While I enjoy the Rift Beast system, I do feel like it’s a good foundation for a truly great system that can provide interesting gameplay and decisions, beyond what is currently there. Here are some ideas I have to improve/rework certain aspects of it:
- The way you first encounter the beast via the Mysterious Rift could remain the same. We invade the Rift Beast’s timeline, slay it, and influence its further evolutions.
- The first change I would suggest is during the evolution stage. A huge quality of life would be to allow reroll of choices for a cost (Ancient Bones makes the most sense). This alleviates some of the bad feelings you get from never getting offered a choice that has the rewards you need to craft whatever Primordial you are after.
- The next fundamental change I would make is to rework the evolutions to give them rarities and design them to synergize more with each other for greater reward. Certain evolutions should only become available if we choose a “pre-requisite” evolution (increased attack speed unlocks evolutions that trigger off the beasts attacks, additional heads unlock evolutions that trigger for each head it has, etc). This would give us more control over the creation of our beast and as we add more synergies to the beast the rewards should get better. If the beast system had rare or unique evolutions it would add an exciting aspect to the hunt for crafting the perfect beast, especially if they come with greater rewards.
- A nice feature to build upon this would be a way to view the possible evolutions and how they interact so that as we learn more about our prey we can better plan how to craft the most dangerous and rewarding beast. At the very least we should be able to view our current lineage at any time via a menu.
- The final change I would make would be removing the Torn Rifts and making the beast encounters more of a hunt than it is now. When we enter a zone that contains a beast it could let out a screech and we see a notification “The Hunt is On” or something. We could find footprints or the beast’s scent in the zone that we interact with and it gives a general indication of where the next scent/footprint is that we follow until we find the beast and it fights us. Each time we interact with the footprint/scent enemies from the Ancient Era could ambush us that we could kill for ancient bones. The beast should still be able to be found naturally in the zone, but the hunt aspect would ensure we can find it and get rewarded along the way. Removing Torn Rifts also makes it more exciting to finally find a Mysterious Rift since we know we’ll be able to invade the beast’s era.
Please let me know your thoughts and ideas for making the Rift Beast a more compelling expereince.