According to Auron 402's FAQ on gamefaqs, you are quite renowned at navigating the ancient cave. He says this, regarding you:
Squeealer, who is definitely the most crazed Ancient Cave aficionado that I
have ever encountered. Squeealer has become so proficient at navigating the
many perils of the Ancient Cave that just to keep things interesting, he not
only refuses to use accumulated Blue Chest items, but he also sends Maxim in
to the Cave ALONE! I have probably learned more from him about the workings
of the Ancient Cave than I have from anyone else, and I really enjoy being
able to talk to someone who understands my fascination with the AC. His
very informative FAQ can now be found here on GameFAQs at
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/file/588451/43439
Thanks for everything!
I'm very impressed. And since you've been exploring the AC for 13 years(!!!???) now, perhaps this thread should really be about what advice would give to future roguelike game makers. Given all your experience, how would you recommend they proceed in creating a roguelike?
It's okay to have an ending point in your roguelike. I always chuckle when, after completing a tough run, someone will ask me if I defeated the Master Jelly (the cave's final boss). Who cares? The 8ish hour journey of making it to floor 99 was the success and satisfaction.
Keep us coming back. Roguelikes already have a built-in replay value because when you "win," you've really only beaten that one randomly generated dungeon. You haven't beaten all the other infinite number of possibilities. But I realize most gamers need more than that. I still get a thrill when I find a Blue Chest (rare chest item) or find a Treasure Room (cluster of treasures protected by a horde of enemies), so rare little surprises like that are important to me. The more rare stuff that can happen with the insane randomness of roguelikes keeps me coming back and hoping I see something I've never seen before. Some gamers will play the AC just to collect all ten Iris Treasures, even though it is a well-known fact that doing so earns you nothing. So in that case, the gamer just needed the challenge presented to them even with no hope of actual reward!
What is also important to me is improving my game, accomplishing something I've never accomplished before, and tracking my accomplishments. I also think a game could reward me for these accomplishments by unlocking characters, features, etc as I've said before.
Here are a couple of excerpts from my FAQ. (At the end of my FAQ I talk about ways the AC could be improved):
Here are some challenge ideas that help you unlock fun stuff. These could be selected before the run, or the game could just recognize that you've done them:
- Getting to floor 99 with a short party (including solo)
- Getting to floor 99 in a certain amount of time
- Getting to floor 99 with no characters having fallen in battle
- Getting to floor 99 with selecting "no instant death" option
- Getting to floor 99 with selecting "bring in no Blue Chests" option
- Getting to floor 99 with selecting "Red Chests only" option
- Getting to floor 99 having used no healing spells
- Getting to floor 99 having used no IP effects
- Getting to floor 99 having defeated every enemy
- Getting to floor 99 having never escaped battle
- Getting to floor 99 having KEE while never escaping battle
- Getting to floor 99 having KEE while averaging less than X turns per battle
- Getting to floor 99 having KEE while averaging less than X rounds per battle
And to help me track my accomplishments:
J. AC SUMMARY
At the end of the main quest we get something I think is really cool - a summary of your accomplishments throughout the game. Of course, my FAVORITE is the AC Summary page.
I'm suggesting a revamped and bigger AC summary providing stats for your just completed run, and also your all-time stats. Each run, whether successful or not, could provide you with ratings in different categories and ranking you, thus providing the player with a way of gauging their AC abilities. Here are some ideas:
- total escapes
- total enemy encounters
- total number of enemies defeated plus a collapsable list of all enemies defeated
- total number of enemies that were summoned in battle
- Red Chest report including list of all finds and categorizes them by commons/uncommons/rares
- Blue Chest report
- dropped items report
- total HP pads plus shows if you missed any
- total Treasure Rooms and a special Treasure Rooms report
- spells not found
- healing report including how many times each healing spell or healing IP effect was used
- attack spells report
- IP effects report
- give us a way to save these summaries
I think the toughest part of making a roguelike would be making the gameplay interesting, dynamic, and even quirky, but all without bogging it down. It's such a fine line and partly depends on the person playing the game.
One thing that Lufia II has going for it is that you become familiar with the characters, gameplay, battle systems, etc. via the main quest. So when you start playing the AC sidequest you've already got some idea of how to play.
"Possibly the best thing about these challenges is how they uncover more of the true beauty of this game. It is amazing how detailed and how much effort went into the strategy of battles. It absolutely boggles my mind how they could waste such a superlative effort by making the normal quest such a low difficulty level that you barely see the tip of the iceberg in terms of the intricacy."
I'm not really clear there when I say strategy of battles. There is a long list of weapons, armor, items, etc that all have unique functions and usefulness. To this day I am still discovering things about this game.
