Author Topic: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming  (Read 11272 times)

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #30 on: October 02, 2016, 09:51:49 am »
Thanks for the suggestions, current name contenders are:

Savings Interest -- Savings Interest....seems to work for me!

Missile Damage Boost -- Improved Warheads, Enhanced Warheads, and Advanced Warheads

Power/Defense/Energy Globe -- Hydral Spectres or Spirits something like that. Trying to not just do a generic power orb thing with these, but a floating Hydral spirit head that grants powers...or something.

Health Shard Double pickup perk -- Not sure on this one, Shard Splitter, Shard Surplus something like that.

Iron Will -- Indomitable, or True Grit, or Indomitable Spirit

Retaliation perk - An Eye for an Eye, we also have a ready made perk icon for this which is nice.

Better alternatives will of course still be under consideration. :)



Offline Logorouge

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #31 on: October 02, 2016, 11:17:24 am »
Power/Defense/Energy Globe -- Hydral Spectres or Spirits something like that. Trying to not just do a generic power orb thing with these, but a floating Hydral spirit head that grants powers...or something.
For something like that, the icon of the decommissioned sac item "Harmony" might work.

Offline Monkooky

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #32 on: October 06, 2016, 02:03:16 am »
Just came back from pretending to be productive, and it looks like I'm late to the party.
Hopefully though, not too late to give suggestions.


General stuff:
Dodge perks are kinda problematic, now that I'm thinking about perks.
First, it's impossible to tell when they kick in, making them seem like rubbish. You get this 10% dodge chance, but it has no noticeable effect- you probably wish you'd gotten something else. Some kind of sound and/or blur effect on your mech when the dodge procs would clear this up.
Second, they're rather inconsistent. I for one do not survive enough hits during a boss fight for the law of large numbers to kick in. Makes things a wee bit RNG. Not the biggest deal in the world.
Third, I don't think they play well at all with overlapping enemy shots. A lot of patterns have a large number of heavily clustered shots- normally, this has about the same threat level as a single shot as you only take damage from one if many hit you. However, clustered shots I believe each bullet rolls against your dodge- rendering it moot.

Undying Will sounds like it would make me salty when it failed and absurdly pleased when it saved me repeatedly. This is the good kind of RNG- but please make it clear when the effect procs.



Random Perks:
Scrap Repurposer: Health packs restore missiles instead if at full health
Munition Repurposer: Missiles restore health instead if at full missiles
Unenecumbered: Faster move speed when at low missiles/energy
Panic!: Brief phasing and move speed boost when hit
Powered by Pain: Energy capacity increases with missing health
Double Tap: % chance to fire twice in rapid succession


Unique Mech Perk ideas:
Deep Blue- Overclock: +20% energy costs +20% energy weapon damage
Right now this dude is mostly about the energy, not the starting familiar. Maybe that ought to be changed, but +100% energy  totally overshadows the familiar as is.

Indigo Dipole- Repulsive Paintjob: Mild passive bullet repulsion effect

Flame Tank- Burning Ring of Fire: basically just move the flame nova auxilliary to a perk
Flame Tank- Great Balls of Fire: ain't got anything but a name. Prrrobably would involve fire. In ball form more likely than not.
Flame Tank- Inferno Discus: Get a burning familiar with a large orbit radius and contact damage. Doesn't fit the mech too well, but lame puns!

Redshift- Time dilation: Enemies move and shoot slower, enemy bullets move slower.
Redshift- Time stop: When you enter a room, enemies cannot move or shoot until you fire a weapon.
Sadly, no time puns came to mind- names are boring for now.

If possible, it'd be cool to have some perk selections be entirely mech-specific perks
i.e. at level 5, Redshift can select between Time Dilation, afterimages, or Time stop.
This would guarantee players see the perkand you'd be able to make the perks more impactful without making them an obvious pick.
On the other hand it might be a little bit difficult to come up with and balance the bajillion perks this would require.


Shard boost names: Shard times, Shard drive, shard game shard life, other permutations of that pun. The possibilities are endless!
« Last Edit: October 06, 2016, 02:09:33 am by Monkooky »

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #33 on: October 06, 2016, 09:29:25 am »
Quote
Just came back from pretending to be productive, and it looks like I'm late to the party.
Hopefully though, not too late to give suggestions.

Not too late, we're probably looking at a couple more weeks of internal testing and work, and then maybe a couple of weeks of steam beta testing. Don't hold me to it, though.

Quote
Dodge perks are kinda problematic, now that I'm thinking about perks.
First, it's impossible to tell when they kick in, making them seem like rubbish. You get this 10% dodge chance, but it has no noticeable effect- you probably wish you'd gotten something else. Some kind of sound and/or blur effect on your mech when the dodge procs would clear this up.
Second, they're rather inconsistent. I for one do not survive enough hits during a boss fight for the law of large numbers to kick in. Makes things a wee bit RNG. Not the biggest deal in the world.
Third, I don't think they play well at all with overlapping enemy shots. A lot of patterns have a large number of heavily clustered shots- normally, this has about the same threat level as a single shot as you only take damage from one if many hit you. However, clustered shots I believe each bullet rolls against your dodge- rendering it moot.

Yeah, they could be better aesthetically, but this would probably need engine work which complicates things. Regarding the overlapping shots, I don't mind this too much. If there are too many shots to reliably dodge then that seems kind of fair enough.

Quote
Undying Will sounds like it would make me salty when it failed and absurdly pleased when it saved me repeatedly. This is the good kind of RNG- but please make it clear when the effect procs.

Yeah, I'll try and make the description clear, and experiment with some visuals.

Quote
Scrap Repurposer: Health packs restore missiles instead if at full health
Munition Repurposer: Missiles restore health instead if at full missiles

These sound good, I think they're probably not able to be implemented currently, but I'll look into it. Pretty cool.

Quote
Unenecumbered: Faster move speed when at low missiles/energy

I think the problem is that move speed isn't really desired in a game like this, though. It can actually make things harder, so move speed boosts are tricky.

Quote
Panic!: Brief phasing and move speed boost when hit

We could do this, but we already have the phase module which is similar to this. Do we want a similar perk, too?

Quote
Powered by Pain: Energy capacity increases with missing health

We can almost do this in the engine, I think, although last I checked I ran into problems with this conditional stuff. I'll look into it.

Quote
Double Tap: % chance to fire twice in rapid succession

Good idea, worth looking into.

Quote
Deep Blue- Overclock: +20% energy costs +20% energy weapon damage
Right now this dude is mostly about the energy, not the starting familiar. Maybe that ought to be changed, but +100% energy  totally overshadows the familiar as is.

Cool idea, this runs into a current problem, though, in that we can't target damage boosts at only energy weapons, although engine improvements are being looked at in this area.

Quote
Indigo Dipole- Repulsive Paintjob: Mild passive bullet repulsion effect

Yeah, seems good for the mech. The worry with this is that it'll make the mech untouchable, I'll look into this later, probably.


Quote
Flame Tank- Burning Ring of Fire: basically just move the flame nova auxilliary to a perk
Flame Tank- Great Balls of Fire: ain't got anything but a name. Prrrobably would involve fire. In ball form more likely than not.
Flame Tank- Inferno Discus: Get a burning familiar with a large orbit radius and contact damage. Doesn't fit the mech too well, but lame puns!

For the moment, the current Flame Tank special perk gives +20% multiplicative damage boost when dealing fire damage.

Quote
Redshift- Time dilation: Enemies move and shoot slower, enemy bullets move slower.
Redshift- Time stop: When you enter a room, enemies cannot move or shoot until you fire a weapon.
Sadly, no time puns came to mind- names are boring for now.

Yeah, perks something like this sound about right. No puns? Shame!

Quote
If possible, it'd be cool to have some perk selections be entirely mech-specific perks
i.e. at level 5, Redshift can select between Time Dilation, afterimages, or Time stop.
This would guarantee players see the perkand you'd be able to make the perks more impactful without making them an obvious pick.
On the other hand it might be a little bit difficult to come up with and balance the bajillion perks this would require.

Yeah, seems a good idea. Coming up with 3 cool perks per mech is the tricky part, I think. But over time we could aim for that. I think for the next build we'll probably stick to just at least 1 per mech, though.

Offline ptarth

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #34 on: October 06, 2016, 10:47:48 am »
I've been in the area of the dodge code, so I can add some effects without too much trouble. Dodge! message in blue? Invulnerability like aura for 500 ms? What color?

The other points about dodge are... just how dodge works? Dodge has always been dodgy and unreliable. But if you combine it with the damage reduction perks it is better.
Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Offline Logorouge

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #35 on: October 06, 2016, 12:57:57 pm »
Not too late, we're probably looking at a couple more weeks of internal testing and work, and then maybe a couple of weeks of steam beta testing. Don't hold me to it, though.

Question: Does the perk overhaul update include the potential fix for secret rooms crashes or was that already pushed in a stealth update?

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #36 on: October 06, 2016, 01:15:44 pm »
I've been in the area of the dodge code, so I can add some effects without too much trouble. Dodge! message in blue? Invulnerability like aura for 500 ms? What color?

The other points about dodge are... just how dodge works? Dodge has always been dodgy and unreliable. But if you combine it with the damage reduction perks it is better.

Better idea:
We already have phasing ("phase out for x seconds when you take damage.")
Extend that to dodging.  Rather than 25% chance to dodge, make it a 25% chance to dodge and phase for x duration.

Even if it's only a half or a quarter of a second, it'll be noticeable and actually help against those stacked shots.

Offline Chthon

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #37 on: October 06, 2016, 01:40:02 pm »
New perk ideas:

Ablative plating: Shots which would have barely hit you, instead ricochet off your armor. Effect: Reduce hit box by 1-2 pixel. Give it a nice splash effect if it would have hit you but just missed you. Does not affect shots coming into your sprite at a steep enough angle.

You would have to balance it with compact molecules of course. Currently Compact Molecules already lets you slip between diagonal blocks for some reason.

Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers: Shots which hit you have a X% chance to simply bounce off of you. Your hitbox is increased slightly. "What possible purpose could these have served on board a prison ship?"

Event Horizon: Shots which come within pixels of your hitbox cause time to become slowed for everything. The closer they come the slower it gets, allowing you to spend more time fine tuning your dodge. Note: Your movement is slowed, so it really is only useful if the bullets were almost going to miss you as it were. Think the bullet dodging in the Matrix.

Offline ptarth

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #38 on: October 06, 2016, 03:22:06 pm »
I've been in the area of the dodge code, so I can add some effects without too much trouble. Dodge! message in blue? Invulnerability like aura for 500 ms? What color?

The other points about dodge are... just how dodge works? Dodge has always been dodgy and unreliable. But if you combine it with the damage reduction perks it is better.

Better idea:
We already have phasing ("phase out for x seconds when you take damage.")
Extend that to dodging.  Rather than 25% chance to dodge, make it a 25% chance to dodge and phase for x duration.

Even if it's only a half or a quarter of a second, it'll be noticeable and actually help against those stacked shots.

I like this idea.
Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Offline Monkooky

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #39 on: October 06, 2016, 03:52:34 pm »
I've been in the area of the dodge code, so I can add some effects without too much trouble. Dodge! message in blue? Invulnerability like aura for 500 ms? What color?

The other points about dodge are... just how dodge works? Dodge has always been dodgy and unreliable. But if you combine it with the damage reduction perks it is better.

Better idea:
We already have phasing ("phase out for x seconds when you take damage.")
Extend that to dodging.  Rather than 25% chance to dodge, make it a 25% chance to dodge and phase for x duration.

Even if it's only a half or a quarter of a second, it'll be noticeable and actually help against those stacked shots.

I also like this idea.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #40 on: October 06, 2016, 05:18:46 pm »
I've been in the area of the dodge code, so I can add some effects without too much trouble. Dodge! message in blue? Invulnerability like aura for 500 ms? What color?

The other points about dodge are... just how dodge works? Dodge has always been dodgy and unreliable. But if you combine it with the damage reduction perks it is better.

Better idea:
We already have phasing ("phase out for x seconds when you take damage.")
Extend that to dodging.  Rather than 25% chance to dodge, make it a 25% chance to dodge and phase for x duration.

Even if it's only a half or a quarter of a second, it'll be noticeable and actually help against those stacked shots.

I like this idea.

Seems.........good? Yeah, should work I think if it can be implemented.

Quote
Ablative plating: Shots which would have barely hit you, instead ricochet off your armor. Effect: Reduce hit box by 1-2 pixel. Give it a nice splash effect if it would have hit you but just missed you. Does not affect shots coming into your sprite at a steep enough angle.

Might work. I'm not sure there's a way to adjust hitboxes, though, using modifiers. Interesting idea, though.


Quote
Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers: Shots which hit you have a X% chance to simply bounce off of you. Your hitbox is increased slightly. "What possible purpose could these have served on board a prison ship?"

It'd be cool to be able to reflect occasional shots. That could also make for a different implementation of dodge.

Quote
Event Horizon: Shots which come within pixels of your hitbox cause time to become slowed for everything. The closer they come the slower it gets, allowing you to spend more time fine tuning your dodge. Note: Your movement is slowed, so it really is only useful if the bullets were almost going to miss you as it were. Think the bullet dodging in the Matrix.

Sounds cool, implementation seems a bit scary, though. Might be possible.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #41 on: October 06, 2016, 08:11:10 pm »
Quote
Question: Does the perk overhaul update include the potential fix for secret rooms crashes or was that already pushed in a stealth update?

Only just caught this question. Yeah, the next update will have the potential crashing fix. No stealth update was pushed.

Offline Logorouge

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #42 on: October 06, 2016, 09:37:07 pm »
Quote
Question: Does the perk overhaul update include the potential fix for secret rooms crashes or was that already pushed in a stealth update?

Only just caught this question. Yeah, the next update will have the potential crashing fix. No stealth update was pushed.
Any chance you guys could do a small early update including the fix? (Beta branch in case something goes wrong?) Would be nice to potentially get rid of that sword of Damocles of a crash. Sorry for the selfish request, but redoing an entire 6th floor is such a pain.

Offline Misery

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #43 on: October 06, 2016, 11:02:19 pm »
I would say, go for a quick fix.  That crash really is pretty nasty.  Worth putting out a tiny update for it.

Just one tip though, one thing you can do is use bug-report saves.  Save one before you enter a secret room, and if it crashes, just reload that directly.   

I *think* this causes the run not to count for the purposes of it displaying how many runs you've won/lost in the main menu, but still, it is a workaround until the issue is fixed. 

Offline Monkooky

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Re: Perk Overhaul Brainstorming
« Reply #44 on: October 07, 2016, 03:05:39 pm »
Some more ideas:

Reactive Armor: When you take hull damage from an enemy shot gain +20% damage reduction for the rest of the room. Capped at 3 stacks. (NOTE: These numbers seem like they might be too high, depending on how damage reduction stacking works)

Name Here: When you hit with a shot, the corresponding gun gains +5% damage for the next three shots (damage boost is only on the gun that fired the shot to prevent cheese)

Other Name Here: Recharge energy on main gun hits, with a capped proc rate

Something for Green Envy maybe, though I've no idea what's being planned for him
Cash is Key/Money opens doors: Can spend money in lieu of keys i.e. 5 credits to open a chest/door

 

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