One issue I have with the Little Crusaders is that if you have 3 or 4 players, the dragon’s more likely to win. If you have 7 or 8 players, the knights are more likely to win. There’s just this sweet spot where it’s balanced. This is very odd that there’s nothing to compensate for more or less players so in a 3 player game, you can just spam the roar until you win. Increasing the cooldown when there are less players would help with the balance issues with the game.
Changed cooldowns could help, but IMO, roar (or dragon mechanics overall, to compensate) needs to be revamped entirely, since it’s currently promoting a meta that’s not fun to play or play against.
Roar, as currently implemented, basically just stalls the game for 30 seconds. Dragon has to sit still for several seconds for the animation to play (not fun), knights in roar radius are forced to run away and stay back for 30 seconds until they get un-scared (also not fun), and knights outside of roar radius can only stay back to not get scared (more waiting, not fun). The basically free kills you get as dragon for roaring are also not very rewarding, IMO. Additionally, using roar is pretty much a brainless move, since it can be used basically anywhere at any time without consequence.
As you mentioned, unless you purposefully don’t use roar for the sake of the game experience, spamming roar basically gets you a free win with lower player counts, which is boring for all parties involved, especially the knights (unless they stay away from the dragon entirely to not get roared, which makes thing boring for other reasons).
However, another issue is that with higher player counts, you’re basically just forced to spam roar to not die instantly. This leads to gameplay that plays as the following:
Roar
If most players are scared, chase players to get free kills
Else, if 3-4 players aren't scared, participate in engaging gameplay
Else, if more than 4 players aren't scared, run away to not die
Roar again
Fixing this would probably need more than just changes to the roar cooldown, although it would help.
An AoE mechanic of some kind would be desirable to prevent the dragon from being swarmed, but there’s no reason for it to stall the game so long when a brief AoE push (+ stun, if desired) attack would fulfill the same requirements.
However, I personally think it would be more fun gameplay-wise to switch the move over to a more mobile, directional move rather than a broad stationary move, since it would require more foresight to use, be more engaging to the dragon, and be less cheaty to the knights, while still fulfilling the same purpose.
For example, instead of the roar, there could be a charge attack (similar to the Accelerate Combustible Cornelius) which would propel the dragon forward, knocking away and stunning the players in its path.
This would fulfill all the benefits provided by the roar (crowd escape, stunning players for easier kills) while also not forcing unaffected players to stand back and requiring more foresight to use.
also, not really related, but make tail whip usable while moving again please, it’s basically unusable with more than 1-2 players and forces roars
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