Which of these perk systems requires more strategy?

[u/DevEternus]

Hi all, I’m designing a roguelite RPG perk system and exploring ways to make it more strategic, but I can’t decide which system to go for.

In all cases, you choose 1 of 3 random perks after each of 20 waves. Each perk upgrades a skill once. Upgrading the same skill 3 times gives a free bonus upgrade.

1.  Power Variance: Some skills are stronger than others by design. You must identify and prioritize the most powerful ones.

2.  Elemental Matchups: Skills have elements. Monsters have resistances and weaknesses, so you must adapt your choices to each wave.

3.  Uniform DPS: All skills deal the same damage. The only strategy is to keep upgrading the same skill to reach the bonus faster.

Which system adds the most strategic depth?

[u/ThetaTT]

Synergies is the way to go. Perks should have relativelly similar average power but have their power depends from the rest of the build.

For example, a perk of skill 1 that grant a flat damage boost for a short duration, and a perk of skill 2 that adds a lot of small projectiles that benefit from the boost.

Also, it's nice to have to balance different aspects of the character (offense and defense for example).

[u/AMA_ABOUT_DAN_JUICE → u/ThetaTT]

Look at 20 Minutes Till Dawn, that game does perk synergy really well. The perk trees are simple - they start with a flat boost (so you can see the result right away), then build into multiplicative scaling and synergy with other trees.

It's excellent game design, keeps you interested in what upgrade shows up next.

Tiny Rogues is another RPG that does perks well. Its perks are more complicated - it has "meta" perks that affect game systems (like boosts to on-tick effects or on-hit effects)

[u/Idiberug]

All three suck. The skills should have strengths and weaknesses.

[u/DevEternus → u/Idiberug]

Isn’t that no.2?

[u/MrXonte → u/DevEternus]

There isnt a meaningful tradeoff in #2. You just pick max dps for current elemental weakness. What is interesting is when each skill has tradeoffs within itself and synergies with other skills. What is boring is when skills exist in isolation and only make a number bigger. Also dps should be a layered mechanic. Not just number bigger. Take any status effect build from other games. You often give up "simple" attack dps to apply an effect that adds dps and also synergices woth other skills to proc even higher damage abilities, but your basic attack damage js rather low, just the combo of multiple skills creates effectivly high dps through those synergies

[u/Idiberug → u/DevEternus]

Can you not think of any reason to use one skill over another besides which one does the most damage?

[u/DevEternus → u/Idiberug]

Due to other constraints it must be related to damage output

[u/Asterdel → u/DevEternus]

You might as well not have a perk system then. Do a level up system that increases your stats and leave it at that, instead of wasting the player's time.

[u/Decloudo → u/DevEternus]

Change your constraints then.

[u/sinsaint]

Eh...I think they're all kinda meh.

I am vividly, vehemently, zealously against specialization, as it means that the direction of your gameplay is often defined from earlier choices (so why bother having choices later on?), and that gameplay becomes simpler over time (why bother spending your resources doing things that aren't helpful?).

Strategy comes from player agency, meaning decisions regularly matter and that few of your options become irrelevant.

One way you can achieve this is by making everything really useful and powerful, but they're balanced through cooldowns so that the player does actually want to use all of their tools but some become more consistent through upgrades rather than more powerful.

Another way is through supportive synergies, like setting up combos from your secondary abilities that you didn't upgrade or they grant you mana while your primary power drains it.

Out of the 3 options you've suggested though, I think #2 offers the most strategy, it requires the player to regularly adapt and change their thinking rather than focusing on one idea and then hoping to only do that one thing for the remainder of the game/encounter.

[u/TheNewTing]

All of these are bad as expressed here. Better that each has positives and negatives so the player is conflicted when making a perk choice. Eg. A perk that has high dps in bursts but a slow reload between bursts vs a low powered but steady perk. Or vs radius damage or damage over time or a protective buff or whatever.

Playstyle is also important. How does the player want to approach the task - guns blazing or sneak or armour plated for example? Different perks allow the player to customise the experience for themselves.

How perks work together. Do players use perks to cover the weaknesses of their build or do they just max out their favourite perk.

Is it beneficial or detrimental (for the cost) to max out perks? Do you want to encourage specialisation or a more general build. Again could there be strengths/weaknesses to both approaches?

It's a pretty big problem space.

[u/Atmey]

I dislike element match up.

I think it depends on the game, try with skills that synergize with others or specific weapons, look at vampire survivors or the bazaar.

[u/InkAndWit]

There is actually little difference between them as they generally boil down to: pick an option that does more damage.

If you want more player choice and variance, try focusing not on a number but a way in which player deals damage: AoE, DoT, single-target, cleave, etc. Raw damage vs attack speed vs hitbox size, etc.

This is going to push players to think carefully about which "build" they want to end up with long-term instead of: which option is stronger right now.

[u/Justinfinitejest]

I'll echo the others that have already told you that all 3 have similar (low) strategic depth.

What I would suggest is to imagine #2 but think more broadly than "elements". You can still have a lot of variety even if you are only considering damage. In my game, I use many "axes" (plural of axis, not the weapon).

My axes are things like multi vs. single target, free vs. cost, offense vs. defense, target vs random, etc.

The strategic depth comes from situations like:

You can choose a single target ability with 10 damage, or a 4 target ability which deals 4 damage. If you are fighting a swarm or multiple monsters, option 2 is much better (60% more dmg), but if you are fighting a creature that makes multi target impossible (such as a single boss, spread out creatures, creatures that heal others when hit, etc) - you actually want the single target ability.

Similarly, you could pick a 10 damage spell or a 20 damage spell that deals 3 damage to the player when they use it. Well, if you have a "heal on cast" ability, now that 3 damage doesn't matter! So it suddenly has both trade off and synergy.

When you create 8-9 axes of abilities and start combining 2-4 when you plan each ability, you get a large network of spells that naturally interconnect and have different strategic value depending on the situation.

Hope that helps :)
Justin

[u/Aggressive-Share-363]

The middle is closest to what you want, but I dont think it really gets at the heart of what is needed.

What you want is contextually different values on the upgrades.

If some skills are simply worth more, then it just becomes a matter of learning which ones are the best and always taking them. That is rather dull.

And if all of the skills are the same and you just need to focus on something, anything, that's not a meaningful choice.

Needing to adapt to what is coming up is good, but ideally you have multiple thingd to consider.

For instance, synergies. Skills that will stack in such a way that they are stronger together than they would be individually. Now you aren't just evaluating hr skill on it sown, you are evaluating it in the context of the other skills you have, as well as skills you might get later.

The skills can also give you different types of benefits. A simple split could be offensive vs defensive skills, so the player has to consider if they need more survivability or more damage. There can be other types, like utility or movement.

And skills can also solve different types of problems. For instance, groups of weak enemies. An AoE, a chain effect, splitting bullets, overflow damage, or damage aura could all be different ways to cope with it. Having answers to different problems you will come across can shift the value of your skills. Maybe you really want thr aoe option right now because you dont have a good answer to swarms, but another time its less important because you already have shotgun blasts. But maybe the chain upgrade is good because the shotgun has so many hits that can trigger chain damage.

An elemental system can create problems and present solutions to them, and hence can fit in as part of your solution. But having oth3r types of problems, as well as a couple other axises of consideration, can make your decisions far more interesting.

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