Perk Overhaul Brainstorming

[Pepisolo]

Is that the one that first bullets that intercept other bullets?

Nah, that's the Interceptor Drone. Narcotics Drone fires a big pink needle that slows enemies down.

- Global (as current, but lower percentages)
 - Gun Damage (main and energy, uncommon, but higher percentages*)
 - Familiar & Missile (uncommon, but higher percentages*)

Rather than 5 separate perks its now 3.  Then on certain mechs you can supply the "this mech is the [X] mech, it gets a bonus to just [X]."  E.g. Blue Wonder is the energy mech, it can have a level-up perk that gives it a massive bonus to its energy weapon damage** or the Familiar Mech gets a massive bonus to familiar damage**

Yeah, we could save specific damage boosts as special mech perks. I'd like to split things up a little at least, but that would require engine work so maybe it's not worth it.  Keeping damage boosts as purely main/energy/missile/familiars all in one just seems uninteresting to me and doesn't promote much build diversity. Having Gun Damage and Familiar & Missile Damage seems better, although I imagine the Familiar & Missile one would get chosen a lot less.

[Draco18s]

I tend to be familiar heavy (regardless of base mech), so I'd pick it up.
The number of times I've had 4 offensive familiars is pretty high.

[ptarth]

• I've been avoiding commenting because I don't wish to contaminate other's views with my own (reduce bias)
• Making fundamental decisions with a low review rate/period is dangerous, because the chance of unrepresentative thoughts dominating.
• The default mechs are actually very different, but subtly so.
• There are differen starting stats, weapons, and xp per level requirements. They each also have a gimmick.
• White gloss has the extra health, which results in more sacrifice shop items and/or is safer.
• Blue Mech gets double energy and less main gun damage
• Green gets extra money and keys, which means more shopping variety and more consumables.
• Humble mech converts money directly into short term damage. At a reasonable rate that only gets better.
• Orange Mech gets unique weapon and early shields.
• Redshift is redshift.
• Purple Mech gets Hornet Mines and Magnetic Missiles. Which are unique and different.
• I do think perks need to be enhanced.
• Damage perks should probably be halved again (at least at the top end)
• More damage reduction perks should be added.
• Maybe more critical damage & critical hit rate perks. But in general this just a DPS increase hidden with large variance.
• Splitting the damage boosts results in more options, but doesn't address any of the problems.
• Unique perks every 5 levels would help. These perks would allow for options that make the mech "more" of whatever its theme is.
• Examlples
• Flame Tank - More powerful and versatile flame throwers.
• Blue Mech - Add extra unique familiars. I think we might be able to swap out a specific familiar without trouble. But things more complicated than that, are more complicated. But it doesn't make a difference. Who would want less familiars?
• Humble Mech - Already has powerups of the credit weapon. However if the player drops the weapon earlier, they don't matter. So perhaps give the player the weapon again if they choose the perk.
• Redshift - Is Redshift. Possibly some crazy time cloning features. I.e., you spawn some friendly redshift mechs to help.
• Purple Mech - Gravity manipulation seems to be the theme. So perhaps reducing the reload rate of the hornet mines, or granting a modified version of the flame trail. It drops hornet mines that repel. So you can draw repelling barriers. Possibly too cheesy or dangerous.
• Green Envy - Double the chances of getting the special drops.
• There is no "missile" mech due to the rarity of missiles. Perhaps this is an expansion mech design. We should probably make a list of the fundamental mechanics and ensure there is a mech for each.
• Scaling perks too much should be curtailed. That's because it causes massive problems with scaling too hard. We trimmed down the scaling originally, (example damage perks), but you can see it is still too much! Having the summation of your perks be the form of their goodness is sufficient. Some increase is desireable, but not too much. Consider this, the best perk is probably +1 shield, which you get once at an early level...
• Trap master - Yeah. I theoretically could do it. However, the entire damage type system is a massive mess.
• Keyprentice - Uh... How about gain X keys per level?
• Health Shard conversions are not very good. The entire system is somewhat bjorked. I also think it is all hard coded. We could maybe get around it by adding double health shard gains.
• Missile Perks - Getting more missiles + higher missile caps I support.
• Armor Upgrade - In general we have been moving away from trade off systems. They just don't work out they way we imagine. I would vote no here as well.
• Extra XP - These exist already. More would perhaps be okay.
• Auxilary system - Having a perk grant a the respawn system would be good. Details are not important.
• Specialist - I like this.
• Debuffs - Gimmicky with either low actual game impact or too much. Fire rate variance really makes this hard.
• Pierce - Variant on DPS increasers. Plus could have really bad interactions with multistage shots.
• Culling Strike - Seems promising. Or have more on room start effects in general.
• Speed Boosts - I would argue for flat rate, but even then I have a hard time imagining I would want more speed on my mech. I can't drive well with its current speed.
• Stealing - Um.... Complicated....massive can of worms. How do you steal versus buy? I'm going to back away slowly.
• LootFloorIndex - It worked last I knew. How did you test it? Note pools are setup to have ranges, so the differences between floors 1-2 with and without the booster is probably not noticeable.
• Floor scaling from both direct floor bonuses and from different enemy poools do require damage increases. Although top end scaling is too much, mid range scaling is okay right now.
• Flame Tank is best mech! Be gone with your foul Humble Mech propoganda!
• Weapon Specific Bonus Perks force you to choose a specific weapon path, and cannot be swapped out. That means the RNG really matters. I don't like that. I am more accepting of attachment based weapon-type specifics, but even then am not convinced they are different enough to be important.
• I still think Energy Shards should be a thing in the expansion.
• Missile Debuffs - Interesting. I don't think we can do that currently, but I could see it working. Having special missiles with debuffs would be a proxy.
• Draco18s's modified Weapon type proposal. If we do this, we would build the system that supports the full division. So there is no reduction in effort. I'm still unconvinced by its worth.
• Note: Every time I write expansion please replace with (REDACTED)

[Pepisolo]

LootFloorIndex - It worked last I knew. How did you test it? Note pools are setup to have ranges, so the differences between floors 1-2 with and without the booster is probably not noticeable.

I basically just added to the LootFloorIndex number then looked at what items were appearing in the item rooms. It didn't seem to make a difference. I added a plus 5 to the index and then expected to see more higher tier gear, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I'll take another look.

[ptarth]

I would have expected that to work.

And now since we are taunting the forum, let's continue with some things I've been thinking.

• Key Apprentence = 50% of an extra key when you pickup a key.
• Key Master = 100% of an extra key when you pickup a key. (Stacks)
• Add in dev-build only listing for shot damage, so we can see literally the damage each shot does. Effectively how the crit! message works.  It's too spammy for regular player releases.
• Limit fire-rate modifiers to 25% per passive stackable bonus. Convert Salvo upon Salvo (and counterpart) to attachment.

[Pepisolo]

I would have expected that to work.

And now since we are taunting the forum, let's continue with some things I've been thinking.

• Key Apprentence = 50% of an extra key when you pickup a key.
• Key Master = 100% of an extra key when you pickup a key. (Stacks)
• Add in dev-build only listing for shot damage, so we can see literally the damage each shot does. Effectively how the crit! message works.  It's too spammy for regular player releases.
• Limit fire-rate modifiers to 25% per passive stackable bonus. Convert Salvo upon Salvo (and counterpart) to attachment.

Key stuff, yeah, seems better than just getting keys. Dev-build shot damage listing, seems good. Limit fire rate modifiers -- yep, that needs to happen.

[Logorouge]

You could bring back the Out to Lunch perk (10% chance to skip condemned/miniboss). Make it 100% and add a clear warning about lost treasures and XP in the description.

Saboteur: Bosses start slightly damaged (the equivalent of half the first phase). It might not sound like much, but it's quite the headstart in my opinion.

[Chthon]

You could bring back the Out to Lunch perk (10% chance to skip condemned/miniboss). Make it 100% and add a clear warning about lost treasures and XP in the description.

Saboteur: Bosses start slightly damaged (the equivalent of half the first phase). It might not sound like much, but it's quite the headstart in my opinion.

Saboteur might skip more than the entire first phase on the Floor 7 boss. (His name escapes me at the moment) Dang thing has like 22 phases or something.

Maybe it should do 10% of a phases damage every time you move onto a new phase?

[Misery]

Dang thing has like 22 phases or something.

I almost gave it more than it currently has, actually...   

[Logorouge]

Saboteur might skip more than the entire first phase on the Floor 7 boss.

Not sure I understand. How would cutting 50% of the 1st phase's worth of HP cause Terminus to skip a phase?

Thinking about it some more, it does mean the saboteur's effect on Terminus and the Warden would be negligible since their first phase don't have much HP to begin with. I don't think it's really a problem though, considering those two are special "final" bosses, but it's still something to keep in mind.

[Pepisolo]

You could bring back the Out to Lunch perk (10% chance to skip condemned/miniboss). Make it 100% and add a clear warning about lost treasures and XP in the description.

Saboteur: Bosses start slightly damaged (the equivalent of half the first phase). It might not sound like much, but it's quite the headstart in my opinion.

Out to Lunch, yeah we could do that, I'm still struggling to find a reason why most would choose it, though. Although, I could do a kind of perk selection for one level that has weird optional choices that don't really give clear benefits, like movement speed, if we get enough similar perks to add.

Saboteur sounds decent to me, and I was just about to say that I don't think we can implement it but I then realized that we probably actually can, although it would also have to affect minibosses too. I'll probably try implementing this today, to see how well it works.

In other news, even though the perk amount has grown, we're still a bit short I'd say. I really seem to be running out of steam around the 12 to 15 levels with no good perks in there, so any more ideas for cool perks would be much appreciated.

[Pepisolo]

Just thought of a Saboteur change, how about, makes bosses take 10% extra damage? This is more easily implementable, I think, and might be generally better?

Edit: Implemented. Well, that was much easier than I thought. I'll probably change the name to something more like Boss Hunter or whatever, but the effect is that you get a 10 or 20% damage boost on bosses and minibosses, if that sounds cool enough.

[Logorouge]

Just thought of a Saboteur change, how about, makes bosses take 10% extra damage? This is more easily implementable, I think, and might be generally better?

Edit: Implemented. Well, that was much easier than I thought. I'll probably change the name to something more like Boss Hunter or whatever, but the effect is that you get a 10 or 20% damage boost on bosses and minibosses, if that sounds cool enough.

That sounds pretty cool. Nicely done.
I was about to suggest a name change to "Big game hunter" to go along with it.

[Pepisolo]

[That sounds pretty cool. Nicely done.
I was about to suggest a name change to "Big game hunter" to go along with it.

Nice, sounds like a good name to me. Speaking of names, if anybody wants to help me name perks, here are a list of the new ones with working titles:

Savings Interest: Receive a bonus of 10% or 20% on your current credit amount once you enter a new floor.

Missile Damage Boost: Gives a straight up additive missile damage boost.

Power/Defense/Energy Globe: If you get hit, you receive a short term buff in the form of an orbiting globe which gives defense/energy/power buffs for 10 seconds. If you get hit in quick succession, the globes stack. This is kind of like the charges from Path of Exile.

Health Shard Double pickup perk: Gives a 10% chance of receiving double health shards from pickups.

Iron Will: Gives a 75% chance to not die when you would normally die.

Retaliation perk: Simply damages enemies that damage you. Enemies take more damage the lower on health you are.

[Logorouge]

Missile Damage Boost: Gives a straight up additive missile damage boost.

"Burlusts Warheads" or just "Improved Warheads" maybe.

Power/Defense/Energy Globe: If you get hit, you receive a short term buff in the form of an orbiting globe which gives defense/energy/power buffs for 10 seconds. If you get hit in quick succession, the globes stack. This is kind of like the charges from Path of Exile.

"Solo System P/D/E". Not a very descriptive name but I thought it sounded cool.

Iron Will: Gives a 75% chance to not die when you would normally die.

How about "Undying Will"?

Health Shard Double pickup perk: Gives a 10% chance of receiving double health shards from pickups.

"Shard refinement" or "Collection improvement" or "Genesis".

Retaliation perk: Simply damages enemies that damage you. Enemies take more damage the lower on health you are.

"Blood for Blood" or "An Eye for an Eye".