Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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Does a shorted electric grill transfer power?
Thanks!
Thanks guys, that's really helpful - I'm enjoying it much more now. I raided some troll houses so managed to build up enough money to make something strong enough to deter all but the wealthiest and most determined thief.
I really want to enjoy this game but it is impossible for beginner families. My family make some money by "playing" offline - my terrible $2k house gets destroyed by tools - the damage persists - I have no money to rebuild - GG.
Some more thoughts about beginner families.
If you're going to make a game about burglary then your main sources of income should be from either robbing people successfully or having burglars die in your house trying to rob you. I think something must be going very wrong with design when you're making more money/hour by not actually playing the game than you do by playing. How does this incentivise people to play?
I understand all the points relating to tools being too strong with infinite money - for me the solution should not be money or tool-abandonment related. Tool-abandonment and more expensive tools will actually mean nothing to the hypothetical player with infinite money. Tools are super expensive? He buys them anyway. He loses his tools on a gamble? He buys more tools anyway. The players that this solution affects most are the players with NO money. With little money the tools become disproportionately valuable and so poor burglars are left in a position that actually going and trying to burgle someone is prohibitively expensive in money and risk terms. It must be remembered that new families start the game poor and in a game where you permadie the majority of your play time is going to be spent at early net-worth. To be honest I am not surprised to see very very few low cost/level houses as the game currently is horrible if you don't have enough money to even build a satisfactory house.
I also get the feeling that $2,000 is not enough money to build even the most basic house that doesn't rely on dog spam.
Therefore I propose:
1) Reduce the cost of tools and allow your tools to remain if you flee from a house. To keep the tools balanced you heavily restrict the maximum number of tools and tool types that can be carried.
2) Families start with $3,000 - $2,000 is money from a bank that can only be spent on construction, $1,000 is in cash and can be spent on construction OR tools.
Hey guys, nice comments,
I can understand the rationale behind dealing with unlimited tools issue but I think it could be addressed better for newer players by restricting the stack sizes and variety of tools you can carry. It might be that there simply aren't that many people playing at the moment but when I start a new life it is almost impossible for me to successfully rob someone's house. Also I feel like I don't have enough money to properly defend my family from invaders but maybe I'm just a scrub.
I am getting better at "casing the joint" but I also think a valuable addition would be information on a rough region of how much money someone has spent within their house.
I also think a good new addition would be:
When you first start your house and you have $2000 to spend - a problem I am having is that I have to spend ALL of that money to make a robust enough system (that isn't dog spam) in order to defend my safe/family. A result of this is that I have no money so people won't try to rob me.
I don't think it encourages new players to design interesting houses if, after they have built it, no one will be interested in robbing it because there is no money. It seems a bit harsh that after you have built your first house you have no money to buy tools and no one will attempt to rob you so all you can do is log off and wait for some money to come in.
Therefore I suggest the "family heirlooms". These are items that are in your safe for the very first time you log in, have no function and cannot be transferred to your backpack. They have a sale value of $1,000 if stolen.
This will mean that beginner houses are still attractive and reduce the temptation for killing the wife for early houses.
Hi there,
Really like the game but I am having difficulty enjoying it as an early player and was wondering what people thought of these ideas.
After watching some videos on youtube I have come to realise that since the videos have been made two key things have happened to tools. They are:
1) They seem to be a lot more expensive; and
2) If you leave a house you are robbing you have to abandon all of the tools you brought with you.
For me this detracts from the strategy of trying to unpick other people's puzzles (which is the most exciting component of the game) and drives the game even more into pure guessing. In my view the further away from pure guessing the game gets, the more rewarding an experience players will have.
As a new player I am finding it difficult to create a cost effective and interesting defence mechanism that isn't "pitbull spam" without spending nearly all of my money. Therefore I effectively start with no tools or a few tools that are hugely valuable. This discourages me from bringing tools on robbery missions and effectively forces me into "guessing houses". This means that all but the most basic houses are simply too dangerous for me to even attempt.
So how do we get away from pitbull spam and guessing houses?
Everyone's been there - you walk into someone's house, take a couple of steps and oh look, over 9,000 pit bulls - so what do you do? You just walk out. Some people might come back with loads of drugged meat. Great! You drug the dogs and get past them but then you come to 5 possible doorways with the sticky switches and pits/electric floors. Are you feeling lucky punk? Of course you aren't you just leave - and it has cost you ALL of your investment into tools due to a "guessing house" you had no idea was a "guessing house". For me this breaks the experience of the game. The game is at its best when it encourages you to take risks and you feel able to delve deeper into people's houses.
I propose the following 2 changes.
1) In order to incentivise people to create intelligent houses with actual traps and not pitbulls, every time someone dies in their house the owner of the house makes some money AS WELL AS gaining the tools that are lost. Let's say they sell the corpse for scientific research. This would mean that people who create "pitbull spam" and "guessing houses" would not make any money from this as would-be thieves would simply leave after taking one look. This would encourage people to design houses that suck their victims in, trapping them with cunning.
2) Allow thieves to keep their tools. By keeping the pricing at the same level it would still be a disincentive simply to spam lots of tools. If you consumed some tools but still felt that you had to leave then you still suffer a loss. By restricting carrying so many tools that it could break the house maybe you could limit the stack size of tools or restrict the total value of tools that can be brought to certain value houses?
I believe the combined effects of these changes will lead away from the pure guessing houses and incentivise players to design the houses more intelligently.
Thanks for reading if you got this far, I would be interested to hear what other people think.
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