I really appreciate your thoughtful comments so far! I've read them all (including JuiceFiend's essay in another thread lmao, I used TTS to read it in Mrs. Slitherss' voice), and they'll go a long ways towards making the game the best it can be.
There are a few common concerns I'd like to respond to:
- We don't want to lose choice of what to level up, or be forced to perform repetitive tasks (grind) to level up certain stats
This is a solid concern that I'm glad so many of you have raised. It's clear that we need ways to level or boost important stats without being forced to train them.
One option is to simply retain the ability to buy stats from juice fountains, but then also allow the player to train them through usage. Or maybe using a stat enough unlocks a passive 'bonus' point for that stat, that goes on top of the stats you've purchased, similarly to how items provide stats.
We could let there be several ways to increase stats, i.e. by juice fountain, equipping gear, perks, potions, quest rewards, and training. We'll have to go slowly and see how things play out.
- Level-locking items is unrealistic and dumb
I agree that It'd be silly to have a sword that is unusable at 9 muscle but then 100% effective at 10 muscle. It is better to reward the player for excess muscle, perhaps with a linear or logarithmic scaling curve.
- Infinite scaling of things like flight or movespeed is problematic with the physics
Yup, currently if you have more than 80 movespeed your character just trips and goes flying as soon as you start walking. I'll have to cap those specific stats, or improve the physics for them. Or both. Another consideration is a way for the player to set their 'effort level' in the menu. For example, they could choose to use 60% of their full flight level until they hit shift for 100% effort.
- Rather than more repetition, the game needs more things to do/explore, lore, monsters, and characters
I 100% agree. The current version of the game is about 10% through the story, and part of that is because I'm still working on basic systems like world gen, hotkeys, and the ragdoll system. My intention is to combine hand-made content with procedural generation to create a thriving universe with many challenges and things to discover, and then multiply that by having many ways to play through the game, via different routes and playstyles. I do not want to force players into an addictive WoW style grind that consumes days of their lives just to keep up with the content. I aim to balance it such that the grind is much lighter and happens as the player plays through the content.
We are also just scratching the surface of what monsters can do. Most of the monsters we have now were added in the first two weeks of development, and still use the same 'animation' behaviour. We don't have bouncy enemies, ranged enemies, evasive enemies, enemies that hunt the player, enemies that attach to the player, enemies that fight each other, and so on. We'll get there though :)