Maybee some PVP mode?
So you can battle between you and your friends in the typical modi like free for all or teambased?
Good work and very nice ideas so far by the way
I like the hardcore mode idea

I think it would be a great idea. It would lend some more replayability across multiple modes with little development time.

I would recommend locking certain levels/mobs out of Endless mode to match the main story progression.

I’ve played plenty of games where you play an endless mode and it tends to ruin that small element of surprise because you see something new out of context.

Otherwise, this all sounds awesome!!!

I would much prefer the Endless Tower be a part of the normal game mode, instead of an alternative game mode. If you have the Endless Tower somewhere in the game world, players can enter it with a copy of their characters temporarily at level 1 with no items or spells. Depending on how far they can make it, they unlock new treasures for when they escape the tower.

In Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals there was a 100 floor dungeon that worked exactly like this. There were normal treasure chests scattered about with loot that would vanish when you died / completed the 100 floor dungeon, and there were blue chests with special items that you were allowed to keep if you escaped from the dungeon (by teleporter every 5 levels) or beat it.

I totally agree with J. Let it be part of the main game to play with your friends and get better gear.

Maybe you can also add a hard/time mode and the players who clean this get an special item or something else.

I also think that many people would enjoy it if they can do something with this game mode for their main char. While i think that even a standalone version would suffice, maybe you could indeed implement it into the main story.
If you would set apart the loot required to boost your (now lv 1 ) character and loot you can take outside, it should be balanced. Maybe you should call it “Tower of Dreams” then or something else that would make sense mainstory-wise. =)

Keep it up guys! It looks great. I’m so hyped to see what more you have in mind for this master piece ;)

Now that’s a nice upgrade for the dad, can’t wait to see what it means plot-wise!

I love the rogue-like experience, and plenty of interesting questions come to mind.
So I’d like to suggest a couple of ideas for the rules of this mode :

A- Get a sense of progression : I especially enjoy rogue-like when the rewards somehow linger after death and you don’t just struggle for scoring or achievements. Like in Rogue Legacy your character dies but as you progress you unlock significant power ups for future generations (or FTL you die but you unlock ships etc.). So you should get out of a Grindea rogue-like session with some sense of accomplishment materialized in some unique items making you more powerful in the regular Grindea world.

B- Unlock after the main quest is completed : this is to avoid any spoilers regarding monsters / items / skills, and not to frustrate players who like to complete every unlocked content before moving on with the story (like me). It also makes plenty of sense for progression to set this mode as a clear end-game content and not have its rewards compete with those you can get while playing the main story.

C- Go in with a naked character : so in my mind rogue-like works best with a small amount of skills you can quickly (a few hours) level up to the most powerful ones, like in HammerWatch for instance. That doesn’t really match the great variety and depth of the Grindea skills system, meaning starting at level 1 in such a mode you could never really fight with a good mix of the most powerful skills in Grindea in a rogue-like short session, unless you tweak skills progression which could feel awkward and destroy the fun of levelling up and discovering new skill levels in the normal mode.
So what I’d like to suggest is to make this rogue-like mode the best way to get end-game equipment, and let the main story be the place where you level up your character and skills. Which means that you would go in with your regular character with all his skills and without any equipment.
As you progress through the tower you get better equipment that you can equip and then keep if you get out of the tower alive, every 5 levels or so as others have suggested.
This game mechanics also gives an incentive to level up your skills in the regular world and rewards the experienced players with a higher chance to reach the toughest levels, thus introducing some more progression in the rogue-like system (no matter how skilled a player you are you can’t just shortcut XP progression and “finish” the tower in your first few runs).
The “Tower of Dreams” idea previously suggested matches this concept nicely for an in-game integration : you go in naked with your willpower only (XP and skills), and bring back awesome equipment from the dream-world.

Ultimately I envision a very enjoyable end-game loop in Grindea like this :
1- I complete the main storyline and unlock the endless tower.
2- I play the tower to get better equipment.
3- I can use this equipment to do PvP and levelling in Grindea.
4- I go back to the tower with a better skill-set and a few friends to go higher and get even better equipment.
5- Repeat at 3.

Best regards,

Yangna

I see several people have beat me with the Lufia 2 comparison! I still play Lufia 2 just for the randomized dungeon experience. But the reasons it became so fun for me ….

1) Used the main characters who would reset to level 1.

2) Finding “Blue box” items became key to beating it. You would continue playing it hoping you could find these items that could be brought back in to help you beat the dungeon.

3) It was extremely hard! The first few levels would stay around your level progression, but then quickly started to out pace you. You would also lose all skills and magic abilities and had to refind them through chest (but never blue chest).

I was already excited about this game, but this just puts it over the top!

Honestly, if this was separated out into another game, I’d be more than happy to buy it too. Tower of Grindea. Definitely some potential to branch the franchise, especially with the great engine you guys have developed.

A Rogue-Like Mode would be awesome, especially with a Multiplayer-Mode. Also, it would be very nice, if you can play it online, not Local Coop, because i know somebody, who love Rogue-Likes and Multiplayer, but most of the Games only have a local Coop and… i do not like it, too.
So, yeah, make the best out of it.

Endless Tower reminds me of Ragnarok Online… :D
Endgame content is always really important to keep people entertained.
The general idea is to either:
1. Give them an ultimate goal that takes alot of time to archieve
2. Offer endless content to keep them playing.
Both have their up and down sides.

First, in my opinion make sure there is a hard mode, very hard mode and something even scarier for the story mode. That requires minimum development time (except for the balancing part) and gives already a huge replayability. Kinda like Diablo. You could also use the Tower for this option. By finding gear in the tower you can save yourself a good start into the new difficulty playthrough.

If the Tower is beatable (for example it has 100 floors and a final boss), another idea would be to have the character start over from level 1 but everything becomes tougher (Like a Hard mode).

However all the gear you grind for needs to have a purpose. If you give players more and more powerful gear but nothing to do with it then theres little point. (Think of Diablo 3)

I believe a long road with lots of milestones in between is the way to go for endgame content. Have competition between players asewll. Not just PvP. Have leaderboards for clearing time and other archievements. Have players get scores in the Tower for feats they accomplish. (Fast run, take no damage, no skill used, etc) This way PvE fanatics can compete with each other too and then theres actually a reason to get better gear. Or have bosses scale with your Level (and/or gear), this way it never gets easy.

just my 3 cents.

That new gamemode sounds awesome! Although there are the same enemies and entities as in the main story, it sounds pretty fun!
I hope this mode can be played together with friends as it would double the fun!
There’s one thing I don’t understand. You start a new character just for this gamemode and if he dies, he is deleted?

Sogomn

I love this idea completely! I think J has the best of it above already.

1) Having some tiny amount of content that can be unlocked in the main story mode (if it’s not in the story mode) would definitely make it more appetizing to the collectors.
2) If the tower has an end (and boss) then defeating it in the rogue-like mode could enable an enhanced version of it in the main game as a post game super-hard boss, one that requires a well-enhanced character to take on.
3) In the long run you could add tower-specific content post release if you want, or you could have pallet-swap monsters that, once defeated in the tower, get added to the main monster index with some random bits of extended lore, for something a little extra to hunt for that won’t disrupt balance in the main story mode at all.

Thanks for everything that you do! ^_^

I don’t like the idea of locking it behind end game content. I like the idea of it being somewhere in game that you can go to. You can’t access stuff through the tower that you haven’t seen in game, yet. Each floor of the tower could represent somewhere you’ve already “cleared” and at the end of that floor (or series of floors) you refight the boss for that area. After each boss you can choose to leave and gain some reward based on how far you made it.

This would be a physical tower in the game. Or when you’re loading a previously saved game, there could be a button next to the character that is “go to tower” or some such thing so the rewards could be persisted to that save. As you presented it, it sounds fun, but overall pointless in an rpg setting as there’s no reward.

Plus, anything that leans towards a beta-buy-in is a plus by me.

Another gamemode that I feel would add re-playability is a survival type of gamemode. You and a few other friends have to hold out as long as you can on one map while waves of enemies attack. This is a game mode I feel many coop games lack since it’s very simple but very entertaining.

And as the first comment said, a pvp mode would be nice, too.

That roguelike game mode sounds awesome.

All I can recommend is to look at other successful titles in that genre. Something that stands out with even a quick glimpse, is that the success of these games depends on it’s difficulty (not hard enough and it’s not worth it) and unlocking items/characters/abilities/achievements/levels/endings across playthroughs (like in Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, and many others).

If that game mode is any good, there’s a strong possibility that I’ll play that more than the rest of the game (love me some rogue-likes).

Man, lots of neat ideas! :)

We’ll have to wait and see whether or not we integrate the roguelike into the story mode or not. We probably won’t have it as an unlocked mode, however, as if it gets good we imagine some players will get the game mainly for the roguelike; having to beat the game to unlock it seems kind of unfair in that scenario!

Either way, we do want to give it some sort of tie-in with the story mode. What you guys have suggested here, with redeemable loot and other rewards, sounds great in that regard!

We’ll keep you all posted on how the roguelike development goes from time to time, to harvest some more feedback ;D

What if the endless tower were a way for the players of the game to unlock the weapons and spells or skills/areas(secret?) of the game?

You play through the dungeon as often as you want along side the main story, while completing a certain number of floors would unlock something cool like a new weapon or a better version of a weapon/spell(skill).

There could even be a mini side story that helps flesh out some lore or back story within the levels of the dungeon that you unravel as you defeat mini bosses or as you progress to new areas of the dungeon.

For the me the moral is PLEASE dont saddle this game with a boring endless train of randomly generated dungeon levels or loot drops that steal all of the heart that a video game should have.

There are only 3 things any game needs, a well crafted story with engaging character development, smart programing allowing players to easily lose themselves in the game world and a sense of accomplishment making the time spent in the game still meaningful when the gaming session is finished.

What if permadeath meant if you went back to play the character again, it would take you to some afterlife/end of time type zone where you can review all the character’s accomplishments?

A good concept in my opinion is a rouge like endless level for your main charakter. Is the main charakter dying, there is no permadeath for the avater, instead there is an reset of that maybe huge level. Eventuly you can create doors to go back. A death closed maybe only a door instead of the whole level?
Most of this idea is stolen from “Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale”

I like the rogue like aspect of it, but it should be a different game mode. One aspect of rogue likes i like that this game is missing is the survival aspect. Having to hunt for food and gather water, ect.

Of course this is a combat oriented game so i don’t expect a huge focus being on this, but it would be nice to add some basic features.