Arcadia's redesign

Own

Moderator
Apparently this is on the menu post-Tai Ming. I can think of a few ways Arcadia could be done interestingly.

#1 - Ditch automatic town upgrading and automatic rewards completely. Instead, Arcadia is an overgrown meadow / ruin with little markers everywhere. Inspect each marker and it will tell you how much Overall Score you need to make a building there and what type of building can be placed there. If you have enough score to make a building there, it can have a little [!] above it's marker letting the player know.

#2 - Alternatively, just tell the lumberjack what you want built and handle it all through him with score payment.

#3 - Alternatively, acquire Building Permits by doing various quests / hitting certain score amounts / achieving certain things. Then upgrade them with score.

#4 - Each building has multiple levels it can be upgraded to, costing more and more depending on how many buildings you have built or upgraded in general. So when you first build the Hat Shop it might only have the Tai Ming hat salesman in it with Cat Ears / Beard / etc available for a few essence. Upgrade it to Rank 2 and Mr. Fabulous appears in the shop as well, adding the Turban and other hats.

#5 - Everywhere has a purpose. Tavern is mainly filled with quest givers and for attracting new people to your town. Park attracts new people to your town, adds flowers around and populates the park with friendly plant enemies as you do quests for Tai Ming's gardener / Luigi / Clint. The Mason's with Chiseler and Male-Chiseler let you spend essence to build different types of statues in places around town of your choice. The Fishing Pond gains new fishermen as you level it up, increasing your chance of bonus essence after each run. Etc.

Letting people decide the path they want to upgrade their town through seems like it'd be a lot of fun, instead of everyone hitting the same unlocks at the same score markers. I could be working on building up my Tavern and Pond to get quests and essence in my town, or hop into my buddy's town in co-op where they've been building up their Cosmetic Hat and Cosmetic Weapon/Shield Shops to buy from them. :D Fully upgrading the entire town would take quite a while, ensuring multiplayer variety.

#6 - People attracted to your town by upgrading buildings don't initially appear in town, but rather in the labyrinth in NPC rooms, each with their own requirement to free them from the labyrinth. Rescue them for a nice chunk of essence and get them to hang out around the town as normal villagers for the purpose of visual progression / aesthethics.

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Or maybe I'm off the mark and people enjoy automatic town upgrades at specific intervals of score? What do you guys like? I just know I thoroughly enjoyed seeing my town grow depending on who I recruited in the Suikoden series, and the various ways I could customize it.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Yeah I'd like that. It then adds a personal touch and you feel like it's your town, not Rodger Lyke's.

Only thing is, it'd be nice if those NPC rooms were an entirely separate entity, and you always got one in every run on a specific floor if that NPC hadn't been unlocked yet. Otherwise you have to go through the raffle of NPC's that might spawn in the NPC room, which might appear in the question mark room which might not appear at all on a given floor. With the amount of NPCs we have and the amount you're talking about here, it feels like your total score would go up quicker than your unlocked NPCs would.

Also, I heard you liked the word NPC.
 

Own

Moderator
Ideally NPC Rescue rooms wouldn't appear at all if you had no NPCs waiting to be rescued from the labyrinth. I dunno what their rescue requirements would be, though. Most probably just "Finish the current floor successfully" or "Give me # gold to pay for safe passage out", with rarer ones having more difficult requirements. Like, I don't know, killing spawned Elite Snowball Throwers with only your shield to free Santa. That'd be fun.
 

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
#1 - Ditch automatic town upgrading and automatic rewards completely. Instead, Arcadia is an overgrown meadow / ruin with little markers everywhere. Inspect each marker and it will tell you how much Overall Score you need to make a building there and what type of building can be placed there. If you have enough score to make a building there, it can have a little [!] above it's marker letting the player know.

A... Are you listening in on our design meetings? I mean I know we have them in public areas (fast food ftw) but stop spying on us!! T__T

We're actually planning something very similar to this, but we'll ditch the score upgrades altogether and have you unlock each new upgrade/building with essence instead (which will be slightly reworked). I've actually written a longer blog post on this already, but it's not scheduled to be posted until January 5th haha... :D
 
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Own

Moderator
We're actually planning something very similar to this, but we'll ditch the score upgrades altogether and have you unlock each new upgrade/building with essence instead (which will be slightly reworked). I've actually written a longer blog post on this already, but it's not scheduled to be posted until January 5th haha... :D

Essence being used for upgrading your town and buying things seems a little bit like a conflict of interest. Because people will want to prioritize improving their ability to get further in the Arcade (Perks) over anything else. I know I'd neglect everything in favor of getting my second and third perk slot. :p

Maybe when you die your gold for that run could be added to Arcadia's bank, using that to upgrade the town or exchange it for essence at the shrine? Though, most people spend all their gold just trying to heal up. So maybe not. Hrm. :(

I can't wait to see that blog post, either way! :D
 

xEleaa

Rabby
Vilya's reply made me so happy lol. I can't wait either xD

On a other note the "Bank" idea seems pretty neat as well. It could get people just doing runs to farm gold xD
 

Vilya

Developer
Staff member
Own using a stealth drone with universal translator to spy on our meetings confirmed
Unless he's been Swedish all along, and conspiring with the fast food chains to learn when our meetings are had?!
 
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Own

Moderator
A... Are you listening in on our design meetings? I mean I know we have them in public areas (fast food ftw) but stop spying on us!! T__T

We're actually planning something very similar to this, but we'll ditch the score upgrades altogether and have you unlock each new upgrade/building with essence instead (which will be slightly reworked). I've actually written a longer blog post on this already, but it's not scheduled to be posted until January 5th haha... :D

http://www.vilyaroo.com/2017/01/the-future-of-arcade-mode.html

Aw, man! I was expecting more. ;_;
 
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