View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009004 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Jul 21, 2012 12:09 am | Jul 24, 2012 9:53 am | |
| Reporter | Misery | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.203 | ||||
| Summary | 0009004: Increase Ore cost of spells | ||||
| Description | This is mostly about balancing spell costs out a bit, in order to make caves actually have some importance once again. Currently, the ore cost of pretty much any spell is very, very low. Similar numbers to how many arcane ingredients the spell takes. The difference though is the time it takes to get these. Arcane items can take some time and effort to get; so low numbers of those in the cost, like 1 or 2 for each type, makes perfect sense. You have to go through multiple stashes to find the ingredient, and you tend to then find only one at a time. The ore cost, however, doesnt make sense. Gem rooms in caverns are very easy to find, and they're absolutely guaranteed to have gems in them, and they can have MANY gems. The arcane ingredients require actual searching and effort in order to get just a couple, but the ores require next to no effort to get LOTS. Doing just 3 or so gem rooms generally means you dont have to go searching for that type of gem again for quite a long time, even if you play it as I do and use lots of different spells. Increasing the required amount of ores in spell costs would both be simple to do, and also would go a long way to balancing things out a bit. If a spell were to, say, require 10 or 15 Opal instead of 1 or 2, well.... it STILL wouldnt take that long to get, would still take less time than finding the related arcane items, and would make caves important again. This would also have the effect of breaking things up a bit, so the player isnt JUST spending huge amounts of time in buildings and some in surface areas, as the caverns would be a break from those areas (and yet can still have buildings in them, so you could still get some arcane items from those too if you wanted). Also, there's the Boss Delve missions; these give a ton of ore as a bonus, so if the player really wanted a heap of some type of ore, they'd have that to go after as well. As they are right now, caverns are often pointless to go into. I find that when I *do* go into them, it's to look for secret missions, and the gem rooms get pretty much ignored, since there's just no reason to go after them. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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I'd agree that gems need to be more needed, but a straight increase seems a little off. I'd much rather see the gems increase as rarity of spell increases instead, so you'd only need 1 - 2 for a common, but 3 - 5 for an uncommon, 6 - 10 for a rare and 11 - 15 for an epic. I'd also argue a chunk of the problem is that there isn't really any other uses for gems at the moment so there's no reason to do "extra" gem rooms snce they don't provide anything else - maybe allowing gems to "buy" the (now removed) guardian scrolls that boosted particular-element-damage for 10 minutes would mean extra gems won't be worthless any more. |
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I agree highly with raising the costs for rare gems. I can coast through entire continents just using the epic orbs provided by lieutenants, and not having to hunt for cave-related goods since I spent half an hour hunting in the last continent. Legendary orbs would use 25-30 ores, maybe? And I like the idea of permanent spells that use ores being more costly as well (since they last forever, they should have a significant cost. Not too detrimental of a cost to prevent experimentation, but enough to make it something that has to be earned.) In addition, deeper caves could drop proportionally more ores, making deep caves more worth exploring for their great increase in danger. |
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I do think something needs to be done about the relative pointlessness of gem caves (clear out a few and you don't need to touch them for a long time). However, I think there is a fine line between feeling "not worth it" and feeling "like a grind." If players find themselves not wanting to bother going into gem caves, I think a more elegant solution would be to provide an incentive to diving into caves and seeking them out, not just force it on them a a hurdle for creating spells. After all, if it cost 25-30 ore in order to create a spell, then players would just grind them out when they felt like making a particular spell. I think the game plays best in things that give a variety of rewards for tasks, they tend to provide nice consolation prizes when you don't get exactly what you want, or bonuses that are above what you were seeking out specifically. That's the problem with gem caves, they only provide one thing, and you either need them or you don't. I don't believe the solution is to make gem caves act more like stash rooms though, I think what you need is to have more things that gems can be used for, as well as uncommon/rare rewards that can occasionally be found in gem caves as you are clearing them out. Preferably, a combination of both. For instance, gem veins could rarely drop uncommon/rare orbs. As for the use of gems, a simple approach would be to allow you to "sell" them for conscientiousness shards, or perhaps they can act as a currency of their own for a different type of merchant, or as a consumable component for new high-level spells. |
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Yeah, this might be a good idea. |
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The rarity of the spell corresponds to its cost. It's not very often that you'd have to craft a legendary spell, but when you do, the cost will be significant. There's very little cost (relative to legendaries) for most spells you craft. It does boil down to the same issue either way, though, which is that there's not enough reasons to go into caves (besides unlockables and sheer challenge). Deep caves are some of the hardest areas in the game, and the rewards should really be proportional to their difficulty. And even level 1 caves need a more commonly useful reward, and some surprise rare items. |
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What if instead of or in addition to a slight increase in cost, the gem veins started off more rare and increased in frequency the farther down you go? Then you could have the option of just skimming the surface of a couple caves or doing a deep cave run to stock up. |
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Mysterial's idea would make the deeper cave levels more interesting. Right now, you can easily find many gem rooms on the first level, giving you very little incentive to go any deeper if gems are what you are looking for. Ultimately though, I think a multifaceted solution is best. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 21, 2012 12:09 am | Misery | New Issue | |
| Jul 21, 2012 12:11 am | Misery | Description Updated | |
| Jul 21, 2012 7:50 am | BenMiff | Note Added: 0027016 | |
| Jul 22, 2012 2:08 pm | Blahness | Note Added: 0027042 | |
| Jul 22, 2012 4:32 pm | Blahness | Note Edited: 0027042 | |
| Jul 23, 2012 8:41 am | Mick | Note Added: 0027050 | |
| Jul 23, 2012 10:12 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Jul 23, 2012 10:12 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0027056 | |
| Jul 23, 2012 10:12 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Jul 23, 2012 1:05 pm | Blahness | Note Added: 0027063 | |
| Jul 23, 2012 1:05 pm | Blahness | Note Edited: 0027063 | |
| Jul 24, 2012 9:25 am | Mysterial | Note Added: 0027092 | |
| Jul 24, 2012 9:53 am | Mick | Note Added: 0027094 |
