@@milotraballano6314 if they are no longer craftable after the update, they should be converted to soul shards to prevent exactly that. Cake seals are craftable en-mas now, so otherwise you could do 100 and be set for life.
I don’t think they should be made uncraftable. But at a minimum thru should be craftable on lower difficulties. Casual players aren’t playing for the same reasons. Some just want to run through and loot as much as possible w/out a grind.
For the ascensions, have you ever considered allowing a player to cash in their soul flame somehow and base the reward off the number of stacks? That way a player has the opt-in decision of when they don't want to risk a high stack number and then start again after. Love the new update!
This seems cool, especially when the rewards for reaching the next level are visible. Because then you always have the decision of "do i cash in now or push one more for the next higher reward tier" So if you cash it in at some block, the gui could show you: Get X now or do another stack and get X+Y later instead." Although then, it suddenly is about loot again, and not just hardcore competition between friends
I like this system combined with the negative modifier each failure. Then, rather than losing progress towards your cash-out it's just a little harder to gain progress
Transmogs are pointless in single player unless you’re a completionist. It’s a poor reward. There’s already enough in the pack that’s focused on multiplayer to the detriment of single player.
Fun idea to make the cake seals special, in random normal rooms in normal vaults a cake will spawn (only one per vault), when you find and click the cake you get the cake seal, so you need to play normal vaults to get cake vaults
Ooo, ok, that is an interesting idea. Hard part is introducing players to that, unless it's an (optional) quest and cakes don't start appearing until a certain level.
Ascension feels like a completionist type of thing, so I see no issue with it being difficult. I’d love to see increased artifact chance over buffed loot though! That’s my biggest struggle in late game.
I think you should have the soul flame return to 0 if you dont complete because the challenge is to see how many completions in a row you can get not how many you can get while getting a few losses.
I like that! In terms of leaderbord that would create oppurtunities for categories. "highest streak, 0 losses" , "Highest streak, any # losses" etc. I totally agree that it shouln't just become loot meta@@vodskall85
Actually I agree with this one, it doesn’t make sense that it still retains value, with the fact you can buy your body back and stuff, maybe there is room for a more hardcore aspect to VH
Does it need to separate failing the vault vs failing the objective? I don't think you should be punished as harshly for failing on rng then if you were to die. eg: you are on a scav and need that one last creeper eye. so you kiwi'd yourself down to the wire and decide to leave the vault as a last resort because you can't get it... should you be punished to the same extent as if you were to die? For me, if you die the soul flame should be reset back to 0 as your soul has died. If you escape you should be a minor debuff/s (ie the burn) as you haven't killed your soul, just weakened it.. by then completing successive vaults you should be able to 'heal' your soul and remove the debuff/s
I saw someone say that for every completion on ascension, the player can chose a random buff or debuff from a pool to add to the flame. So instead of scaling everything with a stack, you can have the option to chose from +1 ornate, +20% xp or +1 mob spawn in pois (just a few examples). This would would help add a lot of replay ability and could let the player build the flame up to suit their play-style
I honestly liked the idea of losing your total streak after failing one ascension vault because that also helps to justify the reward of the loot from the growing chests as your streak gets higher. Could this still be a possible option, like a command a player could set?
That’s what I’m saying! If this is an optional feature then I want it to be hardcore. Give us more loot for the streak but take it all away if we fail. Don’t like that feature, then don’t run ascension vaults. Everyone wins!
If you’re making Cake vaults not craftable, which sounds like a great idea to make them more special and exciting, then the reward could be higher, maybe dropping the standard crake from 40 to around 30, as in your streams it’s not often you even reach 40 with the desire to loot more alongside finding cakes
Hi Iskall, I think the 30% loss of your stack instead of losing it all should be the opposite, and you'd keep only 30%. No emotional devastation, but still a proper loss to balance the gains as it is opt-in. Otherwise it just won't be as exciting IMO. Or alternatively, add a capacity to turn the vault hardcore and you risking to lose all of your progress, but your reward is multiplied too, or your ascension goes faster.
My gut said "lose 50%" which would be more or less exactly between those 2 extremes. And "losing half" feels like a nice round number to me, more so then 30%
@@Qqmenisa hmm... add transmogs that scale the vault but not scale the vault too much and not as the stacks go higher i would say and have a special ability which you need echo pogs (yes MULTIPLE since this would be too op without MULTIPLE) to put on armor to increase the transmog's power
I really like the transmog idea! It would bring a cool aspect to be able to have something you can show off to others rather than just a number on the soul flame. It should be like every 15 or 25 you get to you get a new transmog for a certain armour/weapon and eventually you unlock the whole set.
I think a nice medium would be to not scale loot inside the vaults and instead scale the completion crate, that would also be thematically linked because ascension is all about completion. Transmogs would also be a nice reward xD Also I really liked that it would reset to 0 on fail as that makes trying for a high score far more fun in my opinion, and was what I was more excited about over the loot :( As another side note I think cakes could be made a tad bit more powerful if they aren't craftable anymore, it's not every vault you run into an ornate village at the end
I think loot would be a good idea, although perhaps it only changes the loot in the completion crates. I think that it would be a good idea for the loot and xp to scale very slowly. Also, the transmog idea sounds great, they could look like crowns or something. :D
Transmogs are a great idea of rewarding the experience with soulflame, I do feel like it's important to have some kind of reward on top of just the experience gain for the single players
Perhaps if you fail the flame modifier thing, you don't lose anything. Just that you get a curse added to the flame. This makes it much more difficult to progress and would eventually make it imposible to complete. If you want to give it another try without curse, you can craft a new one and start from 0 again
I think it would make sense, if the debuffs would be removed, when you complete the vault, that you have failed on. That would Balance the mechanic. Otherwise it would probably just become the meta, if there was no penalty for losing (other than the 30% debuff I mean).
In a similar vein I was thinking you could remove it by spending additional soul flames. Like if the flame is never really consumed what do you do with multiple?
I really enjoy the update to the cake vault. I was actually planning on doing a “Let them Eat Cake” play through of vaulthunters where I do every vault as a cake vault. Then I heard you were changing it and making it better and I’m so excited to jump into that
I don't have any strong opinions about how the loot for ascension vaults should work, but I am a little sad it doesn't completely reset when you fail. Also I really enjoyed the background track in this video, felt like we were having a design meeting in a cozy tavern haha
I think the coolest way to implement soul flame is akin to rogue-like maps. You choose the path you want to take. When entering the vault, you have a prompt of 1 of 3 random negative modifiers and these are retained on the soul flame. You then have to do this every 3 vaults (or however many you think would fit) and so the difficulty is of course continuously getting harder, but it’s more strategic. And if you get a roll of 3 really bad modifiers, it’s unlucky, but it takes skill to work with that. And of course, the modifiers stay on the crystal until you lose. Maybe once you get to 20 or 30 stacks, you have to put on a legendary negative modifier. Some examples could be. Locked Out - can’t leave the vault. Feeling Blue - red trinket is disabled. Red Hot - blue trinket is disabled. No Way Home - compass is disabled. Where the Wild Things Are - 10x wild stacks Gladiator - 25% that every mob is a champion. Dungeon Dweller - cannot complete the objective without completing one dungeon (kill the champion). etc. etc. Obviously some of these are detrimental, but it’s also 1 of 3 choices and it really requires skill to surpass the vault despite these circumstances. Plus, each of these normal and legendary negative modifiers will make each Ascension run feel unique and different. This could be expanded upon by letting there be rare drops (that only drop in ascension runs) that allow a reroll of the negative modifier. I think it’s honestly best that you lose all stacks on death, but maybe you can lose 30% of stacks if you decide to leave the vault before completion. Then you can really weigh your options of is this worth it? And if you’re about to fail, you make a mad dash to the portal. Maybe disable the compass once you get to higher tiers of soul flame so you actually have to plan out your route in the vault. Obviously the community is going to hate losing all stacks, they want this to be meta, not a high risk, high reward challenge. Another note, I think the increased loot is GREAT, but needs to be scaled back. I think mostly the first 20-30 vaults should be equivalent to like the first 10 vaults now where you just SEE increased XP (while there is unseen increased vault loot), but then once you get to 30 stacks and the vault is really hard: boom you get that glorious cascading explosion of loot and the hard journey has been so worth it and you can really start profiting from your hard work.
If the XP and loot increases then you should lose all stacks when you die. It's a late-game optional thing, so it should be a high risk vs high reward. People also need to realize this modpack is in open-beta, each update is going to change a lot, and like you said, you can choose to not update.
Yeah it seems to me like this is the area of the game where "lose more" mechanics are appropriate, since it's meant to be a challenge. If people really don't want to lose all progress then negative modifiers or curses would be a good idea I think, and perhaps you can relieve yourself of them by then successfully completing another ascension.
@@paprika6282 As has been pointed out, if people don't want to lose progress on their soul flame then they don't have to do it. This is entirely an OPTIONAL part of the game!
Loosing the streak upon dying makes perfect sense for an optimal challenge. I would suggest starting the first vault with like "-50% everything"(chests, item rarity, mobs strength etc) to start of the runs with a bit behind vaults, aiming for higher streaks to get better loot after the "bad" loot in the first vaults
I like the idea of it as a "challenge" that will grant a reward. While I dont have a serious opinion, I liked the way that it reset if you fail. But i would keep the loot bonus as a rewards, since the objective is harder aswell (and I think that is a very good change) I would also make cake give more rewards, with being harder to get
I do think loot and experience should still be increased by the soul flame. Leaderboards/competitions/transmogs aren't going to be a very enticing reward for some players (especially in single-player). I like the idea of adding a permanent negative modifier to the soul flame whenever you fail a vault. That would mean eventually you'd end up with a flame with so many negative modifiers that you'd basically want to start over. Maybe once you reach a certain number of failed attempts on a soul flame, (maybe 3?) they could start pulling from the same pool of debuffs as when you fail a vault god quest, since some of those debuffs are especially nasty. Depending on how bad the negative modifiers are, a system like that might even be able to take the place of reducing the number of flame stacks on a soul flame when you fail.
Figured you’d have a direct line to Iskall yet here you are in the comments 😂 I agree about the single player aspect. It’s a completely different experience w/ different priorities.
I like the idea of ascension getting more loot the more stacks you have. This combined with increasingly difficult objectives makes it balanced but also an actual challenge. I do think the amount of stacks you lose should be higher or even all of them. And then balance it out so it is almost impossible to reach above say 20 stacks so it doesn't take forever to get them back. This also contributes to the challenge part.
If ascension vaults are supposed to be a challenge thing, good way to encourage to play them would be automatic afterlife modifier. In that way the only thing you gamble is the number of stacks, which makes it more accessible for those of us who do not excel in vaulting. The question of greater-rewards vs just-a-challenge is interesting, because to me current cake vaults are more of a group activity. So with ascension vaults being progressively more rewarding, I would get an solo option to loot. Not one I necessarily need but it would be nice. I personally like very much, that all the vault seals are being craftable. I am not opposed to finding some as loot/merchandise, but there should still be option to craft them. The obvious answer how to limit craftability to me is a pog in recipe.
Transmogs are always a nice side perk, but maybe (if viable), have it scale the rarity of room spawns. So, if an Omega room has a natural 5% chance to spawn in any vault, 10 stacks might bring that chance up to closer to 15% essentially in the same way Item Rarity works on gear drops.
What you could also do if you fail the soulflame is that it "extinguishes", so you can't build stacks anymore. And instead you can still put it on a crystal like 5 times to get the buff, and then it breaks and turns into a trophy that you can show off.
i think the best thing for the sole flame is to completely reset. its an opt in that spouse to be challenging. you can maby make permanent buffs that you get once you reach a certain namder of runs so when the flame is reset you still got some cined of progres and you will be more excited to run more times edit: another option and it will probably delay the update. to make it into a rouglike. every time you complet a flame runt you need to choose a rundom buf and or debuf. the gole is to get the farthest and you get cool reword or trasmog every 5 levels
i think with the new cake vaults + architect vaults and then divine paradox late game, there isnt a need for the ascension to have cascading chests, XP should increase no matter what, but the idea of the transmogs is what I was hoping for, get to a certain stack amount (with increased difficulty in objs) and get rewarded with a cool transmog to flex, you could even add something similar to the charms, just something floating above your head which signifies how far you have gone
Several thoughts here: 1) transmogs for ascension progression is absolutely a yes, what better way to flex on your friend than an ascension transmog 2) loot should definitely scale with the ascension level, it just feels more rewarding and makes the ascension more than just a number. 3) the penalty for failing an ascension should be lose 50% of your stacks rounded up, it’s just more intuitive for the player, and is very punishing, but won’t lead to as much of the total emotional devastation that leads to people permanently rage quitting. 4) thoughts on negative modifiers, or burns: when you fail an ascension, you lose 50% of your stacks, and your next ascension vault is burned. This one negatively modified vault gives you an opportunity to “rekindle” your soul flame. Completion of this harder vault allows you to keep your stack loss at 50%, if you fail, you lose 100% of your stacks. This redemption vault allows failing to still be super punishing, but still allows for a little bit of recovery so that you don’t feel as bad after you failed a vault due to nasty RNG
I think if the loot increases in amount and rarity the higher the number, then it would be very similar to cake vaults. So I think having a special reward when you reach certain levels like you said (certain transmogs at level 10,20,etc.) would make it more like a leaderboard than a meta.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I was watching, It just feels like a longer term cake vault with the way chests would most likely scale. At that point it would be so much better to just do a cake vault, quicker reward. That transmogs are a great idea however. Although I think they could be done with important numbers, say 85 for example. At 85 you unlock a golden carrot transmog for your helmet. Maybe there are important numbers in the game development's history? Maybe another number could be 70, referencing the 1/70 treasure scrolls are, and how Etho got 3, so far, and getting a transmog that fits with that. Last idea for a number being whatever chance it is to get a Drowned Hide, in reference to Iskall's solo series where there was the curse of the Drowned Hide.
I worry that for the soul flame/ascension mechanic it could easily be a must-do vault if chests scale with stacks. If the only down side is loosing x number of stacks and buying your body back for say 100 gold, what's to say that the stacks you ran before you died didn't already pay for your body? That would mean there would be no reason not to be running ascension vaults, especially as you soul flame wouldn't reset completely after your loss either. I think transmogs for certain stacks reached is a great idea and goal to aim for and increased xp also seems like a great incentive. You could maybe try to "increase the loot" by instead of scaling chests, every 10 stacks for example, a random omega room gets added to the soul flame - kinda like inscriptions. Then you would know that every time you ran an ascension vault you had the chance of finding a guaranteed omega room somewhere in the vault?
Maybe, instead of making chests better in the vault for every stack, you could instead improve the completion crates for each stack, it would make it still have the challenge/ difficulty, but there would also be a decent reward for casuals
Well a bit more stuff in crates wouldn't amount to the chest loot at endgame where we can mine hundreds and hundreds of chests. Just very underwhelming
but then it would make these a really bad and slow versions of cake vaults right 🤔also adding these on the cake vaults would make it either to op because of the stacks of both objectives or not work in harmony and be wasted
Ascension vaults sound like they have a similar parallel with Cake vaults, in that they both are about getting higher streaks for better loot. However, Cake vaults are every successful room makes the next room more powerful, while Ascension vaults are every successful vault makes the next vault more powerful. The concern with Ascension vaults restarting on a loss is that they are far more time consuming to grind than Cake vaults, with Cake vault having much faster gratification at the cost of each vault starting over the streak, while a loss of an Ascension vault could be hours (if not days) of play time feeling lost. To counter this, it seems that Ascension vaults are instead potentially more rewarding overall, leading to a greater risk versus reward. The safety net of a 30% penalty on loss will help balance this risk and dampen the sense of time wasted on loss, instead leading to motivation towards recovery of progress loss instead of starting from scratch. If you want to implement a negative modifier to with each defeat, note that this is punishing losers. It can be used to force players to start over, with excessive negative modifiers stacking up over time, to the point where it is best to begin anew. Alternatively, it can add challenge if maybe the negative modifier is eventually alleviated, perhaps after a certain amount of successes. The implementation of negative modifiers is more dependent on the direction you want to take the Ascension vaults, with these "Burns" being an interesting twist from the way mobs scale in cake vaults. The scaling objective can help with balancing to prevent the Ascension vaults from becoming the meta vault, creating a soft cap on how high you can climb due to objective becoming too difficult to complete, but it can be difficult to find and balance this soft cap with the incredible scaling at max levels. A balanced soft cap for level 90-100 players can be drastically different from what the soft cap for level 100 players with optimized gear, let alone the fresh level 65 players that first gain access to the Ascension vaults, so an exponential scaling of objective may help alleviate that. To further potentially avoid making Ascension vaults meta, a following of the Cake vaults in being difficult to obtain, such as through bounties, Treasure chest, or another means, may help. The record of all time high on the soul flame is a good addition. Many developers seem to not put enough emphasis on such quality of life changes, and it is great to see such implementations. More Transmogs are always fun, but it is up to you as a developer on if that is where you want to focus your resources. Lastly, I am going to vent about the Vault Forge here, because I am not really sure where else to do so. The base concept is enticing with the idea of improving ones blacksmithing skills to become a master artisan and craft amazing gear, but the current implementation does not feel satisfying. Instead it feels like a large investment of resources to result in mostly gear that is to be recycled, and the optimal means of utilizing the forge is to just grind proficiency in a single item, such as swords, and to be a specialist. On a larger server this may be useful, with different players having different specializations, but for smaller servers, casual players, and single player worlds, it lacks motivation. Why try to craft, when I can instead just hunt for ornate chests, and grind my gear that way? While it may be time consuming and resource draining to develop a new system and interface, greater variety in the vault forge can bring greater depth to the game outside of the vault, similar to how the vault tools and jewels have done. The ability to guarantee a minimum tier based on resources invested, with the base crafting still being able to make scrappy or better, but perhaps a recipe utilizing an echo pog and specific focuses for a rare or better piece of gear, and one utilizing an Omega Pog (or multiple Omega Pogs) for guaranteed Omega gear (or epic, and having Omega gear not be craftable), would allow for more control over ones gear, and less rng while smithing. The resources to craft the gear may need to very from the ones suggested, instead relying on various recycled material, focuses, gems, other resources to be implemented, etc. Additionally, the resources may need to be rarer and or more expensive than the ones currently implemented for crafting gear. The concept of proficiency can remain in place, with better proficiency still being able to improve rolls, but instead gate tiers behind levels, and maybe nerfing or adjusting it overall, since higher quality gear can be guaranteed crafted. The different tiers of gear you craft can provide different proficiency experience, but crafting many lower tiers and utilizing/draining more resources on lower quality gear may boost proficiency faster, but poor pieces may give significant less after reaching the next tier proficiency. So grinding scrappy gear may help reach "Maker" tier, but provide very little in the grind from "Maker" to "Apprentice", instead gaining more proficiency exp through crafting common or rare gear. The crafting of scrappy gear is still worth it as a point to drain resources, since your higher proficiency has a slight chance of boosting gear, and it still gains exp, but if you are afford to make higher tier gear, it is a better investment. This is to create a form of scaling and a feeling of progress still being made. Further more, I think it would be best to put trinket crafting in another block, as crafting a delicate pair of wings, Treasure goggles, and a crystal ball do not really fit with the roaring flame of a forge crafting metal armor. Last note, remember that this is a PvE game. You are not playing AGAINST other people, but instead WITH other people. Balance does not need to reflect games such as World of Warcraft, where there is strict competition and has to additionally account for things such as PvP, but can instead be more lenient. It can reflect games like Warframe, where balance can can be much looser, taking a back seat to fun, enjoyment, and fulfillment. It matters less that there is a meta, but that there is instead synergistic combos and mechanics that are viable and enjoyable. I am not saying to abandon balance, because structure is still needed to make the game have a fulfilling feel, but that it matters not how strong and overpowered us vault hunters are, the vault dwellers will never complain. Thank you for making such a fun and amazing game. The rapid evolvement shows progress and motivated developers, and is desired in a game still under development. Vault Hunters is not just unique as a Minecraft Mod, it is unique as a game in and of itself, and I look forward to every update.
Yeah, the older versions being available is great, but some updates can also be kinda disheartening. E.G. in my case I was playing the modpack for a few weeks and then for a new update it basically was „huge changes, best to start a new world from scratch“ which felt kinda meh to me personally. EDIT: In such cases it‘s a choice of „keeping the world and missing out on great changes“ or „get great, new changes but lose the work you‘re already attached to. So for me it kinda became a „wait for the modpack to stabilise and then play it“
For ascensions: What about giving out CROWNS every 5 ascension vaults? (in the completion crate). We all know we like crowns. Maybe even Mumbo will come play an ascension now. (It's still a hardcore thing, the crown is a pure FLEX and has the number on it)
Being part of a living game is hard and different from what most of us are used to. Even the pace of MC updates is slow enough for most people to be okay with it. I mostly play Destiny 2, which is a living game that has updates every few months. It's frustrating for sure, and sometimes I hate the changes. But I've played for 10 years because it's living. If I don't like a change, I know it's only temporary. The world that the changes are part of is dynamic and keeps me engaged. You don't have to love every chapter to love the story.
That said, my PC isn't fast enough to run Vault Hunters, so I'm still waiting for the "vanilla" version to come out. OR for a hardware upgrade. I love the concept but I have very little experience playing the mod pack without crashing 😆
My PC can handle destiny okay, but that's the limit of it's abilities. Any time I try even exploring the overworld in vault hunters it crashes. After a few days I finally got a vault opened and stepping into the portal crashed it immediately 🤷♂️ I'm still new to PC gaming though. Just built this machine last year
@@emmittforbush1656 You might want to check the RAM and stuff that Vault Hunters uses. As well as the amount of RAM your PC has in total. Sounds like it's an issue related to that.
For the soul flame. Every 10 levels (or whatever) add a debuff ( a burn). It will increase the difficulty while still being able to have increased loot.
Here's my idea: The soul flame would gain stacks like normal but at certain intervals you gain a negative modifier to the vault (every 5 or 10 completions for example). You still get increased loot, the vaults become harder as the stacks go up, and you lose a percentage on failure. I think the burn fits this better than a burn when you fail. The more stacks you get, the hotter the soul flame, the more you burn in the vault. Without thinking too hard myself, it sounds balanced and makes vaults more interesting without having to work around time so much with longer vault objectives. or Keep it how it was introduced in the update video, difficulty stays the same and vaults get more loot the higher stacks you accumulate and if you fail you lose the soul flame and the stacks. I think this is fair enough if the loot is scaling with the vaults. You're testing your skill to get more loot. If you can't finish your punishment should be the base amount of loot again, not increased loot but less than the one you failed in. If you make the soul flame not punishing enough, it will be the only thing people run to get loot. It makes it no longer an optional mechanic in the game, but a required one to get the most amount of loot the fastest.
I love the Burn idea. If it is just 30% loss, then I'd always use my soulflame on vaults regardless of what I'm trying to do or collect. A burn would be cool because then I'd have a reason to start a new soul flame
I love how you have been including your community throughout this whole development process. You are amazing! Thank you for heading such an amazing mod-pack! I feel that the ascensions need to loose more stacks when you have a loss. Only loosing 30% can be such a minor change to the loot you may receive. I also like the idea of the failed ascension adding a negative "burn" to the stacks. This gives the longer lasting ascensions more risk the more they are failed. You have also mentioned making the loot grow less, I am not sure how much it grows by at the moment, but if you are concerned that all looting will happen within ascension vaults making the loot grow less with each stack will be better in my opinion. I also have the need to mention i love the concept of putting the, now amazingly powerful, cake vault behind the need to find the seal. This makes it a great item to search for along with the other powerful items such as keys. Thank you again for the amazing opportunity to play this amazing creation you have concocted! My best wishes go to you are your team!
My thoughts: Maybe lose 50% on lose - 30 is too non-hardcore. (as this is supposed to be hardcore) Some kind of "Loot Quality" or "Loot Quantity" stat increases by 1% additively per ascension level. Feels like an increase but not too fast. Like x2 loot on level 100 I think is ok? OR/AND the same for EXP
Transmog idea is great for the ascension! I imagine it starting as a scrappy looking armor that slowly looks better and better as you reach higher tiers
My concern with making loot scale on soul flame is that I believe it ends up being an overall lose-lose situation. Failing and either losing all stacks of soul flame (especially if it is a botched failure such as a computer crash, server lag, or bad luck of impossibly epic proportion (le creeper eye)) or even losing part of the stacks will never feel good if there is scaling loot involved. As you said in your video, it would easily become the META and would then be frustrating if you lost 10, 20, 30++ levels of vault loot scaling. Maybe as compensation, the objectives don't scale in difficulty as fast but maybe curses get applied to the vault (1 additional curse per X levels)? I believe there needs to be other rewards associated but especially rewards you can't get elsewhere. For example, what if each crystal completion MULTIPLIES the reward for bounties completed in soul flame vaults by 2-5% per level? Or, what if soul vaults had their own scaling, elevated bounties with good rewards similar to lost bounties? Additionally, what if the reward crates scale just like cake vaults do where you start getting high artifact chance + super loot if you are good at the game?
Looking forward to the update! As you say, anyone can choose to stay a version behind if they don't like the new update, but for the majority that like the direction, lets go!
Having a unique transmog be tied to soul flames (depending on how hard and possible it is) you could go 15/30/45/60 for the armor and then 75/90 for the weapons and off-hand. And at 100 you get a trophy or just a "I did 100 soul flames stacks and all I got was this stupid t-shirt" chestplate. Same can be done for the cake vaults (PLEASE IMPLEMENT THE CAKE TRANSMOG AS OBTAINABLE!)
Hi Iskall! What if instead of scaling the reward(amount of loot)per vault you have different benchmarks for the ascension. For example, maybe at 20 vaults completed in a row with no fails you get a crate that has some good reward in it, then the next crate is when you complete 30 or 40 vaults with no fails, etc. This could give a way to incentive the player into doing the ascension challenge and giving them a reward without it being too much
I feel like with such a feature the punishment should be equal to the challenge. We should have to crash all the way down or atleast most of the way with ascension. In my head I think the best balance would be lose 50% upon a loss and then if you lose twice consecutively it resets totally (allowing for intentional reset or a good balance for players in over their head) I don’t know if there’s any way to perfect a system before it hits the mass population but I’m excited for the change
I think the loot needs to grow. I can run a bunch of normal vault crystals to see what my streak would be. The loot needs to grow. What would be the point if there is not extra loot?
Made great friends Built a lot of stuff Tried and failed doing bid mods stuff hahah Got all the artifacts Bronze, silver, gold for the last boss Boss with friends Toons of vaults with friends Helping a ton of newbies Exploring the over world A lot of procrastination Made a shop Tried many skills Crafted a lot stuff Automated a ton of stuff Got stolen 180k items I… don’t know what else hahah
I really hope you guys keep the soulflames as a challenge thing and let it fail and return to 0. Its a risk vs reward type thing and i feel like its not very fun if you arent punished for failing it
When failing the Ascension, make it a choice. Put the crystal with Item A in an anvil and you loose 30% of your Ascension count. Put it with Item B in an Anvil to keep the Ascension count but add a negative modifier. The higher the Ascension, the higher the probability for a curse instead of a modifier. You have to do one of the two choices to make the crystal usable again.
This would make it a tactical choice and give the player the choice while keeping the intended challenge/punishment. And it would use mostly existing mechanics, keeping the development impact hopefully small.
And one more thing: Instead of a leaderboard, how about allowing the crystal to be turned into a special completion crate. This would destroy the crystal, but the higher the ascension, the better the loot pool of the crate.
I think the stack should increase loot by 1-2% each stack, similar thing with xp. transmog is a great idea. Maybe make cake seal a special item that can only be obtain from treasure chest, very rarely in bounties, and be purchased from the new vendor rooms. For the soul flame stack, I think reducing vault timer by 1-5 second each stack can add a lot more challenge.
You don't want to mess with the time of a vault. They want it to be, theoretically at least, infinitely stackable. Reducing the time will guarantee that you can only get so high!
My thoughts on ascension are that I like the idea that failing is penalised fairly highly. To me losing 50% of your stacks seems better than 30%, but I really truly absolutely hate the idea of adding a curse to the soul flame on failure. That makes all future runs “worse” and keeps the feel-bad from failing in every following run (if only I hadn’t failed this would be easier kind of feelings). I’d much rather one big “oh no! Oh well, new challenge! I guess it’s time to focus on upping my stacks again” moment that feels like you can get back to where you were before with some effort and time, rather than a permanent negative effect. Honestly I’d probably just scrap a soul flame if a curse got applied and start from scratch again. (Assuming that is possible) As someone who plays in single player, having no extra loot in ascension vaults makes them seem much less interesting. Leaderboards aren’t exciting if I’m the only one on them, and transmogs are fine but I have no one to show them off to and I already have favourite transmogs that I’ll likely use instead anyway. (Maybe the new transmogs would be my new favourites but everyone has their own style so this is unlikely to be the case for everyone and would be an underwhelming reward if you don’t like them as much.) I do appreciate that this is a mod pack designed to be played in multiplayer servers however so my view and play style may not be what you want to develop towards. Love the idea of keeping cake vaults kinda OP and making them non-craftable - would be a really exciting thing to find in bounties, vendoors and the like, kinda like how Chaos catalysts are at the moment. I get so excited at every chaos catalyst I get and I’d love to have more things that give that level of excitement in bounties etc!
i agree at least a 50% reduction for failing a run seems appropriate cake vaults being non-craftable is good cuz it has you explore other dimensions on the game
Perhaps the ascension gained when playing ascended vaults could be used to boost a vault crystal, so when the player gains ascension they can choose when to ‘combine’ their soul flame with a vault crystal. This in turn will greatly boost: loot quality and quantity, xp, etc. But reset the soul flames ascension. The issues are that it may be repetitive and inconvenient to run, say, 30 vaults with little to no loot or progression this could be counteracted by the quality and quantity of loot and xp for in the ascended vault.
I like the hardcore aspect of it. Reminds me of the other versions of VH. I like the challenge. And there are lots of things that give loot. Def be creative and let the reward be anything else. XP would be great at higher levels, or a transmog. Or little trophy statues etc. Let it be for fun and not ‘important’ :)
The problem with the soulflame vaults is that when you start, you will never run a vault without it. If you get to any reasonable stack and fail, and the only punishment is 30% of your stack, you will still rather play a 70% stacked vault than any other 0%. If there isn't any permanent "damage" to the soulflame, a player will be stuck between his/her top doable vault stack and its 70% (get to my limit, fail, get back to my limit, fail...). But you are always pulling at least 70% extra loot compared to a normal vault. A fail needs to somehow damage the soulflame. Heck, give it some "repair slots" and "break" it every time the run fails. You want it to end at some point. So you can start again. If you just want to keep track of your streak that can go forever, I suggest a StreakBook item. If you take it with you into any vault, it just takes note of whether you failed or not (You don't have to take it with you so you can do some shenanigans challenges with your friends without breaking your streak when you die). StreakBook is just a streak counter, not a vault changer.
When it comes to cake vaults, The idea of making them not craftable is amazing. It makes it rare and special. Now it's just another choice, like scavenger, elixir,... But it should be quite common in venDoors I think. You can hunt for it, but it takes time and effort. Not just one crafting recipe.
How about every X amount of unlocked Stacks you get some permanent reward, like a free archive table, or extra skill point or expertise point? It could be based on the max Stacks you gotten on the character so you cannot repeat the reward. Might be a good incentive for someone to try to challenge themselves, that's outside normal progression but provides a meaningful reward.
I like this, but as an opt-in I don't think that excluse rewards should be powerfull that "if you don't have 20 stacks you are missing out in free skill points". Maybe make some decorative items or transmogs that use your stacks record to unlock.
I believe what you say makes sense. But the things we (you) talked about was something as well. As it's an opt-in thing it shouldn't just be 30 but 50 percent if not directly go to 0. Another thing is, there should be more chests BUT if there are more chests then there should be more mobs. You will not make them stronger or anything but their quantity will go up with chests. Lastly I think burns should debuff players and not curse them. Like the things that we(dillans) talked with you. That's what comes to my mind at the moment. Thanks for openly talking about these things with us (the dillans)
Having the ascensions crystal not add any extra loot would fix it being better then normal crystals. Maybe only just having tiny XP boost but at a lost would set it back to 0. Perhaps having the soulflame on it change colors to show how many stacks you have it for example: 0-blue, 5--orange, 10-purple, ect. so you can flex to your friends how many vaults you can complete in a row in an item or just put it on display. If you wanted more difficulty maybe at each color change tier you have it add +1 random vault curse for each vault to balance the increased XP. (love the update btw vendoors are amazing and more dungeons!!!)
For the soul vaults, what if the player is scored off of vault performance instead of pure completion like Halo scoring? Completing objectives and looting would give points and points drain with time. Then the scaling of the vault was based off of the gross score before entering? And maybe you could curse the run to get a score multiplier? Alternatively, what if they are reworked to become free . What I mean by this is, when you complete the crystal, you get the FULL soul flamed crystal back but lose it if you fail. However, all loot collected in the vault goes into limbo to compensate. When you fail, you get a percentage of all of the loot (not including like, xp or completion crates) you have collected based off of the final score. Additionally, you could choose to cash in the crystal (somehow) and get your loot but lose the crystal (for the hardcore, broke, or scared players). This way, soul vaults still feel like a challenge but are not META. Just ideas. Love the update and for keeping the community in mind!
I definitely think making the soul flame increase xp instead of item quantity is a great idea since getting to level 100 is quite a big grind and the soul flame could be used to make the process quicker. I do think you should keep it increasing artifact chance as well for the same reason. Also you could change the penalties for not completing to for example dying = 50% off and just leaving = 30% off.
Whats happening to the afterlife modifier that the soul flame use to give? My friend uses them all the time on our server and would be pretty devo if they went away.
What if every 3 vaults (witch is ruffly 30% base on 10 vaults) you get a random positive modifier, which compliments the random negative modifier idea for failing a vault
With the soul flame it could be that at milestone numbers of stacks (e.g. 10,20,30 etc) the vault gets more powerful but in then stays at that level till you reach the next milestone. Combining this with being reset to 0 if you lose gives the chase element of the milestones but also the risk of losing the exisiting stacks.
I love the idea of a negative modifier being added to the soul flame. I think it could be a cool idea that if you die, or don't complete your challenge, maybe the vault itself becomes cursed. Kind of like an architect vault that isn't completed. Things start being replaced with bedrock until its unusable and the soul flame gets recycled or gets crafted into a chaos catalyst or something.
cool idea, but there needs to be some lower buffer for this or you just never ever come out of a down spiral untill you have to recycle it. - which means you would just craft a new one and start over after you loose like 3 times.
I prefer the idea of it giving xp boost than items, but im sure a very minor boost to loot wouldnt hurt. the punishment for failing shouldn't be too harsh imo, but there should definitely be something. An idea could be that each stack of ascension gives added xp and loot e.g. 10 stacks = 10 levels of increased xp and 10 levels of increased loot. If you die and lose that percentage of stacks (assuming it remains 30%) your stacks of ascension go from 10 -> 7, your level of increased xp goes from 10 -> 7, but your levels of increased loot go from 10 -> 0. Any other punishment would probably just encourage crafting a new one, unless you add a way to remove that punishment with a mote or something
Either reset stacks entirely, or add a burn. Otherwise there's no reason to ever stop using that ascension. Add 1% item rarity for every 2-3 stacks. That adds a slow, but very significant, reward.
One way you could balance this would be to have the ascension flames have a fixed "capacity", the maximum number of stacks it can contain, based on the level that you first obtained the flame at, and to make it so reaching that cap destroys the flame and returns some (extremely) valuable reward, forcing you to start over again. That way, even if you fail a few vaults along the way, there's no permanent consequence, but there's no issue of players looping the same high-level flame over and over again because you can complete it and obtain one with more capacity as a result of all your grinding.
Personally, I think the soul flame should become locked as a trophy of how far you got on that Flame. Going back on the same crystal feels weird to me. I do feel the increased loot gives it a better place in the meta. Transmog unlocks would be SO OMEGA. What if all the loot and xp you get during your full streak is gambled when you soul flame... You don't get any of it until you "crystallize" it - which is when it can't be put on a crystal again. Then, you get all of it if you decide to end your streak by "unlocking the flame" in a "brazier/ascension" block. and if, perhaps based on game difficulty or w/e, you lose your streak in the vaults, then the soul flame is dissipated in some way (ranging from moderate loss of loot and XP % to loosing all of it.) A more friendly way of doing this might be putting the extra loot IN the soul flame, keeping vault loot the same-ish, and big rewards for "unlocking your flame" and tapping out of the stream - like extra xp and treasure sort of gear and such based on how many vaults completed in that flame. Some of that doesn't belong in this update of course, but that's my thought on it! Half awake, apologies for mess XD
The soul flame system potentially giving more loot reminds me of the old OP system in borderlands. If it didn’t necessarily give more lore, but simply better quality loot I think that could work really well. Like maybe it can give weapons and armor that are levels ahead of you similar to the borderlands system, but items obtained can’t increase HP/armor/block chance (defensive stats basically) past what current level gear already gives. So if your max level, it’ll only be potentially better damage, it doesn’t need to be a huge difference either. Maybe have the gear from it listed as Soul Forged Level 1 to show its special ontop of that and I think that could be really fun!
I really like the idea of the ascension challenge. I commented on the previous video pointing out a few things that I felt needed adjusting, mostly agreeing with the hive mind. What I'm not particularly thrilled about is the extra XP. Please hear me out, just some food for thought: + it's completely OK for solo play (you could even use ascension as a strat to help speedrun VH) - for general multiplayer setting it might broaden the difference between players by enabling creating level gaps even more quickly, which "can" discourage playing together later; the rich get richer scenario - the chests in ascension vault with higher flame stacks are already cascading, so the player gets more XP per POI looted, and then that boosted XP total would be multiplied again with the xp modifier resulting in a double xp boost. I'm conflicted about the additional loot. On one hand, it's perfectly fine for me if ascension is just a challenge that you can flex about; on the other hand, having an additional reward encourages opting into the feature (and looting more chests is always fun). When it comes to high level play, if you're not very skilled then the ascension effects would overlap with plunderer pearl (no xp to be gained, small loot boost, random objective, but in case of ascension objective becomes harder). Hardcore 100->0 loss is nice in theory. In practice, I think only the most hardcore players would opt into this scenario now that ascension includes only elixir and scav. Average players are already sage-sealing their crystal en masse to avoid scav, and we want people to enjoy ascension so they can also enjoy the scavs (I assume that's the case). Because of that I think % loss is a good idea. Introducing % loss +burn also creates additional gameplay and decision-making: "Do I want to continue this soulflame to keep my current loot % but have to deal with the modifier, or do I restart". How big should the loss be? I have no proper opinion on that. Imho this part requires throwing it at the community and adjusting later, because it will be tough to hit the right mark. I like @todmustache2884's idea of boosting crates instead (I know you like the idea of vault improving visually with a higher chest count, but I have some vague doubts about this). Transmog rewards are also a fun idea, don't know about replayability in that case ("I reached 80/100 stacks to get transmog, lost and can't be bothered to try again"). Bringing back the leaderboard+reward from the speedrun vaults might also not be a bad shout. I would personally publish the feature in an underwhelming state rewards-wise, and with a high % loss. Then I would observe whether people are interested enough to opt-in and for what reasons (challenge, bragging rights, loot). From there I would consider adjusting as necessary. This way while people might complain that it is not 100% satisfying, you might avoid the outrage about "making it harder" or "taking away rewards" later. But of course, while I don't have any game design experience, so these are just random thoughts. That was a lot of rambling, but maybe something will be useful to the dev team. I will give ascension a try regardless of the outcome. Good luck!
I think the punishments for escaping the vault but not completing it and dying in the vault should be separate, say if you managed to escape you would lost 30% or 50% of the stacks, but if you died you would get a choice of it resetting to 0 or losing 30% or 50% and taking a “burn” for the remainder of the soul flame
Would it be possible to be able to set the amount lost on failure through a game rule I think default being around 50% would be great or maybe difficulty would adjust it. also giving experience is great but that would make the reward pointless at level 100 so I think transmogs and loot is probably a better option imo.
in braisher what if increase the amount you need to light that scale on the ascension level so the higher level of ascension the higher amount you need to light braisher
I don't have a strong opinion on this but I do want to thank you for being so present here on youtube with this kind of casual direct to the point content. It makes me feel as if you really care about your audience but also your player base. Knowing that you actively read the comments (even if you glaze over this one which is totally fine; I'm not helping you at all here xD) gives a great sense of community. It feels like a new age of Iskall. By the way, you got a shout out on the "Imp and Skizz Podcast" by Bdubs in his interview that was uploaded today (part 2). He was asked how it felt coming into season 6 when he did after a long break and how it was getting to know new people and new dynamics and such. That's around the 3 minute mark. Impulse asks a related question around the 6:10ish mark and Bdubs answers around 6:30. He mentions you around then. I remember from watching back in the day that because of how you greeted him and did a collab with him that I took to him quickly after being a bit wary at first. I think you did more than you know to help him find his footing on S6 right away.
I see two options at the moment, first being it resets to 0 stacks but loot increases (slowly) or they lose x% but stacks could increase something like reputation chance (again slowly)
To start off, I am super excited about the ascension vaults! This is going to be amazing. That said, you asked for my thoughts, so here we go. My personal take on failing the vault: losing 30% (or 50% or whatever) of the flame sounds good. I’m all for it but I didn’t mind when you lost all of them so I’m good with whatever. My personal take on the burns: if I get one, I’m probably restarting the flame. I know that’s a weird quirk but I like my stuff perfect and clean so that’s probably just me. Making it get progressively harder: makes sense but it depends on the dynamic you want. The cost of applying the ascension to a vault is relatively cheap (not including opportunity costs) so why wouldn’t you do it every vault (making it meta) just to see what your streak is? If you make it progressively harder then that would give it a cost. Makes sense to me. Although you mentioned in your first video that you wanted to hit something like 80 flames. I didn’t think that would be possible BEFORE you talked about making it harder. Now I seriously doubt that goal. Rewards for ascension vaults: I am good with either option, but I had a thought that I wanted to share. What if after like ten flames you could pick an uber modifier to go on it? Like I’ve been grinding for catalysts at level 90 and it would be awesome to be able to pick prismatic. Maybe at 15 you could add two to one? Soul surge and champions abode sounds Omega to me. Don’t even know if that’s possible. Just a thought. I haven’t even considered the implications. Finally. Great game, Iskall. Keep up the good work!
Ascension is a great mechanic, i being a game designer myself have a unique view on this . This mechanic is as you said is on an opt in basis for the hardcore players who want to add a challenge to their basic playthrough . You also have hit the nail in the head with regard to it being high skill cap with relatively low barrier to entry . I feel like when you lose the stack should go back to 0 . It adds frustration , which actually is really good for engagement among those hardcore min maxxers who would find a normal play through boring and dull . ( It also makes it easier to balance) One of my favourite things to do is have a variable cascade system as in like have a very slow start with the loot being increased like maybe 0.5 % in 1st , 1% in second but make it grow in sort of exponential way which would like make maybe a 30 ascension soul flame to be OP , but to reach there is very hard and only the vest of the best can do it ..... This kind if reward and challenge will satify both the casuals and the hardcore fanbase . If you make it just a reduced stack it will affect the viability of it being opt in as even am ascension 1 vault would be always statistically better than none ..... Hope you appreciate this pov
2 options if your awarding loot have the vaults increase in loot value every 3-5 levels of Ascension or if you go for the transmog option how about an evolving transmog that lets you show off how far you have gone, so every 5 ascensions the transmogs appearance grows in some way so that the player has a way to show off how epic they are
I always thought soulflame stacks after reaching certain thresholds should reward player with unique unlock in terms of cosmetics. For bragging rights. Tbh 65+ seems a low level, would be nice for this to be toward last or close to last levels, as more of a end game thing, something to be excited about, as it could potentially scale infinitely. But I don't play this, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt. The soulflame stack mechanic i imagine could fall more, exponentially based on the number of fails in a row, so if you fail more in a row, it could potentially offset you more. Well that could be discouraging to some players tho, so there would need to be a reason to risk it regardless of potential risk of failure. Mby after each tier soulflame reaches (in groups of idk, 10), a new tier specific end-game exclusive materials could be obtained, if you complete vault you get 2 if you fail 1. That would make reaching tiers within this exciting. I think soulflame resetting to 0 shouldn't be a discouragement for a player. This was intended to be a streak counter. Having it reset partially kinda defeats this purpose. The question then is how to make failing a run with ascension be ok with player? so perhaps a better way to do this would be to reset stacks on failure to 0, but in doing so reward player based on the number lost. This way players could even fail on purpose and still get rewarded with something, although the rewards would not be immediate. Having stacking objectives sounds like a good idea on paper, as long as the way it scales is reasonable to finish at all times.
I think it would be smart to make it yield more xp. We already have a lot of ways to get lots of loot, but only one way to buff xp and it's with burger trinket. I would love if those flame vaults would buff xp with every ascension. It would be mostly used in levels 90-100 when we don't need so much loot anymore because we already have everything we need in regards of loot/materials.
I think there should be 2 soul flame like things one is self challeng flame where its JUST how many can you complete in a row no perks no debuffs while the other increases drops and chests but loses cut rewards from the next vault and does the burn that stays until you surpass where the last loss was, (say 10 drops to 7 once you reach 11 the burn leaves) but inturn every vault during that time has a curse they have to deal with but you can only use one soul flame if you try to use a different one to avoid the curse you could get the message "once a soul is a blaze it's always ablaze" and if they lost the soul flame after that message it just adds the modifiers already attached to their old flame (i hope that wouldn't be too hard to implement) but i think it would be really interesting to see and make losing more than "oh no my number " and more of "i can't fail or i am cursed" plus it makes losing in later ones way harder because the curse lasts so much longer and multiple losses would add multiple curses and would go away when its loss level was passed not the highest level
Maybe a possibility of it breaking after losing, much like an ender eye after being used could, as well as the 30% level loss in the soul flame could suffice to balance it
How about a market where when you hit certain levels of stacks, opens new items for you to buy, with say soul shards, plus the number of stacks that is listed next to that item. Then you would have a constant up and down of stacks and things to work for. Or scale the mob damage inside the vault and scale the crate that comes out from the objective only. Maybe with specific things being guaranteed in the crate per level.
Personally, I think you should lose the soul flame once you break your streak (like what was shown in the update video). IIRC, you can find soul flames in the vault, meaning they are renewable (I could be wrong, only gotten to like lvl 50), so what happens if you keep getting soul flames when you really only ever need one? Also, I’m kind of confused as to what your goal is with ascension. You say it’s a purely opt-in, but I kind of don’t see how it is as there seems to be no downside to running crystals with the soul flame on (besides maybe failing and losing all your stacks, but then you can just pull out another soul flame and start again). It only gives you good things, like more loot or more exp (which is a competitive advantage, idk if you’re trying to not give players that and keep it even or give them even more loot). When I saw the update video, I decided I was gonna start a new play through again and use the soul flame constantly when I get 65+ because there was no downside, just more loot. As much as I hate to say it (I love loot), I think the soul flames should solely increase exp in the vault, scaled with completions. If you fail a soul flame vault, then you lose the soul flame. That way, it’s a good strategy for leveling up when the exp requirement is extremely high and it doesn’t offer players a “competitive” advantage by giving them a lot more loot for simultaneous completions, it’s basically just bragging rights and speedy exp. This is coming from a casual player though. (Sorry for wall of text)
what about letting the player choose how much of their ascension they want to risk? this could be done by for example putting special vendoors or dungeons in the vault, which increase the amount of potential stack loss, but have great loot. (by putting it inside the vaults themselves you also get an extra choice to make while inside the vault, which may be interesting) to balance that out though, there would probably need to be a minimum stack loss, which could be the 30%. Alternatively, there could be a room which you can only open at the start of the vault, which immediately makes the vault "hardcore", but either gives some good loot or adds modifiers to the vault.
the burns should be added onto a crystal to provide an additional level to ascension rank if completed. The more burns applied, the more levels to the rank increase. The burn you add to the crystal can be randomised or pay high fee to craft certain negative modifiers...
If cake seals can't be crafted, I think they shouldn't be nerfed. So it is actually worth to buy them in say a vendor.
Exactly. Also I’m gonna craft up like 10 in update 12…
@@milotraballano6314 if they are no longer craftable after the update, they should be converted to soul shards to prevent exactly that. Cake seals are craftable en-mas now, so otherwise you could do 100 and be set for life.
I don’t think they should be made uncraftable. But at a minimum thru should be craftable on lower difficulties. Casual players aren’t playing for the same reasons. Some just want to run through and loot as much as possible w/out a grind.
I think this was his thought!
I 100% agree
For the ascensions, have you ever considered allowing a player to cash in their soul flame somehow and base the reward off the number of stacks? That way a player has the opt-in decision of when they don't want to risk a high stack number and then start again after. Love the new update!
This seems cool, especially when the rewards for reaching the next level are visible. Because then you always have the decision of "do i cash in now or push one more for the next higher reward tier"
So if you cash it in at some block, the gui could show you: Get X now or do another stack and get X+Y later instead."
Although then, it suddenly is about loot again, and not just hardcore competition between friends
I like this system combined with the negative modifier each failure. Then, rather than losing progress towards your cash-out it's just a little harder to gain progress
The transmog idea is also amazing. If the soul flame makes it really hard at high stacks, having a unique transmog would be a nice thing to show off.
Great idea! Maybe this is how to get the transmogs Iskall mentioned, rather than automatically getting them when you reach that number of stacks.
Transmogs are pointless in single player unless you’re a completionist. It’s a poor reward. There’s already enough in the pack that’s focused on multiplayer to the detriment of single player.
Fun idea to make the cake seals special, in random normal rooms in normal vaults a cake will spawn (only one per vault), when you find and click the cake you get the cake seal, so you need to play normal vaults to get cake vaults
Make it 1 cake every 100 rooms or so would make sense.
I love this idea! Makes cake vaults accessible enough while still incentivizing players to run regular vaults too.
Ooo, ok, that is an interesting idea. Hard part is introducing players to that, unless it's an (optional) quest and cakes don't start appearing until a certain level.
Idea is cool. Hopefully would give the pink aura to find the cake?
Ascension feels like a completionist type of thing, so I see no issue with it being difficult. I’d love to see increased artifact chance over buffed loot though! That’s my biggest struggle in late game.
Did you know they changed cake vault! It now increases loot quantity and quality!
I think you should have the soul flame return to 0 if you dont complete because the challenge is to see how many completions in a row you can get not how many you can get while getting a few losses.
This is a good point
Also the burn could be indication of failures, but not actually do anything
I like that! In terms of leaderbord that would create oppurtunities for categories. "highest streak, 0 losses" , "Highest streak, any # losses" etc. I totally agree that it shouln't just become loot meta@@vodskall85
Actually I agree with this one, it doesn’t make sense that it still retains value, with the fact you can buy your body back and stuff, maybe there is room for a more hardcore aspect to VH
Does it need to separate failing the vault vs failing the objective?
I don't think you should be punished as harshly for failing on rng then if you were to die.
eg: you are on a scav and need that one last creeper eye. so you kiwi'd yourself down to the wire and decide to leave the vault as a last resort because you can't get it... should you be punished to the same extent as if you were to die?
For me, if you die the soul flame should be reset back to 0 as your soul has died. If you escape you should be a minor debuff/s (ie the burn) as you haven't killed your soul, just weakened it.. by then completing successive vaults you should be able to 'heal' your soul and remove the debuff/s
I saw someone say that for every completion on ascension, the player can chose a random buff or debuff from a pool to add to the flame. So instead of scaling everything with a stack, you can have the option to chose from +1 ornate, +20% xp or +1 mob spawn in pois (just a few examples). This would would help add a lot of replay ability and could let the player build the flame up to suit their play-style
I honestly liked the idea of losing your total streak after failing one ascension vault because that also helps to justify the reward of the loot from the growing chests as your streak gets higher. Could this still be a possible option, like a command a player could set?
That’s what I’m saying! If this is an optional feature then I want it to be hardcore. Give us more loot for the streak but take it all away if we fail. Don’t like that feature, then don’t run ascension vaults. Everyone wins!
@@thampshi yeah I agree!!
If you’re making Cake vaults not craftable, which sounds like a great idea to make them more special and exciting, then the reward could be higher,
maybe dropping the standard crake from 40 to around 30, as in your streams it’s not often you even reach 40 with the desire to loot more alongside finding cakes
I agree, if they're going to be uncraftable. Then they should probably be slightly easier to get max value out of.
Hi Iskall,
I think the 30% loss of your stack instead of losing it all should be the opposite, and you'd keep only 30%. No emotional devastation, but still a proper loss to balance the gains as it is opt-in. Otherwise it just won't be as exciting IMO.
Or alternatively, add a capacity to turn the vault hardcore and you risking to lose all of your progress, but your reward is multiplied too, or your ascension goes faster.
To this i would add transmogs at certain milestones otherwise i agree
I agree, only a 30% loss seems like a small slap on the wrist
My gut said "lose 50%" which would be more or less exactly between those 2 extremes. And "losing half" feels like a nice round number to me, more so then 30%
@@Qqmenisa hmm... add transmogs that scale the vault but not scale the vault too much and not as the stacks go higher i would say and have a special ability which you need echo pogs (yes MULTIPLE since this would be too op without MULTIPLE) to put on armor to increase the transmog's power
I'm in favor of keeping 30%... so every 3 levels, you get 1 back if you die
I really like the transmog idea! It would bring a cool aspect to be able to have something you can show off to others rather than just a number on the soul flame. It should be like every 15 or 25 you get to you get a new transmog for a certain armour/weapon and eventually you unlock the whole set.
I think a nice medium would be to not scale loot inside the vaults and instead scale the completion crate, that would also be thematically linked because ascension is all about completion. Transmogs would also be a nice reward xD
Also I really liked that it would reset to 0 on fail as that makes trying for a high score far more fun in my opinion, and was what I was more excited about over the loot :(
As another side note I think cakes could be made a tad bit more powerful if they aren't craftable anymore, it's not every vault you run into an ornate village at the end
I think loot would be a good idea, although perhaps it only changes the loot in the completion crates. I think that it would be a good idea for the loot and xp to scale very slowly.
Also, the transmog idea sounds great, they could look like crowns or something. :D
Transmogs are a great idea of rewarding the experience with soulflame, I do feel like it's important to have some kind of reward on top of just the experience gain for the single players
I like the Transmog idea too, along with XP gains it would be great
Perhaps if you fail the flame modifier thing, you don't lose anything. Just that you get a curse added to the flame. This makes it much more difficult to progress and would eventually make it imposible to complete.
If you want to give it another try without curse, you can craft a new one and start from 0 again
I completely agree but I'd love to see some new transmogs as a sort of achievement. It'd be a way of physically flaunting how far you got :)
I think adding the debuff after failing is a interesting idea but I think it should only last for 1 or 2 vaults, or until you succeed a vault
Yeahhh thats smart, like all debuffs go away when u complete a vault again
Yeah. My worry was that they would keep stacking until you can't even get more skilled, because they make progress at your gear level impossible.
I think it would make sense, if the debuffs would be removed, when you complete the vault, that you have failed on. That would Balance the mechanic. Otherwise it would probably just become the meta, if there was no penalty for losing (other than the 30% debuff I mean).
How about the debuff lasting until you've regained the lost stacks? And, the debuff should only apply to ascension vaults.
In a similar vein I was thinking you could remove it by spending additional soul flames. Like if the flame is never really consumed what do you do with multiple?
I really enjoy the update to the cake vault. I was actually planning on doing a “Let them Eat Cake” play through of vaulthunters where I do every vault as a cake vault. Then I heard you were changing it and making it better and I’m so excited to jump into that
I don't have any strong opinions about how the loot for ascension vaults should work, but I am a little sad it doesn't completely reset when you fail. Also I really enjoyed the background track in this video, felt like we were having a design meeting in a cozy tavern haha
Same
I think the coolest way to implement soul flame is akin to rogue-like maps. You choose the path you want to take. When entering the vault, you have a prompt of 1 of 3 random negative modifiers and these are retained on the soul flame. You then have to do this every 3 vaults (or however many you think would fit) and so the difficulty is of course continuously getting harder, but it’s more strategic. And if you get a roll of 3 really bad modifiers, it’s unlucky, but it takes skill to work with that. And of course, the modifiers stay on the crystal until you lose. Maybe once you get to 20 or 30 stacks, you have to put on a legendary negative modifier. Some examples could be.
Locked Out - can’t leave the vault.
Feeling Blue - red trinket is disabled.
Red Hot - blue trinket is disabled.
No Way Home - compass is disabled.
Where the Wild Things Are - 10x wild stacks
Gladiator - 25% that every mob is a champion.
Dungeon Dweller - cannot complete the objective without completing one dungeon (kill the champion).
etc. etc.
Obviously some of these are detrimental, but it’s also 1 of 3 choices and it really requires skill to surpass the vault despite these circumstances. Plus, each of these normal and legendary negative modifiers will make each Ascension run feel unique and different. This could be expanded upon by letting there be rare drops (that only drop in ascension runs) that allow a reroll of the negative modifier.
I think it’s honestly best that you lose all stacks on death, but maybe you can lose 30% of stacks if you decide to leave the vault before completion. Then you can really weigh your options of is this worth it? And if you’re about to fail, you make a mad dash to the portal. Maybe disable the compass once you get to higher tiers of soul flame so you actually have to plan out your route in the vault. Obviously the community is going to hate losing all stacks, they want this to be meta, not a high risk, high reward challenge.
Another note, I think the increased loot is GREAT, but needs to be scaled back. I think mostly the first 20-30 vaults should be equivalent to like the first 10 vaults now where you just SEE increased XP (while there is unseen increased vault loot), but then once you get to 30 stacks and the vault is really hard: boom you get that glorious cascading explosion of loot and the hard journey has been so worth it and you can really start profiting from your hard work.
If the XP and loot increases then you should lose all stacks when you die. It's a late-game optional thing, so it should be a high risk vs high reward. People also need to realize this modpack is in open-beta, each update is going to change a lot, and like you said, you can choose to not update.
Yeah it seems to me like this is the area of the game where "lose more" mechanics are appropriate, since it's meant to be a challenge. If people really don't want to lose all progress then negative modifiers or curses would be a good idea I think, and perhaps you can relieve yourself of them by then successfully completing another ascension.
If they are like now, I agree it should be harsh, but 50% is better I think. although I would love to change it up a bit more (my other comment)
@@paprika6282 As has been pointed out, if people don't want to lose progress on their soul flame then they don't have to do it. This is entirely an OPTIONAL part of the game!
Yes, this!!!
Loosing the streak upon dying makes perfect sense for an optimal challenge.
I would suggest starting the first vault with like "-50% everything"(chests, item rarity, mobs strength etc) to start of the runs with a bit behind vaults, aiming for higher streaks to get better loot after the "bad" loot in the first vaults
I like the idea of it as a "challenge" that will grant a reward.
While I dont have a serious opinion, I liked the way that it reset if you fail.
But i would keep the loot bonus as a rewards, since the objective is harder aswell (and I think that is a very good change)
I would also make cake give more rewards, with being harder to get
I do think loot and experience should still be increased by the soul flame. Leaderboards/competitions/transmogs aren't going to be a very enticing reward for some players (especially in single-player).
I like the idea of adding a permanent negative modifier to the soul flame whenever you fail a vault. That would mean eventually you'd end up with a flame with so many negative modifiers that you'd basically want to start over. Maybe once you reach a certain number of failed attempts on a soul flame, (maybe 3?) they could start pulling from the same pool of debuffs as when you fail a vault god quest, since some of those debuffs are especially nasty. Depending on how bad the negative modifiers are, a system like that might even be able to take the place of reducing the number of flame stacks on a soul flame when you fail.
Figured you’d have a direct line to Iskall yet here you are in the comments 😂
I agree about the single player aspect. It’s a completely different experience w/ different priorities.
I like the idea of ascension getting more loot the more stacks you have. This combined with increasingly difficult objectives makes it balanced but also an actual challenge. I do think the amount of stacks you lose should be higher or even all of them. And then balance it out so it is almost impossible to reach above say 20 stacks so it doesn't take forever to get them back. This also contributes to the challenge part.
If ascension vaults are supposed to be a challenge thing, good way to encourage to play them would be automatic afterlife modifier. In that way the only thing you gamble is the number of stacks, which makes it more accessible for those of us who do not excel in vaulting.
The question of greater-rewards vs just-a-challenge is interesting, because to me current cake vaults are more of a group activity. So with ascension vaults being progressively more rewarding, I would get an solo option to loot. Not one I necessarily need but it would be nice.
I personally like very much, that all the vault seals are being craftable. I am not opposed to finding some as loot/merchandise, but there should still be option to craft them. The obvious answer how to limit craftability to me is a pog in recipe.
Transmogs are always a nice side perk, but maybe (if viable), have it scale the rarity of room spawns. So, if an Omega room has a natural 5% chance to spawn in any vault, 10 stacks might bring that chance up to closer to 15% essentially in the same way Item Rarity works on gear drops.
I might be wrong but other than inscriptions I think this would be the only thing that increases rare rooms I really like this idea
What you could also do if you fail the soulflame is that it "extinguishes", so you can't build stacks anymore. And instead you can still put it on a crystal like 5 times to get the buff, and then it breaks and turns into a trophy that you can show off.
i think the best thing for the sole flame is to completely reset. its an opt in that spouse to be challenging. you can maby make permanent buffs that you get once you reach a certain namder of runs so when the flame is reset you still got some cined of progres and you will be more excited to run more times
edit: another option and it will probably delay the update. to make it into a rouglike. every time you complet a flame runt you need to choose a rundom buf and or debuf. the gole is to get the farthest and you get cool reword or trasmog every 5 levels
A rogue-like option for this is such a sweet idea.
i think with the new cake vaults + architect vaults and then divine paradox late game, there isnt a need for the ascension to have cascading chests, XP should increase no matter what, but the idea of the transmogs is what I was hoping for, get to a certain stack amount (with increased difficulty in objs) and get rewarded with a cool transmog to flex, you could even add something similar to the charms, just something floating above your head which signifies how far you have gone
With relics going away you should make each successful ascension guarantee an amount of lemons or oranges as you get higher.
Several thoughts here:
1) transmogs for ascension progression is absolutely a yes, what better way to flex on your friend than an ascension transmog
2) loot should definitely scale with the ascension level, it just feels more rewarding and makes the ascension more than just a number.
3) the penalty for failing an ascension should be lose 50% of your stacks rounded up, it’s just more intuitive for the player, and is very punishing, but won’t lead to as much of the total emotional devastation that leads to people permanently rage quitting.
4) thoughts on negative modifiers, or burns: when you fail an ascension, you lose 50% of your stacks, and your next ascension vault is burned. This one negatively modified vault gives you an opportunity to “rekindle” your soul flame. Completion of this harder vault allows you to keep your stack loss at 50%, if you fail, you lose 100% of your stacks. This redemption vault allows failing to still be super punishing, but still allows for a little bit of recovery so that you don’t feel as bad after you failed a vault due to nasty RNG
I think if the loot increases in amount and rarity the higher the number, then it would be very similar to cake vaults. So I think having a special reward when you reach certain levels like you said (certain transmogs at level 10,20,etc.) would make it more like a leaderboard than a meta.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I was watching, It just feels like a longer term cake vault with the way chests would most likely scale. At that point it would be so much better to just do a cake vault, quicker reward. That transmogs are a great idea however. Although I think they could be done with important numbers, say 85 for example. At 85 you unlock a golden carrot transmog for your helmet. Maybe there are important numbers in the game development's history? Maybe another number could be 70, referencing the 1/70 treasure scrolls are, and how Etho got 3, so far, and getting a transmog that fits with that. Last idea for a number being whatever chance it is to get a Drowned Hide, in reference to Iskall's solo series where there was the curse of the Drowned Hide.
I worry that for the soul flame/ascension mechanic it could easily be a must-do vault if chests scale with stacks. If the only down side is loosing x number of stacks and buying your body back for say 100 gold, what's to say that the stacks you ran before you died didn't already pay for your body? That would mean there would be no reason not to be running ascension vaults, especially as you soul flame wouldn't reset completely after your loss either. I think transmogs for certain stacks reached is a great idea and goal to aim for and increased xp also seems like a great incentive. You could maybe try to "increase the loot" by instead of scaling chests, every 10 stacks for example, a random omega room gets added to the soul flame - kinda like inscriptions. Then you would know that every time you ran an ascension vault you had the chance of finding a guaranteed omega room somewhere in the vault?
But does he know that cake vaults are changing?
Wait Cake vaults are changing? No idea. I figured Etho would have said something if they were
@@TheRyanGib yes it’s true!! Etho said so in the last vodskall video I heard it! 🤣
Yeah, we gotta wait for etho to post to know for certain.
I hope someone told Etho
on the soul flame (ascension) you can maybe add something to add to the crystal after the flame to give it an affinity in loot, vault exp, etc.
Maybe, instead of making chests better in the vault for every stack, you could instead improve the completion crates for each stack, it would make it still have the challenge/ difficulty, but there would also be a decent reward for casuals
or add 10% chance per ascencion to get a(n) (additional) crate. got 30 stacks = get additional 3 crates
Ohh thats a good idea
Well a bit more stuff in crates wouldn't amount to the chest loot at endgame where we can mine hundreds and hundreds of chests.
Just very underwhelming
better chance for artifact would since thats the only thing u really "care" about in late game@@pri2108
but then it would make these a really bad and slow versions of cake vaults right 🤔also adding these on the cake vaults would make it either to op because of the stacks of both objectives or not work in harmony and be wasted
Ascension vaults sound like they have a similar parallel with Cake vaults, in that they both are about getting higher streaks for better loot. However, Cake vaults are every successful room makes the next room more powerful, while Ascension vaults are every successful vault makes the next vault more powerful. The concern with Ascension vaults restarting on a loss is that they are far more time consuming to grind than Cake vaults, with Cake vault having much faster gratification at the cost of each vault starting over the streak, while a loss of an Ascension vault could be hours (if not days) of play time feeling lost. To counter this, it seems that Ascension vaults are instead potentially more rewarding overall, leading to a greater risk versus reward. The safety net of a 30% penalty on loss will help balance this risk and dampen the sense of time wasted on loss, instead leading to motivation towards recovery of progress loss instead of starting from scratch. If you want to implement a negative modifier to with each defeat, note that this is punishing losers. It can be used to force players to start over, with excessive negative modifiers stacking up over time, to the point where it is best to begin anew. Alternatively, it can add challenge if maybe the negative modifier is eventually alleviated, perhaps after a certain amount of successes. The implementation of negative modifiers is more dependent on the direction you want to take the Ascension vaults, with these "Burns" being an interesting twist from the way mobs scale in cake vaults. The scaling objective can help with balancing to prevent the Ascension vaults from becoming the meta vault, creating a soft cap on how high you can climb due to objective becoming too difficult to complete, but it can be difficult to find and balance this soft cap with the incredible scaling at max levels. A balanced soft cap for level 90-100 players can be drastically different from what the soft cap for level 100 players with optimized gear, let alone the fresh level 65 players that first gain access to the Ascension vaults, so an exponential scaling of objective may help alleviate that. To further potentially avoid making Ascension vaults meta, a following of the Cake vaults in being difficult to obtain, such as through bounties, Treasure chest, or another means, may help.
The record of all time high on the soul flame is a good addition. Many developers seem to not put enough emphasis on such quality of life changes, and it is great to see such implementations.
More Transmogs are always fun, but it is up to you as a developer on if that is where you want to focus your resources.
Lastly, I am going to vent about the Vault Forge here, because I am not really sure where else to do so. The base concept is enticing with the idea of improving ones blacksmithing skills to become a master artisan and craft amazing gear, but the current implementation does not feel satisfying. Instead it feels like a large investment of resources to result in mostly gear that is to be recycled, and the optimal means of utilizing the forge is to just grind proficiency in a single item, such as swords, and to be a specialist. On a larger server this may be useful, with different players having different specializations, but for smaller servers, casual players, and single player worlds, it lacks motivation. Why try to craft, when I can instead just hunt for ornate chests, and grind my gear that way? While it may be time consuming and resource draining to develop a new system and interface, greater variety in the vault forge can bring greater depth to the game outside of the vault, similar to how the vault tools and jewels have done. The ability to guarantee a minimum tier based on resources invested, with the base crafting still being able to make scrappy or better, but perhaps a recipe utilizing an echo pog and specific focuses for a rare or better piece of gear, and one utilizing an Omega Pog (or multiple Omega Pogs) for guaranteed Omega gear (or epic, and having Omega gear not be craftable), would allow for more control over ones gear, and less rng while smithing. The resources to craft the gear may need to very from the ones suggested, instead relying on various recycled material, focuses, gems, other resources to be implemented, etc. Additionally, the resources may need to be rarer and or more expensive than the ones currently implemented for crafting gear. The concept of proficiency can remain in place, with better proficiency still being able to improve rolls, but instead gate tiers behind levels, and maybe nerfing or adjusting it overall, since higher quality gear can be guaranteed crafted. The different tiers of gear you craft can provide different proficiency experience, but crafting many lower tiers and utilizing/draining more resources on lower quality gear may boost proficiency faster, but poor pieces may give significant less after reaching the next tier proficiency. So grinding scrappy gear may help reach "Maker" tier, but provide very little in the grind from "Maker" to "Apprentice", instead gaining more proficiency exp through crafting common or rare gear. The crafting of scrappy gear is still worth it as a point to drain resources, since your higher proficiency has a slight chance of boosting gear, and it still gains exp, but if you are afford to make higher tier gear, it is a better investment. This is to create a form of scaling and a feeling of progress still being made.
Further more, I think it would be best to put trinket crafting in another block, as crafting a delicate pair of wings, Treasure goggles, and a crystal ball do not really fit with the roaring flame of a forge crafting metal armor.
Last note, remember that this is a PvE game. You are not playing AGAINST other people, but instead WITH other people. Balance does not need to reflect games such as World of Warcraft, where there is strict competition and has to additionally account for things such as PvP, but can instead be more lenient. It can reflect games like Warframe, where balance can can be much looser, taking a back seat to fun, enjoyment, and fulfillment. It matters less that there is a meta, but that there is instead synergistic combos and mechanics that are viable and enjoyable. I am not saying to abandon balance, because structure is still needed to make the game have a fulfilling feel, but that it matters not how strong and overpowered us vault hunters are, the vault dwellers will never complain.
Thank you for making such a fun and amazing game. The rapid evolvement shows progress and motivated developers, and is desired in a game still under development. Vault Hunters is not just unique as a Minecraft Mod, it is unique as a game in and of itself, and I look forward to every update.
That is an option: if you like a certain version, play on that one. The older versions are available, just like Minecraft itself.
They may as well not be, because they're permanently unmaintained.
Yeah, the older versions being available is great, but some updates can also be kinda disheartening. E.G. in my case I was playing the modpack for a few weeks and then for a new update it basically was „huge changes, best to start a new world from scratch“ which felt kinda meh to me personally.
EDIT: In such cases it‘s a choice of „keeping the world and missing out on great changes“ or „get great, new changes but lose the work you‘re already attached to. So for me it kinda became a „wait for the modpack to stabilise and then play it“
@@tainmere sadly it's going to be that way during an alpha phase
@@Blue-Maned_Hawk yeah, it's the same with older versions of Minecraft
@@wizardlyfrog yeah, for sure
For ascensions: What about giving out CROWNS every 5 ascension vaults? (in the completion crate). We all know we like crowns. Maybe even Mumbo will come play an ascension now.
(It's still a hardcore thing, the crown is a pure FLEX and has the number on it)
Being part of a living game is hard and different from what most of us are used to. Even the pace of MC updates is slow enough for most people to be okay with it. I mostly play Destiny 2, which is a living game that has updates every few months. It's frustrating for sure, and sometimes I hate the changes. But I've played for 10 years because it's living. If I don't like a change, I know it's only temporary. The world that the changes are part of is dynamic and keeps me engaged. You don't have to love every chapter to love the story.
That said, my PC isn't fast enough to run Vault Hunters, so I'm still waiting for the "vanilla" version to come out. OR for a hardware upgrade. I love the concept but I have very little experience playing the mod pack without crashing 😆
Guessing you don't play Destiny on a PC then? Cause if you do, you should be able to play this as well. 😊
My PC can handle destiny okay, but that's the limit of it's abilities. Any time I try even exploring the overworld in vault hunters it crashes. After a few days I finally got a vault opened and stepping into the portal crashed it immediately 🤷♂️ I'm still new to PC gaming though. Just built this machine last year
@@emmittforbush1656 You might want to check the RAM and stuff that Vault Hunters uses. As well as the amount of RAM your PC has in total. Sounds like it's an issue related to that.
The assencion should give loot but no "burn" if you fail
For the soul flame. Every 10 levels (or whatever) add a debuff ( a burn). It will increase the difficulty while still being able to have increased loot.
or a 30% chance of 20 seconds removed from vault timer per level.
@@unkool_Dad that works until they get too high level and forces a automatic fail eventually. You never want to make it impossible just more difficult
Here's my idea:
The soul flame would gain stacks like normal but at certain intervals you gain a negative modifier to the vault (every 5 or 10 completions for example). You still get increased loot, the vaults become harder as the stacks go up, and you lose a percentage on failure. I think the burn fits this better than a burn when you fail. The more stacks you get, the hotter the soul flame, the more you burn in the vault. Without thinking too hard myself, it sounds balanced and makes vaults more interesting without having to work around time so much with longer vault objectives.
or
Keep it how it was introduced in the update video, difficulty stays the same and vaults get more loot the higher stacks you accumulate and if you fail you lose the soul flame and the stacks. I think this is fair enough if the loot is scaling with the vaults. You're testing your skill to get more loot. If you can't finish your punishment should be the base amount of loot again, not increased loot but less than the one you failed in.
If you make the soul flame not punishing enough, it will be the only thing people run to get loot. It makes it no longer an optional mechanic in the game, but a required one to get the most amount of loot the fastest.
I personally think the vault should get better, maybe a little slower. But also like a unique transmog seems cool for like 10-20-30 stacks.
do we have an idea when the final product will be released? Like, I want to try this a lot
I love the Burn idea. If it is just 30% loss, then I'd always use my soulflame on vaults regardless of what I'm trying to do or collect. A burn would be cool because then I'd have a reason to start a new soul flame
I love how you have been including your community throughout this whole development process. You are amazing! Thank you for heading such an amazing mod-pack!
I feel that the ascensions need to loose more stacks when you have a loss. Only loosing 30% can be such a minor change to the loot you may receive. I also like the idea of the failed ascension adding a negative "burn" to the stacks. This gives the longer lasting ascensions more risk the more they are failed. You have also mentioned making the loot grow less, I am not sure how much it grows by at the moment, but if you are concerned that all looting will happen within ascension vaults making the loot grow less with each stack will be better in my opinion.
I also have the need to mention i love the concept of putting the, now amazingly powerful, cake vault behind the need to find the seal. This makes it a great item to search for along with the other powerful items such as keys.
Thank you again for the amazing opportunity to play this amazing creation you have concocted! My best wishes go to you are your team!
My thoughts:
Maybe lose 50% on lose - 30 is too non-hardcore. (as this is supposed to be hardcore)
Some kind of "Loot Quality" or "Loot Quantity" stat increases by 1% additively per ascension level. Feels like an increase but not too fast. Like x2 loot on level 100 I think is ok?
OR/AND the same for EXP
i think its better to make only the completion crate better, but no improvment inside the vault, and about making it harder I think its a good thing
Transmog idea is great for the ascension! I imagine it starting as a scrappy looking armor that slowly looks better and better as you reach higher tiers
My concern with making loot scale on soul flame is that I believe it ends up being an overall lose-lose situation.
Failing and either losing all stacks of soul flame (especially if it is a botched failure such as a computer crash, server lag, or bad luck of impossibly epic proportion (le creeper eye)) or even losing part of the stacks will never feel good if there is scaling loot involved. As you said in your video, it would easily become the META and would then be frustrating if you lost 10, 20, 30++ levels of vault loot scaling. Maybe as compensation, the objectives don't scale in difficulty as fast but maybe curses get applied to the vault (1 additional curse per X levels)?
I believe there needs to be other rewards associated but especially rewards you can't get elsewhere. For example, what if each crystal completion MULTIPLIES the reward for bounties completed in soul flame vaults by 2-5% per level? Or, what if soul vaults had their own scaling, elevated bounties with good rewards similar to lost bounties? Additionally, what if the reward crates scale just like cake vaults do where you start getting high artifact chance + super loot if you are good at the game?
Looking forward to the update! As you say, anyone can choose to stay a version behind if they don't like the new update, but for the majority that like the direction, lets go!
Having a unique transmog be tied to soul flames (depending on how hard and possible it is) you could go 15/30/45/60 for the armor and then 75/90 for the weapons and off-hand. And at 100 you get a trophy or just a "I did 100 soul flames stacks and all I got was this stupid t-shirt" chestplate. Same can be done for the cake vaults (PLEASE IMPLEMENT THE CAKE TRANSMOG AS OBTAINABLE!)
Hi Iskall! What if instead of scaling the reward(amount of loot)per vault you have different benchmarks for the ascension. For example, maybe at 20 vaults completed in a row with no fails you get a crate that has some good reward in it, then the next crate is when you complete 30 or 40 vaults with no fails, etc. This could give a way to incentive the player into doing the ascension challenge and giving them a reward without it being too much
I feel like with such a feature the punishment should be equal to the challenge. We should have to crash all the way down or atleast most of the way with ascension. In my head I think the best balance would be lose 50% upon a loss and then if you lose twice consecutively it resets totally (allowing for intentional reset or a good balance for players in over their head) I don’t know if there’s any way to perfect a system before it hits the mass population but I’m excited for the change
I think the loot needs to grow. I can run a bunch of normal vault crystals to see what my streak would be. The loot needs to grow. What would be the point if there is not extra loot?
I don’t know what else to do after lvl 100
Made great friends
Built a lot of stuff
Tried and failed doing bid mods stuff hahah
Got all the artifacts
Bronze, silver, gold for the last boss
Boss with friends
Toons of vaults with friends
Helping a ton of newbies
Exploring the over world
A lot of procrastination
Made a shop
Tried many skills
Crafted a lot stuff
Automated a ton of stuff
Got stolen 180k items
I… don’t know what else hahah
I really hope you guys keep the soulflames as a challenge thing and let it fail and return to 0. Its a risk vs reward type thing and i feel like its not very fun if you arent punished for failing it
When failing the Ascension, make it a choice. Put the crystal with Item A in an anvil and you loose 30% of your Ascension count. Put it with Item B in an Anvil to keep the Ascension count but add a negative modifier. The higher the Ascension, the higher the probability for a curse instead of a modifier. You have to do one of the two choices to make the crystal usable again.
This would make it a tactical choice and give the player the choice while keeping the intended challenge/punishment. And it would use mostly existing mechanics, keeping the development impact hopefully small.
And one more thing: Instead of a leaderboard, how about allowing the crystal to be turned into a special completion crate. This would destroy the crystal, but the higher the ascension, the better the loot pool of the crate.
I think the stack should increase loot by 1-2% each stack, similar thing with xp. transmog is a great idea. Maybe make cake seal a special item that can only be obtain from treasure chest, very rarely in bounties, and be purchased from the new vendor rooms. For the soul flame stack, I think reducing vault timer by 1-5 second each stack can add a lot more challenge.
You don't want to mess with the time of a vault. They want it to be, theoretically at least, infinitely stackable. Reducing the time will guarantee that you can only get so high!
there should be some kinda special ascension type of room with special loot that can be found in the vault once you reach a certain streak number.
My thoughts on ascension are that I like the idea that failing is penalised fairly highly. To me losing 50% of your stacks seems better than 30%, but I really truly absolutely hate the idea of adding a curse to the soul flame on failure. That makes all future runs “worse” and keeps the feel-bad from failing in every following run (if only I hadn’t failed this would be easier kind of feelings). I’d much rather one big “oh no! Oh well, new challenge! I guess it’s time to focus on upping my stacks again” moment that feels like you can get back to where you were before with some effort and time, rather than a permanent negative effect. Honestly I’d probably just scrap a soul flame if a curse got applied and start from scratch again. (Assuming that is possible)
As someone who plays in single player, having no extra loot in ascension vaults makes them seem much less interesting. Leaderboards aren’t exciting if I’m the only one on them, and transmogs are fine but I have no one to show them off to and I already have favourite transmogs that I’ll likely use instead anyway. (Maybe the new transmogs would be my new favourites but everyone has their own style so this is unlikely to be the case for everyone and would be an underwhelming reward if you don’t like them as much.) I do appreciate that this is a mod pack designed to be played in multiplayer servers however so my view and play style may not be what you want to develop towards.
Love the idea of keeping cake vaults kinda OP and making them non-craftable - would be a really exciting thing to find in bounties, vendoors and the like, kinda like how Chaos catalysts are at the moment. I get so excited at every chaos catalyst I get and I’d love to have more things that give that level of excitement in bounties etc!
i agree at least a 50% reduction for failing a run seems appropriate cake vaults being non-craftable is good cuz it has you explore other dimensions on the game
Perhaps the ascension gained when playing ascended vaults could be used to boost a vault crystal, so when the player gains ascension they can choose when to ‘combine’ their soul flame with a vault crystal. This in turn will greatly boost: loot quality and quantity, xp, etc. But reset the soul flames ascension. The issues are that it may be repetitive and inconvenient to run, say, 30 vaults with little to no loot or progression this could be counteracted by the quality and quantity of loot and xp for in the ascended vault.
I like the hardcore aspect of it. Reminds me of the other versions of VH. I like the challenge. And there are lots of things that give loot. Def be creative and let the reward be anything else. XP would be great at higher levels, or a transmog. Or little trophy statues etc. Let it be for fun and not ‘important’ :)
The problem with the soulflame vaults is that when you start, you will never run a vault without it. If you get to any reasonable stack and fail, and the only punishment is 30% of your stack, you will still rather play a 70% stacked vault than any other 0%. If there isn't any permanent "damage" to the soulflame, a player will be stuck between his/her top doable vault stack and its 70% (get to my limit, fail, get back to my limit, fail...). But you are always pulling at least 70% extra loot compared to a normal vault. A fail needs to somehow damage the soulflame. Heck, give it some "repair slots" and "break" it every time the run fails. You want it to end at some point. So you can start again. If you just want to keep track of your streak that can go forever, I suggest a StreakBook item. If you take it with you into any vault, it just takes note of whether you failed or not (You don't have to take it with you so you can do some shenanigans challenges with your friends without breaking your streak when you die). StreakBook is just a streak counter, not a vault changer.
The idea with the negative modifiers is interesting. If you want to go this route, it should be a random negative, so that a player can't prepare.
When it comes to cake vaults, The idea of making them not craftable is amazing. It makes it rare and special. Now it's just another choice, like scavenger, elixir,... But it should be quite common in venDoors I think. You can hunt for it, but it takes time and effort. Not just one crafting recipe.
How about every X amount of unlocked Stacks you get some permanent reward, like a free archive table, or extra skill point or expertise point? It could be based on the max Stacks you gotten on the character so you cannot repeat the reward.
Might be a good incentive for someone to try to challenge themselves, that's outside normal progression but provides a meaningful reward.
I like this, but as an opt-in I don't think that excluse rewards should be powerfull that "if you don't have 20 stacks you are missing out in free skill points". Maybe make some decorative items or transmogs that use your stacks record to unlock.
I believe what you say makes sense. But the things we (you) talked about was something as well. As it's an opt-in thing it shouldn't just be 30 but 50 percent if not directly go to 0. Another thing is, there should be more chests BUT if there are more chests then there should be more mobs. You will not make them stronger or anything but their quantity will go up with chests. Lastly I think burns should debuff players and not curse them. Like the things that we(dillans) talked with you. That's what comes to my mind at the moment. Thanks for openly talking about these things with us (the dillans)
Having the ascensions crystal not add any extra loot would fix it being better then normal crystals. Maybe only just having tiny XP boost but at a lost would set it back to 0. Perhaps having the soulflame on it change colors to show how many stacks you have it for example: 0-blue, 5--orange, 10-purple, ect. so you can flex to your friends how many vaults you can complete in a row in an item or just put it on display.
If you wanted more difficulty maybe at each color change tier you have it add +1 random vault curse for each vault to balance the increased XP.
(love the update btw vendoors are amazing and more dungeons!!!)
For the soul vaults, what if the player is scored off of vault performance instead of pure completion like Halo scoring? Completing objectives and looting would give points and points drain with time. Then the scaling of the vault was based off of the gross score before entering? And maybe you could curse the run to get a score multiplier?
Alternatively, what if they are reworked to become free . What I mean by this is, when you complete the crystal, you get the FULL soul flamed crystal back but lose it if you fail. However, all loot collected in the vault goes into limbo to compensate. When you fail, you get a percentage of all of the loot (not including like, xp or completion crates) you have collected based off of the final score. Additionally, you could choose to cash in the crystal (somehow) and get your loot but lose the crystal (for the hardcore, broke, or scared players). This way, soul vaults still feel like a challenge but are not META. Just ideas. Love the update and for keeping the community in mind!
I definitely think making the soul flame increase xp instead of item quantity is a great idea since getting to level 100 is quite a big grind and the soul flame could be used to make the process quicker. I do think you should keep it increasing artifact chance as well for the same reason. Also you could change the penalties for not completing to for example dying = 50% off and just leaving = 30% off.
Whats happening to the afterlife modifier that the soul flame use to give? My friend uses them all the time on our server and would be pretty devo if they went away.
What if every 3 vaults (witch is ruffly 30% base on 10 vaults) you get a random positive modifier, which compliments the random negative modifier idea for failing a vault
they are already OP, stop trynna make them better
With the soul flame it could be that at milestone numbers of stacks (e.g. 10,20,30 etc) the vault gets more powerful but in then stays at that level till you reach the next milestone. Combining this with being reset to 0 if you lose gives the chase element of the milestones but also the risk of losing the exisiting stacks.
I love the idea of a negative modifier being added to the soul flame. I think it could be a cool idea that if you die, or don't complete your challenge, maybe the vault itself becomes cursed. Kind of like an architect vault that isn't completed. Things start being replaced with bedrock until its unusable and the soul flame gets recycled or gets crafted into a chaos catalyst or something.
cool idea, but there needs to be some lower buffer for this or you just never ever come out of a down spiral untill you have to recycle it. - which means you would just craft a new one and start over after you loose like 3 times.
I prefer the idea of it giving xp boost than items, but im sure a very minor boost to loot wouldnt hurt. the punishment for failing shouldn't be too harsh imo, but there should definitely be something.
An idea could be that each stack of ascension gives added xp and loot e.g. 10 stacks = 10 levels of increased xp and 10 levels of increased loot. If you die and lose that percentage of stacks (assuming it remains 30%) your stacks of ascension go from 10 -> 7, your level of increased xp goes from 10 -> 7, but your levels of increased loot go from 10 -> 0.
Any other punishment would probably just encourage crafting a new one, unless you add a way to remove that punishment with a mote or something
Either reset stacks entirely, or add a burn. Otherwise there's no reason to ever stop using that ascension.
Add 1% item rarity for every 2-3 stacks. That adds a slow, but very significant, reward.
5:54 and people across the world playing singleplayer can audibly be heard being underwhelmed at this proposal
One way you could balance this would be to have the ascension flames have a fixed "capacity", the maximum number of stacks it can contain, based on the level that you first obtained the flame at, and to make it so reaching that cap destroys the flame and returns some (extremely) valuable reward, forcing you to start over again. That way, even if you fail a few vaults along the way, there's no permanent consequence, but there's no issue of players looping the same high-level flame over and over again because you can complete it and obtain one with more capacity as a result of all your grinding.
Personally, I think the soul flame should become locked as a trophy of how far you got on that Flame. Going back on the same crystal feels weird to me. I do feel the increased loot gives it a better place in the meta.
Transmog unlocks would be SO OMEGA.
What if all the loot and xp you get during your full streak is gambled when you soul flame... You don't get any of it until you "crystallize" it - which is when it can't be put on a crystal again. Then, you get all of it if you decide to end your streak by "unlocking the flame" in a "brazier/ascension" block. and if, perhaps based on game difficulty or w/e, you lose your streak in the vaults, then the soul flame is dissipated in some way (ranging from moderate loss of loot and XP % to loosing all of it.)
A more friendly way of doing this might be putting the extra loot IN the soul flame, keeping vault loot the same-ish, and big rewards for "unlocking your flame" and tapping out of the stream - like extra xp and treasure sort of gear and such based on how many vaults completed in that flame.
Some of that doesn't belong in this update of course, but that's my thought on it! Half awake, apologies for mess XD
The soul flame system potentially giving more loot reminds me of the old OP system in borderlands. If it didn’t necessarily give more lore, but simply better quality loot I think that could work really well.
Like maybe it can give weapons and armor that are levels ahead of you similar to the borderlands system, but items obtained can’t increase HP/armor/block chance (defensive stats basically) past what current level gear already gives. So if your max level, it’ll only be potentially better damage, it doesn’t need to be a huge difference either. Maybe have the gear from it listed as Soul Forged Level 1 to show its special ontop of that and I think that could be really fun!
I really like the idea of the ascension challenge. I commented on the previous video pointing out a few things that I felt needed adjusting, mostly agreeing with the hive mind.
What I'm not particularly thrilled about is the extra XP. Please hear me out, just some food for thought:
+ it's completely OK for solo play (you could even use ascension as a strat to help speedrun VH)
- for general multiplayer setting it might broaden the difference between players by enabling creating level gaps even more quickly, which "can" discourage playing together later; the rich get richer scenario
- the chests in ascension vault with higher flame stacks are already cascading, so the player gets more XP per POI looted, and then that boosted XP total would be multiplied again with the xp modifier resulting in a double xp boost.
I'm conflicted about the additional loot. On one hand, it's perfectly fine for me if ascension is just a challenge that you can flex about; on the other hand, having an additional reward encourages opting into the feature (and looting more chests is always fun).
When it comes to high level play, if you're not very skilled then the ascension effects would overlap with plunderer pearl (no xp to be gained, small loot boost, random objective, but in case of ascension objective becomes harder).
Hardcore 100->0 loss is nice in theory. In practice, I think only the most hardcore players would opt into this scenario now that ascension includes only elixir and scav.
Average players are already sage-sealing their crystal en masse to avoid scav, and we want people to enjoy ascension so they can also enjoy the scavs (I assume that's the case).
Because of that I think % loss is a good idea. Introducing % loss +burn also creates additional gameplay and decision-making: "Do I want to continue this soulflame to keep my current loot % but have to deal with the modifier, or do I restart".
How big should the loss be? I have no proper opinion on that. Imho this part requires throwing it at the community and adjusting later, because it will be tough to hit the right mark.
I like @todmustache2884's idea of boosting crates instead (I know you like the idea of vault improving visually with a higher chest count, but I have some vague doubts about this). Transmog rewards are also a fun idea, don't know about replayability in that case ("I reached 80/100 stacks to get transmog, lost and can't be bothered to try again").
Bringing back the leaderboard+reward from the speedrun vaults might also not be a bad shout.
I would personally publish the feature in an underwhelming state rewards-wise, and with a high % loss. Then I would observe whether people are interested enough to opt-in and for what reasons (challenge, bragging rights, loot). From there I would consider adjusting as necessary. This way while people might complain that it is not 100% satisfying, you might avoid the outrage about "making it harder" or "taking away rewards" later. But of course, while I don't have any game design experience, so these are just random thoughts.
That was a lot of rambling, but maybe something will be useful to the dev team. I will give ascension a try regardless of the outcome. Good luck!
I think the punishments for escaping the vault but not completing it and dying in the vault should be separate, say if you managed to escape you would lost 30% or 50% of the stacks, but if you died you would get a choice of it resetting to 0 or losing 30% or 50% and taking a “burn” for the remainder of the soul flame
I think the burn feature would be really cool for the assertion loses and for the cake seals, I think keep it craftable but make it more expensive
Would it be possible to be able to set the amount lost on failure through a game rule I think default being around 50% would be great or maybe difficulty would adjust it. also giving experience is great but that would make the reward pointless at level 100 so I think transmogs and loot is probably a better option imo.
in braisher what if increase the amount you need to light that scale on the ascension level so the higher level of ascension the higher amount you need to light braisher
I don't have a strong opinion on this but I do want to thank you for being so present here on youtube with this kind of casual direct to the point content. It makes me feel as if you really care about your audience but also your player base. Knowing that you actively read the comments (even if you glaze over this one which is totally fine; I'm not helping you at all here xD) gives a great sense of community.
It feels like a new age of Iskall.
By the way, you got a shout out on the "Imp and Skizz Podcast" by Bdubs in his interview that was uploaded today (part 2). He was asked how it felt coming into season 6 when he did after a long break and how it was getting to know new people and new dynamics and such. That's around the 3 minute mark. Impulse asks a related question around the 6:10ish mark and Bdubs answers around 6:30. He mentions you around then.
I remember from watching back in the day that because of how you greeted him and did a collab with him that I took to him quickly after being a bit wary at first. I think you did more than you know to help him find his footing on S6 right away.
I see two options at the moment, first being it resets to 0 stacks but loot increases (slowly) or they lose x% but stacks could increase something like reputation chance (again slowly)
To start off, I am super excited about the ascension vaults! This is going to be amazing. That said, you asked for my thoughts, so here we go.
My personal take on failing the vault: losing 30% (or 50% or whatever) of the flame sounds good. I’m all for it but I didn’t mind when you lost all of them so I’m good with whatever.
My personal take on the burns: if I get one, I’m probably restarting the flame. I know that’s a weird quirk but I like my stuff perfect and clean so that’s probably just me.
Making it get progressively harder: makes sense but it depends on the dynamic you want. The cost of applying the ascension to a vault is relatively cheap (not including opportunity costs) so why wouldn’t you do it every vault (making it meta) just to see what your streak is? If you make it progressively harder then that would give it a cost. Makes sense to me. Although you mentioned in your first video that you wanted to hit something like 80 flames. I didn’t think that would be possible BEFORE you talked about making it harder. Now I seriously doubt that goal.
Rewards for ascension vaults: I am good with either option, but I had a thought that I wanted to share. What if after like ten flames you could pick an uber modifier to go on it? Like I’ve been grinding for catalysts at level 90 and it would be awesome to be able to pick prismatic. Maybe at 15 you could add two to one? Soul surge and champions abode sounds Omega to me. Don’t even know if that’s possible. Just a thought. I haven’t even considered the implications.
Finally. Great game, Iskall. Keep up the good work!
You can make the soul flame have 2 mods one is for gathering stakes with no loot increase and the other use all the stakes to increase loot.
Ascension is a great mechanic, i being a game designer myself have a unique view on this .
This mechanic is as you said is on an opt in basis for the hardcore players who want to add a challenge to their basic playthrough . You also have hit the nail in the head with regard to it being high skill cap with relatively low barrier to entry .
I feel like when you lose the stack should go back to 0 . It adds frustration , which actually is really good for engagement among those hardcore min maxxers who would find a normal play through boring and dull . ( It also makes it easier to balance)
One of my favourite things to do is have a variable cascade system as in like have a very slow start with the loot being increased like maybe 0.5 % in 1st , 1% in second but make it grow in sort of exponential way which would like make maybe a 30 ascension soul flame to be OP , but to reach there is very hard and only the vest of the best can do it ..... This kind if reward and challenge will satify both the casuals and the hardcore fanbase .
If you make it just a reduced stack it will affect the viability of it being opt in as even am ascension 1 vault would be always statistically better than none .....
Hope you appreciate this pov
2 options if your awarding loot have the vaults increase in loot value every 3-5 levels of Ascension or if you go for the transmog option how about an evolving transmog that lets you show off how far you have gone, so every 5 ascensions the transmogs appearance grows in some way so that the player has a way to show off how epic they are
I always thought soulflame stacks after reaching certain thresholds should reward player with unique unlock in terms of cosmetics. For bragging rights.
Tbh 65+ seems a low level, would be nice for this to be toward last or close to last levels, as more of a end game thing, something to be excited about, as it could potentially scale infinitely. But I don't play this, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
The soulflame stack mechanic i imagine could fall more, exponentially based on the number of fails in a row, so if you fail more in a row, it could potentially offset you more. Well that could be discouraging to some players tho, so there would need to be a reason to risk it regardless of potential risk of failure. Mby after each tier soulflame reaches (in groups of idk, 10), a new tier specific end-game exclusive materials could be obtained, if you complete vault you get 2 if you fail 1. That would make reaching tiers within this exciting.
I think soulflame resetting to 0 shouldn't be a discouragement for a player. This was intended to be a streak counter. Having it reset partially kinda defeats this purpose.
The question then is how to make failing a run with ascension be ok with player? so perhaps a better way to do this would be to reset stacks on failure to 0, but in doing so reward player based on the number lost. This way players could even fail on purpose and still get rewarded with something, although the rewards would not be immediate.
Having stacking objectives sounds like a good idea on paper, as long as the way it scales is reasonable to finish at all times.
is there still going to be a vanilla tip version of Vault Hunter ?
Maybe a whole other type of flame, maybe like a “spirit” flame that resets to 0 and is a little more powerfull
I think it would be smart to make it yield more xp. We already have a lot of ways to get lots of loot, but only one way to buff xp and it's with burger trinket. I would love if those flame vaults would buff xp with every ascension. It would be mostly used in levels 90-100 when we don't need so much loot anymore because we already have everything we need in regards of loot/materials.
I think there should be 2 soul flame like things one is self challeng flame where its JUST how many can you complete in a row no perks no debuffs while the other increases drops and chests but loses cut rewards from the next vault and does the burn that stays until you surpass where the last loss was, (say 10 drops to 7 once you reach 11 the burn leaves) but inturn every vault during that time has a curse they have to deal with but you can only use one soul flame if you try to use a different one to avoid the curse you could get the message "once a soul is a blaze it's always ablaze" and if they lost the soul flame after that message it just adds the modifiers already attached to their old flame (i hope that wouldn't be too hard to implement) but i think it would be really interesting to see and make losing more than "oh no my number " and more of "i can't fail or i am cursed" plus it makes losing in later ones way harder because the curse lasts so much longer and multiple losses would add multiple curses and would go away when its loss level was passed not the highest level
Maybe a possibility of it breaking after losing, much like an ender eye after being used could, as well as the 30% level loss in the soul flame could suffice to balance it
How about a market where when you hit certain levels of stacks, opens new items for you to buy, with say soul shards, plus the number of stacks that is listed next to that item. Then you would have a constant up and down of stacks and things to work for.
Or scale the mob damage inside the vault and scale the crate that comes out from the objective only. Maybe with specific things being guaranteed in the crate per level.
Personally, I think you should lose the soul flame once you break your streak (like what was shown in the update video). IIRC, you can find soul flames in the vault, meaning they are renewable (I could be wrong, only gotten to like lvl 50), so what happens if you keep getting soul flames when you really only ever need one?
Also, I’m kind of confused as to what your goal is with ascension. You say it’s a purely opt-in, but I kind of don’t see how it is as there seems to be no downside to running crystals with the soul flame on (besides maybe failing and losing all your stacks, but then you can just pull out another soul flame and start again). It only gives you good things, like more loot or more exp (which is a competitive advantage, idk if you’re trying to not give players that and keep it even or give them even more loot).
When I saw the update video, I decided I was gonna start a new play through again and use the soul flame constantly when I get 65+ because there was no downside, just more loot.
As much as I hate to say it (I love loot), I think the soul flames should solely increase exp in the vault, scaled with completions. If you fail a soul flame vault, then you lose the soul flame. That way, it’s a good strategy for leveling up when the exp requirement is extremely high and it doesn’t offer players a “competitive” advantage by giving them a lot more loot for simultaneous completions, it’s basically just bragging rights and speedy exp.
This is coming from a casual player though. (Sorry for wall of text)
what about letting the player choose how much of their ascension they want to risk?
this could be done by for example putting special vendoors or dungeons in the vault, which increase the amount of potential stack loss, but have great loot.
(by putting it inside the vaults themselves you also get an extra choice to make while inside the vault, which may be interesting)
to balance that out though, there would probably need to be a minimum stack loss, which could be the 30%.
Alternatively, there could be a room which you can only open at the start of the vault, which immediately makes the vault "hardcore", but either gives some good loot or adds modifiers to the vault.
the burns should be added onto a crystal to provide an additional level to ascension rank if completed. The more burns applied, the more levels to the rank increase. The burn you add to the crystal can be randomised or pay high fee to craft certain negative modifiers...