Some upcoming stuff

[Misery]

Whaaaat?  Why's that?

I always think it helps to give the player some sort of potential tool to identify things like this.  And a lot of the MCs that are positive are pretty good (though maybe not AS good as things like Healing Nanites) and worth identifying to reduce the risk of the bad ones (which can be nasty).  Provided of course that the player is willing to buy said item or manages to find it somewhere.

If there's some balance issue or something you think I'm missing here, by all means, lemme know.

[Pumpkin]

I feel I don't find enough mystery circuits in a run to justify buying an identifier item. However, if mystery circuits start to happen more often, like several per floor, and if the identifier definitively identify all circuits, I might take it, even in sacrificial room (provided I find it early enough).

How is the chests / keys / small permanent rewards story going?

Stray idea: a pair of items, "Yin" and "Yang"; one give a big permanent bonus, the other gives an equally big permanent malus, but each run their effects (good and bad) are randomly attributed to one or the other (they're not part of the mysterious circuit pool and aren't identified like them). When finding one, the player might want to wait for the other; when having both, the player can consume one, and consume or ignore the second if the first had the malus or the bonus, respectively. Having both lead to 50% chances for a big bonus and 50% chances for canceling bonus and malus, whereas consuming the first just when found can lead to a flat malus if the second isn't found later (or while it's not found).
Worth mantising?

[Draco18s]

I'm not sure I understood that idea correctly.

[Pumpkin]

I'm not sure I understood that idea correctly.

Me neither.

I think what he tries to do is another item (a pair, in fact) that works on the same mechanism of unknown bonus/malus as the mysterious circuits. The point with only two items and the guarantee that one will always be beneficial (and the other being always bad) is that if you consume one, you know the other. If you take the bad one first, you also consume the good one and your are even; if you take the good first, you discard the bad one and keep the bonus.

However I'm not sure. He's post was rather confused, to say the least.

[Misery]

I have no idea what's even going on here.

As for the mystery circuits, hmm.   Do we need to have those appearing more often?  When I think about it, once I HAVE identified one I usually never see it again for the rest of that run. 

One reason though for an identifying item is that some of the mystery circuits are temporary effects; like, a whole lot of extra damage or something for a full 30 seconds.  That's a really huge effect (30 seconds is a LONG time to be dishing out a ton of extra damage or whatever), but normally, using a mystery circuit in the heat of battle isn't the brightest move, if it's not a revealed one.


Anyone else have any thoughts on the MCs?

[Misery]

And I've just been utterly destroyed by my own overpowered upcoming new enemy.  That Fragment thing... hmm.

Occurs to me that MAYBE I'll tone it down a bit.  Possibly that might be a good idea.

That was after 5 freaking floors, too, ugh.

I blame Windows.

[ptarth]

Whaaaat?  Why's that?

2 Major reasons that are all probably rationalized
1. Complicated - I don't see how to easily code it.
2. Not very important - There are very few with long term negative effects. Most are good. And most that are bad don't have a long term effect.
3. Good is too Good - Some of the ones that are good, are very, very good. So at least this way there is a little bit of a slow down on the powers the player gets. Once I finally get it released, I think you'll be demanding that we actually tone them down.

[Pumpkin]

I was thinking...

Currently, there is possibly bad outcomes, so I don't use them in a fight. And while there is mostly temporary outcomes, I don't find it interesting to consume-test them outside of fight. And while I never find the same twice in a game, I see no point in testing them for later identification.

But if all Mystery Circuits were guaranteed to be both good and temporary, it would make for some fun outcomes. Like "oh, I'm faster... against Wall Master. Nice ><" or surprise damage boost, or surprise defense/immunity, etc. This way, they would be usable during a fight and the player would have a beneficial boost at the cost of adaptation to the random effect. Maybe mysterious circuits could even be always mysterious; one type of consumable with a random effect. That kind, I would use. Or maybe if the bad effects were still temporary, a little bit rarer and manageable in a fight, like half speed, half damages, depletes shields, etc, I would still try them in a fight.

[Draco18s]

If they showed up more often so that there was an increased likelyhood of seeing them more than once, then it'd be worth identifying them just by using them.

[Logorouge]

Hmm.... it's occurred to me that it might be nice to have some sort of items that are capable of identifying Mystery Circuits before the player uses them.  Isaac has an item like that, which is usually one I grab ASAP when possible (many roguelikes have such a thing too).  I dunno why this didn't occur to me until just now...

Ah, similar to Isaac's PHD but only the ID part, right? I'd use that. If it's a sacrifice item, you'll have to pay health now for a possible future benefit. I like it. Things like reduced range or reduced speed are crippling enough that I would sacrifice a bit of life to avoid them completely. And now that the circuits can show up in the shop, they'll be frequent enough to make a desirable item to grab I think.

[Misery]

If they showed up more often so that there was an increased likelyhood of seeing them more than once, then it'd be worth identifying them just by using them.

Yes, to some degree there needs to be more of a chance of actually seeing the same ones more than once.

What about the way Isaac does it?  In that, there's a whole ton of different pill effects, but each time you start a new game only a certain number of them are randomly chosen, and only those that are chosen can appear in that run.  Even if you were to somehow just use a wacky synergy that keeps farting out pills, you'd never see any that aren't the 7 or 8 that it chose to go with that run.   That's probably the only reason why the pills even work out in that game.  Like with this, there'd be too many effects otherwise.

[Pumpkin]

Selecting a sub-pool of mystery circuits for each game sounds good to me. Also, several Arcen's games do something like that: bot and boss types in Bionic Dues, ships and guardians in AIW.

[Misery]

Aye, that is a good point. 

Is it plausible with the game engine though, that's the question...?   I personally have no idea how hard or not that might be to implement, but indeed it would really work much better for the MCs.  They'd just seem a lot better overall that way and give more motivation for the player to identify them, so hopefully that's feasible.

Ptarth, any idea on the viability of this one?