KoBeWi
Jumpkin
I recently played more of the new arcade. The changes made the mode much more enjoyable and accessible. Playing in 2P, we were able to even reach Season Temple for the first time. However after multiple runs, there's one thing that really bothers me.
After each death, we have to start over. I know this is the base principle of this mode, but it could work if there were, say, 10 floors.With as many floors as there are now (and more are planned), full run can easily take 30-50 minutes. And that's assuming you always play perfectly and reach the highest floor you "can". In reality, we reached Season Temple once, Seasonne twice and majority of our runs ended at Pumpkin Woods/Flying Fortress. If we want to play more of the higher floors, or even see them, we need to play over the lower floors each time. Sometimes we double-S Pillar Mountains, sometimes we lose our Time Crystal at Evergrind Forest. It's just random and inconsistent. And even if you assume you can breeze through first floors perfectly, doing them each time is just fricking tedious.
So my proposal is that there should be a way to skip first floors as some shortcut. I know it was suggested numerous times, but I'm at a point in arcade where we need much more gold to upgrade town and there are no available quests right now, so it's just more like grinding for unlockables. Perma-death is a thing of the past, most modern roguelikes introduce some permanent progression (which Grindea already does) and some of them allow for skipping dungeon floors at certain conditions (e.g. Gungeon).
Obviously the "shortcuts" can't be free. They should be there available for a price and have some drawbacks, but ones that shouldn't bother casual players. My suggestion here would be that unlocking a shortcut would require you to first get a double S on particular floor and then complete a questchain (probably from Archie). The questchain should consist of some hard to achieve tasks that will prove that you truly "mastered" to floor. It could be completing the floor with some exclusive nightmare active or doing a certain thing you wouldn't normally. Also you wouldn't be able to make a shortcut to some floor if you didn't shortcut the previous one.
Now, when you SS rank the floor and complete the few related quests, you would be able to start at the next floor. E.g. if you unlock shortcut at Pumpkin Woods, you would be able to start directly at Flying Fortress or any chosen previous floor, but only at the starting floors of each area (yes, I assumed floors as areas). Obviously, starting at level 1 and no equipment would make no sense, so there should be a way to manage builds for each floor. Either the game could store last 3 builds you reached the floor with or allow to directly save the character state upon reaching the floor.
There are few things to consider regarding that.
What happens when you save a build and reach the floor with more players? I can think of 3 options:
-just don't allow that. If you don't have saved build for higher number of players, you need to first reach the floor and save the team's builds for all the slots. So each number of players would basically have a couple of build slots for whole team
-make additional players clone the first player, making them start with the same build
-allow to distribute saved builds between players. When you reach the floor, you save the build in one of 4 slots and then in multiplayer any player can start from that slot. Every slot has a level 1 character by default. Also, host can decide to store individual player's build at a slot upon reaching the floor
First option requires most slots to store (unless you limit number of slots per number of players) and 3rd one is the most complex. But personally, I'd prefer the last one as it's just flexible.
Another thing are potions, perks and treats/curses. Again, there are 3 options (unless someone thinks of something else):
-store them as part of build slot
-allow to change them independently
-allow to change them independently, but it requires to upgrade shortcut/shortcut NPC to allow that (possibly with potions/perks/(treats/curses) as separate unlocks)
Again, I'm for the 3rd option, as it's interesting and "earned".
Another thing to consider is what to do with the score. Well, I assume that players who use shortcuts don't care about score, but rather want to actually complete the arcade mode. So every time you start, your score starts at 0. Storing score in "build slots" are not an option, because they can easily be edited, unless the score is separately stored in cloud (if cloud was used for this, maybe starting score should be reduced as a penalty). Also, if you start at higher floor, it's possible to get higher score anyways if you survive it, than when reaching the floor and dying there.
Well, I hope I didn't miss anything. The shortcuts would make the mode more enjoyable for casual players. Even with all the improvements that made the mode easier and more accessible, it's still too difficult to finish it when you randomly die at first floors. You can't expect everyone to master the mode to always SS each floor up to e.g. Seasonne. It's unreasonable and also it's heartbreaking when single mistake can make your last 40 minutes invalid, because a boss/enemy acted in unexpected way or you were just unlucky and need to start everything over.
So, um, discuss. I guess there will be players against this for whatever reason (git gut probably, lol). But if the system will be designed in a way that players need to take some effort to actually allow skipping floors, but won't be able to take first place in leaderboard doing so, it will bring only positives (pro player won't probably be affected).
Now, I mentioned that there could be quests to unlock shortcuts, but actually didn't suggest one. I bet Pixel Ferrets will be much better at coming up for quests, or some of the top creative posters on this forum. I probably could design a quest for each floor, but well, I'm lazy This thread is a lot anyways.
But to give some examples, for Pillar Mountains:
-Slime Infestation - floors get infested by HORDES of slimes, green and red ones. There's a Gigaslime as a boss of second floor (hopefully HORDES of slimes give enough experience), which is also accompanied by a group of green/red slimes at start of the battle.
-A Lost Path - there's a secret path at Pillar Mountains that only a few people know about. With this quest active, first 2 floors are 2x/3x (or more x) bigger and second floor has enemies from Evergrind Forest.
-Rabby Grove - 2 or 3 special rooms at Pillar Mountains where there are lots of Rabbys, with 2 or 3 elder ones in last room. The place is magical and Rabbys have a power to kill in one hit.
-Master of Shield - you need to perfect guard every enemy in each room. If you kill an enemy without perfect-guarding an attack from it, quest fails. If you succeed, Master Ji gives you a prize.
At the end of these quests (special challenges), there could be some special item that allows Archie (or whatever the shortcut NPC would be) to make a shortcut to Evergrind Forest. These special quests could be fun to do, because they can alter the regular floor generation in some interesting way not found in standard run.
After each death, we have to start over. I know this is the base principle of this mode, but it could work if there were, say, 10 floors.With as many floors as there are now (and more are planned), full run can easily take 30-50 minutes. And that's assuming you always play perfectly and reach the highest floor you "can". In reality, we reached Season Temple once, Seasonne twice and majority of our runs ended at Pumpkin Woods/Flying Fortress. If we want to play more of the higher floors, or even see them, we need to play over the lower floors each time. Sometimes we double-S Pillar Mountains, sometimes we lose our Time Crystal at Evergrind Forest. It's just random and inconsistent. And even if you assume you can breeze through first floors perfectly, doing them each time is just fricking tedious.
So my proposal is that there should be a way to skip first floors as some shortcut. I know it was suggested numerous times, but I'm at a point in arcade where we need much more gold to upgrade town and there are no available quests right now, so it's just more like grinding for unlockables. Perma-death is a thing of the past, most modern roguelikes introduce some permanent progression (which Grindea already does) and some of them allow for skipping dungeon floors at certain conditions (e.g. Gungeon).
Obviously the "shortcuts" can't be free. They should be there available for a price and have some drawbacks, but ones that shouldn't bother casual players. My suggestion here would be that unlocking a shortcut would require you to first get a double S on particular floor and then complete a questchain (probably from Archie). The questchain should consist of some hard to achieve tasks that will prove that you truly "mastered" to floor. It could be completing the floor with some exclusive nightmare active or doing a certain thing you wouldn't normally. Also you wouldn't be able to make a shortcut to some floor if you didn't shortcut the previous one.
Now, when you SS rank the floor and complete the few related quests, you would be able to start at the next floor. E.g. if you unlock shortcut at Pumpkin Woods, you would be able to start directly at Flying Fortress or any chosen previous floor, but only at the starting floors of each area (yes, I assumed floors as areas). Obviously, starting at level 1 and no equipment would make no sense, so there should be a way to manage builds for each floor. Either the game could store last 3 builds you reached the floor with or allow to directly save the character state upon reaching the floor.
There are few things to consider regarding that.
What happens when you save a build and reach the floor with more players? I can think of 3 options:
-just don't allow that. If you don't have saved build for higher number of players, you need to first reach the floor and save the team's builds for all the slots. So each number of players would basically have a couple of build slots for whole team
-make additional players clone the first player, making them start with the same build
-allow to distribute saved builds between players. When you reach the floor, you save the build in one of 4 slots and then in multiplayer any player can start from that slot. Every slot has a level 1 character by default. Also, host can decide to store individual player's build at a slot upon reaching the floor
First option requires most slots to store (unless you limit number of slots per number of players) and 3rd one is the most complex. But personally, I'd prefer the last one as it's just flexible.
Another thing are potions, perks and treats/curses. Again, there are 3 options (unless someone thinks of something else):
-store them as part of build slot
-allow to change them independently
-allow to change them independently, but it requires to upgrade shortcut/shortcut NPC to allow that (possibly with potions/perks/(treats/curses) as separate unlocks)
Again, I'm for the 3rd option, as it's interesting and "earned".
Another thing to consider is what to do with the score. Well, I assume that players who use shortcuts don't care about score, but rather want to actually complete the arcade mode. So every time you start, your score starts at 0. Storing score in "build slots" are not an option, because they can easily be edited, unless the score is separately stored in cloud (if cloud was used for this, maybe starting score should be reduced as a penalty). Also, if you start at higher floor, it's possible to get higher score anyways if you survive it, than when reaching the floor and dying there.
Well, I hope I didn't miss anything. The shortcuts would make the mode more enjoyable for casual players. Even with all the improvements that made the mode easier and more accessible, it's still too difficult to finish it when you randomly die at first floors. You can't expect everyone to master the mode to always SS each floor up to e.g. Seasonne. It's unreasonable and also it's heartbreaking when single mistake can make your last 40 minutes invalid, because a boss/enemy acted in unexpected way or you were just unlucky and need to start everything over.
So, um, discuss. I guess there will be players against this for whatever reason (git gut probably, lol). But if the system will be designed in a way that players need to take some effort to actually allow skipping floors, but won't be able to take first place in leaderboard doing so, it will bring only positives (pro player won't probably be affected).
Now, I mentioned that there could be quests to unlock shortcuts, but actually didn't suggest one. I bet Pixel Ferrets will be much better at coming up for quests, or some of the top creative posters on this forum. I probably could design a quest for each floor, but well, I'm lazy This thread is a lot anyways.
But to give some examples, for Pillar Mountains:
-Slime Infestation - floors get infested by HORDES of slimes, green and red ones. There's a Gigaslime as a boss of second floor (hopefully HORDES of slimes give enough experience), which is also accompanied by a group of green/red slimes at start of the battle.
-A Lost Path - there's a secret path at Pillar Mountains that only a few people know about. With this quest active, first 2 floors are 2x/3x (or more x) bigger and second floor has enemies from Evergrind Forest.
-Rabby Grove - 2 or 3 special rooms at Pillar Mountains where there are lots of Rabbys, with 2 or 3 elder ones in last room. The place is magical and Rabbys have a power to kill in one hit.
-Master of Shield - you need to perfect guard every enemy in each room. If you kill an enemy without perfect-guarding an attack from it, quest fails. If you succeed, Master Ji gives you a prize.
At the end of these quests (special challenges), there could be some special item that allows Archie (or whatever the shortcut NPC would be) to make a shortcut to Evergrind Forest. These special quests could be fun to do, because they can alter the regular floor generation in some interesting way not found in standard run.