Recently, a couple Pokemon have been added to Secret Rooms in dungeons as unique hunts. Because of that, I have gotten back into trying to hunt these rooms to try and get those unique Pokemon for filling out my dex. However, in doing so, it sort of dawned on me just how unsatisfying the gameplay loop is with finding these rooms. The gameplay entirely consists of manually running every tile on a floor until you hopefully (not even guaranteed) hit a secret room tile. I personally don’t find this super fun, and honestly it just seems very tedious to do. Instead, when a secret room is found, people in my guild are more likely to just log off and hold the floor so that everyone can have the Pokemon and don’t have to do their own individual hunts, which feels like it goes against the whole point of the mechanic in the first place.
I think the idea of Secret Rooms is super cool - a hidden place in the dungeon which offers the chance to find so many interesting secrets. It’s a great way to liven the feel of a dungeon and really make it multidimensional, especially when story elements are added into them. But when it comes to hunting them down, there is so much left to be desired. For that I’d like to propose two possible ways in which these hunts don’t have to constantly feel like a torture, without making secret rooms too much less of a secret.
More prominent visual indicators on Secret Room tiles. I know this is a possibility that has been used for some in the past (like in SFR), and I think it would be really help in making the hunts more deductive rather than pure luck. The only downside here is that not every tileset has an unused tile that properly fits.
Have an item that checks for the presence of a Secret Room on the floor. If one is present, have a message show up in the battle log that displays “there seems to be more to this floor than meets the eye…” or something similar. I think this could be an interesting use of the family items that are supposed to make secret rooms more common and encourages more diversity in the Pokemon used in a team.
These are the only two ways I can think of at the moment, but I’m sure there’s other ways, which I’d also love to hear!
Rather than just having SR tiles, I feel like the SR tile will only be able to be revealed by frisk, scanner orbs, t-specs etc would make this better b/c frisk kinda still reveals the hidden SR while still keeping it hidden.
As for the text, I feel like that just makes it so people only explore floors when the text pop.
I personally think that the SR tile is the way to go, but other methods like making a sound or a distinct sparkle like hidden items do would also work, but yeah, I agree with this.
I think a holdable team item or something would be great or add the effect to treasure specs or something to make them more valuable. The only time Ive had fun SR hunting was in easter hc
I like the way you incorporated the idea of adding the existing fam items into the mix that are currently non-functional. Guaranteeing you know what floors have secret rooms, imo, is much more advantageous than increasing the possible amount, especially when having multiple srs on the same floor has no added value.
Ideally I’d want both of the ways you suggested to be added into the game. A fam item that just notifies you when an sr is present on a floor doesn’t seem like a terrible ask considering the pokemon that get the current sr fam items aren’t among the most desirable, and there are already so many fam items with game changing effects.
The visual indicator I feel is just a long overdue standard considering these are supposed to be rooms that can and should be found under normal play, and the idea of stepping on a single tile on an entire floor with no identifying features by just running the dungeon normally is a near impossible thought.
Personally I would also add on that any srs that lead to new dungeons or special locations (llc and rms as the prime example of what not to be like) should have guaranteed pathways as soon as they’ve been found as an sr. You shouldn’t have to rely on rng to perform specific tasks like key item use or running a dungeon, at that point it feels a lot more punishing than it does rewarding when you find the sr.
Honestly reading this, also after talking with Turt earlier, I feel like the current non-functional family item that are “suppose” to give SR a higher spawn rate to change to that instead. Some gen 8 pokemon could also gain a family item that does this as well.