Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

Juice Galaxy (formerly Juice World)

Floppy ragdoll rpg sandbox with physics-based combat · By fishlicka

Stat System Overhaul (help me) Sticky

A topic by fishlicka created May 11, 2021 Views: 14,284 Replies: 106
Viewing posts 1 to 20 of 69 · Next page · Last page
Developer (3 edits) (+30)

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!

(+5)

I love all of this except for the "some items will require certain stats" in MY opinion the second option there is much better like in fallout guns/energy/melee etc. as there is no hardlock to use a weapon and that system is great. And my one question is which fallout do you mean 1-2-brotherhood, nv-3, 4, or 76 for the perk style.

Developer(+8)

I'd also rather make the item stat requirement soft, where the item is simply less effective without sufficient stats, maybe falling off exponentially if you have way too little of a stat.

I was thinking of Fallout 1/2, but Noita might be a better example of the perks I'm interested in. Weird/gamechanging stuff like:

  • You cannot cast spells but melee does double damage
  • You can fly for free but there is no gravity
  • Eating a monster allows you to take its form temporarily
  • Fire damage is converted to cold damage
  • Spells cost Juice instead of Willpower (or energy currrently)

and whatever weird stuff I/others think of.

(+4)

The noita perk system is a great idea, where if someone speccs too heavily into one branch they get one of the double edged blade perks. It will add more replayability as players would have to do each branch to find the final perk, and for the more skilled players take advantage of making the ceiling higher. Also adding noita esc perks would give players the satisfaction of exploiting those perks to the best of their ability. Some ideas for said perks are (will edit to add more when I think of them)

- Double spell damage BUT double the cost

Shaped glass perk? sounds like a great idea

idea 1: add a new boss a secret one when you go in the dream and go far from the house you will see an secret boss called A̵̛̠͉̣͚͇͇̝͚̩̫͔̅̓̒́̈́̀̎̓̇̊͑̽̂̾̑̓̈́ͅV̸̛̯̝̳̪̘̝̤̈́͗͂̀͑̂̑̃͗͌́́́̋̿̌͝I̷̢̧̭̦̟̩͖̥̣͕̖͚̞̫̦͑͗̎͠ͅȨ̸̨͔̞̜̰̞͍͎͔͖͚̼̳̗̬͖́̿̓̍̏͗͐̓̀͗͐̃͘R̸̨̫̩̰̺̥̝̳̣̳͍̝͚͔̠̟̺̤͈̭̱̦̖̲̪̗̀̾̆̄̉̈́̓̃̆̀̈͛̇̂̓̊̈́̄̉̈́͛̂͘̕͘̕

to beat him all you have to do is to have the holy hammer any weapon you use wont work like the clog and you will

obtain something called glitchy helmet and error sword the glitchy helmet lets you see secrets you never found and the error sword every time you die you will get a free revive only one

idea 2: you can now buy stuff from every area

maybe a system kind of like souls wherein you CAN use items if you're underpowered, but they won't be as effective as if you meet the stat threshold

(1 edit) (+3)

I won't suggest that much but in my opinion, i think the "level up yourself by using your stats" should apply to the base stats only. For example, getting damaged and swinging your weapon at monsters increases muscles, then the stats will scale because of the base stats but the only way to manually increase the stats without increasing the base stats is with the usual juice fountain purchase.

Maybe increase the limits of the stats (currently 19 i think ?) whenever you increase the base stats, like if muscle is increased by 2 results in the limit of the health max to increase by 2 and the health regen by 1 or something. The "items will require certain stats" thing is a good balance for some of the weapons and items, which is nice.

Btw, what is 'Will max' and 'Will regen' ? Is it stats for doing magic perhaps ?

(+1)

Yeah, will is magic-related, from what I can tell. Spells will probably use will instead of energy in the future, making it a separate resource.

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.

(+9)

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.

(+11)

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!

(3 edits) (+4)

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 )

Developer(+11)

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 :)

(+2)

Hey, thanks for reading that whole spiel of mine! Having Slitherss read feedback seems like it'd be fun, perhaps you should do that with all of your user suggestions.

I'm glad that you're considering a lot of the feedback the folks on here are putting forwards. As you say, the game is still early in development, and it makes sense that you'd want to iron out game fundamentals before adding loads of story content. Just don't let all of the suggestions overwhelm you. :p

I think that the effort level thing is really cool, it'll have some fun moments in the game where you're only using a percentage of your power and mock enemies like some anime cliche

I think some secret lore quests would rock in this game, and non secret ones

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 there should be some system where you cant max out all stats and instead have a limited amount of stat upgrades you can use (about 2/3 of the way to maxing everything out)

or the max amount of upgrades you can get from a fountain is capped on an overall player experience level which is based on training and overall juice earned

another option is that each of the new base stats being added are trained while the old ones are still bought at fountains, but the effect of these upgrades is now affected by the new base stat levels

i am also not sure about the idea of training I feel like juice in of itself is fine as it is with it being a universal currency/xp

(+1)

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?) 

Your idea for boosting Sense, Muscle, Soul and Brains works, but how is there going to be a way of buffing Ranged items, might I ask? I honestly feel like Ranged items have kind of been neglected since they were first introduced (For fair reason, a freaking Pineapple that explodes and knocks back enemies is overpowered) and I would enjoy if there would be a slight overhaul to the whole Ranged weapons thing. Otherwise what you are doing so far is just making the Game better.

i mean Fishlicka recently said that explosion now cause fire effects (the reason why the pineapple gun become more powerful than it already is from the beginning) which was a new feature added recently. As well as updating some of the ranged weapon to not be useless and deals almost no damage. I do agree that fishlicka really did just buff the pineapple gun even more in the latest update, which obviously needs some kinda nerf in the future if possible. 

(1 edit)

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

(-1)

hell yeah, I would LOVE to see crafting in this game, for example: the rune longsword could be made with a standard sword hilt and blade, meaning you can craft hybrid weapons, and I would also love to see potion brewing! I know I've already mentioned potions, but maybe a cauldron in Heck, as an incentive to visit heck more often, that you could throw random stuff in for different effects. I don't know if this would be a good idea, but maybe a hunger system would give it more challenge, like you have to kill monsters for meat and find pools in the wilderness or toilet realm to drink, I think it'd be pretty dope. On the topic of biomes, as you mentioned that the very colorful terrain (rip) will later be added as a biome. I have a proposal, I can tell there's biomes, but it's super hard to tell. theres mountains and plains, as well as canyons, but they all look the same. maybe have some easily seen different biomes, like a sand floored juice desert, with pools of lava, or large oceans here and there, something to find new and explore. I'm asking too much, lol, I'm gonna go. sleep, n' stuff...

On another note (Christ in hell, I talk a lot,) I think a building system would be EPIC. Like maybe going along with crafting, you could get wood from trees, used for many recourses, and maybe could build houses out of sweet succulent plywood. Maybe also you could build with stone, which you could get from like caves or something, maybe houses made of pure juice lol. I dunno, it just seems like a neat thing, but this is prolly super bothersome so I'll actually stop now.

Great update by the way, been playing for 40 minutes now, looking for all the spells. I only have to find kinesis and tiny sun, so wish me luck.

(+1)

NO IM DONE WITH CR AFTING NOT ALL  GAMES NEED CRAFTIGN I CANT TAKE IT, EVERY GAME I SEE IS MINECRAFT, OH LOOK RESIDENT EVIL HAS CRAFTING, BRE- actually no that game already had cooking mechanics, FAllOUT 4 HAS BASE BUILDING WHAT IS NEXT MARIO WITH  BLOCK BUILDING I CANT TAKE IT I WANT A CREEPER TO EXPLODE ME 

no really having to  constatly visit heck would be boring, NO DONT MAKE a HUNGER SYSTEM THIS WAS A JOKE ALREADY BUT STOP WITH THE MINECRAFT, there is no meat its all juice, and ok yeah biomes should be different, a desert where juice is dry and there is fall damage would be cool, maybe make it so the graveyard evolves with progress, the most we have seen is ingot coming in, and if you struggle with spells i reccommend beating bosses up but maybe 30 minutes was enough

Deleted 3 years ago
(+2)

angy

(+1)

and I have more to say, sorry. I think more stats is a good idea, however, I'm not as sure about the whole levelling up thing. juice fountains are pretty crucial, and I think that the new form of levelling up would be even easier to get super OP fast, because using juice requires players to go out and explore for new things. I think infinite stat scaling would be awesome, and like you said, have enemies and bosses stat scale with the player, that'd be pretty cool. that, and I feel like juice fountains are more.. satisfying? I guess that's ONE way of wording it, but I can't think of many other ways to put it. Like if a player is just wandering around, and it says 'movement stat leveled up' or something, they'll be "Oh yeah, that's cool." but with juice fountains, it's more of "Oh yeah, I'm levelling up now, this is sick." because players can see and interact with their progress. As juicefiend and terraformtrent above me said, it takes the ability to customize stats away, and players may feel that they've been cheated of creative value. another thing on this topic, I think that having weapons only be available to higher level players is great, but I could see how many others would find it frustrating. I think having new stats and character classes is a GREAT idea, but I can agree with many others that juice fountains are more intuitive and fun, although maybe these 5 new stats you propose could be levelled by just doing them. eg: get muscle by fighting, get brains by finding new things, get sense by not being ass at the game (like I am,) get spirit by [???] and get haste by running and jumping, or if haste means breaking things in the future, then by breaking things.

I think a stat rework would be pog, but I see many downsides to the idea of having stats scale with in-game progress, and I think it might lower the creative and willy nilly free-will ideologies of Juice World. TL;DR, Base stats would be cool, but Juice Fountains should be used for upgrades, not XP.

thats the reason fish asked us so we could tell them ideas, but in the end the fountain is not gonna be removed because we can never abandon the fountain

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.)

Deleted post
(+1)

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.

Viewing posts 1 to 20 of 69 · Next page · Last page