Author Topic: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.  (Read 7389 times)

Offline Professor Paul1290

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #15 on: January 29, 2013, 03:26:41 pm »
I guess to toss in another suggestion:

What about equipment becoming Merc Coins?
What if, instead of keeping a piece of equipment, you had the option of trading the equipment to the Mercs for Merc Coins at the Strategic View?

As I understand it now, equipment goes away if you die or take a lot of damage, so taking a piece of equipment out of an area without losing it could be another source of challenge for players who want it as well.

Some possible benefits of this:
-It would make "equipment" make more sense "equipment" as it would strengthen the idea that this is something you can give to somebody else.
-It would give players who want to an extra challenge to take a piece of equipment and make it out of a area without losing it.
-It would allow players who like equipment to have equipment while giving players who don't care much about equipment an alternative benefit.

Offline x4000

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #16 on: January 29, 2013, 03:36:37 pm »
It's a possibility.

Please don't skip equipment.

I thought in your first post above you were asking for it to go?
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Offline madcow

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2013, 03:40:57 pm »
Trading equipment into coins in at the strategic view requires it actually last long enough to do that!

And I didn't say I was completely won over! But I would be fine with either direction ;)

Offline Nanashi

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2013, 03:53:49 pm »
I hate to be cynical, but isn't this tantamount to admitting "Hey, our platforming segments are occasionally tedious and something players would rather not do, so we think it's a good reward to let you do less of it"? -_-

Offline x4000

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #19 on: January 29, 2013, 03:56:34 pm »
I hate to be cynical, but isn't this tantamount to admitting "Hey, our platforming segments are occasionally tedious and something players would rather not do, so we think it's a good reward to let you do less of it"? -_-

Not particularly.  It's saying "occasionally you run into a really hard segment through random chance, and you want to skip it rather than banging your head against the wall eternally."  Even Mario 3 had a similar mechanic, the cloud.  And all the more recent Marios have various other mechanics that let you skip levels you find too hard after you fail them enough times.

Personally I think the platforming segments are some of the most fun I've encountered in a game like this in a long time, not that I'm biased or anything.
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Offline Nanashi

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #20 on: January 29, 2013, 04:02:35 pm »
  And all the more recent Marios have various other mechanics that let you skip levels you find too hard after you fail them enough times.

I kind of take Yahtzee's side on this feature as more of a personal insult than a helpful feature. What reason would it give an incredibly stubborn person like me (and I'm sure stubbornness is pretty common amongst game players) to go after these coins? I'd never want to use them.

Offline x4000

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #21 on: January 29, 2013, 04:05:53 pm »
Well, that would be your prerogative.  But I think the dynamic here is a bit different from the Mario level-up blocks.  These are more of a bonus in the same way that "auto-resolve" in the Total War games works.  Sometimes in those games it's just nice to auto-resolve the tactical battles to get on with the current strategic stuff you are currently thinking about, rather than jumping back and forth one more time.  The incentive in those cases is that you can't wait to do the next strategic thing, and thus want to get on with that.

And you know?  If someone doesn't use them, that's okay too.  I sure as heck don't use the Mario golden leaf things.
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Offline Pepisolo

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #22 on: January 29, 2013, 04:49:10 pm »
Don't like this idea at all -- certainly not as a total replacement for equipment. You've already stripped out mercenaries, and now equipment? This game currently is just not interesting enough in terms exploration, you should be expanding and overhauling the equipment system rather than getting rid of it. Mercenary purification is not going to add anything particularly interesting or fun to the game. Implementing this seems like it would benefit your schedule more than it would the game.

Offline Teal_Blue

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #23 on: January 29, 2013, 04:52:59 pm »
It's a possibility.

Please don't skip equipment.

I thought in your first post above you were asking for it to go?

Ahhgg!  sometimes i don't know what i want.  Anyway, whatever you all think is best sounds cool, i just don't want to take things away from the game if we don't have to. Does that make sense?


Offline x4000

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #24 on: January 29, 2013, 05:00:44 pm »
Well, the schedule is inflexible at this point, so that's a moot point -- it's a matter of how we use that time, not whether or not we can adjust that amount of time.

That said, what I'm currently working on is simply making the equipment display better (such as saying what it does).
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Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #25 on: January 29, 2013, 05:05:25 pm »
Having not read the thread: Total first impression.

1. This seems like a really good idea as a mechanic, because it gracefully solves the problem of purification growing tedious, and it doesn't give you a very solid advantage really, aside from just not making you take as many risks to yourself. That being said...

2. The problem I have with currency is that it does nothing as a power-up. Sure, you can hire mercenaries to do things that you can already do, and they reward you by allowing you to skip out on a bit of a repetitive part of the game. The thing is, you can already purify stuff on your own. I'm picking up the coins to be rewarded with less gameplay in the worst case scenario. Best case scenario, coins are nothing but 'fun to pick up'. It takes a lot of talent and effort to make a coin fun to pick up. Games like Mario have achieved this to a great deal of mastery, but there are many other games that don't succeed at it. It's not a core necessity to make coins fun to grab, but if the coins don't add any fun to me (as I doubt I'll hire purifying services) and aren't fun to collect, then I'm losing a game mechanic. As it stands, I doubt I'll hire a mercenary, and the coins are just not fun to collect. I kept getting them because they existed, but not because I liked the jingly sound they created or anything. Look to Link to the Past or Xotic or other similar games for rewards that are really just fun to earn for various reasons.

3. The benefits of equipment are really really cool. This is really the biggest reason, I think. The last one was a whole load of game design mumbo jumbo, but ultimately, I want items that do cool stuff. When you said "power-up", a lightning bolt struck. Not literally, but in my mind. Equipment is cool because it's basically this game's functional power-ups. If you replaced equipment with power-ups that provide a temporary (probably timed) benefit that works the same way as the present equipment works, we don't lose the effects. Ultimately... sometimes, I want to collect triple shot and just go have fun with triple shot. If all of that was taken out of the game, the surface areas become a slog of 'shoot stuff tactically'. It's not as if that's bad, but power-ups add a lot to the game when implemented well, and throw in a bit of variety, a bit of the same twist you get from the cape or fire flower in a Mario game. No, those items don't make the game, but when those are in the game, you have something to go for. The entire game isn't just "Jump and run". It's about the power-ups you can keep, and how you use them as well. It just gives it the 'more' that breaks up the action just the smallest bit.
Now, the problem lies in ganking loot or making the game too much of what it isn't, right? Well, is this not more a platformer than an RPG? Don't even give the pretense of 'equipment'. There's a power-up. Some energy ball. Someone gets it, it goes to everybody in the chunk for a time, and a survivor explains "This is a deposit of pure consciousness energy that provides various effects" or something.

In Summary: It's a graceful little simple solution to make mercenary coins actually be useful. However, I don't like removing the equipment's effects because I don't want to lose out on the power-up effect of equipment, and I know I am unlikely to bribe my way out of the simple pleasure of purification. So, replace equipment with timed power-ups and give merc coins this function so that they actually have a use.

Edit: I really really wanna emphasize one thing, and that's the fact that I don't think the merc coin idea is bad. I just know that I won't use it. The way I look at it, I'm skipping gameplay, and I like gameplay. That's why I'd never opt to auto-complete a level I'm stuck on or anything like that. That's why I'm not a fan of idle farming methods in offline games. I don't like those, because somewhere, somehow, a game is being played, and I'm not the one doing it.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2013, 05:14:36 pm by LaughingThesaurus »

Offline Panopticon

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #26 on: January 29, 2013, 05:41:35 pm »
If you do return Mercs for tile purification will using them roll the turn over or will it be able to work like an extra purification that turn?

Offline madcow

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #27 on: January 29, 2013, 05:49:00 pm »
I think LT pretty much summarized my feelings as I thought about it more. I'm not against the merc coins - and I think my favorite part of that idea is the potential for expansion of buying later on.

In the end, its the temporary power-ups feel of equipment that I somewhat prefer - though again, if the decision came to switch to something else I would be just fine with it.

Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #28 on: January 29, 2013, 06:27:06 pm »
I like how powerful the effects of equipment can be strictly by virtue of them being temporary. Instead of picking up the ragged boot of multiple projectiles, you just get a +2 projectile 15s power-up that gives you the effect for a number of seconds. If they were mean, they could well make each color mean a different effect, and shuffle the colors at random on world creation so you have to experiment to find which clusters actually get you immolation and such... but this isn't a roguelike so.

Offline MouldyK

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Re: An alternative to equipment: Mercenary Purification.
« Reply #29 on: January 29, 2013, 06:28:50 pm »
The way I see it, we can have the "Keep Equipment in level, can trade for Merc Coin" system that one guy suggested as it keeps the best of both worlds. And those who won't use it can maybe be gifted with an Achievement like "That Was All Me!" for not using Merc Coins to skip levels.

But the system might help for those times when the random number generator hates you and wants to make the enemies too damn high.

 

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