Ok, I've pretty much added exactly this in the latest patch, I hope it feels less punishing once that central blocker is gone. Thanks again for the feedback, I feel this is a really big change and one that might not have happened without this input. Hugely appreciated, thank you!
Happy to be of help.
And yes, it really makes the game feel better paced and makes buying additional balls truly worth it. With these changes I managed to beat 1st difficulty as well as 2nd difficulty with Inferno ball. And it was really fun!
In those, I also had a couple of other, though much less significant thoughts:
- The tutorial could mention that you can switch around the active lights of each mission. That one took me some time to figure out.
- The Multiball mission is probably still a net negative. You get 3 balls, so unless the centre bumper has less than 3 HP, you get something that helps no one except speedrunners. My personal idea would be to alternate it with a mission that restores your protective bumper to half of the HP it had the last time you triggered Multiball + 10% of its base HP.
- Saving a ball that goes out at the side funnels feels really cool, so it's sort of disappointing to me that the side protective bumpers (usually, at my skill level) last longer than the centre one.
- The slow motion effect is really cool and fun, so I see a lot of potential for fun Glyphs and Blessings unlocking additional situations when it triggers. E.g. once a minute when a ball is about to be lost, whenever you cradle a ball, or when a ball moves downwards at a very high velocity.
- There's some potential for a couple cool temporary damage boosts from Glyphs in return for doing risky things. E.g. remove side blockers and gain temporary bonus damage after a ball enters a side funnel, while holding one or both flippers open, or while the centre protective blocker is gone.