Hello Community!
Today I wanted to share some of my plans for the future of Rift Wizard.
The roadmap has been updated:
Patch 2 is all about build variety and depth. I want to make sure that there are many interesting ways to get through the game.
The biggest component of this is fixing how shrine stacking works. Being able to make an unstoppable juggernaut out of certain spells makes other spells much less attractive. It also encourages a playstyle that doesn't involve much thinking: casting one spell and one spell only. So I would like to make it a bit harder to construct such juggernauts, which means, no more stacking shrine bonuses.
Won't shrines be weak and worthless if they can't stack? If left unchanged, sure. But making them nonstackable also allows their power to be much higher.
So this would be a good time to redo the shrines. They all just add a bit to one attribute- no longer! Look forward to shrines that add damage procs, give your minions extra abilities, add extra damage types to spells, and more.
This will move the game a bit more towards loot dependence. There is always a careful balance in roguelikes between solvability and randomness- my goal is that Rift Wizard will still be in a healthy middle state after this change.
Shrines will take the bulk of the development time this patch. They will also probably upset balance. That's great, because I want to continue addressing balance anyways. My goal with balance for Rift Wizard is that the player doesn't feel bad trying new things. Some things can and will be stronger than others. Balance can vary run to run based on loot, monster choices, and terrain gen. In fact, I'm experimenting with a discount-scrolls mechanic on the beta branch right now that grants random discounts to spells each run, further encouraging the player to rely on their wits instead of static ideas about builds and strategies. Ultimately, its ok if a few spells and skills do seem generally more useful than others, as long as they don't totally squash out other builds. The worst offenders are those who not only muscle out other spells, but also allow you to beat the game without taking risk and without making decisions- Arc Lightning and Heaven's Wrath sometimes do this right now, especially when combined with Multicast. Expect changes to these spells, and perhaps a few others as well.
Its also nice if there aren't any totally useless tools- everything should have atleast one conceivable use (thought it may be very, very niche). Rift Wizard has a ways to go to achieve this, and I'll be doing some work this patch towards this end.
The beta branch, as of friday, has some preliminary balance changes, and the first draft of the new shrines.
In addition, I'll be polishing the UI a bit. This involves a bunch of different small tasks, but a few big ones too. Notably, each spell will be getting its own unique animated icon. Its a small thing, but it should make the game feel a bit more warm and alive. A few of these icons are also live on the beta branch right now.
The last item I want to tackle for the November patch, time permitting, is at Mac/Linux compatibility.
Future plans have not changed drastically, though I have delayed work on spell upgrades. I'd considered revamping these this patch, but revamping the shrines is plenty of balance change for one patch. So I'll be taking a look at these next patch. They aren't in a horrible state, but the upgrades system as a whole could be much more interesting. Some spells have really cool upgrades- arc lightning as a pay-as-you-go 11 SP superweapon is pretty cool, and upgrading spider queen into a different type of spider queen is, in theory atleast, quite cool as well. My current thinking is that I would like to do the same thing to upgrades that I am currently doing to shrines: make them bigger, exclusive, non stacking choices. Its generally more interesting, in my mind, to make those sorts of decisions. But I am not yet set on this- thinking it over will be part of the work of patch 3.
All of these plans are subject to change of course, and there will be many small items not mentioned in the road map. If there is suddenly huge community interest in something not currently on the roadmap, it may well make its way onto it. But this is the current most up to date plan for Rift Wizard.
Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to come by and share your thoughts on the discord.
-Dylan