I see a lot of posts on this wiki about seeds that give overpowered items. These greatly reduce the difficulty of the game, but due to the popularity of these posts this seems to appeal to a great deal of the player base. Therefore, I propose the addition of what are effectivly Anti-Challenges, that reduce the difficulty of the game. Things like sadder bosses, night vision, large portions, or thick armor could function as counterparts to their respective challenges, with the cost of your score being reduced by a multiplier, similarly to how challenges increase your score. Perhaps this could only be unlocked after finishing a run with default settings, to preserve the learning curve and difficulty that PD has to offer. What do you guys think?
Sounds like a good idea. My nephew dropped the game pretty quickly, after so many early deaths
Or maybe PD just needs a bottom banner of subway surfers gameplay 💀
It’d be interesting to see a game mode in which the challenge is seeing how quickly you can curbstomp a boss
Not a bad idea, but a bit against the tradition of Rogue-likes, which tend to be punishing. On one hand, the game can be really frustrating (it took me 60 tries before winning, and I still lose in very frustrating ways). On the other hand, maybe the game is just not for everyone?
Perhaps this could only be unlocked after finishing a run with default settings
Nah, I think the game just needs easy mode for the casuals. Whether that’s broken into separate challenges or just a single mode. I know people who have tried the game and lost interest because they’re not into even the default 0-challenge difficulty.
But it could also be a separate fork of the game entirely. Heck there probably already is one. YAPD appears to have easy mode.
I’ve been playing a lot of Caves of Qud recently and it has an interesting mechanic that I think is absolutely great for newer players.
You are offered to start a classic game which is the standard one life, perma-death you expect from a rogue-like game. Or you can choose the Roleplay game where you can make a checkpoint at the last settlement you visited. This means that if you die on an outting, you will roll back to the last time you visited a settlement without losing all your progress.
This could be easily be implemented into Pixel Dungeon since every new zone has a trader which could act as a checkpoint.
This allows for the feeling of progress and also allows newer players to experience and learn the deeper zones and levels of the game without the risk of losing everything and starting over after every death.
I’m a huge fan of this since Caves of Qud is such a deeply complex game and there’s so much to learn and explore.
I see what needs one would want to address with this, but doing something along the lines of anti-challenges isn’t the viable solution for me. If you are seeking to make the game more accessible to people who learn slower, it’d be better to make an easier difficulty and absolutely not lock it after a normal game. Other than that, one should realise why challenges are not just a harder difficulty: they add new problems that you need to include in your playstyle. Increasing armour stats doesn’t really do that. Neither does making bosses easier. Seeds are popular because they give people a powerful set of specific tools. In the game, that is mostly done with - surprise surprise -classes, and now - trinkets. Maybe there could be a feature that’d allow you to try some specific enchantment or whatever, but I don’t feel like there is really such an urgent need for it since seed seekers are there. Unless you want to allow people to try new additions to the game so that they can give more feedback on them and see what has changed.
Unlocking them after a normal run was just a suggestion, anti challenges could be implemented without that restriction, of course. The whole idea was that players who struggle with the game don’t have to rely on seed seekers. Even with anti challenges implemented, seed seekers could still do their thing. This isn’t trying to replace seed seekers, just help with an underlying issue.
But what’s the point of giving them a choice on what easening factors to choose? It’s overcomplicating things for newer players. Just make an easy mode if there is a need for that.
Great Idea. Sounds easy enough to implement, and would add a lot iof variety. I could see mixing some challenges with anti-challenges to create some interesting runs.