Spicing Up Currency Relics

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Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby wizzzargh » Mon Nov 07, 2016 9:06 pm

Copy Saver is boring, pretty much always useful, and makes Translator look like trash. At least SEPI has some conditionals on your free loot.

Fusion Saver is unexciting because Fusion is limited more by 'running out of viable things to fuse' than it is by currency.

Revive Saver is boring, awful, and pretty much made redundant by quick dismiss (spend a free action to prevent your demon from dying, or be able to revive your dead demon for 75% the cost? Hmmmm....)

Translator has a similar problem to Fusion Saver- the real limiting factor is ability slots and ability access, not credits. Getting to 8 summoner skills is not particularly hard, probably requiring maybe 6000 credits in an average game. Getting to 8 GOOD skills requires finding the right demons, and successfully linking with them. I'd never actually get it myself at level 5, even if Copy Saver didn't exist.

SO THESE ARE MY RADICAL NOTIONS

Copy Saver-> Honestly, just delete this and keep SEPI for the 'I want monies' upgrade.

Revive Saver-> Possession- Lets you replace the ENTIRE skillset of a living demon with the skillset of a dead demon. This deletes the dead demon from your coffin. Alternately, call it Seance and let dead demons teach their skills to living demons, possibly for higher prices.

Fusion Saver- TRIANGLE FUSION
So you take THREE demons and cram them all together into an invulnerable monster that actually isn't that great because of the HP penalties from having too many resistances. Hmm. Well, maybe I don't have any radical notions for Fusion saver after all.

Translator- The summoner can learn skills... FOR FREE(But only on 100% cleared levels, to prevent tactically tedious skill swapping). See above for why I don't think this would actually be unbalanced.
Also this lets inquisitive players test out strategies and abilities for themselves without worrying about ruining their credit rating.
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby Gaswafers » Mon Nov 07, 2016 9:31 pm

I've had some of my own ideas for addressing boring upgrades, but I REALLY like the idea of Seance. You could get rid of Consume and give Seance to Hand of the Dead.

Translator -> Twin Mind: Allows you to have two sets of abilities that you can swap between as long as you're at full HP and SP. Putting an ability in one set doesn't cost any credits if it's present in the other set.

Fusion Saver -> Synthesize: Fusions no longer consume the component demon. You can use dead demons for fusions if you also have Seance.

Soul Armor II: Lets you swap between two different soul armors while at full HP and SP. Drastically reduces the credit cost of your next soul armor transmutation(one time deal).
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby mbj » Tue Nov 08, 2016 1:03 am

In one of my recent hand of the dead games, I found a spicy combination of upgrades which involved recycle, consume, and fusion saver with a meatshield/sacrificial headless. Recycle gives a max of 50% of the revive cost after ~6 level ups, fusion saver discounts 25% of the cost. So you pay like 500 credits or something for an instant full Hp/Sp heal with an expandable meatshield. It takes one turn to revive him, so you could get another full heal mid battle if you can tank for a single turn.

The reason fusion saver seems weak is because if it were better you could get free heals or free money
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby Ferret » Tue Nov 08, 2016 4:00 pm

Copy Saver probably, of all of them, is the most likely to just quietly vanish.

Bringing back the old Mind Matrix effect (copying an entire ability set from one demon to another) isn't a bad idea. Copy Ability from the coffin isn't off the table either, but I am reluctant only because I don't want people to feel like the coffin is something that needs to be managed (in part because right now I give you no tools to do so.)

I've thought of doing an "alternate ability set" upgrade myself (feels like something Orb of Power would start with), so that idea's pretty likely at some point. :)

Fusion Saver would probably be replaced with something that actually improves Fusion in some way, though I'm not sure what that'd be yet. :) Main difficulty: making sure this benefit doesn't give your party even more of an edge over Tower encounters. (I think part of why the game ends up a bit easy now is because typically the party's demons have 8 abilities each but typical Tower demons cap at 4. Flexibility and/or extra defense passives count for a fair bit. I'm currently pondering ways to correct this little quirk. :) )

I'm a little twitchy about allowing Soul Armor swaps... this is already one of the more powerful upgrades. :) For the moment,

:D That 50% of revive cost cap on Recycle is actually hardcoded and is there for exactly that reason.

Thanks for the good suggestions you guys, and keep them coming. The upgrade revamp may not be this build, but the forum lives forever. Never too early to throw me suggestions and ideas :D
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby wizzzargh » Tue Nov 08, 2016 6:38 pm

Ferret wrote: (I think part of why the game ends up a bit easy now is because typically the party's demons have 8 abilities each but typical Tower demons cap at 4. Flexibility and/or extra defense passives count for a fair bit. I'm currently pondering ways to correct this little quirk. :)


'Floor Effects' Maybe? Floor wide buffs that apply to enemy teams? If the effect isn't tied to the demon itself you don't need to worry about the player throwing it right back at the game after recruitment.
At the most boring level it could be things like +1% Attack, Defense, Evasion, Accuracy per floor. But I'm suer other effects could occur as well.

Also...though they were loathed by some, I must say, Double encounters become less unfair once you have a stable of fully skilled demons and an inventory of junk.
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby Ferret » Tue Nov 08, 2016 7:14 pm

Double encounters will eventually make a comeback in a more controlled form. Most of the problem with them was that they were happening by accident of the RNG and not with any real intent/planning behind them, which allowed them to show up in all sorts of unfortunate forms/times. (Procedural content generation tends to be at its worst when it is merely or almost entirely random content generation, see also the current level layout creation algorithms. :P )

Some of what I'm doing with corpses is actually experimenting with this a little bit: that's what the monster encounters they can generate are about. :) It's only a very minor piece of the puzzle, but corpses gave me a good opportunity to take it for a test run. In short, I have this idea about spawning different styles of encounters that appear/behave in different ways. Typical encounters that behave as the ones we have now do (spawn randomly in level, avoid each other), stalker encounters of small groups that try to stay near the player but out of sight, and then rush in when the player runs across something else, sleeper groups (like what corpses) spawn which are bigger than normal groups but start at a disadvatage, etc.

I'll make a post in the "Possibly Coming Soon" thing about this in more detail at some point, but November is proving to a crazy month in FerretDev land, so I don't wanna add to it at the moment. :D Then too, I also promised next build would be content expansion (in specific, more Tower floors, giving everyone their first exposure to Tier 3 content), so it probably won't be implemented super soon.
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby Gaswafers » Wed Nov 09, 2016 10:14 pm

Here's an idea for a fusion upgrade: Using the fusion transmutation also grants bonus experience to the target demon that is proportional to its base level.
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Re: Spicing Up Currency Relics

Postby Ferret » Wed Nov 09, 2016 10:45 pm

Hey! Stop reading my notes! :P
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