I dont see why erase needs to be a separate skill, just allow deletion of skills, getting a new one costs another point. I dont think that would be OP at all, and it would certainly add strategy. Either way, I think there is a consensus that being able to change skills in some way is a good thing
I think you're onto something. While I'm not sure how this should be done, I don't think I really would want to use up a skill slot with a skill that really only lets me delete other skills.
Ya man I think if you could change skills that would split this game wide open strategy-wise but I foresee it making the game too easy so even more balancing would be needed and possibly even some nerfing of the more powerful ones.
Yeah, this was why I thought it should be a skill you take. I think it would make things too easy. So my thought was that you take a skill choice that deletes a skill and you pick which skill goes, and then you use your 2nd pick that turn take another skill (if you like one that is available). I think there should be thought in taking skills early, and I don't think it should be a sure thing that you can change one. Alternatively, you could make the skill so that it if you pick the Swap Skill, you pick one of your current 1-4 skills to replace and it gives you a random 4 skills to replace it with. So it is just a single skill use. Yes, you still lose that one skill pick from earlier...but I think that is balanced.
I don't think I want to update the game if it makes leech even less useful. Blah. I feel like I'm finally just getting the hang of this game and they go and reduce the effectiveness of a whole bunch of stuff. And i still don't know what benefit "Luck" has. And "Vitality".
An update that makes upgrades worse? No thanks. Not unless they reset the leaderboards and require that you have the newest upgrade to place(or if they actually added something that is useful in an update)
Luck is pretty critical. It makes potions more powerful. For ever point of luck, each potion gives that much health. So if your luck score is only 1, each potion you collect gives you 1 life. If your luck score is 5, each potion gives you 5 life. In addition, it gives you +5% for bonus coins. This means that when you collect coins each coin you collect past the 3rd has a % chance of giving you a bonus coin. Vitality raises your base life, and it modifies your +% chance for bonus potions, which works the same as coins.
I still don't understand how life leech works - I'm attacking monsters normally but nothing different is happening to my HP
The more damage you do, the more life you leech. Basically really good when you're higher level (~15-20).
I like the idea, but here's another way to implement it: Make it one of the "bonus" item shop spells. But have it appear only that way, not in lieu of a normal skill choice.
When you have enough to leech, it will actually show you the amount you will leech under the damage by your finger. It works like this: If you have 5% leech, you have to do at least 20 damage in a swipe to get 1 life on leech. So if you take leech early when your base damage might be 4 and your sword damage might be 5 and you swipe 3 skulls and two swords, you are only doing 14 points of damage (base 4 + sword 5 + sword 5). So not enough to leech. But if you had 2 more swords in that chain, it would be 24 points and you would get 1 life. Now, later in the game if you had 10% life leech, 7 base damage, and 9 sword damage, and then hit your handy Dazzle skill or just had a lot of swords on the board and hit like 15 swords to kill a boss, you would do 142 damage and get 14 life.
Alright, sounds like everybody's keen on the skill erasing. I do agree that it would add a bit more strategy, since some of the abilities lend themselves better to early game while others are better for late game Fair enough, but just to elaborate a bit on the 1.2.3 rebalancing, I think most of the changes should only affect high-level play (levels 50+) and are really only meant to make the game more challenging for people reaching levels 200+ on Harder, not at all to punish new players: - Leech is now capped at 25% (was 20%) and is upgraded more slowly the higher you go, before it was 5>>10>>15>>20, now it's 5>>10>>15>>18>>21>>23>>25, so you only need 1 more upgrade to get it to 20%+ - Durability is now capped at 90% and, like leech, upgrades slower for higher levels, was 50>>60>>70>>80>>90>>95, now 50>>60>>70>>75>>80>>83>>86>>88>>90, so again, just 1 more upgrade to get to 80% - +XP/UP/GP bonuses are now capped at +2, i.e. 8 upgrades (+0.25 per upgrade as before) Unless you were strutting around with 95% durability and +10 XP/UP/GP the rebalance won't really affect you, and if you were then maybe the late game will regain a bit of that just-trying-to-survive-one-more-turn-against-overwhelming-odds feeling
cool, new update. BTW...FF - you should reset the high scores in GC if it is possible, as you make changes to caps and leech rules and stuff...
Hah yes, it's actually not possible, once a Leaderboard's been set up in Game Center it can never be reset, edited, deleted or hidden. I can easily reset or change the OpenFeint leaderboards but the Game Center ones are written in stone and will stand tall until the end of time Also I expect a leaderboard reset would bring down a flood of angry emails and 1-star reviews so it's not something I'd do for every balance tweak I think the way other games have dealt with this was to just add a multiplier to new scores, which might work alright here too (x10?)
The concern with adding more steps in the upgrade path for something (like the Leech example you gave) is that we still only get to pick 2 of 4 level skills/specials or 1 of 4 weapon/item upgrades, so by reducing the effectiveness of a given upgrade step, it lengthens out the number of turns to get to the equivalent level even more because you may not be able to take it the next turn because something else offered is more important, so it becomes more frustrating because we can't actually make use of half (or three quarters) of the stuff already offered to us and now with a reduced upgrade stepping it's realistically several times longer to get to the same level because we dont generally get offered that upgrade at every level anyway. And Leech is actually pretty rare as it is. Maybe if on Easy you could select 3 of the 4 level skills and 2 of the 4 item upgrades, it would seem okay to reduce the effectiveness of a given upgrade without significantly impacting the fun factor for Easy mode while still retaining the increased difficulty you're aiming for for Normal and Hard play.
Love This Game Hey there! Just want to pile-on with the praises for this amazing game! It really does feel like a rouge-like, which is fantastic, and brings something new to the match-3 genre, which is really challenging these days. There are only two improvements I'd really plug for at this point... The first is some in-game help screens with detailed descriptions of what the different stats, spells, and upgrades actually do, and how they work. These should be accessible from the various upgrade screens as well, so that it's possible to look up what something does while choosing your upgrades. It would also be nice to see a summary of what your totals would be with the new equipment. Some sort of "character sheet" screen would be really helpful with this... As a new player, it's extremely difficult to wrap your head around everything that's going on, and I didn't start to actually do well until I read this thread front-to-back. The only other thing I think the game needs (and this is something every roguelike has, from Adventure to Rogue to Nethack to ...) is the ability/chance to actually make it back out of the dungeon alive! It should be extremely difficult, but KNOWING that eventually you're going to die takes away from the wonderful rougelike feel of the game. There's more at stake than just your score if there's a possibility of - well - winning the game. Also, this would open up the possibility of having endings for all of those wonderfully absurd story beginnings - which, of course, you'd only get to see if you actually make it back out of the dungeon again. Anyway, thanks for giving me so many hours of enjoyment!
Loving this idea. Can I also suggest a turn number counter in the corner of the screen as well as the score on-screen rather than on the stats page/ Anyway, to carry on the point I made before about uneven skull drops at a higher level, it IS happening. I played a game earlier and cleared 12 potions in one move and 12 skulls dropped in to replace them. That's ridiculous.
If you have your numbers right, that would be less than 1 in 10,000, I used an odds calculator available on the internet. However, the odds change a lot if you are off by a little bit, and its very easy to be. Clearing 12 tiles late in the game is a very risky move. Forget 12/12 skulls, 6/12 skulls with a deadly boss, or even 2, is much less uncommon and more then fatal enough.
