Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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Spiderman: I already own that book.
The thing is that while trying your own house, you should be allowed to be lazy, as you are not competing with anyone. Imagine that while arranging the chess pieces on the board before the game starts, if you placed one piece in the wrong place you automatically lost. Is that necessary? Would that make the game better? No and no. It would just increase the time wasted arranging the pieces on the board.
The undo button while designing your house is also lazy and mastery of the game should require you to place every single piece of your house correctly without place for mistake. Do you want the undo button to be removed?
A game doesn't need to fill one specific function. It could be interesting and make you think, it could be enjoyable and relaxing to play, or it could teach you new things and train skills.
If this was a game with a beginning and an end, and maybe also a story, you could defend that point, but it is not. If the objective of the game is to make a point and not to be played and enjoyed, once that point is made, end of the game. I died in may own house, point taken. The game fulfilled its objective, now it's over.
But that's not the case. This game is meant to be played after the point is made, and beyond that, dying in your own house is just a frustrating waste of time that adds nothing of value to your game experience.
I don't think I was disrespectful to you, nor did I dismissed anyone's opinion. Your sarcasm is out of place.
Following with the car analogy, you can make a car pretty if you want, but if that affects the engine, it will be a bad car for driving (or not so good as it will be if you didn't mess with the engine to make it prettier). This not my experience; this is a fact.
That's akin to saying that all paintings should just be pretty things to look at, or all films should make you feel happy.
No, it's not. It's like saying the engine of a car should work properly, not be pretty. The gameplay design of a game is not artistic; everything surrounding it can be. You can have your point in the story or have ugly graphics or disturbing music if you think that helps the mood, but the gameplay design is a system. You can make your car engine look pretty instead of working properly, but then expect me to look at it, not to drive it.
That's kind of a false dichotomy though, like you're saying that a game that makes a point can't be enjoyable as well
A game can make a point as long as it doesn't interfere with it's gameplay.
Thanks for answering, jasonrohrer. I really appreciate it.
It's your game and you can have it your way, but "making a point" is a terrible, TERRIBLE choice for a game. A good game is meant to be played and enjoyed, not to "make a point". The game isn't even remotely similar to reality to sustain that point. Dying because you miscalculated in which step would a dog that watched you through a window step on a switch that activates an electrical grill will hardy be taken as a good point about home security. It will be taken as just bad design.
Second thing, the fact that you can actually test all your traps makes death on your own house moot. You can ensure all your traps work correctly, it just takes you even more time to do so (on a game that already is extremely time consuming). "Making a point" aside, it's a mechanic that adds absolutely nothing of value to the game, and a lot of extra time wasting and frustration. You may as well go ahead and remove the "undo" option from the editor. It may reinforce your point and if you place an element in the wrong place, it was just your mistake so no complaints allowed.
Also, in any case, the point would be made pretty early in the game. This game has no victory condition; it is meant to be played a lot. Why do I have to keep suffering from your point? I get it, just avoid me the hours wasted on triple-checking every little change I make to my house. Editing and improving you house should be encouraged, not discouraged, as it is now.
There are no random elements.
There is a random element: players. Will an uncautious player with $20k come into your house and fall into your trap? Will you find a house of a rookie player who didn't add any defenses at all? You can actually rob ANY house if you randomly take the correct no-tools path. In fact, house design is build around the idea of reducing the chances of someone finding the correct way at random. Luck is a huge factor in this game. Luck is the only way I have gained any money at all. This is a massive skinner box.
I ask you to reconsider it. Do you want to make a point or do you want to make a good game? I don't wanna buy, nor expend my time with the former.
You can get away with it now because it's a very unknown game and only people who likes it sticks with it, but if this game ever gains enough popularity, you will be hearing this complaint constantly.
Thank you for your answer, iceman. There's lots of things I didn't know.
I must disagree with the robberies, though. As far as I have played, looking for the no-tools path to the safe is virtually impossible (except for really bad designed houses) usually you will have dozens of paths to choose while a pack of dogs chase you and/or so many paths with no-return mechanisms that you need an enormous amount of equipment just to go and try some of them, while risking losing most of your money and your life. Unless you can make a great and cheap theft with your initial $2000, you just can't afford it. Luck is a great deal in my experience with this game.
Of course, practice makes experts and you may know more tricks than me, but for most people the impression will be the same as mine and they will just stop playing as will I.
If I'm bothering at all discussing this is because I think fixing most of these problems would make the game more enjoyable to everyone. I can't see anyone enjoying less the game by not dying while trying their own house, for example, and making houses smaller would force players to be clever and compact with the traps instead of relaying on vast mazes with endless paths, doors and buttons.
The appeal to the game even though evil is not really a negative. There are a lot of evil games, look at GTA.
I'm not talking about the evilness of the game with regard to the theft theme or anything like that. I'm talking about how the game uses very manipulative methods (even if it's unintentional) to keep you playing.
I assure you I've tetrachecked things but ending up failing. This should not happen. The negative aspects of dying while trying your own home exceed vastly the good ones. As a designer, what do you gain from someone to lose hours of work and having to redo everything? Making him want to kill himself? There is little justification for the game to allow this.
3.- Everyone is different. To some people, they love it.
There's people who like to hurt themselves. That's not actually an argument. Spending 15 minutes going through corridors opening random doors is hardly fun for anyone. If you could not rob from other houses, how much people do you think would just keep doing it because they think it's fun? I would be surprised if more than one. Why would you limit your game to that audience instead of making it more fun overall? Also note than addiction is usually confused with enjoyment. "I play a lot, so I must like it" is an unconscious though. Frustration is a very bad choice for the main element of a game.
Isn't the very nature of gaming to waste time? How can any gaming be productive?
As I said, I'm talking about unnecessary time loss., the time you spent achieving nothing inside the game. A game has to have respect for the player's time and this game clearly doesn't.
Btw, I dind't say I don't like permadeath. It's a very important element of the game, it's just badly applied.
Hi. I'll never play this game again when the contest ends and only because I would like and try to get my money back, so before that happens, being this a beta, I though you would appreciate a constructive critique of the game, so here it is. English is not my first language, so excuse me for the possible mistakes.
1.- The game es evil. From a game design standpoint it's overly compulsive. I started the game to play some minutes and ended playing 8 hours straight, not even stopping to eat. The bad this is I wasn't enjoying it. Behind this game lays the same psychology of the gambling games. You just keep playing in the hope that the next time more favorable events will occur. Maybe some fools will fall into your trap, maybe the next house you go in will be badly protected, etc. Rewards for playing are extrinsic. You don't enjoy going to other houses to steal; you only steal because it will give you money. You'll never go to a heavily protected house with $0 just for fun, because there's scarce fun in that. It's a very addictive game, but it relies almost entirely on that to keep people playing. On the other hand, designing your home is enjoyable by itself. It's a shame that everything around it makes it so frustrating.
2.- It's outrageous that you can die trying your own home. I just spent more than an hour building a macro complex only to die on it while trying, and it's not the first time it happens; it's the fifth. Can you imagine how I feel when that happens? Is that what you want your players to feel?
"But it's more interesting this way as you have to be very careful while trying!" No. If you go for something more elaborate than the typical labyrinth with a hundred doors with pit bulls behind, you'll need electronics, and it's almost impossible to be sure that something is gonna work when you have dozens of switches and cables crossing one another.
"But you can try it first with chihuahuas!" No, you can't. If you try something, then you can't edit it without losing money. You should be able to recover the money of everything in your house; if not, editing is just wasting money, and you usually can't afford that.
3.- Robbing is not fun. Houses are too big. Most people just go with the giant labyrinth, and it's a pain in the ass only to think about robbing those. Also houses are not stable. You can't study a house and prepare for the big theft because it will probably give chills or just disappear any moment.
4.- Robbing is not profitable. Because of the previous point, robbing is usually not fun at all and very discouraging. Also, buying equipment to rob in most cases result in a terrible waste of money. Equipment is very expensive and you don't know how large is a house. So let's say you see a house with some dogs and you buy 20 units of drugged meat and go to try and rob it. It turns out there were 22 dogs. You die and lost everything. And usually the cost of the equipment is barely the same as the quantity you'll rob, so robbing in any house minimally well protected is a stupid risk (except if you just restarted and have nothing to lose). Worst of all is that if you don't use the equipment, you just lose it. You see a house with the wife with a shotgun, you buy a gun, and when you want to go back to that house it has either disappeared or now gives "chills" and you just wasted $1200. I can't even think of a reason why you lose your items if you don't use them.
5.- The game is a huge waste of time. I could cry just to think of all the hours I have unnecessarily lost playing this game, not because the core of the game requires it, but because of how wrong are some areas designed. Being building your house the most fun aspect of the game, the waste of time it requires is outrageous. Having to build your perfect complex house one or twice would be one thing, but to have to redo it constantly, even without actually having finished it because you died trying, is infuriating. The fact that I have already lost so much time pushes me to keep playing, to try and have more luck the next time, to make it count for something. If I stop playing now, all those hours went to nothing. I feel the urge to keep playing, even though I don't want, even though I hate it. Just like a compulsive gambler.
Hope this helps you with the development.
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