Ways to make my game's main mechanic more interesting?

[gritty pagoda]

A bit of context on my game: my game is a roguelike, and I'm being very honest when saying I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel with it, as you can think of a very similar game to The Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne or Enter the Gungeon where the player progresses around a dungeon killing enemies and bosses.

My game's main mechanic involves making your own gun. Each gun is made up of 3 parts that when combined, result in a unique gun. Here is what I have thought of so far, but as you guys keep on reading, you'll realize some of these parts are seriously limited when coming up with ideas.

Gun Parts

• Stocks: The first part that composes a gun, should be the part that represents a “handle” on a gun. On the code side of things, this is the part that contains a custom bullet.
• Triggers: The middle part that composes a gun, should have, like the name implies, a trigger to pull. On the code side of things, this part contains fire rate information and if it’s a semi auto (hold and release to shoot once) or automatic gun (hold click to shoot multiple times).
• Barrels: The last part that composes a gun, should have a part where a bullet can come out. On the code side of things, this part contains the spread (in an arc) and amount of bullets that come out of the gun, also contains the “spread type”, which basically defines a pattern.

Rarity sorting:

• Normal (Tier 1)
  • Super standard modules, nothing unique, very generic functioning. Examples: barrels that only shoot one bullet, stocks with a normal projectile that just applies damage.
• Rare (Tier 2)
  • Better than normal modules, more interesting behaviors or just plain better versions of their normal counterparts. Example: a trigger with higher than average fire rate.
• Epic (Tier 3)
  • Unique behaviors but not completely overpowered or “run saving”. Example: a barrel that shoots bullets in all directions, stocks that shoot projectiles in a different trajectory like a sin or cos function, projectiles that set enemies on fire, grenade-like projectiles with explosions.
• Legendary (Tier 4)
  • Unique behaviors from epic and offer stronger alternatives. Example: lasers, a multi-hit projectile, tracking/seeking/homing bullets, projectiles that freeze enemies.

Stocks lead to a lot of room to play around with since you can basically create/think of any bullet you have in mind.
Triggers are insanely limited, not much variations would be available besides very boring ones like just giving rarer triggers a higher fire rate.
Barrels are sort of similar to triggers in the way that they are limited. Variations would be limited to certain things like: wider spread arc, more bullets. Pattern options could be circular, line, or a custom shape.

Ideas to spice things up:

• Give triggers more properties like bullet size or range.
• Triggers could also give the bullets properties like piercing shots?
• Give barrels ways to alter the bullet trajectory, for example, the bullet could move in a way of a sine function.
• Remove one rarity tier so it’d be easier to sort parts

…but that’s still sort of limited. I need more ways to make triggers and barrels more interesting.

[snow sierra]

this sounds like a rougelike i once came across where you progress through a dungeon killing enemies for coins to buy different parts for a gun every few rooms with there being a boss fight at the end and the occasion chest with a random part but there were many different things such as rubber bullets that bounced twice before disappearing, a shotgun barrel that triples the number of bullets fired, a balloon stock that also adds a bounce to any bullet, a bee magazine that makes every 3rd shot spawns a bee that acts as a homing attack and it just continues from there

things like a run and gun mag which had less ammo but automatically reloaded, many different triggers 3 of which just giving different fire rates while some special ones added effects like the bee magazine

there was the gun stock which made you shoot a bullet behind you as well as infront

here is a link to an itch page about it: https://stepford.itch.io/gun-knight

[neon pine]

so right now

stocks -> change bullet type, mainly about "damage" and "effect"
trigger -> change "fire rate"
barrel -> change "trajectory"

The rarity sorting is fine if all components are unique and belong to one rarity only, unless you want to go with "higher rarity is always better cause there is always a legendary variant of the same thing"

now, consider what a gun may have (these are stats I gather from many games I have seen, as well as ChatGPT help):

• Damage: how much damage does the bullet deal? Does it vary? Can it crit?
• Fire rate: how fast does it shoot? What is the time between each shot?
• Reload rate: how long does it take to reload after running out of ammo?
• Ammo (per magazine, and max ammo): how many shots can be made before reloading?
• Trajectory: does the bullet go straight? Spread out? Tracking? Etc?
• Special effects: does the bullet cause burn, poison, explosion, freeze, etc?
• Effective range: does the gun have a range in which the bullet can deal damage or deal more damage? Does it have higher penetration in this range?
• Accuracy: How varied are the shots from the intended target?
• Recoil: Would shooting reduces accuracy of consecutive shots? Would it affect other mechanics?
• Penetration power: Can the bullet pierce multiple enemies or one? What are the conditions?
• Weight: Does the gun affect movement speed and/or other aspects of the game like equipments based on current weight?

Now, the Stock is currently controlling a "bullet". This means the stock can control damage, special effect, as well as penetration power. However, for game's sake, we could remove penetration from being dictated by the bullet type. Bullet can, however, dictates ammo, cause different bullets would have its own magazine type.

The Trigger is controlling fire rate, but it can also control reload rate and recoil. Simple, but it contributes to dps. It can also contribute to penetration.

The Barrel can improves accuracy and decides trajectory, as well as adding special effects to the bullets like crit or fragment or increased penetration

like, some stuff may overlap

[gritty pagoda]

hmmm that's very interesting, i like the idea about the trigger adding special effects on top.

i had no idea about gun knight! thank you! will definitely give it a go so i can get some more inspiration for the parts that dont seem that interesting rn. awesome find

[gritty pagoda]

yeah, rarity should be like that in my game, more so based on uniqueness rather than just being the "same" thing but just straight up better

currently, i'm not doing any magazine handling, but maybe it would be good to introduce something similar to it, not just because of variations but also because reloading does add a bit of difficulty and decision taking in some spots.

special effects could be added to the trigger or barrel, based on the suggestion Boombuk provided, i think adding "extra" modifiers here would be nice. the effective range change sounds awesome too, that way, something like a shotgun barrel would make way more sense.

i like the recoil idea as well, again, think on certain bullets or barrels it would make a lot of sense, like maybe if the bullet were to do A LOT of damage, it should have a slow fire rate and something that adds recoil, like on something like a rocket launcher.

i hadnt thought about weight, but im liking the idea. again, it could be added to the barrel/trigger, or maybe it could just be like an extra property on each part and more unique parts could have the drawback of having more weight, so if you wanted a really good bullet you'd have to sacrifice having an okay barrel/trigger, or you could just have a super broken gun but the weight would be too much.

thank you for the input, it helped a lot, i'm liking a lot of the proposed things to take into consideration! specially the weight one since i dont think i've seen stuff like that in 2d roguelikes like the ones i mentioned since speed is sort of "agnostic" to everything else and it's usually a different stat, so i think it would be something really original and something that adds difficulty and would make the player take some "sacrifices"

[neon pine]

yes, but it's also important not to overscope
if you find a mechanic redundant or feel bad or goes against your vision or other mechanics, just remove it. It's just suggestions, you don't need to include every single thing, but these are things you can pick from

[gritty pagoda]

yeah, i understand that, thanks. again, the ones are mentioned are the ones that stood out the most out of all the suggestions you gave me and the ones i think would add something/be feasible to implement