[SUG] Talismans for "max N skill types"

[Proxima]

"Fewest different skill types" was an interesting challenge, and while the talisman system partially supports this challenge (in that we can have "use only skill X" talismans), it would be good to expand this to support levels that require more than one skill type.

[namida]

Are there many cases where "any X skill types" would offer value that "these specific X skill types" wouldn't?

If there are enough such cases, I can consider it.

[Proxima]

For starters, unless I missed it, we don't have the ability to restrict to "these specific X skill types", except by zeroing all others, which is clunky, especially if there are lots of skill types on the level.

I guess the main virtue of "any X skill types" is that it challenges the player, while still giving them choice about which skills to use -- for example, there were several levels that were possible with builders + any one destructive skill. Another obvious example is Going Their Separate Ways with 2 skill types, which allows the player to go for either the no-floaters or no-climbers solution.

[WillLem]

+1 for this

[namida]

Another question I'd have is, what should the icon for this be? (for use in the level select menu / when clicking on a talisman on the preview screen)

[WillLem]

An initial idea after sleeping on this:

[WillLem]

Another idea, possibly a bit clearer but less elegant/simple:

[WillLem]

Meanwhile, this absolutely does the job, but moves away from the "symbols" style of NL's menus:







After some thought, I prefer the first of the 3 ideas I've posted so far.

[Simon]

Very hard to make a simple icon for number of different skills. Here's one more take.

-- Simon

[namida]

^ What do people think about Simon's idea without the "not equals" symbol? (Keeping in mind "total skills" already exists with a different icon.)

[Silken Healer]

Sorry, but I'm not a big fan of Simon's one. I prefer WillLem's "?" one a lot more.

[WillLem]

Thanks for the vote, Silken!

Simon's idea could work, for sure. I agree that it would be better without the 'not equals' sign, which is potentially confusing. It's a tricky one to get right tbf.

I reckon that or my "?" one (which is also potentially a bit confusing and/or unclear, admittedly) are the best ideas so far.

[Simon]

Yeah, the icons aren't precise yet, in the sense that they all afford plausible but wrong interpretations. We want to minimize plausible interpretations, ideally there should only be one plausible interpretation, the correct one. Let's look at some wrong interpretations:

Three buttons with not-equal:
Beat the level with n assignments where no two assignments can be the same skill, in addition to what the other restrictions impose.

Indeed a strong wrong plausible interpretation. Is this why you deem the not-equals sign confusing?

Three buttons:
Beat the level with n assignments total.

This is the weakest wrong interpretation because the wrong interpretation already exists with a different icon (crosshairs?). This can be an argument that three skill buttons without any symbol is a good icon. The problem with this argument is that the player must know about the crosshairs icon to draw the conclusion that three buttons don't mean n assignments. Therefore the three buttons by themselves still aren't as precise as we want. I'll have to sleep over it some more.

One button with question-mark:
Beat the level with n assignments of a single skill of your choice, and this is the only skill allowed other than the explicit skills from the other restrictions.

This sounds really plausible a wrong interpretation to me, even stronger than the three-buttons-with-not-equals. Consider: If you were to implement such a talisman restriction, isn't this the obvious icon for that?

One button can mean:
Vague. Weakly the same as one button with question mark.

-- Simon

[namida]

Any further ideas on the icon / thoughts about existing proposals?

The icon is pretty much the only problem with this one (unlike the kill-all-zombies one which raised a lot of further issues). Much like the existing talismans it involves purely checking what skills the player has used up to a certain point; it's just checking a different factor. To be clear, I don't foresee a situation where this suggestion has to be cancelled; this is more just about avoiding a situation where it ends up with a bad icon (keeping in mind that at least, if all else fails, there are text descriptions in-game as well as visual ones).

[WillLem]

I don't think NeoLemmix needs any more skill-related talismans, but if this does get implemented then I support most of the ideas for icons that have already been posted.

The one I suggested featuring a "?" could be re-designed with something other than the question mark to represent "any skill."