Rethinking upgrade stone costs.

[x4000]

From mantis (warning, really long): http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=7206

Just wanted to make sure that folks in the forums saw this and could weigh in with opinions before we go changing the algorithm for how upgrade stone costs are applied.

[zebramatt]

This reminded me of when I wrote this...

So, I've been thinking about the new upgrade mechanics. Generally I really like the change, but a couple of things don't sit quite right with me at the moment. (This is probably better suited to the brainstorming subforum.)

First, the existence of a 10-upgrade cap seems juxtaposed with the potential longevity of characters: once you reach your 10, all further upgrade stones are completely useless for that character. Sure, they'll come in handy if you ever lose your character but there's no exciting choice there.

Second, the fact that each path becomes exponentially more expensive (coupled with the 10-upgrade limit) seems to encourage generalist characters. By far the quickest way to power up your character will be to focus on mana and attack, with a few in health. Specialisation's payoffs don't become any more attractive as you upgrade but do become more expensive, so beyond a certain point you're either discouraging specialisation; or conversely penalising certain playstyles.

I'd be in favour of making the upgrade cost curves of each path start at the same base (and maybe make health upgrades increase life by 50% or 75% rather than 100% for balance?) and encourage generalists as now for, say, three levels, but then inflate further upgrades in other paths relative to your specialisation.

For example, you've upgraded attack twice (8, 16) and mana twice (8, 16) and then hit level 3 health upgrade (8, 16, 32) - so the cost of upgrading attack or mana jumps from 32 to 64. The game would obviously warn you when this was about to happen; and the upgrade path GUI would make it obvious how many stones you need for the next level of each, and why. (You'd even have an excuse to name classes at that point - "Health Specialist" or "Tank" or "Brute" or whatever.)

There's then lesser need for hard '10-upgrades-only' style caps, since once you get to 10 your costs are going to be pretty high to keep going in any one field, let alone trying to level all three. And it keeps interesting choices around for a lot longer, potentially.

The only flaw I can see with that is that you might tie yourself into a single character specialisation with no escape short of having your character killed and starting over. Perhaps a really expensive Guardian Ability might then allow you to trade your stats back into stones so you can try a different path (and maybe the conversion is very inefficient, so you end up level 2 in all stats and only have 128 stones to show for it, or something).

...so I thought I'd quote it here.

Not that I necessarily feel the same way now - but I thought it relevant nonetheless.

[madcow]

I haven't managed to reach the upgrade cap, didn't know there was one even. Is the cap the number of total upgrades you can get, or is it the number of upgrades per a stat you can use?

[zebramatt]

I haven't managed to reach the upgrade cap, didn't know there was one even. Is the cap the number of total upgrades you can get, or is it the number of upgrades per a stat you can use?

10 upgrades per character total, spread across the three stats. So 8/1/1, 6/1/3, 3/3/4 or any other combination adding up to ten!

[madcow]

Ahh, I see. That makes sense as far as encouraging specialization. I had wondered why you would want to transfer to a different person!

To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure those 3 stats is enough to have real specializations between characters. It would be cool however, if you could use upgrade stones on enchantments (or possibly spells) as well. Using up one of your upgrade slots, for a buff to a specific enchantment/spell, which of course is lost when the character dies.

I'm sure that idea is outside the scope of this thread.

Another suggestion is perhaps a partial recovery of upgrade stones spent (but not full recovery) if you can manage to beat your vengeful ghost after you die (somewhat similar to dark souls). This would keep some loss in death, require the same amount of exploring to get leveled up in the first place - but subsequent characters would have a lessened impact assuming you can beat the ghost.

[zebramatt]

Another suggestion is perhaps a partial recovery of upgrade stones spent (but not full recovery) if you can manage to beat your vengeful ghost after you die (somewhat similar to dark souls). This would keep some loss in death, require the same amount of exploring to get leveled up in the first place - but subsequent characters would have a lessened impact assuming you can beat the ghost.

This sort of idea actually is explored over in the Mantis issue - with one major stumbling block being that when you die in a mission, your ghost is destroyed along with the mission space, which might encourage save scumming!

[Penumbra]

There is also a thread in the brainstorming section about new features for Vengeful Ghosts 

As for upgrades, the one thing I don't like is the cap at 10. It makes 10 seem like the right number, the number to strive for. If the cost just bashed the person in the head at a certain point, they will make their own cap. The upgrades are linear, which means that 8th upgrade gives much less overall benefit than the first did, and at a much greater cost.

If people should be fine with three to five upgrades, don't tell them they should have more 

[zebramatt]

I think that's a fair point. If you removed the hard cap, what sort of sort cap would we see?

[Penumbra]

I am going to rejigger my excel spread sheet so we can all play with it easily.

[jordot42]

I don't think there should be a cap either. 

I like the thought of limitless power.  Take the game Fate for example.  The original had a level cap of 100.  I thought to myself, "Wow, that's it?  That's as good as I can get?"  I didn't buy it.

The next version (I forget the name) removed the level cap.  I bought that one.  "Let's see how high I can get my stats", I thought.  The carrot/horse thing I guess.

"How much bonus attack can I get?  Let's find out."  This might encourage grinding, but for me "limitless power" is an incentive to keep playing.

[Drjones013]

A ten level cap would be awesome if you could incorporate some kind of specialization, say what enchantments you have while you level give you a small but noticeable bonus that's persistent in that character (I get a small jump bonus, remove my jump enchants, put on my gills, level, character now has a slight jump and water resist, etc). Your early characters would become obsolete as you get better enchantments but it'd definitely give you a reason to switch between characters later on, particularly as specialization became more acute.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Idk, I'm a bit conflicted on Upgrade stones.  I do think that later upgrades are a bit grindy, considering how many are required but at the same time, if you incentivize it too much, then we'll have people playing for hours grinding for those things...So its kinda up in the air for me. 

Hmm....

I don't think getting rid of the cap is a good idea though, as it might lead to some horrid imbalance and would encourage grinding up upgrade stones until we were so powerful we could take out the Overlord in one shot. 

King

[Penumbra]

Here is the skill sheet, with almost every variable easily changed. Feel free to play around!

The basic equation I used involves a cost per total level added to a cost per skill level. This allows scaling across individual skills without penalizing the player for the order in which the skills are selected.

Base Costs for Health, Damage, Mana: Base
Multipliers for Level and Skill: MultSkill, MultLevel
Log Bases for Level and Skill: Log_levelLb, Log_skillLb
Exponent for Level and Skill: Ex^levelEx, Ex^skillEx
Total level at next upgrade:  X
Skill's level at next upgrade: Y

(MultLevel * X^levelEx * Log_levelLb(X) + 1) + ((Y^skillEx * Log_skillLb(Y) + 1) * Base * MultSkill)

Edit: I guess I could explain a little more 

Download the excel spreadsheet (need Office for this part) Then, change around the red values up top. The green values at the bottom are the total cost for the build written to their left. Bases are the 8,4,4 for the first upgrade (written as 7,3,3 because of the +1)

The exponent section dictates how quickly higher levels become more expensive, and you can customize overall level growth vs individual skill level growth.

The Log is used to "soften" the exponent in the early levels and serves to incentivize a certain cap. It is a standard Log₁₀ right now, as that breaks at level 10.

Edit: Added skills to level 50, updated image and .xlsx
Edit2: Added multipliers for both Skill and Level costs, as per Purlox's request
     (His equation would be: ExLevel = 1, MultLevel=2, MultSkill=1.2)

[Penumbra]

I don't think getting rid of the cap is a good idea though, as it might lead to some horrid imbalance and would encourage grinding up upgrade stones until we were so powerful we could take out the Overlord in one shot. 

I don't think so. There aren't enough upgrade stones for that at all, even in an infinite world (well, not really, but practically)
50 points in Damage would cost 267,793 stones to reach! 50 in health would be 535,585!


Remember, the characters are individually balanced, which means if yours is getting huge bonuses for Damage, your life will be really, really low. And vice versa. The linear scaling of upgrade bonuses keeps the really extreme cases in check.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I don't think getting rid of the cap is a good idea though, as it might lead to some horrid imbalance and would encourage grinding up upgrade stones until we were so powerful we could take out the Overlord in one shot. 

I don't think so. There aren't enough upgrade stones for that at all, even in an infinite world (well, not really, but practically)
50 points in Damage would cost 267,793 stones to reach! 50 in health would be 535,585!


Remember, the characters are individually balanced, which means if yours is getting huge bonuses for Damage, your life will be really, really low. And vice versa. The linear scaling of upgrade bonuses keeps the really extreme cases in check.

Hmm, mk.  Works for me.  I took a brief look at your spreadsheet and after my brain exploded it looks like the math is sound...but I'm not certain yet.  But I'm not opposed to it either. 

King