I'm strongly considering some major changes to the stat system in the near future.

Major Changes

• New base stats: Muscle, Brains, Sense, Spirit, and Haste.
• Stats level up as you use them, and no more level cap.

Minor Changes

• base stats boost other stats, i.e. Muscle increases max health and melee damage, spirit increases energy regen and flight
• some items will require certain stats, or have their power boosted based on how much of a certain stat you have

There is a google doc detailing these changes in greater detail here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HicEhMNpV_v2l_9PryXmI_i0iqws9rdzFJd-CRIm_f0/...

Context

It is currently too easy to max out your character and there is no incentive to continue playing after you've beaten the current bosses. I will solve this by creating infinite scaling for the player and monsters/bosses, and stuff like farmable crafting recipes from bosses/dungeons. Fallout-style perks may also be unlockable on subsequent playthroughs.

I intend for there to be three main play styles: melee (muscle), ranged (sense), and mage (brains). The player may choose to focus on leveling up just one playstyle, or hybridize between them.

Your Input

This is pretty big! I have a pretty good idea of how and what to do, but I want all of the input I can get, so that it can be as good as possible. I will be watching this thread closely and answering any questions I can. Thank you!

I say this is a good idea, but I dont like the idea of no level cap on its own.  I believe that eventually the game would kinda break if someone gets an absurd amount of strength and they can one shot everything, or an absurd amount of walking movement where they would constantly trip when they tried to walk.

I am slightly concerned about the possible incentive for players to repeatedly perform same meaningless actions to level up a stat.

I bet you didn't know, but for all these years of game tutorials Ingot was actually levelling up his defense. What, you thought he was just carelessly suicidal?

Now, instead of levelling up through giant pizza delivery, we might have to wack Koaladog with something heavy for an hour.

I personally really like being able to choose what I want to upgrade on my character, and the strategy that comes with it. Being able to choose to spend juice on, say, Damage instead of Max Health is something I think is valuable to the game, as it lets the player adjust how hard they want their fights to be and how quickly they want them to be over - like a player-chosen difficulty system. With a "stats level up as you use them" system, I'm not sure this depth would be kept.

I think one of the most satisfying elements of the game as-is is going to a fountain to spend all juice on upgrades, and immediately noticing the difference the upgrades make. With a "stats level up as you use them" replacement, I feel like that sense of a "boost" would be lost.

I think adding more endless content plays more to the game's weaknesses than to its strengths. I like the unique characters to meet and weapons to try, and finding and exploring new authored areas (like the big statues, beneath the trap door, or inside the toilet) is great. Getting a handle of the controls is another big fun factor. Flying around in the far reaches of the map defeating the same enemies over and over is repetitive and gets dull rather quickly, and so is re-fighting bosses for juice. I was compelled to grind to the level cap in both of my playthroughs of this game (once on the current version, once a few versions ago), and the process of doing so is inevitably the least fun part of it. When I finally reached the level cap, I felt relieved I'd officially "finished it" and done everything there was to do, and could stop playing. With the level cap reached, the grinding was officially over, and I was free to move on to other things.

It is currently too easy to max out your character and there is no incentive to continue playing after you've beaten the current bosses. I will solve this by creating infinite scaling for the player and monsters/bosses, and stuff like farmable crafting recipes from bosses/dungeons.

There's not an incentive to keep playing most games after having fought all their bosses. It's not a crime for a game to end when it has nothing left for the player to do. I think focusing on having more of the authored content in the game (i.e. more bosses and areas) would be more rewarding than tweaks that let the player stay in the least fun part of the game forever. (Though this is a pretty biased way of putting it.)

I hope this doesn't come across as mean or contrarian. I'm just concerned because Juice Galaxy has some interesting ideas that I really like, and the concerns in this discussion seem to value very different aspects of the game than what I enjoyed.

Thank you for making Juice Galaxy!

Firstly, fish, thank you for getting in touch with the community as much as you have. It's always nice to see a developer interested in the opinions of fans. It can be a double-edged sword, of course, but I'm sure you know that. I've got a few thoughts about things that I'd like to share after reading the design document.

TL; DR from me about the changes you've proposed:

• Infinite level scaling seems unnecessary but could be alright, but it is not a good way of dealing with players losing interest in the game. Talking about that is the bulk of this post.
• I'm not a fan of hard-locking weapons behind levels but soft locking is alright, since it makes people consider what they want to spend their points on more without totally denying them access to a weapon.
• Changing the skill system is good in theory but simplifying it as much as you are proposing seems unwise, since it takes away the ability for the player to specifically tailor their upgrades.
• Being able to choose perks/modifiers that apply major changes to the game is an excellent idea and I'm all for it. 
• I am really conflicted about leveling up stats through usage, since it's been done both well and terribly in other games. I'd suggest having usage of certain skills augment the level of skills upgraded through Juice, to get the best of both worlds: you can upgrade you arm strength with Juice, but actually hitting things would increase it further, or give access to melee-specific skills/perks that aren't upgradable or accessible by default.

(Note: the full post I had written here was really long, and I realized it would make reading the thread a pain, so I've moved the bulk of my reply to its own page. You can read it here: https://itch.io/t/1382074/regarding-the-proposed-infinite-level-cap )

hey fishlicka u gonna add the books or bosses to the spawnmenu or the future player?

(future player as in the one in the cabin)

this is a gud idea! i beat the game in 1 go, so i had no insentive

I think a lot of things have already been said, but I feel like I can add something not given.

Perhaps you can "Over-fill" the stats? So instead of having infinite leveling, you can go really high, but it will slowly go down to the cap. So you can still get really strong to swing at a bunch of enemies- yet it won't be that way forever. This could make it to where grinding isn't really encouraged due to the player going to loose the over-filled stats sooner or later. (also because over-filling juice would make so much sense pun-wise)

I also feel like giving more stats to fill would be good, maybe not "n00b trap" stats, but even more specific stuff for us to do. Though if you were to add more stats being able to be done, I feel like they shouldn't be given from the starting point, and you would have to go out and find leveled-up fountains. An example of a stat to be given for people in the level-ed up could be the dashes/special moves you want to add, or even making the over-fill top a bit taller so you can level up more, or the "over-fill" goes down slower.

I may not be saying/explaining my viewpoint in the best way, but basically I like a more "short-burst of power" where you can be really powerful for a bit instead of a permanent "Kill everyone you see unless they are some gigantic tank" mode. The only major problem I could see forming with the "over-fill" idea is where you treat juice like a health potion and never use the overfill (maybe there could be some "linger" aspect where it doesn't cost as much to do again to encourage using the hypothetical system more?) 

ok time for me to make a 500000 word essay of a mechanic that is probably harder to code than making the matrix

instead of using the boring and outdated juice meter fountain thingy, you have a mold ( i dont know how else to describe it), and you can also choose the dynamic skin.

when you start up the game with it (dynamic skin) your character looks a bit transparent, to fix that you leave your school and go to a juice fountain, you now have a menu of multiple juice colors, now how do you get the juiced colores, you can get rainbow aka all stats up by just killing regular enemies, but to get the other colors you must kill the special enemies (the ones with the different colors), they all have a primary color and if you make their life end they drop their color and only their color, every color is a stat, you get stats by filling your mold with colors, but brain, sense and muscle are not colors so how do you get them

well just beat things up thats how, your mold also gets slightly bigger on the body part you develop, sense are legs because there are no eyes brain is head and muscle are arms and hands, that makes it so you can get even more juice, and it makes it so you can have buff muscles and fill them out with flight anyway because its nice to get to decide, there are other ways to make your mold bigger, killing bosses, getting new items, beating a dungeon when those are added, and just killing enemies also makes it bigger slightly and the flying and damage thing are a part of it they just dont make your mold bigger, you can still see your stat numbers on a stat menu though.

to not make getting specific colors a grind you can also just split rainbow juice into other colors although it will take a lot to produce a little of a specific color but atleast you get every color everytime you split rainbow, and bosses drop every color upon being defeated or just dying

now this is the part where i talk about the dynamic skin, it is a special skin that changes depending on what colors of juice you have, if you fill it out with only red (damage) it obviously becomes red and if you wanna be more balanced it will look like one of those balls you make in make a bouncy ball yourself kits, and since the mold grows to not make you slightly transparent every time you beat a boss the colors only change when you open the mold editor and edit mold juice levels

and finally just like there are specific color enemies there are strong, smart and sensible enemies who cry a lot and give you muscle, brain and sense respectively, you can tell which are which because their respective body parts are larger, The E.

i literally just made this and i got a new idea that is somewhat connected, make a super soaker weapon that has different stats depending on the juice you give it, like if you hive it health juice it heals you when attacking ok bye thats it see you after you use tts and alsoa efmoneainonfkdznmviemawornklncioe

also love how swirlying, pole vaulting, and angry chicken calming are on the list of possible stats.

also does pollywog training mean possible pets in the future? (his name will be Larry.)

I would love all this. It would make the game more challenging and that's what I want.

I like the ideas you have and I'm not particularly picky. I like playing to the developer's ideas, since with every good game regardless of how strange or difficult a certain mechanic could be, so long as the developer put time into implementing it properly they always end up a skill you can master, so nothing there. Just a suggestion.

At some point somewhere I believe you mentioned crafting, and reading the comments I saw one person think of it in a minecraft style but I think maybe just expand on what you could have. Whatever crafting system you have in mind could probably work with my idea, but anyways: As I played the game I noticed certain weapons and helmets have stats and you can only get them by chance. I was thinking maybe having some kind of way to merge two different weapons and sum up the stats... Well not sum up. They just leave the desired weapon with the highest stats the other weapon held previously, because if it was summed then people could probably exploit the game and have flight 200 weapons and stuff, which whether or not you want is up to you, but yeah that's my idea and it's pre simple. Weights and stuff of the weapon don't have to change.

Also on the topic of weights, I feel like if you're going to use a weapon lock utilise the weights. Maybe don't make weapons impossible to use, but extremely difficult in the same way a kindergartner would struggle to wield a large mace. The more one uses a weapon, the more arm strength (or whatever stat you want) experience they get. The heavier the weapon, the more stat experience gained. The higher the stat, the easier it is to wield heavier weapons.

TLDR: Suggestion for crafting. Two weapons, helmets or spellbooks can be used in crafting to heighten the stats of the desired item. Read the last paragraph because I dunno how to summarise it lmao.

I would like to just name a couple hard points that I have in mind on the subject, since others have the discussion part down pat:

-I like the attribute system idea. I would however like to request that the skills/abilities as we know them each remain - and that we can still manually level them up.

For the levelling system, I would like to defer to a diamond-in-the-rough in the world of gaming: The levelling system in Mount and Blade Warband. Each attribute affects what you do in a passive, small way, that can make a difference in the long run. However, to really bring out the power of that merit, one must level up skills as well as attributes; the skills and the attributes collaborate to make a powerful character.

The skills as we know them, I think should still be levelled up using Juice Fountains

Maybe you could "level up" when your stats reach max. It gives them a higher max but resets them.

Maybe you could "filter" juice into different types. Red would be for arm power, Green for flight and movement, and blue for health and stamina.

I definitely think that making the magic system separate will help stretch the game longer while feeling better:

Being able to do all the books at the start kinda feels overpowered on the various runs I done, especially being able to get them from the crates at the start in the school (which feels weird because I thought the school was supposed to be some pocket from the rest of the galaxy). Being able to "unlock" the ability to use spells by using juice in a more tiered manner would feel nice and add more variety to the leveling system. This could be done with two ways-

1. A more player controlled approach, with them basically learning to "read" the book by spending juice, this could be done for every weapon by giving the books each debuff and buffs depending on how good the player can "read" the book. Giving it half damage at a low tier and then giving a "crit chance" or "greater damage percent" would help not make it to where one stat controls all the magic, which would probably be liked because people also like being able to tweak the various physical aspects of the characters, so why not the magic system?
   1. Don' know where they would spend their juice at, perhaps a different fountain or a new NPC?
2.  Giving books a "unlock more power by completing certain tasks" which would make it more story/tasked driven. You would probably have to make it more of a binary system with just "you can't use this because you haven't explored/killed/helped [X] yet" (or a more subtle hint what to do).  
   1. This could encourage exploring or progressing the story, but it may make it feel to gated.

HOWEVER implement anything like these two things would make a lot of extra load with every new spell added; with the first approach suggested, you have to make tiers for every spell book and judge what would be the proper costs for each; with the second approach suggested, you have to make story beats and/or tasks kinda connected and judge what time accessing the spell would be that complements the average gameplay.

Really you can just ignore this because it would make a catastrophic workload for you, but with how the spells work now just shows me that it needs to have some limiting factors from the get-go and that it needs more tweaking of it's properties like how you can tweak your swing speed and damage with melee weapons and how you can tweak your movement with jump, fly, and movement speed.

I'm still going to be happy with whatever direction the game takes though with its iterations, hope the game-making process goes smoothly for you! (it's your project after all, not mine) ((also sorry for the horrible grammar and run-on sentences))

That is a ton of changes. I would love to see stat changes be more beneficial, but I am not sure that doing it ALL AT ONCE would bode well. Try doing pieces at a time so that you don't have to redo a whole bunch of stuff.

I am all for the no capacity stats, but add like a code with an exponential equation that increases the level up cost per each stat level. Like "LevelUpCost(x){ x^1.5}" where x is whatever the current stat is.

Something is charming about flying to monster level 50 and juice farming. Making stats purely use-based is a lot less fun, and also lessens the need for juice farming. If you want the infinite terrain to be a thing, you should also have the infinite stat to be a thing.

As you go farther, monsters gain size. What if you added size as a stat so we could actually reach monster hit boxes more effectively? Or size could increase residually as you gain more levels.

If you want to add a gets-better-as-used thing though, maybe apply it to weapons. Like weapons gain levels with each hit they get or something and have a max level depending on what rarity you found them with.

I think there is little use for jump height but spirit would be an absolute plus. Like extra spell damage or pineapple, rubber ball cannon, or frizzX damage. 

What you have done so far is really cool, fishlicka. Everything can always be improved, but I personally would not like to see the game changed so drastically.

what if you could infinitely spend/recover juice at the juice fountain to change your stats? similar to how you can enlarge/shrink weapons, sure there's "no maximum amount" but with the juice cost going up as you increase you may not want to go to infinity

however once you get to a "ugh everything costs too much so there's no point to any upgrades anymore" level, it'll run into the same issues as the current stats with there being not much to do late game

it's not flawless and honestly you're "level as you play" approach seems more fun, im just giving my little bit of feedback to my tired brain can come up with, hope it makes sense and i hope when you make the stat update you can be proud of it, because i sure will be!

I know you've had this thread up for a while; I may as well give it a cent or two.

I for one would like to suggest a slight upgrade chance for each stat- be they the new basic ones you've suggested, or more detailed/derivative ones- if they predominately or exclusively are invested in at the expense of others.

For example, if I invest entirely in haste, while neglecting all the other four stats, then after reaching a level with haste, haste from then on would rise a little faster with use, and/or be proportionately more efficient to "buy" via points. From then on, I can increase haste further, faster, whereas the other stats must be hard-pressed-for as always.

By contrast, if I were to balance my character, keeping haste in a stone's throw of each of the other stats, then no bonus (or penalty) would apply and the levelling system would work as it does by default.

Lastly, in this system I imagine, the more specialized the stat is, the greater the bonus for future levelling becomes. For example in the above... example, focusing solely on haste will give it a better bonus than, say, also investing closely in muscles; but, raising just those two would still give each a bonus if they can significantly outpace the other three stats. In turn, raising muscle and haste would give each of the two, when they get high enough, a bonus better than if I were to raise, say, muscle, haste, and sense together. Still, raising these three would incur a slight bonus if made high enough.

This would allow, and encourage, players to specialize a character in a particular way, if they choose. If anyone wants to make a juggernaut meathead that moves like a turtle but can take any hit and smash anything, including out there in the 300.0+ level fog, they may do so more easily; if we want to make a speed demon who can run from the graveyard to the cabin in about five seconds, and who simply runs circles around whatever threat comes along, we can push for that goal; and I don't know what "sense" will be about, but whatever it is I would like to try it and make a game mode/character exclusively revolving around it. Maybe you can do for this "sense" what Bethesda neglected to do for Illusion and Alteration in TESV. I certainly trust you more already.

y si tomamos el koaladog como mascota y podría atacar a los monstruos mientras y tambien podemos mejorarlo

and tame other monsters

so does that mean that eventually if the player uses flying a bunch (like most would) it would cause them to at some point fly extremely fast? or am I losing my mind here?

you should add defense like armor, resistance stat and maybe shield

and add teleport station cuase why not? by unlocking new area!

I like the idea, but it would be cool if that were integrated into the current system. Also, juice can probably be used as a currency (which can help create interesting player situations) but I think the current system is great and should be integrated to the ones you suggested. If the player scales, so should the bosses to keep it difficult. Also, I like the difficulty bar.

it's probably already been considered, but maybe a luck stat?

I think you should go with a class system, in the menu, you should have mage, warrior and ranger, and it should affect the price, or effectiveness of skills, and some other things, ranger will deal more damage with ranged weapons and upgrading damage and walk speed is better, warrior deals more damage with melee weapons, and upgrades swing force and health better, and mage deals more damage with runes and upgrades stamina regen, and stamina better. also, maybe each class has a special ability, like warriors having passive damage resistance, archers turning invisible when below 25% health, and mages having a spell casting familiar that can be equipped with runes but the spells do 50% damage and the stamina pool is half the size of the characters.

pets in juice galaxy?

dang, if i ever get my normal computer back (its a long story, im using a school issued chromebook to type this) i'll have to livestream this game again. my past streams with it didn't do so well but it's been a year and, surprise surprise, i still have like no sub count (i dont give  crap) but honestly i might just figure out how to play this sooner just for myself because i remember this game being absolutely amazing

i hope there will be a inventory upgrade mechanic! :)

yup

i don't really think this is a good idea as a veteran player and i think that it would be even more confusing for new players because it makes stats confusing about how they level up. maybe removing the cap would work but i think that the juice fountains or something of that nature where the juice is used and its all in the players contriol is the the best option because it is very clear and easy to understand. it also reflects on teh gameplay and not vice versa, so you know exactly whats happening.

This is probably gonna come off as somewhat rude, but just know that I like the game, and these are just a few things that I didn't personally like.

My input:

While, yes, I do believe that levels should be uncapped, making them based on how much you use them would make the juice kinda pointless, so, instead of unlocking the perks through things done in-game, you should instead have the player purchase the perks with juice. Health, health regen, stamina, and stamina regen should also still be purchasable by juice, and they should be the only stats you can increase by drinking juice *shudders in health stat grinding in OSRS*

Swirly-D needs to be a boss battle instead of a cutscene where he kills you, or at least, have him replace the clog if you ever return to the toilet world, with a different outcome if you manage to defeat him, the bat should also be either a friendly NPC, or a boss, he seemed way more important than he ended up being.

Ms. Slitherss, who I've heard is supposed to be the final boss, is a big pushover, she needs to have more health (or at least be smart enough to evade attacks, a few shots from the pineapple gun kills her in under a minute) and deal more damage. 

Speaking of the pineapple gun, melee needs a serious overhaul, I happened to get the pineapple from breaking one of the crates in the beginning of the game, and I used it until I was forced to use the plunger to kill the Clog. When fighting the Dream Eater, I switched to the worm gun, because the bigger projectiles helped me make easy work of Dream Eater (which is the only time in the game that the worm gun was a viable weapon, that thing needs a buff).

I'd also like for there to be some sort of reward for feeding the flowers, I was kinda hoping that one of the flowers would turn into a giant, optional flower boss, and I'm gonna say, I was actually somewhat disappointed when I gave one over ten thousand juice, and it didn't turn into a boss. 

Keep up the hard work, though, I think Juice Galaxy can go from being a good game to a great game with a few tweaks. 

I wanted to go over a couple things about the primary slot but i wanted to preface by saying that I really do love the game and have been having fun with it for a while.

Firstly, they're pretty useless compared to spells. I feel like spells get higher in damage (i think they scale in damage with the monster level you got it from) much quicker than weapons and I think its mainly due to the fact getting higher weapon damage is more luck based (including finding hard juice because that's really annoying to find, at least for me).  What I mean by luck based is you need to have good damage rolls on the weapon. At higher monster levels I feel like the weapons just become like accessories and whichever has the highest modifier levels are the best, instead of using them as actual weapons. Also, melee in general needs a buff, I feel like I can at least use a projectile weapon with a good damage roll but if I get a melee with a high damage roll its feels lack luster. Btw the derptera is very fun to fight, I think its sick how they fight other enemies. also i really like how they slap things instead of just walking into them.

sorry if this is just rambling

will the size of your character have a impact on the muscle stat (health, arm strength, meele damage)?

hey dev, when is the next update im very curious

so. a few players have posited the terrifying concept of limiting the stat growth system.

 i would like to hop on to the pile of people who are actually all for infinite scaling, as well as being an enjoyer of the variety of fun stats such as arm strength and flight speed

swrly d has awaken

yea

z,,

my head hurts

cam you add a black hole boss it spawn ML14 (my idea is kinda dumb) if it eats it grows and you have shoot at it explosves for it to shrink?

this would be cool.

Boosting the amount of juice you get in higher difficulties, so grind isn't needed

Выскажу свое сугубо субъективное мнение, но мне кажется, что прокачивать навыки во время их использования - плохая идея, поскольку это может привести к необходимости гриндить ради прокачки нужного навыка. Приведу пример кенши, где для того, чтобы сделать своего героя лучше в чем-то (например, в умении сражаться в ближнем бою) и при этом не тратить на это много своего драгоценного времени, вы нужно яростно гриндить и искать лазейки в игре. Еще мне не нравится идея ограничения оружия по характеристикам, потому что это не подходит этой странной игре. Мне кажется, ей подойдет отказ от большого количества скучных ограничений, существующих в других играх, ради развлечения..