Shoals Surfer
Posts: 253
Joined: Monday, 20th June 2016, 15:27
Complete mutation revamp: a plea for 0.2X
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1. Make the interactions between racial abilties, mutations and forms more clear and easier to understand. For example, Naga can spit poison in Spider Form, but other racial abilities don't work that way. You have to know by heart which ones do and which ones don't. This is true for all of the mutation system; it is complex and confusing. Also weed out the many bugs (if you have big wings activated and morph into ice form, you keep flying but you cannot cancel the flight. Because you have no wings.)
Right now it's really messy what works when; it's different from race to race, mutation to mutation and from form to form. It's a big cognitive load for players for little gain.
2. Good mutations are "nice to have" at best and detrimental at worst, bad ones reach from vexing to life-threateningly crippling. You can see why only a lunatic would eat mutagenic meat or quaff a potion of mutation. Also rebalance the bad once so that not a select few of them are brutally crippling regardless of character.
This isn't really fun in my opinion. The player should at least consider taking the risk because the rewards could be as good as the punishment would be bad.
Many "good" mutations are weak and unimpactful, in part because you are unlikely to get them to level 3; make mutations only one or two levels; possibly introduce a way to semi-steer which ones evolve (potion of evolutuion?). This includes Jello-exclusive mutations which are equally unexciting and definitely not worth losing all items of the dungeon over; but this isn't about Jello specifically so I'm going to cut it here.
Overall add new randomly obtainable mutations, make old ones more fun and impactful.
3. Quash permanent malmutate or come up with a real way that players can use to protect themselve. Malmutate serves no purpose atm other than to annoy people and make them end runs earlier than they would have liked to.
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Working example of a fun and impactful mutation system: the ds race. A. All Ds muts are guaranteed to evolve beyond level 1 and B. the exclusive ones are for the most part, impactful, fun and open up new possibilites for the players or force them to think their strategy over. Except for body slots mutations of course, which are terrible. Except claws, of course.
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- Cimanyd, luckless, milski, Seven Deadly Sins, Shard1697, VeryAngryFelid