2 Suggestions for Relic System

[Marker Mage]

So when I've gotten a quest completed that gives me infinite copies of a relic, I've found myself wanting to do one thing with it: bind it to everyone. I feel that once it's infinite, the only reason not to bind it to every character I have is that I have to bind it to each character individually. So I was wondering if, in a future update, you would consider adding an option to just have an infinite relic bound to every character or maybe even an option to have every infinite relic possessed to be bound to every character.

I also found, while doing relic binding from the character menu instead of the temple menu, that I was breaking up some of the relic combos I liked to bind another new relic and thought "What if I end up with more relic combos I like for the same character and want to switch between them sometime?" So do you think a loadout system for relics might eventually be implemented?

[Twenty Two]

I don't know, but that would be help, especially when it comes to bind ∞ for all Heroes, tho it's not problem if you have like 10-20 Heroes, but after having 50+ Heroes, binding all ∞ Relic to them is very exhausting, people said, binding all Relic can cause lag, but, if in that case, adding feature to unbind Relic from Hero, another extra filter on Relic selection, or multiple pages on Relic section is very advisable.
TMI: binding any available ∞ relic to all Heroes is 2nd hardest part for me, 1st one is clearing level 15 Singularity, hopefully, in the next update, the Devs add these features, and not increase Singularity stages, Imagine binding relics ±((Total Hero ^ 2) x 2) times

[Bard]

You don't need to bind every relic to every character though?

[Marker Mage]

Originally posted by Bard:

You don't need to bind every relic to every character though?

"It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." If I can make sure that every character has a particular relic, I will. The only thing keeping me from doing that with literally every relic is that I have a finite supply of some of them, which puts me into the "But what if I find a better situation for this" mindset that results in me hoarding elixirs until the final boss battle of a game. For those relics that I have an infinite supply of due to completing a quest, I am more than willing to go through the un-fun tedium of binding them to every character. I'm just suggesting a feature to take away this tedium.

Also, I'm realizing that another reason I do this is because I hate having to check both unbound relics and bound relics separately to pick ones for a character to equip. If I have all of them bound to a character, I can look through the list of relics I've bound to them and read their effects while comparing them to the relics they already have equipped. Otherwise, I have to check both the list of relics that I can bind and the relics that I've already bound when trying to decide the relic loadout because one list is missing the relics that haven't been bound yet and the other lists all of the relics but won't tell me the effects of the ones that have already been bound. So this is a reason that I try to move more relics into the bound list, because it lets me go through only the one list when deciding.

Originally posted by Twenty Two:

people said, binding all Relic can cause lag,

That seems to suggest some code that doesn't account for every character to have a large number of relics bound to them. I would guess that it keeps lists of what relics have been bound to each character and that these multiple long lists slow things down. I would honestly handle it by simple having a list of relics that the player has unlocked an infinite supply of that updates with each visit to the town, and have that list and the relics that have been specifically bound to the character (and are not infinite) combined into one list when selecting relics for them to equip. You'd just need to have a check to see if the character has been to town before or was rescued during this mission to see if they should have access to these relics, or you could just decide that infinite relics are exempt from binding restrictions and can be equipped even to a character you rescued during the current mission. Now instead of a long list of bound relics for each character, you'd have the list of infinite relics that gets shared between characters and each character's personal list of finite relics that have been bound to them.

[Macfine]

sounds like you are holding on to a relic of a system. Just get rid of the binding mechanic altogether, and have relics available to all.

[Marker Mage]

I think the relic system still works just fine for Singularity mode. The idea of being stuck with a relic choice in that mode can work because of the short nature of that mode. If you get stuck with a bad choice, no biggie. This mode is meant for a single sitting, and the effects of that choice will end soon enough.

Chronicle mode though, has those choices stick for much longer. There's more of a focus on build up and grind as you get more resources. With this, binding every relic to every character is going to be a sort of 100% completion challenge whether there is an achievement for it or not. However, having this as a possibility seems not be worth the hassle due to the tedium of binding the relics and apparently strain put upon the game to keep track of the full list what relics have been bound to each character. Perhaps it might be best to abandon the binding system for Chronicle mode and go more for a general "equip from inventory" system.

[geepope]

In general I think the current system is one of the game's strengths. Infinite relic quest rewards give you an incentive to use a variety of characters; random relic drops and crafting let you fill in holes if you just feel like skipping a particular character or quest. Both parts of the system complement each other nicely and make for a good way to meter content and give players rewards, while keeping the grind down to tolerable levels. It's a big leg up over how I've seen other throwback RPG type games handle things, and if binding got thrown out altogether you'd lose all that.

Now, if you kept the binding system but allowed players to bind relics mid-run, that would leave the inventory management system intact and remove the mechanical incentive to bind everything to every character. But in practice there's not really much actual incentive to bother--by the time you reach a high enough difficulty level that having optimal equipment matters really matters, you're probably beyond the point where you'd want to be experimenting randomly in the middle of a hard run. So the main difference here is that you would be able to immediately equip new characters as soon as you rescue them, which on balance I'm not sure is a good thing. Bringing a run to a halt while you spend 15 minutes digging through your inventory for the perfect relic loadout probably isn't great for the game's flow, and having a brief test drive period where you're just experiencing a character's basic mechanics without extra relics grafted on is a good way to get a feel for new characters.

If you really want to think outside the box, you could potentially go the other way and make it so you can't change relics at all during chronicle runs. Now you preserve the loot system, preserve the test period for new characters, and get rid of the incentive to bind every relic to every character: binding infinite relics would just be a way to shortlist favorite relics, nothing more. You also remove the incentive to micromanage relic swaps in and out mid-run, alleviating overhead. The downside is that the game would be a little more harsh if you get a couple fights in and realize you've left something silly equipped to one of your characters, since you'd no longer have the grace to change it without restarting the mission. I'm not even sure this would be that much downside, though. If you did something really stupid it would probably show up quickly enough that you wouldn't lose any real time restarting, and if you accidentally left on something experimental that's not bad enough to tank the mission... well, guess you have to do some thinking on your feet now!