Skull-Upgrades should be permanent, and here's why and how to keep it balanced:

[XxGreen AlphaxX]

I started playing the game recently and it's a fun rogue-like,
very cute design, interesting mecanics, pretty challenging gameplay,
And the skull system is pretty awesome,
I thought it was awesome that you could upgrades thoses skulls,
And their appearances would change to reflect their level of upgrades,

yet i was deeply disappointed when i realized that my cool-looking Alpha-Werewolf i
invested so much just to upgrade it was reset to a basic one
And i saw here other-players expressing that they also thoughts Skull-Upgrades should be permanents

I also saw somes players worry about balances if thoses upgrades were to be permanents,
And i think they're not seeing the obvious solution:
Just give the player more control over the difficulty

I'm sorry but to get my point across i'll have to talk about another game
Here's another Rogue-Lite which has permanent upgrades for it's weapon and stats, and manage to keep it balanced, Hades

In Hades you can upgrade your weapons, it take somes ressources a bit of grinding,
and thoses weapons becomes much-stronger as a result, but the game keep it balanced by letting the player choose how difficult he want the game to be once he's finished it at least once and by making the grind harder
the more you advance in the game, the more ressources you'll need to upgrade your weapons and stats, which encourage the player to progressively turn-up the difficulty as you get more rewards as the difficulty of the game increase

basically, here Hade's gameplay-loop:
grind to get ressources > unlock powerful permanent upgrades > need more ressources > increase the difficulty of the game > grind to get ressources


My point is:
Skull-upgrades should be permanent, and to balance it out,
the player should get more difficulty-customizations and ressources scaling with difficulty

it would not only give a much better feeling of progression and satisfy players who likes using certains skulls and want to make them strong as they can be,
but it would also satisfy both players who wants more challenges,
and players who want a more tailored to their needs experience

[mysticluster]

The simple compromise is to have a setting toggle for permanent upgrades like already exists for Rookie Mode. You could even add permanent upgrades to Rookie mode if you want. That way, people who don't want perm upgrades don't have to have them, but the people who prefer them in the game can use them.

[DragoonC]

Completely agree with your point. They should be permanent, now it's a just a novelty and not really useful.

[XxGreen AlphaxX]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย brago90:

That the upgrade is permanent I think is excessive. But after upgrading a skull we can unlock the possibility of finding evolved skulls, I think it would be appropriate. If you are lucky you can skip hunting skulls and if you don't have it then you evolve the ones you have.

i still don't like the element of RNG that-much,
but it would still be better than the current system

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย MagiMelkor:

It's already easy enough absolutely no need to make the upgrades perma.

Exactly, it's too easy,
which is exactly why giving to the player more difficulties-settings and making rewards scales with it would be good

last game i had the Reaper and basically had nothing to do anymore
i barely had to dodge or care, the game almost played itself

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย mysticluster:

The simple compromise is to have a setting toggle for permanent upgrades like already exists for Rookie Mode. You could even add permanent upgrades to Rookie mode if you want. That way, people who don't want perm upgrades don't have to have them, but the people who prefer them in the game can use them.

yeah, i agree
just give more options of customization to the player,
that way he can balance difficulty himself while keeping his upgrades

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย DragoonC:

Completely agree with your point. They should be permanent, now it's a just a novelty and not really useful.

that's a shame because that's a really cool-mecanic too,
for now they're a useless third-wheel you almost never end-up using,

[k-string]

Nah. You are saying this because you're inexperienced play the game for about 30 hours and you will see that it's perfectly balanced and would be completely unfun to do what you're suggesting. If anything, they give you too many bones; you can take a common skull to legendary by area 2 if you're lucky, and definitely by area 3.

[[Виртуа] Rubick'sCube]

Its not fear to change, its just that what you are suggesting is something that can change the game on a whole new level. Most of the fun of the game imo comes from getting to try new combos of skulls and getting to upgrade them through the run. What you are thinking of is getting rid of one of the main reasons that makes starting another run engaging in exchange for a difficulty change. What would be the point of entering skull areas if you start with legendary skulls? what would be the point of bone fragments if you start with a legendary skull? get where im going with this?

[[Виртуа] Rubick'sCube]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย k-string:

Nah. You are saying this because you're inexperienced play the game for about 30 hours and you will see that it's perfectly balanced and would be completely unfun to do what you're suggesting. If anything, they give you too many bones; you can take a common skull to legendary by area 2 if you're lucky, and definitely by area 3.

All true, I got a very lucky run that by the time I got to the Arachne in stage 2 after the miniboss I got a legendary from rare or common if I believe

[XxGreen AlphaxX]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Виртуа FeederBerry:

Its not fear to change, its just that what you are suggesting is something that can change the game on a whole new level. Most of the fun of the game imo comes from getting to try new combos of skulls and getting to upgrade them through the run. What you are thinking of is getting rid of one of the main reasons that makes starting another run engaging in exchange for a difficulty change. What would be the point of entering skull areas if you start with legendary skulls? what would be the point of bone fragments if you start with a legendary skull? get where im going with this?

"Its not fear to change"
"what you are suggesting is something that can change the game on a whole new level. "
they're two conflicting sentences, on one-hand you say you don't fear change, and on the other you express that you don't want the current system to change because you feel comfortable with it,
which is the exact definition of "fear of change",
you're scared things would go wrong because you currently feel comfortable with the game
there's nothing wrong with that, but your personal-feelings keep you from envisaging an alternative which may be better

anyway,
the point would be to maybe find the right-skull to complete your build,
i'm sorry i have to bring this game out again for comparaison, but in Hades even when you have legendary-tier Boons, you still feel compeled to go through Boon-doors,
Because maybe it might have what you seek behind it

again, a rogue-lite should be all about giving the player differents tools to make something interesting out of it
here you're ENTIRELY at the mercy of the RNG with very little player-decision on it

Bones-fragments would still be useful,
just increase the price of skull-upgrades since you make them permanents
maybe you could even simply trade them for some other ressource,
Hades does that too, there's a character who will trade ressources you don't need anymore for other-ressources
it's not that hard to find solutions to your problems

the point isn't to make the game easier,
the point is to make the game feel more rewarding and more challenging
to let the player feel like his decisions and smart-thinking influenced his runs even in the face of bad-RNG

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Виртуа FeederBerry:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย k-string:

Nah. You are saying this because you're inexperienced play the game for about 30 hours and you will see that it's perfectly balanced and would be completely unfun to do what you're suggesting. If anything, they give you too many bones; you can take a common skull to legendary by area 2 if you're lucky, and definitely by area 3.

All true, I got a very lucky run that by the time I got to the Arachne in stage 2 after the miniboss I got a legendary from rare or common if I believe

yeah, and don't you see the problem?
if it's all RNG, the difficulty mean absolutely nothing,

is it your definition of "challenge"? because it sure as hell isn't mine
i simply had lucked on the strongest skull in the godamn game, and then the rest of it was a breeze, i barely had to even dodge
it's not challenge, it's leaving difficulty being decided by a slot-machine

Since you think my opinion is based on inexperience,
let-me tell you about two games i'm very experienced with,
one which nail it's game-design which is entirely focused on challenging the player on every-opportunity
And the other-one being a excelent Rogue-Lite which despite having most like 75% of the game being RNG, still absolutely nail it's approach and find the way to let the player feel like his skills and knowledge about the game are enough to carry-him to it's end
the SoulsBorne-serie, and Hades


i'm sorry if it makes me sound like a pretentious-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥,
but my favorite serie of games is SoulsBorne (Dark-Souls, Bloodborne = Soulsborn)
and in thoses game, there's absolutely no difficulty-options, you just have to learn them and keep struggling again and again until you get better or get enough knowledge about the game to keep advancing,
but it work in their favors because theses games gives you all the tools in the world you could need to make something interesting or something good,
They're incredibly challenging, but when you know them well, you can do well with about anything

in Hades on the other-hand,
You don't get to choose the Boons (abilities) you will get, they're decided by the RNG,
but to still let the player make a decision, the type of Boons you'll get behind a door is showed above it
And even then, even if it's the right type of Boons, you might not get the one you actually want
But since they're all pretty-good and can synergize really well with differents-ones,
You never feel like you're locked with useless thrash,
you can always find a way to make something useful even if it wasn't what you wanted in the first-place


TL;DR, my point is,
In term of game-design, you need to make a choice at some-point:
-Either you make a game in which the player will constanlty be against huge-obstacles, but then you let him decide how he want to confront said obstacle
-Or you restrict the player's freedom to make choices, but then you need to give him the tools to let his smart-thinking and skill influence how well he's doing

Right-now, Skuls is neither of them,
your skill isn't that important considering the skulls you get are what will majorly decide how well you'll be doing
And cleverness or knowledge about the game isn't really useful neither considering there's very little tools the player can use to influence his build or how his run will happen

[Computerless]

Why in the world would you want to start a run with an upgraded skull? That'll just make everything extremely, extremely easy.

[mysticluster]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Computerless:

Why in the world would you want to start a run with an upgraded skull? That'll just make everything extremely, extremely easy.

It will only be easy after you've been playing for a significant amount of time. There are plenty of Skulls to mess around with and learn how to use, the ones you actually get in a run will be random. The first ten or so runs I did, I think I only managed to upgrade a skull once or twice, and it wasn't even the same one because I was checking out different skulls as I would come across higher-tier ones. Even if you are just grabbing whatever first skull you get from the fox and upgrading that throughout the entire game, that's only one skull that you've upgraded and chanced are you won't get that one again in the next run, or probably for several runs. So even if the upgrades were permanent, it would only matter after you do a whole bunch of runs to upgrade each one. That's, of course, assuming that you're even making it through the entire game in each run.

Let's also not forget that even AFTER you have upgraded every skull to Legendary, there's STILL a point to the skull doors. The point is changing which skull you have equipped. I don't know about you, but there are skulls I like to play with and skulls that I dislike and feel are relatively worthless. If I wind up with Mummy in the early game, I don't care if it spawned as Legendary, I'm gonna be switching it out with the next Skull that I come across, so yeah I'm still gonna be going into the Skull doors.