Make Transformations cost depend on floor instead of XL

[Sandman25]

Inspired by

I'll even run away from a few fights to make sure I don't hit level 2 before I get the credits to keep the cost low.

I think it violates basic rule "there should be no punishment for getting more experience" so I suggest to use current floor instead of player XL. For side branches like Anomalia the cost might be based on entry floor as a small bonus, Anomalia is supposed to allow weird things I hope.

[Sandman25]

Probably it can apply to allied demons too.
Doing something like

I'm also willing to switch out demons for their lower level counterparts if I know I will be modifying it to lower cost. (e.g. If I have a Level 2 Gandayah and see a Level 1 Gandayah and I want to modify a Gandayah, I'll switch to the new one.)

is weird because players are more happy to meet lower leveled demons.
It's like gaming the system IMHO.

[ayayaya]

What kind of player would sink to such scummy tactics? Tsk tsk.

This change sounds fine. One side effect would be buffing copying abilities to out-of-depth demons like the level 16 Shoggoth I nabbed in Anomaly, but I don't see that as an issue.

[Ferret]

I've been thinking about this one a bit. I understand with the problem it's addressing and am not opposed to fixing it, but I want to find another way of doing it. My issues with this particular solution are: 1) It will probably be less obvious floors are influencing costs than character levels, 2) It will eliminate any differences in costs between characters, upgrading your lower level guys would be just as expensive as your Anomaly Shoggth, 3) Weird edge cases like returning to the Tower after a 3 floor branch like Anomaly.. when you return from Anomaly, you return to a significantly "lower" floor of the Tower, but now have credits from 3 higher floors.

#2 in particular is a bit troublesome because one of the sneakier parts of the currency system is that you can, if you get in trouble, recruit a low level demon and train it up fairly cheaply. It is true this also allows some minor manipulation of currency has we've discussed in other threads, but I think this advantage outweighs that minor problem for the moment.

I will think on this for a bit and see if I can come up with a fix that doesn't run into those problems. Feel free to make other suggestions in that line yourselves too, of course, and thanks for the feedback.

[Sandman25]

Oh, if you want to keep second feature (transformations of lower XL demons cost less), then we still can fix the first issue (XP being bad): freeze transformation prices of every demon when entering a new floor so if it gets to higher level on current floor, the prices don't change. For example, if you enter the floor with XL 2 demon and XL 3 demon and the former gets to XL 3 on current floor, it still costs cheaper, as XL 2.

[Ferret]

Hmm... that coulddddd work. It's still a bit more awkward than I would like (having costs connected to portal usage isn't something people would necessarily expect) , but it's closer to the mark in terms of addressing my issues with the original idea.

[Sandman25]

The portal feature can be fixed too: don't allow transformations on floor which has portal after returning from the portal.

[Sandman25]

Flavor-wise it can be "Entering the portal corrupted the floor, it no longer allows transformations" or something

[Sandman25]

Another solution is to use number of visited floors so it does not matter where to transform: before returning from portal or after.

[Ferret]

Visited floors would work better I think, yeah. Also easy on me since Demon is balanced assuming you gain roughly 1 XL per floor anyway.