The G-Meister
Giga Slime
Chest rooms in Arcade mode are great! It's a whole free piece of gear which takes no effort to get, and helps your run along! But wait... don't enemies drop the same level of gear, and you can buy some of the stuff in the shop and get a lot of it as rewards from fishing and challenges? That's at least the way I've seen it so far.
Gear level starts low, and chest chance spawning starts high (I think). This gradually flips - better gear spawns in the chests, yet the chest spawn rate drops. Focusing on enemy gear drops as a comparison, they also have a low gear level to start off with, although it starts higher than the chests. This cancels out the effect that there are less enemies to drop gear on lower floors. Gear drops seem relatively constant (although don't take my word for it, haven't actually taken the time to do any mathematical studies.)
This, combined with the fact that, on the same floor, fishing and challenges seem to drop the same gear makes arcade chests like another random gear drop. Increasing gear drop chance slightly would probably have the same effect as chest rooms. However, the fact that each chest has its nice own shiny room in which to obtain the gear from makes it seem a lot better than it actually is.
What the Binding of Issac does with treasure rooms is give them their own item pool containing a large portion of all the items in the game, which are hard to come by through other means. Treasure rooms are also a guaranteed 1-per-floor, which require a key to open (some sort of price tag.) This makes them stand out in the game and really focus a lot of gameplay around them.
I'm not saying we should go with the same attitude towards gear rooms, but they need some distinguishing from just a random gear drop with its own room. The challenges have done a great job of this and bring some meaning to getting the gear. However, if chests are to be their own thing, they need not to stray into this sort of area.
Own's lockpicking example was a great way of keeping the chest idea, yet making it stick out from just a random gear drop. I've also had an idea:
Instead of just one chest with a random drop, there could instead be a selection of items. I've seen this posted about before, so I will expand on it. Instead, we could combine both the current chests and this example. Maybe there's 4 patches of dirt on the floor, each with a different icon etched into them: a sword for a +ATK or +ATKSPD item (including swords,) a wand for a +MATK and +CSPD item (including wands,) a shield for +DEF or +HP item (including shields,) and a "?" for +Crit or +MaxEP item. You may only dig up one of the items.
I was thinking that this would mean in multiplayer, you would each have to choose as a group which hole you dig, where each hole can only be dug once. This would require careful management as a group as to which ones you get, however it then becomes more biased towards singleplayer and players are already severely disadvantaged in multiplayer. It is also prone to mean people picking the one they want without consulting others, either accidentally or intentionally.
Alternatively, it could be four chests, each with a little sword/shield/wand/"?" underneath them, and instead, in multiplayer, one chest is picked for the entire group, whereby each person will get an item of that type. This still has roughly the same effect negative however, though to a lesser extent.
I'm sure a much better solution could be thought of, or this idea expanded on, such that chests have some element of personality to them. Multiple types of predicaments being implemented would be even better.
I wish you all a good grind,
G <3
Gear level starts low, and chest chance spawning starts high (I think). This gradually flips - better gear spawns in the chests, yet the chest spawn rate drops. Focusing on enemy gear drops as a comparison, they also have a low gear level to start off with, although it starts higher than the chests. This cancels out the effect that there are less enemies to drop gear on lower floors. Gear drops seem relatively constant (although don't take my word for it, haven't actually taken the time to do any mathematical studies.)
This, combined with the fact that, on the same floor, fishing and challenges seem to drop the same gear makes arcade chests like another random gear drop. Increasing gear drop chance slightly would probably have the same effect as chest rooms. However, the fact that each chest has its nice own shiny room in which to obtain the gear from makes it seem a lot better than it actually is.
What the Binding of Issac does with treasure rooms is give them their own item pool containing a large portion of all the items in the game, which are hard to come by through other means. Treasure rooms are also a guaranteed 1-per-floor, which require a key to open (some sort of price tag.) This makes them stand out in the game and really focus a lot of gameplay around them.
I'm not saying we should go with the same attitude towards gear rooms, but they need some distinguishing from just a random gear drop with its own room. The challenges have done a great job of this and bring some meaning to getting the gear. However, if chests are to be their own thing, they need not to stray into this sort of area.
Own's lockpicking example was a great way of keeping the chest idea, yet making it stick out from just a random gear drop. I've also had an idea:
Instead of just one chest with a random drop, there could instead be a selection of items. I've seen this posted about before, so I will expand on it. Instead, we could combine both the current chests and this example. Maybe there's 4 patches of dirt on the floor, each with a different icon etched into them: a sword for a +ATK or +ATKSPD item (including swords,) a wand for a +MATK and +CSPD item (including wands,) a shield for +DEF or +HP item (including shields,) and a "?" for +Crit or +MaxEP item. You may only dig up one of the items.
I was thinking that this would mean in multiplayer, you would each have to choose as a group which hole you dig, where each hole can only be dug once. This would require careful management as a group as to which ones you get, however it then becomes more biased towards singleplayer and players are already severely disadvantaged in multiplayer. It is also prone to mean people picking the one they want without consulting others, either accidentally or intentionally.
Alternatively, it could be four chests, each with a little sword/shield/wand/"?" underneath them, and instead, in multiplayer, one chest is picked for the entire group, whereby each person will get an item of that type. This still has roughly the same effect negative however, though to a lesser extent.
I'm sure a much better solution could be thought of, or this idea expanded on, such that chests have some element of personality to them. Multiple types of predicaments being implemented would be even better.
I wish you all a good grind,
G <3
What I meant to say was something along the lines of "Rather than making it easier, I'd rather the selection process be more active and feels like it has better player involvement and/or decision making." Otherwise it just becomes the "walk into room, get random gear drop that enemies drop anyway" sorta thing.