The Castle Doctrine Forums

Random thoughts:

1) What if you got chills after anything that saves damage?  While the "owner" may still be away, hopefully someone heard you blowing up everything and/or shooting your wife.  There is currently a 10(?) minute limit on a single robbery but when you're scouting it makes sense that you didn't get "caught" when browsing, but once you go all in, that's it.  So if someone brings $700K worth of tools and leaves them for the owner, that person can't directly come back. 

2) Robbery time limit could be accumulative.  So you can't scout for some max amount before chills take effect.  (The only concern I would see is dying because you didn't know you ate the timer down to 1 second.  Maybe once alarms set the house goes on chill.)

3) Houses that save changes can stay off the list for ~1hr or something like that unless the owner saves a new house.  Obviously the robber would know that and could check back later at the correct time but it would give someone response time.  I feel like this takes away from the narrative, though.

4) Dropped tools could have a statistical chance of showing up in the safe.  Makes dual accounts less abusable since you would only have x% chance of transferring the tools.  This also could help people who make scary houses earn some nominal amount, without rewarding them fully as if they got a kill.

5) If you plan on reducing tool resale, that will help account abuse and may make dropped tools ok again.  Maybe combined with RNG chance, it would be hard to abuse beyond simply creating an undefended house and hoping you grab it before it disappears.

It is common to say but I don't know how much hypothetically better a person you are if you kill the wife only.  Other games pretty much avoid the concept of collateral damage entirely.  Playing Call of Duty or GTA and being in a firefight inside a town without civilians is completely unrealistic.  More people die from motor vehicle accidents, but I don't think I've heard people refer to car racing games as violent.  But by ignoring the topic, does that actually dull the feeling of the consequences?

I would say the only strange part about hurting the family is the lack of consequence (other than the owner trying your house, which may not be feasible if the thief cleans the owner out or subsequently dies in another house) and, perhaps sadly, if you want people to react when consequences are possible, you need to make it a mechanic (say, armed police start arriving after X number of moves, where X decreases  after each incident) and people would probably act different. 

No matter what the narrative, people will probably react based on gameplay elements when presented with them.  I've used tools when I am stuck when I can because it benefits the other player more if I just give up.  Most people will probably hit the wife if it's feasible for financial gain, but might not equip to go after them specifically.  I don't know how many people would ignore them.  However, I am sure you can design a trap where you present the thief with an obvious chance to kill the kid before making it much worse on the thief.  There are ways of making the choice obvious through room presentation.  While most people would probably ignore the kid 99% of the time, what do they do once it is a clear game element?  What does it say about the person providing the obvious scenario?

I think when you read the developer's story that was posted, the reason for the narrative is clear from the standpoint of the home defender, but the attacker's side was needed to create a complete game.  You can play without doing that but it's a lot slower (since you need to wait for people to die to your house to provide income) so even most people who would not be the aggressor end up doing it.  Maybe there just isn't enough of a penalty for attacking someone's family.  Your bounty increases, but the benefactor is the person who gets them (with the exception of if they die to their own house).  You can not collect on that unless perhaps they come to your house after the chill expires thinking you are an easy target and you change your traps.  You get to know who did it, but getting revenge may rely on how much money you have left and whether or not they are even still alive.  I imagine most people who would waste resources on children are reckless.  You could implement a narrative where the more devious you are, the quicker an "armed" response by police would come.  Right now there is a time limit, but maybe that limit can be reduced, or maybe create a counter where armed police would come after a certain time or move limit that would be reduced.  Right now, there's not much of a penalty on the person being naughty when most houses are difficult to win on ordinary circumstances.  But gameplay elements in a game like this are hard to introduce without causing more trouble they inteded to "fix (not to mention time just to make it a buggy-less game).