Spiral Knights - Make heat be more interesting and involved

Make heat be more interesting and involved

20 replies [Last post]

Tue, 06/14/2016 - 16:32

Fangel

While discussing things on the public discord server today, I had a rather sudden realization - heat is a currency with a single use, and isn't very interesting. What if we made it suddenly do many more things?

As it stands, heat is used to level up gear at the end of levels. This is cool and all, until you realize you're still collecting heat when you can't level up your gear. Here's some ideas to change that.

MAJOR HEAT CHANGE
Heat will be acquired per run, and viewable via a number under your heat circle. That value is increased depending on how much heat is left over after leveling up your gear per level, and is not increased until you step on an elevator. This number can increase infinitely, however leaving a run will forfeit all your stored heat for that run.

When you die, 5%, 10%, or 15% of your total gained heat is lost, along with 30% of the heat you gained on that level. The % lost depends on what tier you die in, but the 30% for what you've gained so far that level is a flat rate.

For number's sake, let's assume heat and crowns have the same system going on - meaning a tier 1 elite run you'll make 2-3k crowns, but also 2-3k heat. Let's get to the uses now, shall we?

HEAT USES

Team revives
Per-run currency
Dungeon boosts
Any-time forging

Team Revives
Players can use heat they've earned per run to revive fellow teammates. To revive a player, you must use 100, 225, or 500 heat (tier dependant). This revives a player to full red health like an emergency revive, and is activated by walking over them and attacking twice (once to prompt, second to confirm).

Per-run currency
Every run, you collect heat. At every clockwork terminal and subtown, there will be heat merchants.

Heat merchants can exchange various things with you for heat. Here's a quick rundown of how it could work:

0* fire crystal - 15 heat
1* fire crystal - 45 heat
2* fire crystal - 135 heat
3* fire crystal - 405 heat
4* fire crystal - 1,215 heat
5* fire crystal - 3,645 heat

(NOTE: fire crystal numbers are previous number times 3)

Spark of Life - 2,500 heat
Golden slime coin - 500 heat
Primal/Forge/Grim spark - 1000 heat

Dungeon Boosts
Dungeon boosts are modifications that affect you per-dungeon. They last only for the run you are currently in, but provide small boosts to the user and their team.

Players can choose up to 3 dungeon boosts at a time, however there will be upwards of 30 total boosts to choose from! Boosts are unlocked via rank, prestige, and achievements earned.

Examples of boosts:

+1 sword ASI
+1 gun MSI
+1 bomb CTR
+2 freeze resist
-1 second to dodge timer
+2 health
+4 poison resist on shield
+1 damage VS fiends
+2 sword damage VS fiends

Dungeon boosts are accessed via a new tab in your player slot, to the left of "achievements". Here you select what boosts you want (only can do this in haven, subtowns, or clockwork terminals!). If you change a boost mid-run, all your dungeon boost progress is lost.
In the dungeon boost tab, there is a button to add 1, 10, 100, and 1000 heat to your boosts. This will transfer your total heat number into your dungeon boosts. You can add heat to your boosts at any time in your run as long as you have the heat to add!

Boosts cost 350, 1500, and 3750 heat for the first, second, and third boost. It will thus cost 5600 total heat to get max dungeon boosts. As incentive to use boosts, the third dungeon boost also applies to the rest of your team, and stacks with any boosts they gain as well!

Any-time forging
At any point during a run should you realize "oh shoot I forgot to forge something!", then look no further - you can use heat you've accumulated to access your forge for 30 seconds. This requires you have 350 heat in queue and also 650 stored up. This is activated in your forge menu while not next to an arsenal station.

You cannot change equipment, only forge things that require fire crystals. Should you be a few crystals short and find them in the level you're playing, then it wouldn't be a bad idea to level up your gear mid-level.

That's most of my ideas right now, but I'm sure there could be so much more added to heat to make it more interesting! Outside of purchasing things, it should all be temporary things that are nice to have but not mandatory. I'd love to know what else you all would spend heat on!

TL;DR - Make heat like temporary crowns that exist per run that you can use to revive players, purchases certain rarities, access up to 3 per-dungeon "boosts", and forge equipment without the need for an arsenal station.

Tue, 06/14/2016 - 23:40

Flash-Flire

yes

Yes

YES

SO MUCH YES!!!

Wed, 06/15/2016 - 00:10

Corporal-Shade

I'm a Wizard

Ooh, very interesting.
I see you've made the prices of a few items incredibly expensive to limit your power. That's good.

Reviving however is kinda cheap. You don't even need to buy Sparks of Life. They cost a lot less than a token spark.
Unless there's a multiplier that increases by 1x each time but that's still too cheap.

It should be...
Tier 1: 100+10d+5x
Tier 2: 200+10d+10x
Tier 3: 300+15d+10x
Where d is equal to the depth and x is equal to amount of times you were incapacitated before.
If you don't like my formula then fix it.

Oh and one more thing. Reviving will be as annoying as trying to fight near a key.

This idea is a great way to use useless heat so yay.

Wed, 06/15/2016 - 00:15

Neueragon

sounds interesting.

lets go through all of them bit by bit.
first of all, does "die" also inclue your ER? if yes, that might be a little harsh.
team revives: because loosing heat is a real thing and you can loose even your total heat, spending it as soon as possible is something you WANT to do. reviving someone with it is a great idea. might be a little too cheap though, doubling the prices seems reasonable.
buyable items: are these single fire crystals? because they seem way too expensive, if you get as much heat as cr, you couldnt even buy three extra radiants per FSC run (and FSC has a lot of heat). spark of life seems good, slime coin too. the other sparks are a bit too expensive. right now, most of what you can buy with sparks isnt worth it, other than 5* trinkets to vendor. that makes them worth 100cr each. your sparks of life would be at around 1 heat = 1cr, so I would lower the price for other sparks to around 200 heat.
dungeon boosts: feels overcomplicated and unnecessary.
forging: sounds good. maybe make it a little simpler though and have forging just cost extra heat if you arent on an arsenal station.

Wed, 06/15/2016 - 03:14

Triplescrew

I disagree about

I disagree about revives.

Heat =/= HP. Knights dont run on heat...They have different energy type.

BUT! That doesnt mean that we should not be able to buy SPARKS OF LIFE with unused heat.

And i dont like "anytime forging" idea. People will prolly not use it ...coz they gonna save up for Rads/revives. And its not like its VERY NECESSARY to rank your gear 1 lvl up....Because, with what you suggested, heat is stored and you can just use it afterwards anyway.

Wed, 06/15/2016 - 03:56

Neueragon

I suppose it does make sense not to have knights be revived with heat, even if it would be a nice use.
but, other idea. you know about mecha knights and energy gates? the things nobody ever uses? make them run on heat!
and as a bonus for those people that hoard things, why not have some large-ish but costly heat reward? at the very least 10k heat, but probably more. something like hallow prize boxes? you could get "normal"-coloured (regal, cool, all those things) proto-model costumes and the currently unavailable proto weapons and shield, for collectors.

Wed, 06/15/2016 - 07:37

Vohtarak-Forum

The first part is pretty much what we worked out on the discord server, I like the new additions though
will the non-arsenal station forge work like that for boss missions though? It would make heating through vana more of a joke with the cost being near negligible to what you get from it

Wed, 06/15/2016 - 12:43

Fangel

responses!

"Reviving however is kinda cheap. You don't even need to buy Sparks of Life."

Team revives are supposed to be cheap due to the whole no bonus when you get up. Early tiers and odd strata you'll be making less heat, so the idea is that you have to save up your heat from 1-2 levels before you can revive someone, making Sparks of Life still critical in early levels. On top of this, you might be saving heat for one of the other uses, so you won't want to spend it all reviving one player. However in boss levels where there is no shop at the end, you may be willing to revive players frequently because you have no other use for heat.

"first of all, does "die" also inclue your ER?"

Under this system we might be able to pull the ER out of the game. The biggest reason it was included was because we didn't have health revives anymore. However if the ER system remains then no, you do not lose heat if you have an ER. You'll notice when you die right now with no ER it still has the "heat lost!" visual, and I was sort of playing into that.

"buyable items: are these single fire crystals?"

My initial thoughts are yes, they are single fire crystals. In retrospect it could be groups of 3, or even groups of 5. The idea is that if you run all of tier 3 then you'll have somewhere between 7k-11k heat units to spend if you don't use any elsewhere. If you're at the clockwork terminal, then you've gone through radiant territory. Now you can get a few extra crystals. In groups of 3 or 5 that means you'll get from between 9-15 radiants ensured per tier 3 run if you save your heat. That seems reasonable to me.

Lowering the price of normal tokens seems reasonable too. I would say 150-250 heat for one spark however. Basically, once you buy the big things you want you can use the last few heat things on these. I like that idea.

"dungeon boosts: feels overcomplicated and unnecessary."

It was just an idea I had to give more incentive for "quick and easy heat sinks" while in a mission. As it stands the only good one is heat revives, as the money one will have zero effect when you farm King of Ashes all day. The idea is you set up what boosts you want and then forget about them. I'm open to more ideas that fulfill this role though!

"i dont like "anytime forging" idea. People will prolly not use it ...coz they gonna save up for Rads/revives"
"forging: sounds good. maybe make it a little simpler though and have forging just cost extra heat if you arent on an arsenal station."
"will the non-arsenal station forge work like that for boss missions though?"

The "anytime forging" idea is mostly to make these new heat changes feasible in boss missions, I'll be honest there. It won't be fun farming vana and seeing a temporary number go up and then have no use for it, so I figured "why not allow us access to the one thing we leave boss missions mid-way for"?
Basically, players will be heating. Once they max out heating something, they might keep running the run and getting heat units. After they get enough heat units, maybe they need fire crystals, and once they find them, they upgrade their gear and continue onwards. The biggest penalty here is that you're using your team revives on heating, therefore making the rest of your team have to pick up the slack on heat revives or just use sparks of life.

People will also still leave runs mid-way, however by doing so they forfeit all heat they've gained up until that point, making themselves unable to revive other players. They can either stay in the game and stay working as a team, or leave midway and have others have to pick up the slack.

Tue, 06/28/2016 - 03:57

Triplescrew

Alright....If you really want

Alright....If you really want to revive with Heat...Then make it also split HP. Like....To give half of your HP to someone you need to use some Heat.

Coz really....Pure heat revives kinda ruin it.

Tue, 06/28/2016 - 09:04

Fehzors-Forum-Alt

It's not a bad idea. I'd rather see them get their currency systems straightened out and have everything just function, but I don't think heat ever functioned or had a place in the game, as long as I can remember so tying it to these sorts of buffs and removing it from the gear system would be a smart move.

You should probably not both sell things of value (i.e. radiant fire crystals, sparks of life, etcetera) AND use it to power up your knight majorly AND use it to forge whenever because one of these is going to win out and no one is going to get revived randomly, gear won't be forged, etcetera because buying the things is just too valuable, because it's the difference between temporary and permanent and players value permanent quite a bit more. I'd keep it limited to say, buffs and team revives.

Mon, 12/18/2017 - 17:02

#10

Kryophyre

Bump

Bringing this back up to the front just to get the Excess/Late-game Heat discussion going again.

I'd be interested in a system where any heat that can't go towards gear progression at the end of a floor would be collected in a type of "stale heat chamber/pool/capsule." From there, that "stale heat" could be used to forge fire crystals.

Tue, 12/19/2017 - 07:13

#11

Mintagen

This is a good idea!

I'm not sure if all of the above will be implemented or might need price changes, but overall, I think having heat as a "dungeon currency" is a cool idea. It won't break the game and it will only lead to player caring about how their heat is spent. Also this means that those heat amplifiers are a ton more useful.

I'd push for this change! But the developers should know that this change will increase the value of heat but will also reduce the value of fire crystals and sparks of life. If this change gets implemented, the fire crystal and sparks of life's crown and energy values should be balanced with their new and lowered in-game value.

Sat, 12/23/2017 - 18:18

#12

Fangel

ehh

Rarities themselves are self-contained. Rarities are mostly designed to be a "personal progress" based item, rather than a "priced" item. We are able to purchase them as an alternative to farming for them, and thus their prices are rather obnoxious. I do not think their prices should be adjusted purely because we have another way to obtain them, especially since this form of obtaining them is supposed to be rather minor compared to the "actual" method - you won't be getting 50+ radiants from heat purchases, but it will give you a baseline of radiants you can get every run without relying on RNG.

Spark of Life prices are currently very fair. Heck, with an alternative form of revival, it might be smarter to make them rarer rather than less expensive. I think their current droprates are fine, and their prices are more than fair.

Fire crystals above 2* are absurd in price as you should never really purchase them with energy. They ought to be lowered in price in general since no-one who actively plays the game would ever really spend energy on fire crystals at their current prices... But again, this isn't all that related to a heat dungeon currency.

Sun, 12/24/2017 - 08:53

#13

Mintagen

Steering it back (accidental reviving and opinions)

I will simply say I agree with all you've typed in the previous comment. Let me steer it back to the changes we are pushing for. Reading it again, the team revives may need to be looked at more than simply changing the value of sparks and fire crystals.

At first read I thought that the price balances the difficulty of using heat team revives. However, something popped into mind. "Accidental reviving". Since the method of reviving is started by an attack, imagine if a downed ally is moved to the center of an arena or you are cornered with your downed teammate. You might accidentally revive your mate or at least become very vulnerable.

I know the cheap heat price is supposed to balance the revive's difficult nature, but I'd personally prefer it if you simply need to spend 2,500 heat to buy Life Sparks that work like Life Sparks. It sure is a lot less clunky and is probably more balanced.
Heat is useless but with this change it becomes, in fact, very useful. I would personally prefer to save up heat for the rarer fire crystals than spend even a bit on my teammate just to get him out of the way of my attacks.

The rest looks relatively fair and well balanced. I'll stretch the "personally prefer" that I used twice. This is relatively opinion oriented, which is why I don't fully think the changes are necessary. Still, what do you think?

Sun, 12/31/2017 - 02:33

#14

Fangel

i can see it

In the old system, you could split your health with players by attacking over their downed body. This often didn't take players by surprise, and was a pretty fair system. It was replaced with the spark of life system, however that is much clunkier for trying to revive teammates in the middle of combat. Sparks of life allow you to revive players at a safe distance at full health with a combat boost, but are terrible if you're also dealing with a swarm of enemies and stopping to navigate a menu to revive someone is not very intuitive. Walking over their body and attacking twice on the other hand is pretty dang intuitive and doesn't slow down combat like the current system.

Heat revives would act as a way to not lose your health but still revive teammates - in the long term, spending 500 heat to revive a teammate will be less than the 2,500 you could buy to revive yourself.

I know some people will be stingy with their heat, but for many players, we're really just looking for some reason to go back and pick up that extra heat, and helping newer players would make me pick up all the heat in RJP, not just the bits with crowns nearby.

Tue, 01/02/2018 - 19:20

#15

Mintagen

Late response

First off, sorry for the late response. New years and all (happy new year btw).

I can see what you mean however. It's still two clicks to revive with the current system. You click at the teammate's profile and then click on "use spark of life". Two clicks. I can understand the balance of your point still. The current system is not just two clicks but long drag, click, search, click. It's specific, which causes less accidents. Yours is simple to pull off, but can cause an accidental revive. But I now see the balance. Yes I will find the accidental revive annoying but that won't make it a bad change. I never see people reving whilst in combat with the current system and I think it's because it's just not elegant. Really, I think that an alive teammate is better than 500 heat. Opinion changed.

PS. Happy New Year!

Sun, 01/28/2018 - 18:04

#16

Isaac-Shepard

this, i like this

being able to buy fire crystals would make things WAY easier. T5 crystals still dont drop nearly enough and everyone feels the hurt from it.

Tue, 05/01/2018 - 19:58

#17

Flash-Flire

bump i guess

Wed, 05/02/2018 - 04:22

#18

Zero-Chill

meow

I like the idea of team revives with heat. Sparks make the game less co-op when sparks cost this much and you won't bother to waste them on some noob. If this idea ever gets implanted the emergency revive should be removed for balance. I suggest adding it as a boost you buy from basil at the start of the run for say like 1.5kcr.

Sun, 05/06/2018 - 02:11

#19

Videobun

Some changes

So not to piggyback off your post for my own idea (mostly the liquid heat compressor - which isn't my idea, it's back on some suggestion post from 2014) but I want to offer a simplification to a couple of 'em. Boosts are ok imo but need some reworking. Forging on the other hand is just bound to slow down teams and cause some rage for people who get an inconvenient disconnect or lag during that timer. I honestly think they need to make a separate "forge only station" and put them in all the boss areas and treasure vaults. Basically a "nerfed" equip station.

There's something there with the revives and temporary currency ideas though. Just gonna give my two cents on reworking 'em:

Team reviving is a sorely missed feature, despite spending 80% of my time soloing now. I'm gonna simplify this and make your system less of a nerf:
1. No heat loss on death, simply a bit of a heat bonus for not dying
2. Half your current health and a set amount of "liquid" heat necessary to rev a buddy. Maybe that achievement would come back from legacy :o

Shop idea is good, but I think it'd make more sense to have "liquid" heat become part of the temporary clockwork economy in a different way:
1. Basil has a secondary shop to exchange liquid heat for tokens and sparks (as suggested above)
2. Instead of buying heat crystals, you have a heat tank. Whatever liquid heat you have left at the end of the mission gets pressurized (with a cute little animation maybe, I dunno) when you go up from an elevator and get your reward rundown. The kind of crystals you can create are based on your rank; just press a button for which kind you'd like, and the exchange occurs. It'd be a small amount, but enough to guarantee some non RNG rads per run. (again, this is back on some old suggestion posts, but suggested as an equippable, not a feature. This'd just be a feature)
3. If you don't want any heat crystals at all, pour all that excess liquid heat into some bonus prize rolls for some extra crowns and maybe some lockboxes. It'd work like the casino, except it'd just collectively spin all of your rolls at once based on how many you could do maximum. Prize pool excludes vials/hearts and such since it's an end-of-run thing. It would be a measly amount of crowns/mats as usual, but the bonus potential for some boxes would be a nice way to dump the extra heat if you're absolutely uninterested in crystals.
4. An excuse to make some little heat tank accessory, 'cuz why not?

Fri, 06/08/2018 - 11:11

#20

Rambocreativity

I support this idea.

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Make heat be more interesting and involved