Possible meta progression ideas?

[Prustan]

Just some random thoughts about what could be used as meta-progression or pre-run bonuses. If any of you have other ideas, feel free to suggest them.

+1 tower choices in the shop -> extra tower choice gains 1 coin discount.
+1 boss reward choice -> +2 boss reward choices.
+1 pre-run boon choices -> +2 pre-run boon choices.
Ability to take more then one pre-run boon.
+1 life.
Regain 1 lost life on boss kill.
+1 gold per day.
X number of free tower shop rerolls.
X number of boss reward rerolls.
+1 XP per day on main tower.
Duplicate towers provide +1 XP (6 XP instead of 5, one less tower required to level from three to four).
Enhanced tower bonuses.
Fusion tower combinations. eg Level X Iron tower + Level X Guardian tower = Level X Iron Guardian tower with enhanced stats and bonuses, and removes the Iron and Guardian towers from the shop pool in favor of Iron Guardian.
X number of additional tower slots.

[Shy#2528]

Sry this is maybe an uncommon opinion but I think if there will be meta progression, it would be nice to have a "standard" or "difficult" game mode without grinding advantages.
Otherwise don't have an opinion on this, maybe just add an easy-mode or something

[Prustan]

Originally posted by Shy#2528:

Sry this is maybe an uncommon opinion but I think if there will be meta progression, it would be nice to have a "standard" or "difficult" game mode without grinding advantages.
Otherwise don't have an opinion on this, maybe just add an easy-mode or something

Perfectly valid opinion. Some people would prefer it without meta progression, others might think that the ideas I posted are too weak. Personally, I was trying to think of things that might give a minor boost in act one, but get over shadowed in act 2+ without proper tower scaling from the player.
Plus, the developer might decide that any sort of meta progression like I suggested has no place in their game, which is also perfectly valid.

[Darklingtw]

I have mentioned a few ideas in passing here.

[Prustan]

Originally posted by Darklingtw:

I have mentioned a few ideas in passing here.

I did see that before I posted these ideas, and there's a few things there I didn't add here.

Re freezing tower, given the mechanics of the demo, not too sure what effect it would have. Maybe applies X freeze stacks on each monster like the snake tower applies poison, and each stack is one time that a tower will hit it before it hits the tower? Having their movement slowed wouldn't help, just slow things down more then they already are.

Re round timer and incoming boss indicator. Did you see the round counter in the bottom right of the screen? I agree that it could stand to be more visible, and a warning of 'Boss every 10 rounds' would have been nice, but it is already there.

[I'm proud of you, son]

The problem with meta progression is that it's not actually answering any questions. As is, this game is largely skill based. If you can get good and learn the ins-and-outs, nothing that people would commonly think of as metaprogression really makes sense.

Metaprogression is designed to allow players to hit roadblocks, overcome them, and then hit new roadblocks. Like in roguelike and roguelites, it's either impossible or a superhuman feat of difficulty to beat the game on a fresh save. However if you grind excessively, the amount of extra stuff given to the player can make the game trivial.

In a game like this, unlockable upgrades like "start with an extra tower" or "towers are cheaper" aren't really helping you overcome roadblocks, instead it's helping you lower the skill ceiling. Which is hopefully pretty obvious that it would be bad game design.

Some ideas I have for meta progression would be something like "every 8 waves, you unlock a swap token. Choose one tower and then another and they'll swap places."

This could be used to actually expand on strategies as well as recover from bad rng, like being forced to put a Glass beside a Flower. Now you can fix that.

Or being able to unlock procs or other kind of abilities like "for the next 3 waves, Chest Tower has an increased chance of appearing."

Temporary Nullification would be great. Hit Bees and only see Honey for a few waves.

Stuff like that.

Or what would be really cool would be a "create your own difficulty" with things have two parts: draw an extra card but also one extra enemy every wave.

Stuff like that would be cool. but ideas for just "gain more gold, draw more towers, always start with a cat tower" are just really lame imo.

[Darklingtw]

Originally posted by Prustan:

Re freezing tower, given the mechanics of the demo, not too sure what effect it would have.

I meant freezing towers in the shop like in Super Auto Pets. For example: "Damn, ther`s a princess tower that I want but can`t afford right now. Let me freeze it/lock it in place, so it doesn`t get rerolled next turn."

Originally posted by Prustan:

Re round timer and incoming boss indicator. Did you see the round counter in the bottom right of the screen?

I have to confess, I only found out about this after I had already posted.. ^^°

[Prustan]

Originally posted by Darklingtw:

Originally posted by Prustan:

Re freezing tower, given the mechanics of the demo, not too sure what effect it would have.

I meant freezing towers in the shop like in Super Auto Pets. For example: "Damn, ther`s a princess tower that I want but can`t afford right now. Let me freeze it/lock it in place, so it doesn`t get rerolled next turn."

Yep. This makes total sense, something to reduce the RNG to get your strategy up and running faster.

[Shy#2528]

Definitely think that anti meta progression would be enjoyable for many
being able to give the enemies more stats or less gold to you
So you can distinguish optimal strats more intuitively and to force players to actually calculate
Edit: imo we need hard mode and infinity mode ASAP^^