Blackfire Achievements > Collectibles system

[BoxOfFaith]

So the collectibles system in Blackfire has turned into a huge mess. Theres been exploits and bugs all over the place involving these things. Perhaps it would ultimately be better if we scrapped the idea entirely and went with a different system.

I had an idea for an achievement system of sorts for Blackfire.

Since new floor concepts and different types of floors are going to be added, why not add specific challenge floors at specific floor intervals. Floor 20, 30, 40, and 50 specifically. Once you beat one of those floors on a character, you'd be granted an achievement that would give you the stats equal to the previous collectibles of each respective tier. So these floors would no longer be totally random, as they should be some sort of specific challenge each time you enter them. Floor 20 could always be a protect the NPC floor, floor 30 could always be a twin boss floor, something like that.

So if you beat floor 20 on your Bishop, you'd receive the achievement, and you'd unlock a buff equal to one of the badges that we currently get. You'd have to beat floor 20 on each character to unlock the small buff. Floor 30 would unlock a green trinket buff, 40 would unlock a blue trinket buff, and floor 50 would unlock the banner tier buff. Only your two highest achievements would be counted, just as the current collectible system works.

Achievements would still be loaded with the vault code, there just wouldn't be a need for actual items anymore. This would probably be a lot of work, but I think it would ultimately be worth it.

As a side note: Perhaps a version c(19) is in order that could include a shop in Mytargas that sells a dummy collectible item. This would be a quick and easy way to give players of all levels a collectible item into their vault so they can properly load their vaults into 1.2D.

 

[Jumbo]

I like this idea very much as it rewards spending time in BFD succesfully even if you are unlucky with item drops.
In my opinion any content should always have two kinds of rewards: time-spent/milestone rewards and drops. If only drops are in some content, one player may get unlucky and get nothing for 20 runs while another gets several drops in a few runs. The chance based system is needed for replayability of course, but I think - with your suggestion implemented - being unlucky will at least be less punishing in a good way.

Actually this is how all other content is in Gaias at the moment:
For levelling content you always get xp and a few quest items even if nothing else.
For Whitepine you get quest rewards and whitepine dust even if you are unlucky with drops - this making you not completely worthless.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I don't see any problems with collectibles. What bugs are we talking about here exactly? I know that there is an exploit to save a collectible without having to sacrifice a keystone, but other than that I know of nothing in particular.

Besides: Collectibles are already designed in a way that eliminates drop-luck as you can potentially use any collectible you will find even when you are currently playing on a different character.

Fixed floor rewards would be boring and hurt replayability of Blackfire Deep. The sole purpose of BFD is to provide a new alternate game mode with endless replay value through procedural generation.



I'm aware that BFD is currently a bit dull. But keep in mind that this is only the first iteration of Blackfire content. There will be new tilesets, new challenges and possibly even randomized quests in the future to make it more interesting. Also the pacing will get improved in the next update.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Under my idea the only thing that would be fixed is that the floors would be guaranteed to be some sort of challenge floor. Enemies would still be random with random spells, you'd just be guaranteed to have one of the event floors. There'd still be tons of replayability as the quest for etherals and red items would still be in tact. If anything this would reward players for pushing further, rather than just loading floor 21 via blue souls, looking for chest/boss and then resetting everything and continuing to replay 21 over and over and over.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Under my idea the only thing that would be fixed is that the floors would be guaranteed to be some sort of challenge floor. Enemies would still be random with random spells, you'd just be guaranteed to have one of the event floors. There'd still be tons of replayability as the quest for etherals and red items would still be in tact.

Ethereals are not really a goal in Blackfire. It's just a tool to make future runs easier. Except for some few classes in which the ethereal is actually BIS. Having only reds as the reward would make BF pretty pointless.

If anything this would reward players for pushing further, rather than just loading floor 21 via blue souls, looking for chest/boss and then resetting everything and continuing to replay 21 over and over and over.

Why would people repeat 21 over and over? The spawn chances for chests and bosses rise as you proceed further. Staying in floor 21 has no benefit over actually progressing.

 

[Jumbo]

@Zwiebelchen
Badges are a reward no matter your class -
You say that, yet still it is a randomized drop system. Like I said, every other part of Gaias has some sort of raw progression to it - not BFD. That's why at least adding some kind of progression rewards in BFD is only a logical addition - they should still be minor though.

You see, the problem with total randomization of rewards is what I described in my post above. There is easily a chance for players to play extensively and get nothing. This is bad for the community as all but the most hardcore players will quit when stuck with such content over long periods of time. Of course this problem is diminished significantly (though not fixed entirely) if the given content is great fun. But that is not the case in the current version. I know you are going to fix that, though.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

That's a matter of taste, really. Some people enjoy Blackfire Deep (myself included, I'm a sucker for rogue-likes).

I understand that it's not for everyone. That's why I designed it in a way that it's completely optional. The rewards are nice to have, but they are pretty minor and won't affect your ability to compete in future endgame content.


However, I'm fine with guaranteed rewards for stuff there in the future. For example, I could imagine rewarding the players for finishing Blackfire Deep with a guaranteed max level collectible matching your currently selected class by reaching floor 50 (when the update that increases BF pacing releases; before that it's pretty much impossible to reach floor 50 without the game crashing).

 

[Jumbo]

Yes this would be great Zwieb. I like BFD and the rogue-like as well, but the faster pace of the next version will make it a lot more to my taste.