[Suggestions] Adding more depth and longer progression

[Lacuna73]

I think this game is great and has a ton of potential. However, I feel it could benefit a lot if it had more depth in some areas and longer progression so I’d like to just throw some suggestions out there for ways to improve it in the future.


**Rarer plorts and corral improvements**
I don’t think plorts should be a guaranteed drop from slimes after you feed them. I think it would be more beneficial for the game as a whole if they had a percent chance to drop instead. Different tiers of slimes would have different plort droprates; higher tiers would drop their plorts less often. This would make largos made from higher tier slimes more unique as they wouldn't be as easy to create. Largos would also have two individual droprates for each of their plorts. I’m going to use the tierlist below based on default plort value as an example.

Tier 0: Pink Slime (100% chance to drop a plort when fed)
Tier 1: Rock/Tabby/Phosphor (90% chance to drop a plort when fed)
Tier 2: Honey/Boom/Rad/Puddle (80% chance to drop a plort when fed)
Tier 3: Hunter/Mosaic/Meteor (70% chance to drop a plort when fed)

Having drop chances instead of guaranteed drops does several beneficial things to the game. First, it reduces slime clutter in environments, less plorts means less largos in the wild, less largos means less Tarr. Second, it slows down progression by making the player gain newbucks slower which I feel is a good thing because it’s currently easy to experience all the game has to offer in just a few hours. Default value on plorts would also have to be rebalanced to make higher tier plorts still more valuable to farm. Third, it reduces the time spent moving plorts around due to there being less of them. Fourth, and maybe most importantly, it adds more depth to the game. Once plort droprates are made a percentage instead of a guaranteed 1 (or 2 with favorite foods), you can add things to the game to strategically manipulate droprates. My idea here is to add different environment preferences for each slime which causes them to have a higher chance to produce more plorts depending on what environment conditions are met.

Each slime would have environment preferences in 4-5 different categories such as temperature, humidity, light level, ground type, and maybe weather type. Each category would have different levels or types, some examples are below.

Temperature levels: cold, chilly, temperate, warm, hot
Humidity levels: dry, medium, humid
Light levels: bright, twilight, dark
Ground types: rocky, grassy, water (would remove the need for a pond)
Weather types: stormy, foggy, rainy

Each slime would prefer 1 or 2 in each category. Every individual level/type from each category would have a corral upgrade to go with it so you can customize the optimal environment for your slimes. Each preference you meet in each category for a specific slime would increase the droprate of plorts from that slime by 5-10%. This might not seem like much but when you have 20 slimes in a corral together and you optimize corral upgrades so you have a 5-10% bonus in each category for each slime, it adds up.

Largos would have all of the preferences from both slimes that make it up; meeting the preferences of one of those two slimes increases the droprates of only that type of plort, not both. If preferences happen to match up then only 1 of the plorts randomly gets the preference bonus whenever the largo is fed. Also, feeding a slime its favorite food would only provide a 30% or so bonus to plort drops.

Having all these extra upgrades gives each corral a unique appearance so they don’t all have to look the same and it prolongs progression by adding more things to spend newbucks on. Different environments can also have effects on slimes other than plort droprates such as behavior (making certain slimes more calm, agitated, etc.).


**Rare slime color variants**
One way to add some depth and a collection aspect to the game is to add a very rare color variant for each existing slime. This is an idea that has been very popular and has worked well in games like pokemon with “shiny” (alternate color) versions of each pokemon. These slimes might be labeled “chroma” or “muta” slimes (Chroma Honey Slime, Chroma Puddle Slime, etc) to differentiate them. These color variant slimes would produce the same plorts as their normal counterparts but every once in a while they might produce a chroma plort instead which varies in color just as the slime does. These plorts can be cashed in for 1.5-2x the price as their normal counterparts. They can also be used for largos as usual but any largos made from them would also be tinted a different color depending on the plort color. Colors could also blend this way if you give a chroma plort to a chroma slime and get a largo made from two chroma slimes.

In addition to using these plorts for largos they could be fed to the normal counterparts of these chroma slimes as well to produce another chroma slime of the same type. For example, a chroma honey plort can be fed to a normal honey slime to make another chroma honey slime so now you have two chroma honey slimes. This way you can continually make more of these special slimes but it takes a while since the chroma plorts are rare.

Building off of the "environments" idea listed above, slimes could have 2 preferences in each environment category. Meeting the first preference in the category would increase normal plort droprates but meeting the second preference might increase the droprate of chroma plorts. This way the player has options as to how they want to farm and what they want out of their slimes. You could also mix it up and meet different combinations of these preferences. You might meet 2 preferences in different categories for increased normal plort droprate and 3 preferences in the remaining categories for increased chroma plort droprate in the same corral. Also, there could be additional bonuses to either normal or chroma plort droprates based on whether or not a slime is in a corral or free range. Free range slimes might have a higher chance to produce chroma plorts and corral slimes might have a higher chance for normal plorts.

One concern here is that slime color is important right now as it is used to easily differentiate different slimes. Mixing up colors too much can be easily avoided by simply making these slimes and their plorts rare (as they are meant to be) or by simply making the alternate colors of these slimes only slightly different. For instance, a chroma honey slime might be orange or red-orange which isn’t too much different than the normal yellow so you can still tell it’s a honey slime. The same can be done for other slimes like puddle slimes so that the alternate color is dark blue which is still similar to its normal light blue.


**Reducing largo size**
Largos are big… perhaps too big. They tend to get in the way whenever you’re trying to do… well anything. It’s also difficult to have lots of them in a corral and, quite frankly, if they were smaller they’d look cuter…

I think it’s inevitable that something will be done about largo size in the future and there are a few different ways this could go. One solution is to simply reduce their size across the board by about 30-40% so they’re not in the way as much (they still wouldn’t be able to be vac’d up). Another solution is to add some mechanic to the game that allows the rancher to manually reduce largo size and subsequently be able to vac them up like smaller slimes. There are a couple different ways to do this.

One way is to add a new special kind of food for each food type (a new special meat, a new special fruit, a new special veggie, etc.). These can be labeled “pygmy” foods or something similar and would be rarer than favorite slime foods like stony chickens and mint mangos. Once a largo eats one of these foods they immediately and permanently reduce in size to about the size of a normal slime and are then able to be vac’d up so they can be handled easier.

Another way is to add a new plot expansion called a compressor. This expansion would be similar to the corral where you can put largos in but then you can manually activate the compressor to immediately and permanently reduce the size of all largos in it. Compressed largos would be similar in size to normal slimes and are able to be vac’d up. Using the compressor would have a cost of newbucks, plorts, or both. Plort cost could be based on what plorts the largos in it can normally produce and newbuck cost might increase with more largos in the compressor (100+ newbucks per largo).

One concern here is that small largos might be hard to tell apart from normal slimes which might result in an accidental Tarr outbreak when feeding them plorts. I think this can be mostly avoided by simply making the largo label more noticeable in the upper right as you hover over the slime.


**Rarer foods**
Right now, it’s very easy to find and produce an abundance of favorite slime foods which give the huge bonus of doubling plort farming. I don’t really mind the ability to produce copious amounts of anything as long as it takes a little bit of time and effort to get to that point. With that said, I think initially finding the favorite foods of slimes should be a bit harder than it currently is. One way to do this is to make the location of where these foods spawn random or pseudo-random instead of always spawning in set locations. The existing spawn points of these foods can remain the same, but they don’t always spawn in all of them. This would require the player to actively look for them even if they know every possible spawn location. Every so often the foods might disappear and begin spawning in a different spawn location in order to mix things up regularly.


**New foods and modifying slimes**
Additional, much rarer, foods can be added that could be used to do things other than simply feed slimes such as permanently giving slimes new behaviors and mechanics. An example is a food that gives the “play” or “boop” behaviors of a tabby slime to a slime that normally does not have those behaviors. Some of these rare foods might not be able to be farmed which encourages players to adventure out to find them.

Alternatively, these foods can be bought at the ranch, not for newbucks, but instead for specific types of plorts. For instance, if you want the food that gives any slime the “play” and “boop” behaviors of a tabby, you need to gather a bunch of tabby plorts to buy that food or if you want to give any slime the internal glow of a phosphor slime, you need to gather a bunch of phosphor plorts to buy that food. This gives plorts a new purpose other than simply cashing them in and it gives different types of plorts unique value because they are used to buy unique things. This is something I feel is lacking from the game currently because the main use of plorts right now is to simply cash them in. I feel that this sort of disincentivizes players from keeping around lower tier slimes. Having price tiers isn’t necessarily a bad thing but if cashing them in is the only use of plorts then it makes it objectively more worthwhile to focus on the higher tier slimes. I feel there should be a reason to keep around some lower tier slimes even if those reasons are only personal preference and slime customization.

Currently, slime science is pretty simple, you feed a plort to a slime and you get a largo (hybrid) and if you feed that largo a plort that it can’t produce you get Tarr… lots of Tarr. It’s a bit of a shame that you can only see hybrids of two slimes at a time, especially since this game will likely have tons of different slimes in the future. This idea of using plorts to buy foods that can add behaviors and characteristics to slimes helps to add more customization and depth to slime science. This also helps make each plort unique just like the slimes they come from. If something like this isn’t implemented then I feel the best alternative to add some long-term depth would be to add a third tier of slime hybrids made up of 3 slimes (if largos decrease in size this new third hybrid tier could be the size of current largos).


**Slimes found in unique ways**
I think there needs to be a bit more of a reason to explore the world. At the moment, it’s very easy to find whatever you need such as slimes and food in the wild. Each slime type spawns often and spawns in more than one place and food can be mass produced at the ranch. One way to encourage players to adventure out more is to introduce more things into the game that can only be done or completed in the wild. This can be done by introducing slimes that are actually rare or hard to find or even slimes that don’t normally spawn in the wild but instead spawn from a triggered event.

An example is to take a boom rock largo and put it in a special water pool in the wild (a cold lake maybe?). Once it explodes (per its normal behavior), it could turn into a normal iron slime (not a largo). This would be the only way to acquire iron slimes. Once largos become smaller (see ideas above) it would be easier to move boom rock largos around and subsequently easier to create iron slimes in mass.

Another example is to take a phosphor slime to a specific area of the world at night and feed it a honey plort which transforms it, not into a largo, but instead into a normal ectoplasm slime. Again, this would be the only way to produce this type of slime, thus encouraging more adventuring out into the world.

One concern here is that the game could become a wiki game which almost requires players to google how to get different things. This can be avoided by leaving hints and clues all over the game on how to get specific types of slimes. The Slimepedia is an amazing tool to help prevent this through descriptions of slimes and descriptions the world. Clues could also be left in emails that you receive in your house as well as in different aspects of the environment itself. If you enter a new area with a big temple in the middle that has an area at the very top displaying a picture of honey and a picture of a pink slime it becomes clear that it involves bringing a pink slime and a honey slime there (maybe to create some sort of jelly slime?). This would require a bit of experimenting but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, lots of players like experimenting, it just needs to be sort of clear what to do without googling.


**New slime types**
-- Snow/Frosty Slime: A white slime that can only survive in cold places, it occasionally freezes nearby food making it inedible
-- Iron Slime: A grey slime that is very heavy and falls much faster after jumping than other slimes
-- Magnet Slime: A slime that attracts and pulls other magnet slimes towards it when its hungry and repulses them when its full
-- Chorus Slime (an idea from hypehypehypeahhah): A slime that makes all nearby slimes agitated when it’s hungry and calms them when its full
-- Warp Slime: A blue/purple multicolor slime that occasionally teleports to a nearby location, they require a special corral improvement to stop them from teleporting out
-- Chameleon Slime: A slime that occasionally changes color to be the same color as the closest nearby slime
-- Ash Slime: A slime found in volcanic areas that also has a chance of spawning near an incinerator after incinerating every 10 or so slimes, it occasionally takes in deep breaths and blows out a stream of ash in front of it
-- Jelly Slime: A red slime with dark particles like seeds in its body (like strawberry or raspberry jelly) that leaves behind a trail of jelly as it moves and leaves bigger, more frequent, slime splashes on walls from bumping into them, and like honey slimes, other slimes really like their plorts
-- Cloud/Vapor Slime: A gas slime that can fly and only consumes gas
-- Ghost/Spooky Slime: A flying dark purple slime that can only survive in the dark and occasionally turns invisible/near invisible, it also occasionally throws nearby food into the air without touching it (spooky!)
-- Ectoplasm Slime: An opaque slime that can glow during the night and can fly during the day
-- Shadow Slime: A black slime that has a darkness aura during the day similar to a rad slime damage aura, this aura disappears at night, any largos made with a shadow slime and a light sensitive slime can now survive in daylight because they produce their own darkness around them
-- Various gem/crystal slimes
-- Various seasonal /holiday slimes


**New food types**
-- Fungi: Can only grow in the dark like caves
-- Fish: Can only survive in water like ponds
-- Minerals: Can be “grown” like a veggie but the ground of a garden becomes very rocky
-- Various gasses: Works similar to water, slimes that use gas as a food have to be physically in the gas to absorb it like a puddle slime in water
-- Insects: Nothing really special here… just bugs (maybe they are found high up in trees/cliffs?)
-- Sunlight: Some slimes might use photosynthesis to survive but must be continually exposed to light, they cannot survive long in darkness, a corral upgrade can go along with this to make continual light exposure possible
-- Nectar: Can be produced from flowers grown in a garden
-- Sweets/Candy: nom nom nom


**Miscellaneous game additions/improvements**
-- A counter on corrals/ponds/coops to keep track of the number of entities in them
-- A corral upgrade that prevents entities outside of a corral from being affected by explosions by boom slimes inside of it
-- A way to remove specific upgrades to corrals and other plot expansions without destroying the whole expansion and rebuilding it
-- An upgrade to the ranch teleporter that allows you to teleport back to any teleporters in the world that you’ve already unlocked
-- Upgrades for more silo storage and upgrades for more vac slots so you can carry more (as the game adds more items these become more necessary)
-- Some sort of pet system or at least the ability to name individual slimes with a nametag (similar to minecraft nametags) which would display the slime’s name above their heads in a nameplate
-- Higher base value for gold plorts, gold slimes aren’t much of a reason to go out in the wild, you can always make more newbucks at the ranch
-- More free range areas at the ranch
-- Special loot or higher chance of good stuff from crates, I don't feel they are that worthwhile to open right now

[Nunn]

Those are some cool ideas. I especially like the shiny slimes!

[SilvieSkydancer]

Oh MAN give us the shiny slimes. I already love shiny Pokemon and shiny slimes would be a perfect addition to this game

[Rosewell8]

This seems to be a Consolidation of many other topics that I've seen on this forum. I'm not sure if you posted those as well, but if you didn't, please provide sources or credit for the Ideas.

[SilvieSkydancer]

This seems to be a Consolidation of many other topics that I've seen on this forum. I'm not sure if you posted those as well, but if you didn't, please provide sources or credit for the Ideas.

I hope you're aware that it's possible this person just had the same ideas as other people coincidentally.

[Lacuna73]

This seems to be a Consolidation of many other topics that I've seen on this forum. I'm not sure if you posted those as well, but if you didn't, please provide sources or credit for the Ideas.

The ideas for rare color variations for slimes as well as the idea for slimes that are created from triggered events in the wild are popular ideas from games like the pokemon series. Reducing largo size is something I've seen several people mention before, I just simply elaborated on possible ways for doing that which I haven't seen anyone do. Modifying slimes is something maybe other people have mentioned before? Its not a very difficult idea to come up with and as far as I know no one has expressed the specific idea I posted on how to do that (with the exception of a third tier of slime hybrids which I've seen more than one person mention). As for the idea of environments, I saw one other person post something about adding environments but it was significantly if not entirely different than what this is and it didn't have anything to do with plort droprates if I remember correctly.

Ideas for different slimes and food might have similar or exactly the same names as some other ideas but I intentionally tried to give them different characteristics than what I've seen other people come up with in order to differentiate them. I also made an effort to search the first 8-10 pages of the forums to make sure I wasn't repeating anyone's original ideas. If you do find someone else who posted an original idea either extremely similar or exactly the same as whats on here (that is also dated before this) let me know, or they can let me know, I will edit the post and let people know that they also had the idea.

[LinkJr]

I'd like to add some suggestions regarding progression too, but first I'll just add my opinions about the suggestions on OP. Having Shiny Variants could be really great, and reducing Largo sizes would be appreciated really. I also agree that rare food and rare slimes should be actually more rare.

Now expanding on your Plort % idea, I think Wild slimes should have a MUCH smaller chance of producing plorts, and Domesticated/Ranch slimes should have a higher production. It would solve a lot of the problems with high number of Largos and Tarr in the wild too.


Alternatively, production could still be guaranteed in the ranch, but there would be more than one plort type for each slime. For example, all slime can produce "colorless plort" and feeding a rock slime has 20% chance of a colorless and 80% chance of rock. (and each tier of slime having different %).


A more complicated solution (which would probably require a lot more dev work and I'm not sure would be feasible) would be to actually introduce "hybrid plorts" and the more "qualities" they have the more valuable they are.
Common plorts are "featureless" just any color of plort, and they have a base value, but...
A rock slime can produce these common plorts and "Rocky" Plorts which would add a feature and increase the value;
Or a Tabby Slime could also produce "Striped" Plorts which are another feature that increases the value;
Then a Largo Rock Tabby can actually produce a Plort that is "Stripped" AND "Rocky" which is even more valuable.
The devs would need to create slimes thinking about plort features though which could hold some ideas back and as I said I'm not sure how viable this option would be, but it could be an interesting approach.


And just as an additional thing, I would like to see Slimepedia entries for Largo slimes, it would be cool to see all hybrid possibilities. (and I would hope shinies are added in the Slimepedia too if they are implemented).