Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
Dr. Noid brought up an interesting thought in another thread. I would have replied there, but I felt it would have diverged from the main point of the thread too much.
Indeed, the question is: How to entice people to make houses that are interesting to rob.
That means the "goal" of the game should change from "Make it impossible to be robbed" to "Make as many people as possible try to rob me"
Instead of trying to stop people from making NP-Hard houses, having an NH-Hard house should not make you "win" the game.
Though I think that would be hard to combine with the theme.
It seems to me that the issue that keeps cropping up is the fact that the "ideal" house is too hard or too tedious to solve with any degree of enjoyment (although I suppose that depends on who you ask). With that in mind, what if we tried to change the system in such a way that these tedious designs aren't the ideal solution? One thought I had was to change the way money was earned in the game. What if, instead of a salary, money was earned primarily via failed robbery attempts in your home? If you die during a robbery attempt you drop some portion of your cash in the house you were trying to rob. When the homeowner returns, they can collect the cash. The reason this would be different than the current system is that, although still viable, the tedious designs aren't necessarily the "ideal" ones. An ideal house (from the homeowner's perspective) would be a house that the robber feels they can easily solve, but is actually trickier than they accounted for. In theory, people would shy away from the current "impossibly hard" houses and instead look for the low hanging fruit.
A rather drastic change (but possibly an interesting one) would be to not keep money in the vaults at all (or perhaps just an exceedingly modest amount). Everyone keeps their money on them at all times. With all the crime going on, players keep their savings in the only spot they feel is 100% safe: in their pocket. Paintings and equipment could still be stored in the vault. Family members would still be left behind, possibly in harm's way. The number of paintings in a home would stand testament to the owner's hubris and greed. Homebuilding would become the main focus of the game (as it is now the primary source of income), leaving robbery to be motivated by greed and desperation. If players take pride in their home first and foremost, they will be more likely to choose their robbery targets more carefully (which would involve avoiding houses that seem impossible to solve). Hopefully, what this would result in boils down to:
House too easy: Easily robbed and doesn't generate income (via robber deaths)
House too hard: Nobody risks their lives (and house designs) and doesn't generate income
House sweet spot: Robber feels like they can solve it but die via deception and trickery
This is just a rough idea I had from earlier today and I decided it was time to finally post (I've been lurking for quite a while). I'm sure there's plenty that I'm failing to consider, but I was interested in hearing what you guys thought.
Pages: 1