Hello, I’m planning out a game that has a random selection of upgrades as part of its gameplay loop, somewhat similar to certain types of tower tycoons and similar (but with character upgrades instead of stores or apartments).
During the phase where you choose upgrades, you get a choice between 5 random upgrades, but instead of only choosing one you can apply up to 3 (weighted so that better performance in-game = more upgrades can be applied). However, they may not all be upgrades you want, so I was also thinking of including a one-time purchase which permanently lets you choose from 6 or 7 random upgrades instead of only 5. (These are not the final numbers, I’ll figure those out when I have a working demo and can do a balance test).
Does this qualify as paid random items? I was thinking maybe not since you can’t pay to reroll and it’s just a one-time purchase for a permanent upgrade to your upgrades, but it is still technically a payment which affects random chance, so I’m not completely certain.
I’m not sure how it works if the player purchases an item and gets one (or more) gauranteed items for their money. I’d think you wouldn’t need to put a percentage for that.
It might be better for for you and the players if you threw them the percentages just to be sure.
Again, you don’t pay to reroll (or even to roll in the first place, the rolls are free and just part of the gameplay loop), you pay to always get a selection of 6 or 7 instead of a selection of 5. Since it also applies to every roll afterwards, the money is also not wasted even if you don’t get what you want initially unless you quit the game on the spot.
Though, I could also actually do the extra rolls even if you have not bought the gamepass and show the extra 1-2 that buying the permanent upgrade instantly unlocks, but for some reason that feels more predatory than “you can buy extra choices”. But it is less like “paying for a chance for something” since you see exactly what you are 100% guaranteed to get for it.
I can probably try to be transparent about percentages anyway (though it’s tricky since they change with the upgrades you already have eg. some upgrades will make others more likely or even lock you out of one entirely), but my concern is more about whether I have to hide the mechanic from users not eligible to purchase paid random items.
I was thinking more like a gamepass to always have an extra random upgrade path option, unless that’s what you mean.
On an unrelated note, I hope my game doesn’t end up too similar to yours lol. (It probably won’t be for a variety of reasons, and you could literally never guess what my game is gonna be based on my forum posts, but I don’t want my game to feel like a knockoff or butt into people’s niches)