Suggestions to Developers - Game modes, modifiers and QoL

[Daneca]

First of all congratulations on the work so far. Griftlands is a lot of fun and was really worth the money. Negotiation battles are an amazing concept and the gameplay of the whole game for someone like me who loves card games and turn based combat is just near perfect.

Pardon the slightly long post but it is a mix of several suggestions. I hope it is not a waste of your time.

To give you an idea of how far I've been within the game, I have just gone through my first marathon on Sal going up until prestige 14, and sitting at P9 on Rook at the moment. I am a gamer for a long time and played the same game for many hours (in more than one game), so I value replayability a lot, and so far the game has not let me down, but there is not much more in its current state. I know it is in beta, but no harm in thinking ahead.

Below you will find a few suggestions for added game variation from a replayability perspective, and thinking in the long run (i.e. when you finish prestige max lvl, then what?). If they are good, you are probably already considering some of them, but maybe not all. If they are not, feel free to ignore them. 

Feel free to make no case of the titles, but as I had fun imagining all of this I ended up having a bit more coming up with them, They are here for example purposes. 

The basic idea is that these can be implemented by the player in addition to the prestige level, so they are another layer of game customization to unlock/use on top of what is already there. I think they do not require major implementation in terms of game assets, which can make them easy to launch at any time (this said from a layperson perspective, I am not a programmer).

Interface wise you already have the menu for game selection well designed, so it would just be another icon in the game customization page. Let’s call them “global mutators” for the purpose of this email. 

On click you can select one or multiple of these, to be applied to the whole game. Within some of them you have additional selections, as explained below. A note on what is meant by “milestones” is on the additional suggestions, further down.

So, examples of some that could provide additional replayability (near endless) in both brawl and campaign modes:

• “Growing Animosity” - Add percentage base health on all enemies (one for negotiation, one for battle). Negotiation can be either opponent or arguments. X% increase on selected attribute(s) per level, endless levels. Milestones can be added for max %HP bonus completion run. Equivalent can be done with damage inflicted.

• “Small Hands” - Add a maximum number of cards that each deck can have. At maximum, you cannot acquire any more cards from any source. Maximum number is customizable (can be separately for each deck or together). Milestones can be added on minimum deck size on completion.

• “Fight Club” - There are no negotiations (incompatible with next one).

• “The pen is mightier” - There is no combat (incompatible with previous one).

• “Endless Road” - Your brawl will continue until you die (would benefit from having multiple save slots implemented as a function on brawl). Several milestones can be added with this including longest brawl, biggest deck, highest deck cost, etc.)

 

Lastly, a few suggestions on functionalities to add (toggleable if you find it better):

• Party management screen (when you have the “Loyalty” trait it would be nice to see abilities and customize who is in and out). This can later lead to adding a whole layer of gameplay based on follower equipment/traits/abilities (probably something of the sort already being considered).

• Add a way to see your follower/ally abilities (including damage range, modifiers/status applied, etc.) and diplomacy effects in game, particularly in the screens where you have to select a follower/ally. 

• Add a way to see enemy abilities/traits, main diplomacy ability and specific arguments/intents on screens where you have to select enemies to negotiate with/fight with.

• Both previous suggestions can be implemented as grafts or items if this information is purposely not displayed. 

• Add a specific indicator for stun when one of your followers/allies has one queued as an action.

• Multiple save slots, as mentioned above, particularly for brawls.

• Add something (a border color, a tag, a line in the description, whatever you see fit) to improvised cards flagging them as improvised. Preferably it would also have the source of the improvisation identified. This is especially useful sorting out improvised items from non-improvised ones.

• You have seen milestones mentioned above. The idea is that they are linked to score tracking, which I assume you will be implementing sooner or later on an account basis. With account scoring, presumably you will also implement an achievement system of some sort, which will work with some type of milestone. The ones mentioned above are suggestions in this framing. 

That’s it for now. I hope that despite long this has not been a very boring read. 

If these have been suggested or discussed elsewhere, sorry for the repetition, I didn’t see

Have a nice day!