#Milla's combat can be severely harmful to player's hands (Instances of mashing through the game)

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viscid bloom
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Hello. I’d like to preface this thread first with acknowledging that this might not be the best place to post it, since it might not be a conventional bug at first glance, and second who I am and why this has become an issue through the game lifespan. I’m a speedrunner of this game, specifically with Milla, I currently hold the world record for the character and, since 3 weeks ago, have been suffering with some severe hand pains which was diagnosed as wrist tendonitis. The cause being a pretty long albeit irresponsible grind session of some of the game’s bosses with Milla.
Now I might make this sound pretty severe but I’ve been able to recover. I’m not out here to pin the blame so excuse me if I sound too harsh.
My point here is that with the way the character is designed, the chances of cases like mine occurring to other people, be it casual players or competitive players are very high and is especially worse for people that already suffer with hand disabilities. Multiple other players in the speedrunning community have reported suffering with hand pain after playing the character for long periods of time as well. I’d like to prevent this from happening from now on if at all possible.
My goal is both being able to increase the amount of people that can both play and compete in the game and prevent them from damaging their health with careless play and to also suggest simple solutions for the developing team.
(Continued on comment section due to character limit)

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Now with that out of the way let me present you with the culprit of this issue:

Mashing
Repetitive motions on pressing the same button for long periods of time. Extreme cases of this action for long periods of time are bound to cause hand injuries such as, in my case, tendonitis or worse yet, carpal tunnel syndrome.
There’s two instances of this occurring through the game, one with Carol and one with Milla, both done to achieve the same result, increasing the amount of DPS you deal in a small amount of time to an enemy. Both performed by pressing their respective attack button as fast as possible. The problem here arises from the fact that there’s no limit to how fast you can attack since you can input an attack on every single frame the game is active. Meaning if someone were to maximize their DPS they would need to repetitively mash to an alarming degree. And this is not just an issue exclusive to speedrunning. Casual players will find themselves performing these actions just by playing the game as it was intended. So how do we fix this?

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Solutions
Let’s get the easy one out of the way:

Carol: So for Carol, the best way to inflict damage is through repetitively pressing the attack button to perform her normal claws. A very easy solution is to just add the ability to be able to hold down the attack button in order to have her perform the same result. Many other games have adopted this method (See for example Smash Ultimate, where what was in previous entries mashing attacks you can now also perform them by holding; or Team Fortress 2, where hold down the shooting button will allow your shots to be performed as soon as possible)
Aside from that, buffs to her other moves could incentivise a playstyle that doesn’t revolve around mashing, namely Wild Claw, which is somewhat underpowered compared to her FP1 counterpart.

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Milla: Now here is the complicated one. Using the special button with her can result in two different actions: if it’s held, she performs a shield which she can use to reflect enemy projectiles and if it’s pressed, she performs a projectile.
We can see here why adding Carol’s solution I’ve talked about can conflict with her design since both are useful actions. So here are some of the solutions I’ve thought about that you can choose depending on your opinion on them and/or how viable it would be to implement.

1.Introduce a limit to how much you can press the cube blaster button in a certain amount of time. The simple albeit somewhat ineffective solution, since mashing will still be part of the character’s kit.
2.Buff the damage of Shield Burst. Because of how strong just mashing Cube Blaster is, Shield Burst is a bit underpowered damage wise. Especially when you consider the mechanic where Milla’s cube becomes weaker if you immediately create one right after you perform the burst. As it stands, there’s not much of an incentive to wait the cooldown to avoid this mechanic or to shoot a burst with full ammo. A good idea would be to increase the damage of burst while it’s at full power but only when it’s at that point. This way it would incentivise player’s to more carefully plan their burst for maximum damage. Aside from that you could make it so the Cube Blasters behave the same way the Shield Burst does, where it deals less damage the smaller your cube is, since frankly it’s way too overpowered as it is right now.

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3.Change the way the input is performed. Now here it gets more complicated. The idea is that while the Special button is held, Cube Blasters come out at a fixed rate, similar to Neera’s Sniper Drive. That leaves the question, how do you perform her reflective shield? One solution could be while you hold down your Cube Blasters, you also hold your guard button (Hold Special + Guard) which will switch from shooting projectiles to performing a shield. The other solution would be moving the shield action from her special button to her attack button. This way to hold the Burst button to reflect and release to burst, the same way it was in FP1.

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So that’s what I got for now.
Thank you for reading this far and sorry for making it a long read and asking too much. This has been an issue that has been bothering me since the game was released.
I love the game to death, honestly, but with the way it is right now it can be very dangerous for my health to continue playing since any play session is prone to damaging my hands. Hand pain is something that I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer through, especially for the rest of the game’s community that I know will play the game for years to come.
Let me know what you think! I’m open for more suggestions regarding this issue

warped birch
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I kinda hate to +1 but yeah

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I can also imagine taking a page from Alien Soldier and having a grounded Down+Guard change the firing mode such that holding the button lets her free-move while continuing to auto-fire in the direction she was aiming when she first started pressing the button.

Or having an assist option in the pause menu to auto-fire until the cube is spent, then when there is no more cube power, switch to the shield. Maybe a similar thing for Carol's face punchies.

Are there any existing actions that work based on holding guard? If not, it might make a lot of semantic sense for holding guard after the dodge finishes to be another way for Milla to keep her shield out.

Or even having pressing guard be the shield input for Milla, and releasing the button make her do the guard/dodge action

wanton bear
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Adding on, this is one of the reasons I’ve tried to find some kind of auto-fire option that’s balanced in terms of being about what I could input manually but that doesn’t require me to mash buttons. I have weaker connective tissues due to genetics, so most of my joints have excess range of motion and are prone to injury with lots of rapid button presses or less controlled movements. I can play for a while and regular levels are fine even with some level of finicky inputs like using cube momentum with Milla or using side attacks to gain speed with Neera or whatever, but trying to speed run most bosses with Carol or Milla is really rough on my hands to the point that I just can’t do it too many hours in a week.

sharp cove
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I made a thread on the steam forums addressing this problem, suggesting turbo mode in the assist options. I'd link to it but they're down currently...

I got pain in my right hand and arm and that wasn't even through input really intensive sessions, just prolonged playing. I dread to think what it would be like as Milla.

elder portal
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needless to say, would be nice to see these things patched up. I've started running Carol myself and I would not like to end up ending up with repetitive strain issues down the road.

sharp pendant
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This is a shame to read about. I felt like Milla in FP2 was doing a lot less harm to my hands than in FP1, but I also haven't played as her for more than 45 minutes at a time. I can see where this is coming from

wind sand
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I'm compiling an update that changes the conditions for Carol's melee attacks to check for the attack button being held instead of pressed. This also benefits her kicks. Milla will need a more involved solution so she is unaffected for now, in the meantime I would strongly recommend using a controller with turbo functionality for competitive speedrunning as her.

wanton bear
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I tried out the latest beta with the Carol changes. I was a little worried it would make combat too easy at first but it feels like it makes it more strategic actually. I'm less sure about the autofire on the up and down attacks as that feels a little weird in some cases but with regular claws it feels like I'm just hurting my hands less and focusing a lot more on when to use the jump disc and aiming it properly and when to use kick or wild claw vs regular claw attack rather than just mashing fast and hoping. And at least on 60fps it's about the same claw attack speed as I can do manually just with much less hand pain. So definitely heading in a good direction from my perspective.

viscid bloom
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Thanks for the super quick fix! This means a lot to me so my hands thank you immensely. Looking forward to what you can come up for Milla! I can wait as long as it's needed

elder portal
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Actually the change to up and down kicks are amazing too

wanton bear
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And yeah, thanks for taking a look at the thread and pushing out a change so quickly. Carol is definitely much easier on my hands just with this so whatever other refinements you do with her or Milla will be very much appreciated.

elder portal
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Up kick makes the Airship Sigwada Boss Skip much easier to pull off

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And down kick increases carols speed even more

dark shuttle
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also as a buncha other people have already said +1 to the whole issue, mashing is... not good and having a kit that encourages/requires mashing is... also not good

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nice to see the Carol adjustments so speedily CarolCooties

green matrix
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Joke's on you I have an autoclicker

muted geode
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The beta certainly makes Carol more comfortable to play. I feel like it lessens the intensity a little bit though. Still, I do like this. Random silly thought, perhaps this could be an item? The assist mode suggestion is probably more suitable.

warped birch
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I think the main problem with it being an item is that it means speedrunners will still be mashing up until the first possible point the item is available, reducing the intended effect of the change.

sharp pendant
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People with hand injuries would especially find that- well- insult to literal injury, omg

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I'm all for more items if the developers want to add things, that said. I just don't know about accessibility features taking up limited equipment slots

wind sand
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If anything it would be an assist toggle, but if that is the case then I would want it on by default

sharp pendant
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I agree, this is all about preventing injuries, and the majority won't always know they have the option to turn a feature on/off.

Whereas the minority determined enough to play "without training wheels" always look for which options to turn off- and if they really want carpal tunnel, that's on them, omg

dark shuttle
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Should there even be an option in a game for "RSI Mode: On?" 😛

sharp pendant
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When you put it that way- hmmmm, yes, that might be best left as a mod at worst, not a toggle in the vanilla game, omg

sharp pendant
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While playing as Milla, I just thought of something:

What if after Milla's guarding animation ends, she could have a 15-20 frame "window" to fire her cubes backwards instead of forwards, regardless of horizontal input? (While moving faster than her base run speed, of course; can't have people firing backwards unintentionally while hopping around and fighting bosses)

As it is, you need to spam guard to buffer more cubes anyways. Why not take an extra directional input out of it for people with a good grasp of timing?

It might be especially handy for boosting off a cube burst, just after launching off a gimmick ramp, for instance

elder portal
sharp pendant
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HEHE

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It's really hard to think of a context sensitive way to give Milla QoL improvements, without adding an entirely new button to the game. But, surely there are frame windows after certain actions that could fill this gap

elder portal
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Like that dance of the fingers is honestly the main thing that makes me not want to play Milla; the other characters don’t have a dance like that

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So anything that makes Milla more accessible is going to be good in my books

sharp pendant
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Milla technically has less of it in FP2, at least, because you can just tap guard while facing left, tap boost, and keep that rhythm going until you hit an angled surface or obstacle. But it still needs backward inputs some of the time

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Because you still need to turn Milla around

elder portal
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Also your suggestion has some fun ramifications; that leftward press eats a little bit of speed, so if Milla is above base speed and you continue cube bursting, you’ll end up with Milla Space Program (In other words; yes)

sharp pendant
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Guarding also eats into speed, so that could be aptly prevented, omg

sharp pendant
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While I was at work, I remembered something that I think could also apply to Milla:

In Metroid Prime Hunters, they did something unique with the shooting that we have yet to see replicated in other games in the series

In single-player, a single L tap resulted in five shots in a series, so instead of having to tap tap tap tap like mad, you had a gentle tapping rhythm to maintain repetitive shots at enemies. (Holding L still lets you use the charge beam, as well, but you will rapid-fire 5 shots first before it starts to warm up)

And in multiplayer, they reduced the shot pattern from 5 to 3, because the playing field needed to be more even between weapon types. Each L tap results in 3 shots

So, for Milla's case, maybe individual Special taps could shoot one cube at a time, but holding Special, releasing, then holding again, in a pattern, results 3 cube shots, instead of 1?

That might take a lot of strain off speedrunners, while also not making it too trivial to fire more shots with fewer taps

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Oh- I had misremembered how it worked. Tapping the fire button still only fired one shot, but holding L would then fire five shots before the charge beam started warming up (Or you could let go and hold Fire again, in a pattern, to fire more shots at a time)

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I think something like that might be interesting for Milla, as well

uneven solstice
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I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong but Carol definitely has auto fire

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Oh what you maybe stopped character movement for just a second or 2 when holding the cube fire button so you dont have to be frame perfect and you can keep your momentum

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Like it let you aim before you gained control of your character again?

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Or holding the cube spawn button could achieve that effect

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Kinda like how aiming your shot on the ground works

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It would make it so that it wouldnt get in the way of people that tap the button and want free movement at the same time

sharp cove
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this thread is old, carol didn't have auto fire at the time