Potion Craft 2.0: Balance Issues & Solutions

[@KillrobPlays]

Watching this I think you can tell I am quite passionate about game design, systems, and mechanics. I hope you enjoyed! I would love to hear your ideas and suggestions. Maybe I could make a video about your suggestions and continue this discussion. Just make sure these stay within the existing framework of the game's features as mentioned in the first part of the video - to make this as useful as possible to the devs. :) Cheers!

[@jamesmcdonald3054]

Here's an idea to help balance bulk brewing: suppose certain customers requested shipments of potion within a certain number of days. For example, imagine that a certain owner of an esteemed leisure establishment requested a shipment of 500 healing potions within the next 5 days because her girls were just too enthusiastic. Should the player choose to accept the task, they would then have the option to haggle out the "contract" and thus know how much they stand to gain or lose. To complete the request, the player would need to place the potions into the inventory of a "mailbox" NPC (seems to be the least complicated way to code it, just a NPC merchant with 0 gold who "buys" at 0% and "sells" at 0% and can be activated anytime) before the time limit. As a bonus, this idea could synergize well with your idea for making the garden less grindy, as the player would have more reason to carefully select which things to plant.

[@KillrobPlays]

I'm not sure how that fixes the issue of bulk brewing though? You're providing more reason to do it, not less :D A contracts / order system on its own is interesting, but quite a bit of extra work to put in I would think. Also you would need a fail state for not being able to fulfill the contracts, and that is something the game's design doesn't seem to like in general.

[@irrelevantirrelevant7332]

As a Suffering Mode enthusiast, I fully agree with most if not all of your observations. I have one idea I deem quite powerful: Put a limit on the potions you can craft per day. If you can just brew 30 potions in total, you incentivise players to a) brew more expensive effects and b) go for expensive ingredients. Perhaps the amount scales negatively with difficulty. Another idea is massively reducing the size of the crystal cave. Just 8 growing spaces would be still powerful.

[@KillrobPlays]

The potion limit per day is an idea that works quite similar in effect to what I suggested with the merchant potion capacity limit. I do think your suggested potion limit would make sense. I also believe that would have to be tied in via some kind of "time per day" limit that is not an actual clock, but every action taken takes away a little from that time resource, be it harvesting, grinding, brewing, etc. However, that would be too much of a new fundamental mechanic and I don't know if the simpler potions per day limit would feel good to the player?

[@irrelevantirrelevant7332]

@@KillrobPlays I think both are valid ways to prevent potion spam, so I think both should be implemented. Energy can be done, Stardew has done that nicely, but it complicates the code. You could make both a skill in the trading and alchemy category, respectively. Something like large scale orders (I return in 10 days, I will be buying 40 potions of x ) and a skill that makes you more efficient at brewing in general.

[@KingYurtleOfTurtle]

I dont have the game design experience (or potion craft experience) to comment on specifics, but i just wanted to say that I've loved the series and this video is a really interesting breakdown. Ep 1 or 2 popped up on my reccomended, and the series has been a daily watch since then :)

[@shadowmage661]

The main thing os I would love a campaign with increasing debt or something. The game has no fail state. Grandmaster felt good as far as progress was concerned, but I basically didnt need to run a shop. There is nothing to force me to win faster. You could just sell all potions to vendors for about 1/4th the price. We don't have enough good shop games. Sure there are all the simulator games but those are just how fast will you win rather than if you can win. The costs to do bussiness are much smaller than the money you gain if your store is just a bit competent

[@Dyanosis]

I mean... the "increasing debt" is the idea that prices are stupid on the merchants. 60k for a new base? 12k for one more part of the alchemy machine that will not be used for awhile anyway?

[@KillrobPlays]

It is true that there is no real fail state, but I also think that is a charming aspect of the game for it to be that way. The only easy way to reinforce this that isn't an entirely new mechanic could be that there is a time limit to making the philosopher's stone. Say it is an quest (special NPC) that will come by on day 1 and tells you that the king has ordered all alchemists in the land to try and create this legendary substance and whoever does it will [win the game] get untold riches from the treasury. That NPC says time is short though and you have 100 days or something like that. Failing that wouldn't end the game, but you lost out on that ending. This kind of mechanic would create a similar effect to the one that you are suggesting, but in a less obnoxious way. It becomes a careful consideration of your resource management too, but without the bankruptcy fail-state.

[@dawiddulian2403]

You'd like "Potionomics"

[@shadowmage661]

On that note, have you played any of the atelier alchemist series from Japan? They do time limit based difficulty at peast tye old ones do. Even though most I completed far ahead of time, the time limit really propelled you forward. For potioncraft, I got to making the final stone and decied naw I'm good lol. 5 element potions are just kinda too tedious for seeing a congratulations blurb

[@shadowmage661]

Potionomics was good, it was just too easy sadly. Even if you play honest and dont make an infinite deck it is very easy to just have too much money and win the duels with cards rather than a better potion. I heard hard mode wasnt much harder

[@MrCamonBear]

@KillrobPlays I don't think healing by travelling along crystal paths is an issue, IF the other changes are made. The rarity and cost of crystals starts to make a lot more sense.

[@KillrobPlays]

That is true, if crystals were as rare as they ought to be, then them being an instant heal wouldn't be as much of an issue :) but I dislike that they do replace life salt completely that way!

[@MrCamonBear]

@@KillrobPlays Maybe 50% heal by distance?

[@KillrobPlays]

Connecting it to teleportation distance and heal the amount the potion would have healed if going along that path normally as if it was perfectly clear... that would work and not be overpowered :)

[@ALFrix0]

I really liked your suggestions, i agree with most of them, i hope the devs implement some of this at least, so i have an incentive to replay the game. I would increase the golden books value even more, it should be something that makes you want to go and collect, it's another incentive to go around the map, even without wanting a specific potion another thing, the treasure room could be useful with something simple like plant pots the decorations could be more interesting if once in a while someone ask to buy one if they see it on your shop (like an extra with the potion) or maybe if you have this decor item then you may be visited more by a merchant thank you for the video, i learnt a lot!

[@philippschreier398]

I like all of your suggestions. While i didnt think it through as thoroughly as you did, i thought about some stuff as well. it could be alternative solutions maybe? like the garden: in order for it to not be annoying, i want potion fertilisation to be something that has a continuous effect or isnt always the best choice, like there could be a downside to using potions. for example: a fertilized plant/mushroom/crystal (from now on p/m/c) will have a "positive status effect" like "+{potion tier} to the amount of ingredients harvested" or "+10%*{potion tier} chance for the p/m/c to become wildly overgrown" or "grow 10% - 30% faster" - something like that. potions could be applied to p/m/c once and last for a set amount of harvests or days. Or there could be a chance for the "fertilized" status to disapear upon harvest or something. If the devs feel extra motivated, maybe the decoration merchant lady could even sell special watering cans where you can put potions into, so that they are automatically applied to p/m/c when watering, those could have tiers and there could be different ones for plants, mushrooms and crystals, then she would have a noncosmetic item as well. another idea i am quite fond of would be for "fertilized" p/m/c to produce less ingredients but more seeds. that way the word "fertilized" would actually make sense and you would only use potions on new p/m/c that you want more seeds of until you have enough. there could be skills related to this as well as the potion tier could impact the duration or potency of the effect. maybe the p/m/c could even have a chance to mutate if you give them potions with side effects? that could spice up the gardening a bit, maybe it would distact to much though i dont know. on a side note, inventory management with seeds is a mess, i think the easiest solution would be for stored plants to "magically" revert back to beeing a normal seed without a growth state, that stacks with all other seeds of the same type and *cant* be instantly harvested upon planting. I would also like it if p/m/c would not always give the same amount of stuff. it just feels very "inorganic". The gold you get for harvesting crystals is already random, why do the plants always grow exactly 12 leaves each day? its not a huge issue balance wise, but that just feels strange to me. selling potions to merchants: Maybe not all merchants should buy all potions for the same price. Maybe the other alchemist doesnt need your potions as he can brew his own. There could be daily markups/downs for potion price from merchants, depending on the potion effect. Maybe merchants give demishing returns for potions with the same effects. like for the first 10 strength potions of the day they give you 20 gold each, but for the next 10 they only give you 15 gold and so on. This would make it so there is a balance to be struck between what and how many potions you sell to the merchant to get all their gold. it would also mean you wouldnt "pay" for everything with potions, as selling a bit every day is more efficient then selling hundrets of potions all at once. thats all i have to say for now, maybe ill add a response once i think of something else... Thank you for your large efford video on this! over an hour long but went by in an instant. I like it a lot!

[@philippschreier398]

i just got to the difficulty section and am surprised to see that you thought of the smaller radius for higher tiers already when you recorded this video, the same thing i wrote about under the last video. seems like we thought the same thing ^^

[@GsRandom.]

Edit: Just got to 23:40, now I feel silly for writing during the issue assessment part, as you basically pointed the increasing the requirements idea later at this point. Still gonna keep the comment for the rest of the potion and books idea I suppose. An idea I was just thinking for the XP problem, is to make so the XP needed for next level to grow at a square manner, doubling every time, which could make so very high levels are more difficult to reach. From there, potions and books XP gain would also somewhat get reworked, so there's an easier path is someone really needed to go for that XP farming later on, as well as earlier. So, for potions, they would give a fixed amount per effect, quantity of effects, variety, etc, but averaging the weights for a N XP gain, kinda like how the pricing works but not mattering if they're compatible or not, making so you'd get rewarded for finding the effects early game, tying with finding them in other bases too. Meanwhile, books could give % of XP, meaning that a small book could give 1-2% XP for example and that could mean way more in later levels, where the incentive to explore on your own is less, but if you want to level up they'd make for the quicker part, especially if you went for the massive books. It would also tie into making the book spawning skill not as useless considering everything. Problem would be finding a balance so levels don't grow too far out too quickly, perhaps maybe not doubling, but still I imagine that could work for the filling the skill tree problem vs choosing a path, doubling into fixing one of the useless skills in said tree.

[@blackhat4968]

I think everyone of your suggestions would help improve the balance of the game. As I said when you started the series, I Loved watching you play it but did not want to do it again myself. It looked like Just to much of a Grind. And it was. But it ended up being like a rollercoaster. A Long Slow Grind up the first hill, and once you reached that tipping point it was all down hill from there, with speed bumps for the daily garden harvest grind, and making the potions for the alchemy machine. Basically Bulk Brewing made it so it was too easy at that point.

[@shadowmage661]

I saw someone who is playing on suffering made a gardening macro lol. Really is super tedious after the first 5 days

[@KillrobPlays]

Yeah, the need for a script shows how flawed this is at the moment :D

[@irrelevantirrelevant7332]

There is a mod that automates harvest, watering and fertilising. Its one of the most popular mods. :D

[@chesshead]

There ought to be some sort of economy in which the price of things depends on the availability of them. If you make 500 stone skin potions, then they should become almost worthless. The more you make the less you can sell them for. Likewise, when merchants offer to sell you things, they ought to be reasonable with their prices. Ramping up the price is a lazy way of making the game more difficult. I'd like to see customers be more mysterious in what they want. Some might be completely indecipherable or mute, but still possible to work out what they want if you max out the skill that allows you to make mistakes (could play something like Wordle). Each mistake could elicit a response which gives another clue about what they want. Gardening should be semi-automatable, if that's a word. Water all, fertilize all, harvest all etc. I would like the bones to be movable, so you can sweep them out of the way gradually. Some of the ingredient paths are too weird but obviously there are many ingredients and they all should have unique paths. I'd like to see crazy paths when you combine multiple ingredients at the same time. Simple paths for single ingredients.8 general directions each with maybe 5 levels of curvature and 3 distances would give 120 basic paths, which is probably plenty.

[@KillrobPlays]

It would be pretty simple to make single-merchant potion sales scale down the price you get per potion for each potion added. However, making a bigger economy thing out of it that tracks potion availability will be a bigger can of worms and not as straight forward as that is an entirely new system to add and balance. :) I don't think their intent is to go for any garden automation, having put a lot of effort into the graphics and animation, they seem to want you to interact with it. Hence why I'm trying to come up with ways to do that which do not get tedious or dispassionate. :D The more difficult to figure out customers is an interesting idea! Not sure how you'd do that without that getting annoying, because you don't have the potions just lying around until the late game. So every one that isn't the solution will feel like wasted time?

[@PopesCol]

I love your videos, been following the series since the the first iteration but no one likes a limited skill tree. One of the most annoying things of other games is having to min max with no other option, having to follow the meta because the rest is so bad compared. Bulk Brewing should give the xp for the 5 potions you make or at least for the materials you use. How making the dificultes harder i would like to have changes on the map. Its something fixable and that wouldn't consume many resources. As you go up on difficulty you get more traps etc... So that you need more "skill" while brewing . On the rest i think we agree. But i really dont want to have a WOW or POE skill tree that doesn't let me get the full game and punish me for not going meta.

[@KillrobPlays]

That's fair enough that you don't like not getting all the skills :) my arguments stand however, not getting all the skills is good for replay value, role playing a certain type of alchemist, as well as making progression a meaningful choice. Same for bulk brewing, it giving full XP without any drawbacks it is terrible for the core gameplay loop.

[@fasolka1993]

I think you can send your feedback to the developers, because I don't think they will find your video on their own.

[@KillrobPlays]

They did receive the video a week in advance :) Also, someone's watching :P head over to the game's store page on Steam and see who's playing the game there ;D

[@Dyanosis]

And then you didn't even touch on the Alchemy Machine. That thing is so pointless. Literal tedium. Let's make Philosopher's salt something that people look at and go "holy god I'm not doing that". Literally potions with effects that make no sense to see how you get around a map. Like a potion with enlargement AND shrinking? The fuck kind of potion is that? Most of the Alchemy machine recipes, to me, are "I don't want to do that". And half of them make no sense. And the skill that increases salt production by up to 200% just makes it so you never have to make salts. In v1, at least for me, you always had to make salt. Void salt was actually useful for erasing path. But now it's just "here's 30k, don't come back". I swear, it's like the devs totally missed the memo that the point of a mechanic should have you coming back, not be a one-off stupid tedium "why am I playing this game" mechanic. Speaking of salts - I don't think I've seen you or any other Potion Craft KZbinr need to ever use Void Salt. Key word - "need". Completely useless salt. Path is too far? Just ladle. Just started your potion with your first ingredient? Just abandon it. What's one ingredient now vs the dozens it took to make this useless salt? Plus moon salt and sun salt just... alternate which way the potion spins? What sense does that make? Why is the sun clockwise while the moon is counter clockwise? Sure, rotating your potions allows you to change the trajectory of ingredients, but does it really matter? Are you really, honestly, trying to make that 1-ingredient PoS potion for a measly amount of money? Why use an expensive salt when I could just add another cheap, low tier ingredient? How about stupid potion requirements? "I need a potion of necromancy that is 1 ingredient, I'm allergic to salt and I really like Fluffbloom, so make sure there's plenty of that". Their code literally has no considerations for what is actually possible to do in the game. They just allow the requirements to be pulled, at random, from a pool of requirements, that may have no relevancy to what can be done. Or asking for ingredients that you haven't even had the ability to see yet. "I really want Grave Truffle" but yet you've not even leveled up the Shroom Vendor to even encounter it yet. Or how about the insanely stupid "I need your weakest potion because this is a delicate matter". Most delicate matters I know of require the strongest ingredients. Have a bad headache? You take a stronger relief pill. Want to get drunk quickly? Higher proof alcohol. That'd be like saying "I want you to make me your best tasting dish but use as little seasoning as possible". If it's my best tasting dish, it probably has quite a few seasons and I'm not about to skimp because your taste buds are shot. All that to say - it wouldn't be that hard to code the game to know what requirements are meaningful based on the potion request. Seriously - I can't make a fucking Acid Potion with only Tangleweed without salt. IT LITERALLY DOESN'T GO THAT WAY. Can we also talk about ladling? There's literally no reason not to ladle. There's no penalty for ladling too much. Just throw in another ingredient. It doesn't worsen your potion. Doesn't water it down. If anything, it helps you get a stronger potion and then that potion never gets weaker as a result of more ladling. Like making a 5-effect potion. Let's go all the up then ladle all the way back. Then all the way left, then ladle back. Now all the way right. Now ladle back. Now down to poison. It's stupid. Your potion is 98% water and 2% ingredients at that point, how does it have ANY meaningful effects?

[@shadowmage661]

In this version you can save full salt recipes so it is much easier than before, can even mass profuce it, even so I barely touched them.

[@philippschreier398]

i get what you mean, but i wanted to touch on the potion of growing and shrinking. maybe that doesnt increase AND decrease your size but makes it so you can grow or shrink at will. at least thats how i rationalized that one. maybe that thought makes it less frustrating for you?

[@mertgoksel35]

Easy, the garden is such a chore (has a mod fix, i cant even say its bad design tho, maybe let us buy golems that would do them automatically? a cute mossy golem would look very good in this game i believe), the customers are useless, the merchants (non seed) are useless, seed merchants way too op because they are the main key to properly progress, the haggling mechanic is way too repetitive (adding more minigames would solve it somewhat),