View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0007544 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | May 5, 2012 2:54 am | Aug 24, 2012 7:30 pm | |
| Reporter | Penumbra | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Summary | 0007544: Limit storage of upgrade stones | ||||
| Description | Cave Story has been bright up a few times, and "permadeath" has been linked to losing weapon levels in that game. A momentary setback. One thing that made cave story weapon loss meaningful was that you had to be without the weapon for a short period of time. With the hundreds of stones I have, I can just upgrade everyone new as soon as the last one died. Every other resource is shared across characters, but what if upgrade stones weren't? Gathering the required stones is pretty simple, and can even be purchased with shards. Maybe this would just be unnecessary down time, but it might also be interesting. | ||||
| Tags | outdated | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
| related to | 0007563 | closed | Chris_McElligottPark | Drop upgrade stones and/or conscience shards upon death |
| related to | 0007616 | closed | Chris_McElligottPark | Upgrade and Upgrade Stones |
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I thought the likening of upgrade stones to permadeath was not that you had to be without, but to act as a discouragement. What you WON'T do is upgrade a character to max, and then instantly kill him off through poor character management against odds you can't possibly win. You might with a non-upgraded character, but even as plentiful of upgrade stones you have, you wouldn't just throw them away. At least, that was my take. Saying all that, though, I don't think I'd like having to "grind up" upgrade stones post death. It might not take much time, given the current mechanics, but then consciousness shards would just become the new upgrade stones. I'd farm a whole bunch of THOSE every once in a while, so that I could purchase the stack of upgrade stones I need every new character... so then you'd have to make consciousness shards locked to the character... and pretty soon you're back to giving the mouse a cookie again. |
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I actually initially thought you were going to simply propose a hard cap on the number of upgrade stones one might carry at any given time (and presumably prevent players from being able to drop them). If you could only have 500 upgrade stones total, you'd want to spend your upgrade points as you approach the cap, meaning you couldn't stockpile quite so much. In fact, there's an upgrade system in that cap itself - if it were linked to, say, the continent tier (100 max at T1, 250 at T2, 500 at T3, 1000 at T4, 2500 at T5), then you'd be earning the ability to mitigate death to an ever increasing degree as you progress. |
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The current upgrade stone system still doesn't feel 'right' to me. It's hard to describe why -- maybe the upgrade stone system feels too separate from the rest of the game. Too ad hoc. I think instead of adding more restrictions, we should relax the ones we have: - Unlimited number of upgrades - but each upgrade gives diminishing returns This way the player has to decide whether to spend their upgrade stones now and get slightly better stats, or save them for later in case he/she dies. Or, like I suggested on the forums, get rid of upgrade stones entirely and buy upgrades directly with CShards from the Iari. |
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I did kind of go back and forth on what the limit shoud be. If it's zero, and you have to grnd up the levels ( or just buy the stones) then, meh. But the 200 stone cap, which means you get one full "buffer" of stones, so no penalty at all if you find 200 with each character. That actually sounds pretty good, since it encourages dying less often. |
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I think that placing a limit on the amount stones is pointless at the moment, simply because the store has devalued them to nothingness, does it really matter if I spend 2,000 shards now or when my character has just died? Not really, the out come is the same. In fact if anything a cap would only hurt people who want to gather them rather than just purchase them. |
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I would go for Quaix setting, personally i like the idea of being able to limitlessly expand a character. But knowing that i need to have a reserve in stock just incase i don't make that next jump quite where i wanted leads me to constantly be thinking about spending my upgrade stones as a resource. Which puts them back into the game as something other than a press X to insert a continue item. |
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The problem there would be, eventually, you would get every upgrade to whatever maximum the diminishing returns would give. There is no longer a decision to _not_ get more life or more damage, why wouldn't you? Upgrade stones are so easy to come by now, we could go back to the new-old math! ;) |
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I agree with the one-buffer cap idea, but what do we do with the extras we'd pick up? Convert them to consciousness shards? Make them add 0.1% to enchant progress? |
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Leave them lying on the ground! There's nothing like a pickup you can't pick up to galvanise you into spending what you've got! |
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I say drop the upgrade stones altogether and go for a mini-xp thing: the longer you keep the character alive and the more heroic things you do with the character, the stronger it gets -- but only with minor upgrades at a time. The fact that we apply upgrade stones means we need big differences with each applicatoin. If it was XP based, small boosts to health/mana/attack would be enough. And it would feel like a real loss, and not one you can just instantly replace. Not that I expect this path to be taken, but it is my opinion. |
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I'm inclined to agree with the idea of 'unlimited' potential development of a character through upgrades with increased cost per upgrade. If each upgrade level in a stat took twice as many upgrade stones as the previous; and there were diminishing returns for each upgrade level (with a minimum cap per upgrade, say 10 hitpoints; or 2% damage, or 1 mana regen), there would reach a point where people would choose not to spend their upgrade stones and save them as a reserve to get the next character off his feet. If you have exponential growth in cost and a linear growth in reward, people will eventually decide to stop pursing upgrades (per character). If the concern is that we don't want the person to just max every improvable stat with the upgrade stones, perhaps have it that improving one stat lowers one (or both) of the other stats: not to the degree that improving the other stats are useless, but as a way to encourage only improving one or two of the stats. Alternately, could have the first ten upgrades (total) have no penalty to other stats, with upgrades after that lowering the other stats proportionately (with minimum caps to the other stats when diminishing returns are hit to, say, 5 hitpoints, or 1% damage, or 0.5 mana regen); with the idea that if the person upgrades all 3 stats past the first ten upgrades, they'll stop gaining anything; but if they want to continue developing the character past the first 10 upgrades, they can, but it will cost them. As far as limiting the number of upgrade stones a character can hold, that I'm less inclined to support. Let people collect their shiny trinkets, it's one of the fun things to do. |
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No more upgrade stones, so moot now! :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 5, 2012 2:54 am | Penumbra | New Issue | |
| May 5, 2012 3:28 am | khadgar | Note Added: 0023513 | |
| May 5, 2012 3:30 am | khadgar | Note Edited: 0023513 | |
| May 5, 2012 8:51 am | zebramatt | Note Added: 0023526 | |
| May 5, 2012 8:52 am | zebramatt | Note Edited: 0023526 | |
| May 5, 2012 9:26 am | Quaix | Note Added: 0023527 | |
| May 5, 2012 9:27 am | Quaix | Note Edited: 0023527 | |
| May 5, 2012 9:27 am | Quaix | Note Edited: 0023527 | |
| May 5, 2012 9:42 am | Penumbra | Note Added: 0023529 | |
| May 5, 2012 10:54 am | Terraziel | Note Added: 0023532 | |
| May 5, 2012 11:53 am | Skarlath | Note Added: 0023538 | |
| May 5, 2012 11:55 am | Penumbra | Note Added: 0023539 | |
| May 5, 2012 11:56 am | Penumbra | Note Edited: 0023539 | |
| May 5, 2012 1:28 pm | greyslayer | Note Added: 0023564 | |
| May 5, 2012 1:29 pm | zebramatt | Note Added: 0023565 | |
| May 5, 2012 7:12 pm | Penumbra | Relationship added | related to 0007563 |
| May 5, 2012 10:51 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0023593 | |
| May 5, 2012 11:07 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| May 5, 2012 11:07 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| May 6, 2012 8:48 am | vadatajs | Note Added: 0023621 | |
| May 7, 2012 1:42 pm | Penumbra | Relationship added | related to 0007616 |
| Jun 25, 2012 9:58 am | Tux | Tag Attached: outdated | |
| Aug 24, 2012 7:30 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0027956 | |
| Aug 24, 2012 7:30 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => closed |
| Aug 24, 2012 7:30 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Aug 24, 2012 7:30 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
