Dungeon of the ENDLESS™ is a Rogue-Like Dungeon-Defense hybrid game, in which your team of heroes must protect the generator of their crashed ship while finding their way out!
I suggest a "locker", in the crystal room, in which you can place (3 items -- 1 weapon, 1 armor, and 1 device). Those are the only things that carry between floors (other than equipped items)
Tiphereth wrote: I don't agree. I think the difficulty is the main matter here. It's all about balance and, so, difficulty.
If the player do a hard thing, the game has to reward him for that, and if the player choose an easy path, the game has to give the player less reward. If the only difficulty was to buy things during the crystal run, I could be agree with the balance mecanism, because there is no risk to do like you said.
But save the merchant until the end can be really hard. And so, if the player takes more risks to save the life of the merchant until the end, I'm not agree : it's important. The player takes more risk to have a next floor more easy. So I don't see why the game should ignore that.
It's also important to keep a good pace of dust between floors, I'm totally agree about that, but if the game need to break the risk/reward principle, so the mecanism has to be changed.
I don't find that "saving the merchant" requires much risk, or even a particular investment in resources, its just not always possible. But I will admit that I am still a relative newbie at the game, having only played for 10 hours or so and can barely make it to floor 4 on the harder difficulty, so I probably just haven't come across situations of risk and hard choice very much in regards to the merchant.
Maybe there can be kind of a middle-zone, where you get a small bonus to dust (5 times the floor number perhaps) if you saved the merchant in the last floor, as he gives you a "thank you" for your protection.
It doesn't matter if it's difficult, or even unlikely.
I don't agree. I think the difficulty is the main matter here. It's all about balance and, so, difficulty.
If the player do a hard thing, the game has to reward him for that, and if the player choose an easy path, the game has to give the player less reward. If the only difficulty was to buy things during the crystal run, I could be agree with the balance mecanism, because there is no risk to do like you said.
But save the merchant until the end can be really hard. And so, if the player takes more risks to save the life of the merchant until the end, I'm not agree : it's important. The player takes more risk to have a next floor more easy. So I don't see why the game should ignore that.
It's also important to keep a good pace of dust between floors, I'm totally agree about that, but if the game need to break the risk/reward principle, so the mecanism has to be changed.
Tiphereth wrote: Yeah, but leave the floor is not the real problem (in my games it was never a real problem).
But to do that, you need the merchant to survive until the end. This is, in my opinion, the core of the problem (and why I think it's not overpowered to let the player buy things at the end of a floor, because the hard part is not to buy things at the end of a floor, but to still have a merchant at that time).
It doesn't matter if it's difficult, or even unlikely. The point is that its a way to make a scarce resource not scarce. The real difficulty in the game comes from the lack of dust, and being able to carry it over between floors makes the next one easier, which in turn would make it easier to keep the merchant alive, and all-in-all make the game simpler.
Augustinus wrote: To buy everything from the merchant with very little risk at the end of the floor is to first light up the way to the exist, pick up the crystal, run through few rooms (that then go dark) and only after you have enough spare dust to spend, buy what you want and equip it.
In practice, leave one guy standing at the merchant when the crystal run starts and buy immediately when spare dust appears.
Yeah, but leave the floor is not the real problem (in my games it was never a real problem).
But to do that, you need the merchant to survive until the end. This is, in my opinion, the core of the problem (and why I think it's not overpowered to let the player buy things at the end of a floor, because the hard part is not to buy things at the end of a floor, but to still have a merchant at that time).
Augustinus wrote: To buy everything from the merchant with very little risk at the end of the floor is to first light up the way to the exist, pick up the crystal, run through few rooms (that then go dark) and only after you have enough spare dust to spend, buy what you want and equip it.
In practice, leave one guy standing at the merchant when the crystal run starts and buy immediately when spare dust appears.
Ah, thats true... Didn't think of that... It still has some risks though, but yeah that sounds exploitable.
To buy everything from the merchant with very little risk at the end of the floor is to first light up the way to the exist, pick up the crystal, run through few rooms (that then go dark) and only after you have enough spare dust to spend, buy what you want and equip it.
In practice, leave one guy standing at the merchant when the crystal run starts and buy immediately when spare dust appears.
I've found that there have been a lot of times that I could have powered off a couple of rooms, not every time, and definitely not on the later floors, but certainly more than a few times. I've also had a lot of floors where I have enough industry to pay for 2 or 3 modules, but I have no dust, so I can't build anymore, and if I'd been able to carry over a few items to sell from the last floor, it would have been easy instead of frightening.
I think the idea is that dust is the most scarce resource in the game, not having it spawns more enemies, so you have to pay for more defenses and replace more modules, and not having it also prevents you from building new modules. Even though there would be plenty of times that you would not be able to exploit your inventory, there would also be plenty of times you could.
Wouldn't buying all stuff from merchant be very risky since that means you have less dust to cover your exit route? And wouldn't that strategy mean that you'd have to get lucky and find merchants in next floor fast enough? ._. I'm little confused at how it works as exploit
Though, I do agree that its nice to have less inventory clutter.
One of the biggest problems I find with losing items comes from finding a new hero that uses a weapon you don't have, and then he/she goes without a weapon for 5 floors just because one never showed up, even in the shop.
If the devs still think that bringing more items with you might break the game, maybe we could have some kind of compromise, where the items you sell to the merchant show up on later floors, so that if you find you need it later it's still there, but it's not unbalanced since you had to pay more to get it back than you sold it for. Or maybe just have a wider selection of "bad" items on sale, because I would gladly pay 6-10 dust for a prisoner's uniform, if it's on floor 6 and my replacement hero has NO armor.
There have been quite a few times where I found the items disappearing to be quite disappointing. I would love to have the ability to keep at least a few extra items. For example, I like to switch to defense/health regen items during big waves, but prefer speed/attack items for exploring! Not to mention, now that some items grant abilities, they can very quickly vary your available tactical options and I feel like I miss out on lots of neat strategies because I don't want to lose that extra speed on Saras or Wit for OPBOT, etc... managing at even a limited persistent inventory would open up a lot more options for the player that can skillful manage their heroes =)
I will not say that we have irrefutable arguments ^^
Like all of us. ^^ That's why we discuss that here. : )
And you can tell us why this mecanism is in the game, which is good enough. No more speculations (not sure of this english word, but you know what I mean ^^).
I understand well your arguments (keep a good pace for the dust is a major one, I think), but to me it's a pity to take back items the player won. It can be frustrating to loose something without any counterpart. And if a player have a useless item, I'm not sure it's really bad to let him have more dust in the next floor (in case he would encounter a merchant). It can compensate a little bad luck to items rolls. (and having good items are really more important in that game, especially weapons which are also the items we have the most chance to loose between floors). ^^
But if you think it could really broke the game, so I'm agree with the link you posted. At least a system to keep some items. Maybe one free, and a cost in industry/food for any extra item?
- Make room for a mistake if s/he forgets ^^
I'm really, really not a "hardcore gamer" (hate that term ^^), and I would agree with you most of the time, but if I have to choose, it's better to punish a player who "deserves" it than another one who did well. : D
- And for the RP explanation, the items are stocked in the first room and too cumbersome to be carried during the crystal run...
Nice explanation for a 100% game design decision, I'm pretty sure of it. : D
Well, i think armors and stuff isn't usefull enough to have it stay from a floor to an other. It doesn't change things that much if you have an armor or not.
On the other hand, weapons really change everything.
What more, armors and accessories can be equiped by any hero, what makes them not as rare as weapons.
That's why i don't think it is such a problem to see stuff disappear from our backpack, while weapons which are really hard to find, should stay.
< Offtopic> What is the RP explanation for stuff disappearance from a floor to an other ? What can possibly explain it ?
I have to admit I can't see any reason for things to go that way ^^' < /Offtopic>
First of all, if there really was no use to keep items between floors, the developers would not have made a system for them to disappear between floors. They did that for a reason, so you can suppose there is some use to keep items between floors. Developers rarely do something for nothing. Logic. ^^
Some ways you could find usefull to keep unequiped items (weapons, armors, accessories) :
First of all, you can't always equip immediately an item. If you get some armors early in the game and don't have more than two characters, you can't equip all your amors, just like weapons. Second, items can have more use than just be equiped. For example, have more items could make your characters more suitable for various situations (like, you know, equip your big armor who slow down your character when you need to tank, and switch with an armor who gives you wits when you want to work on modules). Other situation, you could sell your items to a merchant (or use them in a machine to craft new things if the devs do some system like that ^^).
No, there's definitively some use to keep unequiped items between floor. The real question is : will it make the game too easy ? To me, it's not, because more ease on the next floor means you had more difficulties previously by keeping the merchant alive. Cause, most of all, I insist on that, if you earn these items fairly, it's a form of unfair penality to take them back to you. Nothing more, nothing less.
It's not that much of an exploit to me as you have to work hard to keep him alive, and "deserve" your reward.
Yeah, this is exactly my point. And it's because I don't see that as an exploit that I think the game should reward that playstyle, and not "punish" it.
So basically I'm agree with what you're saying and I don't understand why you say you're not agree with me. Not sure I fully understood what your said. : D
To be honest, i often go buy all merchant's goods before leaving a floor. It's not that much of an exploit to me as you have to work hard to keep him alive, and "deserve" your reward.
The only thing to do is to equip all the stuff bought that way before leaving the floor. It's not that simple to get stuff that your heroes can equip, so using that way to upgrade them is as good as any other.
We have the risk/reward concept, so no exploit, only a different and harder way to play each floor
At least, I agree with you about one thing : weapons should stay from a floor to an other as you will very often come across useless ones when you find them.
Thanks for the link. : ) Interesting suggestions in this thread.
Now you're here (well, you were : D), I'm curious : could we know why you don't want the player keep unequiped items between floors? Like I said, I'm not agree with the "exploit". To me it's more like a classical risk/reward mecanism (you want to buy a lot of things ? So deal with the merchant until the end!), and I don't understand why you could not want that. Is it not more interesting ?
I would like to discuss with you of something who bothers me a lot: the missing items between floors.
I just don't understand why this mecanism is in the game. Well, some people would tell me this is to avoid the merchant exploit (= buy all items just before leaving the floor for the next). But to my mind it's :
1/ a bad solution : Because it adds more things the player will never have a chance to play because of the random. A weapon on the first floor has 50 % chance to be useless (and that % increase if you have Golgy or two characters with the same weapon type). You just have to pray to find a merchant or a character who can use this weapon. Besides, if you have some "chests" events in rooms, I suppose it replace some other good events you could have (just some supposition based on my games). So basically you'll lost totally the reward if you can't equip or sell the items, and the chances to do that are smaller if you have a chest. Bad situation. :/
2/ not an exploit at all : I mean, come on, to do such sort of things (buy all merchant's items before leaving), there is one huge condition : the merchant needs to be alive until the end of the floor! And, well, I don't know for other players, but to me, it's an entire new level of strategy to try to protect the merchant until the end. Most of the time I just buy an item or two when I find him and let him die after. So why could a player not be rewarded for have protected the merchant until the end? Something which can be really hard and risky. The merchant could be found at the end of the level, yeah, but on the other hand, he could not be here at all. There is always a matter of luck. And I'm not sure my first supposition is more likely than the second.
What do you think about this thing? At first, I just thought it was pity, but after dozens of games, I found it was really annoying, and in some sort, pretty unfair. I'm sure a lot of people will not be agree with me, so, let me know why you think this mecanism is a good thing.
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