That's right! If you use four pianos against the Litigator, instead of all four pianos hitting or missing, some of the Drop gags may hit while others may miss.

*An early celebration.*

We also reduced the accuracy cap of Drop from 95% to 90%. However, to make up for both of these changes, Prestige Drop is getting a nice buff: **the +15% accuracy bonus for Prestige Drop is now always applied, instead of only applying for solo Drop!** Go out there and get those crazy combos.

# **IOUs**

When SOS cards were reworked back in v1.2.0, we felt as though the damage boost they provided was significant and felt good. This wasn't immediately the case, and we still had to buff them a little bit after launch. However, upon further analysis, SOS cards revealed themselves to be actually pretty much terrible for anything that wasn't Trap or Drop. As in, in nearly every single case where you could have used an SOS card, you would have been better off just using a regular Gag for the turn, even when accounting for optimal usage of the extended damage boost, which was already extremely difficult to take advantage of anyways.

So, we've once again reworked SOS cards, and rebranded them too – Meet your new V.P. reward, the IOU!

*Which Toon?*

Unlike SOS cards, IOUs are single-target and activated on-demand. While SOSs gave a small buff in a Gag Track for all Toons over a few rounds, IOUs instead give a massive buff in a Gag Track for one Toon for when they use it next! Check out the adjusted values below:

* Toon-Up
	+ Madam Chuckle: +35 Toon-Up to the next 3 Toon-Up Gags.
	+ Daffy Don: +45 Toon-Up to the next 2 Toon-Up Gags.
	+ Flippy: +90 Toon-Up to the next Toon-Up Gag.
* Trap
	+ Clerk Will: +85 damage to the next 3 Trap Gags.
	+ Clerk Penny: +125 damage to the next 2 Trap Gags.
	+ Clerk Clara: +250 damage to the next Trap Gag.
* Lure
	+ Stinky Ned: +20 Knockback damage to the next 3 Lure Gags.
	+ Nancy Gas: +25 Knockback damage to the next 2 Lure Gags.
	+ Lil Oldman: +50 Knockback damage to the next Lure Gag.
* Sound
	+ Barbara Seville: +20 damage to the next 3 Sound Gags.
	+ Sid Sonata: +25 damage to the next 2 Sound Gags.
	+ Moe Zart: +50 damage to the next Sound Gag.
* Squirt
	+ Sid Squid: +30 damage to the next 3 Squirt Gags.
	+ Sanjay Splash: +40 damage to the next 2 Squirt Gags.
	+ Sharky Jones: +80 damage to the next Squirt Gag.
* Zap
	+ Dentist Daniel: +30 damage (per target) to the next 3 Zap Gags.
	+ Electra Eel: +40 damage (per target) to the next 2 Zap Gags.
	+ Nat: +80 damage (per target) to the next Zap Gag.
* Throw
	+ Cleff: +35 damage to the next 3 Throw Gags.
	+ Cindy Sprinkles: +50 damage to the next 2 Throw Gags.
	+ Pierce: +100 damage to the next Throw Gag.
* Drop
	+ Clumsy Ned: +55 damage to the next 3 Drop Gags.
	+ Franz Neckvein: +75 damage to the next 2 Drop Gags.
	+ Barnacle Bessie: +150 damage to the next Drop Gag.
* Rain
	+ +20 damage to the next Gag.
	+ Rain's IOU has been removed from the Derrick Man and is now given as a constant extra reward from each completed V.P. battle.

You may have noticed that other SOS types, such as Restock All, Cogs Damage Down, and Toons Accuracy Up are not listed above. This is because these rewards are now becoming legacy rewards, and will no longer be able to be obtained. Unlike the track restock SOS cards, these rewards will be rerolled into other IOUs of the same "rarity" (i.e. a 4-star Cogs Damage Down can reroll into any IOU that affects the next 2 gags). This also applies to any single-track restock SOS that players may still have.

# **Wrap Up**

Whew! That was a lot, wasn't it? Given that v1.3.0 is to be the biggest update in the history of Toontown: Corporate Clash, it only makes sense to also provide the biggest Gag rebalances we've ever done, too! We hope that you all are as excited as we are to see how these changes fare in the upcoming Partner QA. Of course, we will be keeping an eye out and making any adjustments, buffs, or nerfs as we see fit. We also apologize to Zap professionals world-wide.

Until next time,

The Corporate Clash Crew