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Yes, the +damage to [type] mods are hilariously terrible. They're an excellent example of why being able to turn unlocks off is a great feature.
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Sep 19, 2018 03:35
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megane posted:An alternate method: you always need exactly n items on the spawn list, and start with a basic set of n, but as you unlock stuff you can substitute it onto the list. I don't think I've seen a game do that yet. Hand of Fate, I guess?
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Sep 19, 2018 03:49
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Crypt of the Necrodancer lets you remove items from the pool like that doesn't it?
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Sep 19, 2018 04:44
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goferchan posted:Crypt of the Necrodancer lets you remove items from the pool like that doesn't it? Sort of. It doesn't work (and, conversely, unlocks don't exist in the first place) in All Floors mode, which is basically the real game. Everything else is just practice.
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Sep 19, 2018 04:46
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i'm gonna propose a radical solution other roguelikes have been doing for years; just put all your content in the game accessible to the player from the start and then if some part of that content consistently sucks to the player attempt to make it not suck
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Sep 19, 2018 09:20
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Ah yes, the Caves of Qud method e: to clarify, I know roguelikes in general have been doing that forever, I just wanted to point out for any non-CoQ owners that CoQ does it and it's real good 
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Sep 19, 2018 12:13
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Sort of. It doesn't work (and, conversely, unlocks don't exist in the first place) in All Floors mode, which is basically the real game. Everything else is just practice. I feel like it's less of a problem in Crypt of the Necrodancer though... sure, some weapons are better in theory than others, but they pretty much all have their uses. Even the dagger (because special types of dagger exist that don't exist of other types). Then again Crypt of the Necrodancer is probably my favorite roguelike and/or indie game ever, so I'm probably not capable of being objective about it.
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Sep 19, 2018 12:50
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is having meta run unlockables good design or an attempt to stretch out content. Really makes you think.
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Sep 19, 2018 15:04
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Toalpaz posted:is having meta run unlockables good design or an attempt to stretch out content. Really makes you think. I generally view "good metaprogression" (i.e. not the Rogue Legacy kind) as being a way to encourage the player to continue playing the game despite their failures. Obviously there is a segment of the market that's willing to play a game where you die and start over from scratch over and over again, but you can substantially broaden your appeal by changing that to "die and start over from scratch over and over again except every time you die you get a sticker." In practice the metaprogression does not substantially improve your odds of success*. The point is to give the player a sense of progress. * Indeed, in some games metaprogression actually makes things harder, e.g. in Isaac where it gets a lot harder to accumulate three Guppy items as the item pool gets more dilute. Isaac also has explicit "unlocks" that just straight-up make the game harder too.
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Sep 19, 2018 15:20
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ToME4 does a relatively decent job with metaprogression, in that you 100% have to do the from-scratch roguelike thing every run, but there are a jillion races and classes and additional skill categories and whatnot to unlock, which just offer new and increasingly weird ways to play the game from scratch. e: unless you're using the donator-only item vault I guess, but even that isn't necessarily a huge advantage between runs so much as a means of reliably putting together weird builds that are dependent on wonky artifacts
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Sep 19, 2018 17:45
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Metaprogression that unlocks sidegrades and new options is the coolest way to do it, yeah. There are a ton of players who just won't touch a permadeath game if it doesn't have some kind of metaprogression to keep them engaged, but giving permanent upgrades sort of degrades the experience of the rest of the game -- it makes you think "to beat the giant worm boss, do I actually need to get better at playing the game, or do I just need to grind out more runs to upgrade my worm resistance?"
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Sep 19, 2018 17:56
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Or there's the "glorified tutorial" approach (e.g. Necrodancer).
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Sep 19, 2018 19:11
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Angry Diplomat posted:ToME4 does a relatively decent job with metaprogression, in that you 100% have to do the from-scratch roguelike thing every run, but there are a jillion races and classes and additional skill categories and whatnot to unlock, which just offer new and increasingly weird ways to play the game from scratch. Unlocks aren't really metaprogression. They're still bad, because you should just have access to all the options right off the bat and there's no reason not to, but they don't create a situation where grinding out previous characters gives you an advantage on future ones. The item vault is a huge advantage but using it to the fullest requires that you get a character to the endgame in the first place and know which tier 5 loot is game-breaking as opposed to just putting you slightly ahead of the stat curve.
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Sep 19, 2018 19:25
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There's probably reason enough in many games to lock more complicated classes away for a while as a soft tutorial. Depends on the game, though. Or like, if there's story elements and the game lets you play through as one of the NPCs after you win, etc. I can probably think up a few more examples if I try.
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Sep 19, 2018 19:44
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Cardinal Quest 2 was decent for the unlocks. Grind out for the 4 basic classes, topple bosses for the 5th kinda-goofy class with weird mechanics or just pay $5 for instant access.Roluth posted:Honestly, I like SYNTHETIK's method the best. You largely just unlock additional starting options and small buffs; there's no unlocking of items that drop during runs at all. Wizard of Legend does something similar.
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Sep 19, 2018 19:52
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I think maybe this is one of those things that should be handled the way that Celeste handled cheats -- it has built-in cheats (including unlimited jumps, slow-motion, and invincibility), which can be enabled from a menu option. But there's a message that pops up first from the devs: https://twitter.com/matt_roly/status/956493360641982464 So this would be, like, a button in the settings that unlocks everything, with the understanding that, well, there's no more metaprogression once you click it.
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Sep 19, 2018 19:55
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I think maybe this is one of those things that should be handled the way that Celeste handled cheats -- it has built-in cheats (including unlimited jumps, slow-motion, and invincibility), which can be enabled from a menu option. But there's a message that pops up first from the devs: 868-Hack has this exact button, and I swear there are a couple more games that do that I can't think of.
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Sep 19, 2018 20:22
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Tome4 doesn't have a button per se, but it stores all the unlocks in a text config file somewhere that the player can easily modify. Or just install an "unlock everything" mod from the game's mod portal.
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Sep 20, 2018 00:43
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Toalpaz posted:is having meta run unlockables good design or an attempt to stretch out content. Really makes you think.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:01
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IronicDongz posted:It's the second. Not sure I agree. A well-made metaprogression can both act as a tutorial and give players something to work towards if they're not good enough to flat-out beat the game. I like the idea of an approach that lets you opt in to skipping the metaprogression, though - each player is different.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:22
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If they're not good enough to beat the game, the thing they have to work towards is getting good enough to beat the game
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Sep 20, 2018 01:25
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some steam shmups i have do like, unlocking being able to continue at all, unlocking more continues, unlocking alt bgm/backgrounds/whatever by getting farther in the game on one credit (or your allotted number of continues? don't remember) and that helps string people along through the period of getting repeatedly decimated by the difficulty of the game with little progress stickers which I don't think is a bad thing. You don't have those kind of non gameplay related wards to give out in roguelikes so much though, and I think when you end up at "min maxing your unlocked item pool" something is hosed up
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Sep 20, 2018 01:45
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IronicDongz posted:It's the second. You know what's an attempt to stretch out content? Procgen levels. 
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Sep 20, 2018 02:06
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metaprogression done well can also provide incentive to play new, weird ways, like character-specific unlocks in Isaac like, it would be hard to get me to play anyone but Cain if I didn't have to to get some cool stuff
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Sep 20, 2018 02:11
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Toalpaz posted:is having meta run unlockables good design or an attempt to stretch out content. Really makes you think. This is a false equivalence, not a matter of the first or second. You can have meta run unlockables as part of a good design, and introduce it to stretch out content. Or one of the both. Or neither.
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Sep 20, 2018 02:18
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i like it in games like A Robot Called Fight where as well as unlocking items you unlock more difficult enemies and terrain hazards. it builds up the complexity of the game well.
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Sep 20, 2018 02:33
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Really starting to hate Nuclear Throne and its love of enemies that fill the screen with explosions or projectiles on death. Killed Big Dog for the first time but because I was in the same county as the stupid thing rip run.
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Sep 20, 2018 03:00
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Welp, you're not going to like the boss who appears after Big Dog! Because he does that, except not on death! 
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Sep 20, 2018 03:28
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also what's up with this game's map gen? Half the time the first floor has hardly anything on it but then the map gen gets mad at you and decides to spawn 3-5 scorpions behind some maggot nests at the end of a hallway. Go from barely making it halfway to level 2 on the first floor to being most of the way to level 4 on the next run.
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Sep 20, 2018 03:38
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Your experience gain is pretty variable in the short term, yeah, but it levels once you get out of the first few levels, so you'll usually be only +- 1 level from where you "usually" are. I like it, honestly; if the levels always had the same amount of experience on them, that'd be one less way for the game to surprise you. And Nuclear Throne does like its surprises.
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Sep 20, 2018 04:04
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Made it to the last boss in City of Brass and had actual no idea how to fight it. Nothing I did seemed to have any effect. You can use wishes there if you have any, but apparently that's not necessary. Might have to just rush the final area a few times to see if I can figure anything out.
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Sep 20, 2018 09:15
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The level gen in NT doesn't vary that much from run to run, the main differentiations are drops, level ups, and how well you play. Most logical weapon and mutation combos will work during loop 1. That doesn't mean there can't be "gently caress you" seeds with 3 gold scorps on one part of level one and multiple flak frogs in the sewers, etc. Most players who have beaten the first loop only got there by dying a whole bunch. Now you know to stay the gently caress away from Big Dog after you kill it. There are more learning experiences to come, things only get harder. You pretty much always want to take BaconCopter fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 09:40
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Finished expert mode in Invis Inc, thinking of doing either expert plus or endless plus, but I still need the 20 days cheevo for regular endless too... It seems like, whenever I go for a prisoner level in endless, the prisoner is either Decker (who is not innately useful) or Draco (who is very hard to level up since he doesn't start out with a lethal weapon if he's a prisoner). It's never Internationale or something.
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Sep 20, 2018 09:41
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BaconCopter posted:You pretty much always want to take Last Wish when it's available, but Trigger Fingers will always be my favorite mutation. e: Unless you mean to go through Jungle every time, which I wouldn't really recommend to someone struggling for their first win megane fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 16:46
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In which case that post turns into"always take the strongest mutation, but the second strongest one is also good."
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Sep 20, 2018 16:57
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seems like solid advice
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Sep 20, 2018 17:14
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BaconCopter posted:The level gen in NT doesn't vary that much from run to run, the main differentiations are drops, level ups, and how well you play. Most logical weapon and mutation combos will work during loop 1. That doesn't mean there can't be "gently caress you" seeds with 3 gold scorps on one part of level one and multiple flak frogs in the sewers, etc. Level gen can definitely make a difference in some things Sometimes there's the whole level between you and a crown vault statue so you can't open it up without running past them all, because killing them first will mean there isn't enough xp left. Little Hunter is way easier if you get a nice open room with not too many enemies. Explo freaks in the labs kill me way more often than they should, but sometimes there are tons of them and sometimes the level gen only makes the chump melee guys.
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Sep 20, 2018 19:55
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megane posted:I don't think you mean Last Wish, that's the "waste a mutation slot for basically nothing" one. Maybe you mean Strong Spirit? Fak, it's been too long since I've booted the game up (and a few beers didn't help), definitely meant Strong Spirit. But you don't have to take the best ones to beat the base game. Shotgun Shoulders can be loving amazing with the right build, you just probably won't make it to Loop 2 using shotguns, but it's still super viable for people struggling with the first Throne kill. You could choose complete poo poo for every mutation and still regularly beat the first Throne with mediocre weapon drops. RPATDO_LAMD posted:Level gen can definitely make a difference in some things Yeah, it absolutely can, but to me it really only makes a huge difference once you loop. It's not like Gungeon or something where you get 3 floors with only brown chests or when there is actually not enough money in a run to get the rat key.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:50
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BaconCopter posted:You could choose complete poo poo for every mutation and still regularly beat the first Throne with mediocre weapon drops. When going for Melting's B skin, I had two runs make it to the Throne. The first got an autocrossbow. The second got a gatling bazooka and a super crossbow. Good weapons make things so much easier. (Not that I would normally recommend the gatling bazooka, but as a 2HP Melting it hardly matters)
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Sep 20, 2018 20:59
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megane posted:I don't think you mean Last Wish, that's the "waste a mutation slot for basically nothing" one. Maybe you mean Strong Spirit?
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Sep 20, 2018 21:41
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