I thought of this a while ago, and posted it in my suggestions forum book a while back, but I'd like to bring it up again on its own thread because I think its just that awesome.
What if players could actually control the arcade? Not just by dumping in minerals to form a false democracy dictated by which boss stratum players ran the most, but a true way of "controlling the world" for guilds and single players with 6000+ minerals alike.
What I'd like to see done, specifically:
Boss stratums should not be biased towards a theme when creating mineral crystals
Currently, arcade generation is left up to chance, and chance is left up to the boss stratums giving out more of one type of mineral and less of another. Given the nature of the boss levels, and their tremendous draw in of players due to money+awesome, they should not in my opinion give out any more of one or another mineral. Other levels doing so is more than fine, although is unneccessary.
-Remove the "Sell all mats" factor, and create a drop box that pays out more for minerals (always 5 per mineral.) These minerals would then be buyable at the deposit box for a price and would be placed into wherever that buyer put them.
Think of it as replacing the button for "sell all mats." If you want to just sell your mats for quick money, all power to you- there are those of us whom want to build gates. Or there should be. The price of a mineral attained in such a manner would be determined by how full the box is. If there are 10 of each mineral in the box, each mineral might cost as much as 10K, but chances are there will be far more than that of them in this box. This price will scale so as to prevent a surplus or not in the box.
-More specialized and sophisticated level generation.
"Stratum theme" and such are not so exciting when they are reused over and over, why not have the ability to generate unique levels using an algorithm? Like for instance, take the clockwork tunnels levels, and make it so that they can be mashed with other bits of other levels and so on to form multi-monster levels. There are many ways that this could be done, and many more ways that it would be awesome.
How it would work:
First, add a 2nd variable to the clockwork tunnel generating algorithm for a 2nd stratum type. This is the secondary one, and will merge with the "main theme" for a few levels. When the algorithm goes to create levels, it will occasionally add branches with that type of monster going off to the side. There would still be pure stratum themes- these would occur in the middle of the stratum.
There are many ways that this could work, so choosing one would not be too hard.
-An item or so that could be used to spawn a set of levels in the arcade- for instance, "Heart of Ice Core" would be used to change an ice/fiend stratum into the heart of ice mission set.
First off, this is just how I imagine this to go down.
Creating the item:
A single knight or a multitude of knights would get together and say "We want to create HoI for a week so that we can fight it and have a grand old time!" They would then gather their materials and head to an alchemy machine found someplace and craft the "core" as I have nicknamed it. The "Core" would require a recipe to create, and this recipe could either be learned by a single knight, or be learned by a guild machine such that the guild use it. The recipes for these types of things could come from a variety of sources- basil, random drops, lockboxes, token items, wherever.
The recipe would cost a TON of materials. I'm talking ten thousand scrap metal a pop, 1000 trojan horse shoes, pending on the recipe. Cheaper versions for T2/1 would be available as well- these would still cost a lot, but less.
Rewards for using the item:
Increase drops during the run for all! Not crown drops mind you, but equipment drops. And by equipment I do mean costumes and other such things, as well as perhaps new weapons and armors, or existing armors/weapons that are underused. Speaking of which-
-Increased chance for item drops, and introduction of certain costume armors as item drops.(That is- Surge armor; hunter armor; frosty armor, those)
Actual items would still be just as rare as ever, but it should be expected to receive a costume armor drop perhaps 1/20 full arcade runs or so? Keep in mind that for the most part, these would be new sets of recoloured armor, so that the older ones would keep their value. Auras and accessories would also drop to the theme of the level. This adds an air of mystery and frustration to the game that I particularly enjoy.
-Remove the elevator costs going down into the arcade.
This goes without saying- the arcade should be free if the missions are free, and the missions should be free.
I'll probably update this thread with other ideas from other places as time goes on, unless I forget about it. Like Luiguru's post, but I've got to go now. Will add his ideas later, as I like many of them.
I assume you're talking about the thing where minerals are less likely to spawn in a stratum that used that type of mineral in its creation? Sure, right now I can imagine that most of the minerals in the game are the opposite of whatever fire themed minerals are.
So you could sell all your minerals for 5 cr without affecting gate construction, and then people who do want to change gates can pay to use the stored minerals? Sure, ok. What would happen to extra minerals? Or is it just a box completely seperate from gate rotation?
Yes, I'm picturing something like C42, except you actually get to interact with the grassy parts. Comming up with an algorithm for the level generation shouldn't be that difficult, they've already got something similar in clockwork tunnels and other randomized levels.
The "Heart of Ice Core" seems interesting, although you would need to describe how you get it.
I personally don't think old promotion items should be made available to re-purchase in featured auctions, cough metal sonic cough, and they definitely shouldn't be made available as free, random drops. I'm all for adding new costumes though, maybe they could be based on the main type of monster/status in the level you found them in? They would also need to add a better drop system if they added this in. Maybe everyone in the party gets one, but they are all bound?
By elevator costs I assume you mean the 200 and 500 cr fees? If so, I support it, and I also think they should move those fees into the mission system.