Actually, now that you explained further, I take back my previous statement--this seems like a really good idea. As long as the prizes are a limited number and no more will ever be given out, then the trade system can't be exploited as easily. My only concern would be if, lets say, there was a %0.001 chance of getting a super OP weapon drop. Even if the chance is small, the number of them is unlimited so eventually everyone might have them if one player farmed them and traded them out.
Random comment regarding farming, from a long-running D&D game where I was running people through The World's Largest Dungeon, they suggest the first game session where a common monster is encountered (say, kobolds) give out full XP for the encounters. After that, they are familiar creatures and only earn half XP. In a roguelike, I could see that translating into levels - squish all the giant ants you want at full XP the first level you see them (dungeon level or character level) but on the next one they're worth half. Could make it harsher and go 1/4. 1/8, etc. or less harsh 4/5, 3/5, 2/5... or some other ratio. Either way, the idea is that you don't get the same experience out of killing your 100th orc than you did out of the first couple.
hmm well the kill 1000 monsters wasn't on an iphone game, some other console or something :/ i feel the need for a castle in the sky for Mineko
I have to say that I don't understand this talk of farming monsters and putting restrictions on it. In RT and a bit of Sword of Fargoal that I have played I never felt tempted to stay on a level any longer than was necessary to thoroughly explore it and on the deeper levels any longer than I needed to find a stairs even. So, why should that be a concern?
Yay, catchup time again, so many new posts! Unfortunately I haven't played any of the DS Pokemon games, but I just might need to do that to see how they handle it. Would you like to respond further about it? What do you think they did right or wrong? How does it work, and what could make it better? I think I can make the item trading reasonably secure from fraud, and when I say fraud, I am referring to fake or cloned items. These would devalue the special and semi-unique items values. Of course no matter what I dream up hackers can be very determined! Agreed that the sting of permadeath needs to be tempered a bit, and having access to some past equipment from you previous runs can go a *long* ways to solving the problem. I don't want people to feel that the only way to win is to keep slogging through collecting trinkets and powering them up slowly to +99 like you do in Shiren the Wanderer. It won't work like that in Mineko, things will be grounded a bit more in reality (as real as you can get in a fantasy RPG with magic and monsters I suppose ) I also think you are correct that all of this "learned knowledge" should be easily accessible in-game. No going to the title screen, or a web browser, or anything of the sort. Now I just need to figure out the where and how Believe me feature creep has been a constant battle here. I slashed two or three *entire classes* of item because the juggling of loot and equipment would just get too ridiculous. Of course some of those item types were very cool, and will find their way into the sequel (my dumping ground for all the ideas that can't make it into the first game, but are too good to throw away)! Your ideas of monster experience are definitely ones I have thought of. The trick then becomes more of a balancing act. The ideal would be to make the first of any monster type worth 100% of its experience value, and any one after that equal to some diminishing percentage of the first one. That makes it easy to track because I can simply have a counter for each monster type (the counts would reset at the start of each new game). Having you gain more or less experience depending on your "rank" relation to the monster is also a good possibility. The tough part is figuring out how much experience you need to gain per level in order to stay somewhat viable in the game, and balance everything against this. I do have other methods planned to push you on and reduce farming, but this area of discussion is going to remain open for a while! You absolutely will have the ability to retain an item like a sword through multiple runs, and even add or remove various types of magic from it over time. The good thing is that you won't need to grind endlessly for money to buy blacksmith services, melding pots, and all the stuff that started to wear thin in Shiren after you did it a few hundred times Another vote for in-game info on your goodies and monsters! Duly noted (will get everyone else in the next post, hang tight!)
CD: In the Pokemon trades, you have two choices. 1. You can put your Pokemon up for trade, asking for X Pokemon at atleast Y level. 2. You can search for Pokemon others have put up for trade and, if you have what they want, you can chooseto trade with them. I think my Jirachi is illegitimate because of the odd Original Trainer name and because it was caught with a Master Ball. Unless Japan had a special download that players could get and catch Jirachi on their own, the only legitimate way to get one would be to get one downloaded right onto the game.
I got mine from this: The issue with Pokemon is that people with flash rom carts for the GBA and DS can simply "make" pokemon by editing save files, then trade them legit within the game. Unless your save files are encrypted, jailbroken iDevices would allow the same thing. There was also a problem with Pokemon Emerald where you could unplug the GBAs at the right point in the trade and duplicate what you were trading. (Moot point with flash rom carts - you just make the trade, then restore your save file before the trade and trade again...) With multiple iDevices you could trade, then restore from backup, even if you weren't jailbroken. One way to combat this would be to track generation of said special items online, but that causes a hiccup for those of us with iPod Touches which are usually offline (or those playing in airplane mode, I guess.) Maybe special items could only be found while connected to the internet, then your server would have an inventory by UDID and items could not be duplicated. If you had an item you did not 'own' it would get eaten by a rust monster (I'm thinking Mr. Resetti style) the next time you played and were connected to the internet.
That is pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Once the contest was done and the top winners got their special loot, no more of that exact thing would be created. The next contest would feature a different item of some sort. Problem with rare drops in the main game as you point out, is that eventually that 0.001% chance adds up when there are enough people playing the game enough times. I'm going to do what I can to keep limits on this (more info will be in my reply to drelbs in the next post I make regarding Pokemon items)... I agree with this. Experience systems are tough to get right. You don't want the player to feel like they *have to grind* to gain levels. And you also want them to be able to survive reasonably well if they are smart at any point in the game, otherwise they will grind for levels anyway Sorry, didn't miss this post of yours! Just have to space out the posting I do a bit so I can get some "real" work done in between... Well, that and I've been known to hit the message size limit on both posts and PMs from time to time! Which stinks because then I have to go try to edit myself down to a manageable block of text. Castles in the sky.... Funny you mention this, as my initial concept for Demon's Reach was a *floating castle* sitting over a crater of lava! I have some pencil sketches of it around here somewhere... At some point later I decided that this castle (even if it's capable of floating ) would be sitting on the ground in the valley, as that makes it easier to explain evil monsters exiting it and hanging out in the forest Will this castle "fly" at some point within the game? Maybe! Some people play the same game in different ways... obviously anyone attempting to "farm monsters" or grind for experience in Rogue Touch is likely to die of starvation. If we remove the food mechanic the game changes for many people into a flurry of "bash a monster to bits", then lean on the Rest button until I am healed, and repeat until maximum rank is reached. I suppose that's the way many full RPGs play out now that I think about it! Sword of Fargoal is different in not having food, Madgarden does have some teasers to push you on- I think tougher monsters start popping up the stairs if you hang out too long. Despite that if you are careful you can tiptoe around and build up quite a character. He even went through to re-balance a lot of game parameters, which was partly aimed at limiting superhero/godlike characters I think So even if you and I are in it for the exploration, Joe Grinder may be in it for the experience, or more accurately the XP and Rank! Rather than the annoyance of food an needing to eat to live, I'm trying to work up a series of more subtle motivators that make you want to keep moving. Measuring the turns you take is one trick. Maybe you want to beat the sunset so you are not in the forest at night, or you want to beat that rainstorm that is approaching (there are reasons why it'll be undesirable)... If so you can't hang out killing stuff for 5000 turns Changing experience gain so the returns diminish as you kill more of the same types of monsters on one floor over and over again is just another way to motivate the player to press onward. I have a couple more up my sleeve too. The main goal is to nudge the player along, but let you do whatever you want without fear of starvation and death.
Thanks for the description on how it works in Pokemon. That does sound very much like what I had in mind. The tough part is you need an easy way to assign a value to things that are not really similar so people can request something of similar value. Are boots of speed worth more than a dragonslayer sword? What if the boots cause you to run away from any treasure chest that might contain better boots? Or if the sword shouts "I smell dragons!" at the most inopportune moments? A lot of items you find will have multiple features, sometimes both good and bad as you can see! It might be simpler to just let people post the item they want to unload, and see what other people offer them for it? This form of cheating is unfortunate, but a harsh reality to deal with. As you said, jailbreakers could get at the data, or you could trade off an item and then restore from backup! If your save data resided on a server instead of the device, that would solve a lot of problems. But then you are forced to have internet access to save or resume your game, which is bad! Encryption is possible, and could help. I recall when Rogue Touch 1.0 came out people were so eager to learn all the secret characters that they used a hex editor on the app to find them all. Lesson learned: I encrypted all existing and new character names, and obfuscated the functions that pick them! Since then the only way secret characters were discovered was by chance name entry, or if I gave a name away, so encryption can be effective. I do really like the idea of unique/epic weapons only being able to be found if you are ONLINE! A nice twist is that these items could be limited in quantity that way. Maybe only 1000 sets of Armor X in the world... If your game rolls the 0.001% chance of finding this Armor, it sends a message and the server checks. If the total number of Armor X found is less than 1000, add one to the count in my server DB and message back to your device placing the item in your game. The three main problem areas are: 1) Keeping semi-unique stuff from becoming common over time due to random probability (Online counting and issuing permission for rare/epic gear seems smart) 2) Prevent creation of new unique items directly (encrypting saves and item data should make this tough enough). 3) Prevent cloning of items via backups. So #3 is tough.... overly complicated schemes can be thought up, but I think the need to back up just before a trade and do a restore right after is a pretty big time commitment. If you don't back up immediately beforehand you could lose lots of other data on your iDevice, possibly including the very item you want to clone. Then you have to restore right after, or you could lose new data. Perhaps there is a way for it to know what you've done... Maybe each item is it's own little encrypted object with a unique serial number. Trying to trade a second one with the same serial number embedded within kills the object and bans you from the leaderboards. Eventually someone could break the encryption, but then we can also have a list of valid epics and their serial numbers online. An epic with a serial number not in my DB is a forgery, and the same problem happens! This wouldn't stop a determined hacker from eventually giving himself a nice set of rare equipment for personal use, but it should prevent rampant clones from appearing for trade. Lots of possibilities if I put my mind to it If I make some sufficiently cool or rare stuff and this game gets popular you might see auctions on eBay for goodies! Seems like a lot of virtual goods get sold in the "real world" these days... you never know
Ah, you snuck in there while I was composing my last big post!! You are correct, Food (and starvation) is not the primary motivator in Spirit Hunter Mineko. It simply doesn't make sense when the game's story takes place over a short period of time. I know I certainly wouldn't starve to death if I skipped eating for a day or two There will still be some food items in the game, some of them will give you certain perks when eaten. It might also come in handy as bait for a trap among other things. You just won't be forced to eat or die as you do in Rogue There will be a variety of motivators to keep you exploring and pressing onward in the game world, I hinted at some of them already... odds are most of the time it'll be worthwhile to heed the warnings and keep moving
Oh, that's cool. As long as you have a system in place that discourages camping I'm cool. Have you also considered working that into the game scoring as well? I think some of the later Shiren's had an interesting mechanic that with every dungeon level you accessed there was some sort of 25,000 point bonus clock counting down by time or turns (not sure which but assume if you used anything like this it could go by turns taken) and that once you moved onto the next level the remaining (if any) bonus was tagged onto your ongoing dungeon score. So while the player is being rewarded for loot and experience gained, the depth reached and how efficiently they traveled to reach that depth would be even a bigger factor in their score.
Cool! I can always count on you LordGek to come up with a little nugget of gold like that... I think it would be sufficient to have it count down the number of turns you take on a level. But as an extra sneaky tactic you could subtract "X" amount more for each monster you kill on that level past the number of beasts that were there when you arrived (basically any monster that spawns after you've been on the level for a while). For people interested in maximizing score you would potentially even start avoiding some monsters! Drelbs- Evil Otto would make a great boss monster
I've been following this game's development for a while, and the news that there's no hunger system just put it near the top of my most anticipated list! The lighting effects look awesome, by the way.
I was thinking more along the lines of having appear on the level where you entered X number of turns after you've been on the level. Of course you'd get XP for shooting him, but if he touches you... ZZZZT!
Didn't mean to claim that I am particularly virtuous as far as not-grinding is concerned . But IMHO, even apart from the food issue RT is tuned so that it doesn't encourage grinding. First of all, almost throughout there are monsters that you really don't want to see more of lest they cut the run short. Some of the endgame monsters are quite overpowering, too. And the experience pyramid is such that by the time grinding becomes somewhat desirable, it would take a very long time of it to get anywhere. P.S. - personally I'd dislike having to be online to get unique items as I have an Ipod and mostly play it away from wi-fi. But if I'll be able to do well without that stuff, then whatever. I confess that I kinda deplore that trend towards online functionality in all games... OTOH, if it helps to popularize Spirit Hunter, go for it.
Agreed, hearing about the potential for special edition, super awesome, online-exclusive items was disheartening since I'm on an iPod (sometimes with, sometimes without wi-fi). But like isiel said, if it makes it more popular, go for it!
Near the top??? This should be AT the top of everyone's most anticipated list!! I for one cannot wait for this game
