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#1 Main Forum » That feeling » 2014-02-14 19:49:39

JoeBlow
Replies: 2

There is no feeling quite like going into Sean Hugh Patterson's house once, then seeing his initial layout thinking he has a weakness.  The going back home to buy the tools needed.  Then saying "Oh crap what was his name?"  Then going back out without buying the tools and checking once again.  Then seeing his house value changed but the layout is the same...he added something!  Then saying "Screw it I am going to buy the tools."  Then not being able to get in your house because it is being robbed.  Then checking one last time on Mr. Patterson only to find his house was reclaimed by the state because he died.  Then...THEN going home to see your security tape and gloat because you apparently baited Mr. Patterson by going into his house multiple times so he came to YOUR house but got himself killed!  big_smile

#2 Re: Main Forum » Wife has all the cash? » 2014-02-13 09:43:41

Yeah I see that now.  And even been in the position that Syber mentioned myself.  It just cheesed me off to no end to reach a $22,000 listed house to get a lousy $4K.

#3 Main Forum » Wife has all the cash? » 2014-02-13 09:28:41

JoeBlow
Replies: 5

So I hit a $22,000 house last night.  It had no damage before I got there and when I reached the vault it had $0 and only $4000 in tools.  So that means the wife had ALL the cash.  How does this happen?  None of the dogs were out of place and again there was no structural damage.  So this to me would mean one of two things: a robber came in and got EXACTLY the right path to get the vault before me at random, or a dual account user emptied their vault with their alt to give the alt cash and protect their main's assets with the wife.  Are there any other possibilities?  It seems unlikely that a random robber got the exact correct path without even a single thing out of place because all the dogs were in their proper closets when I first entered.

#4 Re: Main Forum » low level house management » 2014-02-12 15:00:10

setz wrote:

All objects work that way. Unless it was broken or something. (i.e. Broken wall has to be repayed for)

EDITED: Previous post to mine has a more complete list.

#5 Re: Main Forum » Saws for the Poor » 2014-02-12 14:39:55

Yeah please don't do this anymore.  I was one of those and I was purposely trying to keep the money limit down because I was not finished and knew I was not going to be home until late.  The saws started a cascade of attempts that ended up me being robbed for over $9800, a painting and large damage to the house that couldn't be replaced without starting over.

#6 Re: Main Forum » multiple safes / purchaseable minor safes » 2014-02-11 16:25:27

Pandamonium wrote:
Storm wrote:

you're definitely right about the first point. would never work

Who said self test have to end at first vault? Just like switches have a on/off state, for self test you can have every safe turn "off" until you get them all?
The downside is... commitment traps will, well.. kill u.

And thus will be the end of one era and the birth of a new one.  A new era where commit traps are mere distractions and new amazing innovative traps will rise that make them look like a Hippy Peace March.  Yea, brother do I look forward to such a day.  For upon that day we can look one another in the eyes and know that once in the past we were as scared children in the wood.  But now we are men.  Men who will not tremble at the sight of a mere 5 electric floors with a powered door in front of them.  And that truly WILL be a good day to die.

#7 Re: Main Forum » Best way to start ? » 2014-02-11 16:16:34

Agreed to a certain point.  But it IS possible to gain wealth even starting with only a $2000 house.  Sometimes the best traps are not deadly in and of themselves.  Their deadliness lies in their deceptiveness.  You would be amazed at some of the stupid-simple traps that kill huge numbers of would be robber drones.  You just have to keep trying different ideas until you find one that works.  Use your security tapes to note what works and what doesn't.  And it helps if you can keep the game open for a long time at one sitting.

#8 Main Forum » [Suggestion] - New kind of Sticky Switch » 2014-02-11 16:13:00

JoeBlow
Replies: 2

Was there ever a sticky switch that started in the ON position and would forever remain off once stepped on?  Is this a thing that would be useful?  I say yes.  But I am maybe too far out in the realm of possibility.

#9 Re: Main Forum » Bounty and a question about the wife » 2014-02-11 16:11:06

No comments about my 2nd question?  I'm a little shocked to be honest...

#10 Re: Main Forum » Best way to start ? » 2014-02-11 16:09:14

First and foremost - do NOT expect your house to ever last more than a few hours after you log off until you have made many many many house traps.  And even then that is a stretch.  I believe this is broken in game but there is nothing happening for it ATM apparently.  So just expect that you will have to start over from scratch every time you log on after being away for longer than 4-5 hours.

#11 Re: Main Forum » Funniest Home Surveillance Tapes » 2014-02-11 15:48:25

Pandamonium wrote:
LiteS wrote:
42dustman wrote:

Sometimes my house gets invaded by nice guys

Coulda been me. If I suicide run on a richer house and fail, I'll try to make it back out and kill myself in a poor house to give them a free bounty.

I thought I was alone...
whenever I "lose" a family+house, I do about 10 runs of the following

  • Use starting 2000 to buy a bunch of random items (either 20 water, or a ladder and door stop if i'm lazy)

  • Find player with low robberies AND <$100 in value

  • Attempt to solve their home without using tools

  • If successful, suicide right in front of their vault

  • If not successful, see if can back track to entry, if yes, suicide at doorway

  • If total failure, well.... die.

After my "Santa runs" are over, I start again for real.

This might explain the seemingly blind robbers who come into my houses full of tools and then literally walk directly into the pitbull approaching them.

#12 Re: Main Forum » This seriously needs to be changed... » 2014-02-11 15:42:46

There is a way to test it without dying.  Use the Safe Move option that is sitting right above the Suicide button.  Any move you make shows the direction you told it to go and requires you to confirm that you REALLY want to go there.  I was toying with clock traps for a while and died while testing because I accidentally pressed the move key twice and ended up trapped in a closet with a closed power door.  After that, I started using the Safe Move.

#13 Re: Main Forum » Getting sick of duplicate accounts » 2014-02-11 15:39:43

arakira wrote:

Also, you would most probably have been robbed by the first guy because he had the tools and did the correct scouting. So, being robbed by one or the other doesn't change much in the end... Your house had just gotten ripe smile

I disagree.  This is cheating.  They are using a throwaway account to get the route down and then accessing it with their main to get the money and vault items.  BUT they never have any risk with the main because they don't care if the throwaways die.  They just make more with another $2K in tools.  Rinse and repeat until they know exactly what the main needs to bring and the exact path to take to not risk dying.  None of us regular users can do this if we only have one account.  If they get TO THE VAULT then walk away, that's a dead giveaway for a cheater.

#14 Re: Main Forum » Timeout for editing house? » 2014-02-10 21:12:27

What happens if you time out while editing?  Or while looking at the Houses to Rob list?

#15 Re: Main Forum » Funniest Home Surveillance Tapes » 2014-02-09 18:56:24

I have often wondered why when my dogs are bearing down on someone with meat and clubs AND the safe exit RIGHT THERE THREE STEPS BEHIND THEM, they walk RIGHT INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH.

#16 Main Forum » Bounty and a question about the wife » 2014-02-09 17:12:34

JoeBlow
Replies: 5

Is there any way to tell what your bounty is/was?

Is it bad that anytime I kill a wife, just before I hit her, I mouse over her and say "Well (Mrs. Trimble/Dorothy) welcome to the club!" or "Well (Mrs. Trimble/Dorothy) join the club!"

#17 Main Forum » Clubbed wife, no reward! » 2014-02-08 22:00:56

JoeBlow
Replies: 1

Just clubbed someone's wife.  She was carrying $502.  I got back to the house and had no money with me.  I go back and she it there dead.  Do you have to walk on the body to get the money?

#18 Re: Main Forum » So painful... » 2014-02-05 16:39:10

largestherb wrote:
JoeBlow wrote:

The current system rewards you for babysitting the game.

This is the single largest problem with the game.  You simply cannot leave it alone for any significant amount of time and not be forced to start all over again with the tedious rinse and repeat of a brand new build out or buying $2000 in tools and hoping for the best.

my house is now 36 hours since i finished it. i have logged in to look at tapes, and to buy paintings a few times.

if this is babysitting, i need to get onto that career path.

How much was spent on the build?  IMO you cannot count houses that have been built with enormous amounts of cash because they become (virtually) impenetrable.  And yes I know that they aren't really.  But only a small percentage of players have the money to either build such a house or buy the tools needed to take it down.  So to the rest us, it is it is the equivalent.

#19 Re: Main Forum » So painful... » 2014-02-05 16:28:48

Besides, if you really wanted no risk you would spend down to $0 and there would be no incentive whatsoever to come in your house.

Not even this is true.  One time I spent about $6500 on a house and went to work literally with $0.  Came back to a house that was still worth $0 but had been robbed 5 times with 4 deaths.  The 2nd to last one was with tools.  The last one was with a lot more tools and they blasted through everything.  Total damage was about half the initial cost because they seemed to like clubbing dogs and frying power supplies.


The current system rewards you for babysitting the game.

This is the single largest problem with the game.  You simply cannot leave it alone for any significant amount of time and not be forced to start all over again with the tedious rinse and repeat of a brand new build out or buying $2000 in tools and hoping for the best.

#20 Re: Main Forum » 50 dollar bounty? » 2014-02-04 21:22:09

I never ever said that the game should "have a user log on for the very first time and press some sort of button to increase their house survivability".  I said that not being able to keep a well designed house longer than 6 hours (even one that has had $15,000 of investment into it) is tedious and not fun and I think the balance is skewed.

#21 Re: Main Forum » 50 dollar bounty? » 2014-02-04 20:44:55

jw2pfd wrote:

@JoeBlow: As ventuswings mentioned, there should be a decent security versus danger ratio.  Personally, I would feel that the game is "broken" if I could walk away more than a single night and not have had my house targeted by a serious threat.

So you actually enjoy starting over every time you log back on?  I cannot understand that.  There is too much danger and not enough security.  A balance would allow you to be able to keep the house for a while and the better you are at making the security, the better your reward of seeing it live another day.  I'll point you at this thread as a perfect example.  The enjoyment the owner had was seeing how many people used how many ways to finally get at the vault.  That house lasted a couple of days, and it was to quote "...a wild ride, and I had a blast".  That is what is great about the game - seeing how well you build against the onslaught.  But if no matter what you do, you fail the first time you log off, it just gets tedious rebuilding.

#22 Re: Main Forum » 50 dollar bounty? » 2014-02-04 20:14:16

The tool reward reduction was just the first post I saw on the topic.  If there are better ways to mitigate it, then great.  But as it stands I feel the game is broken if I can't go away for a few hours without having to mindlessly rebuild from nothing yet again.

#23 Re: Main Forum » 50 dollar bounty? » 2014-02-04 19:58:39

jw2pfd wrote:
JoeBlow wrote:

I completely get what you're saying.  But having to start over every single time I walk away for 6 hours just isn't fun.  I spent almost that long building the house being painstakingly careful with everything.  I'm not saying to remove tool rewards.  I am saying reduce them to increase the time you actually get to have a house.  I spent 5 hours building it and never got to play the game while it was still functional.

May I ask what you mean by "never got to play the game?"  If you were building a house and came back later to find out it had been robbed, then it sounds like to me that the game is functioning exactly as intended.  The game is designed to provoke an emotional reaction out of you when your work is destroyed by someone else.  It does depend on your goals when playing games in general and your specific goals playing this game.  For me, I have lost everything multiple times and expect to die again in the future and I am very much enjoying the experience.

super_maçon wrote:

But the odds tell me that when i'll go to bed it's over.

Exactly.  There are posts where people say it would be better if they felt like their house could last even a single night.  The game is designed AGAINST having that feeling of security.  My previous post asked some rhetorical questions to illustrate the idea that it's not supposed to feel satisfying when someone destroys your house and you lose everything.  It might be frustrating that you lose it after one night.  It might be equally or more frustrating to lose it after two days or whatever period of time it happens to be.  I feel that it works better when the danger is more imminent and would be against making changes for the specific reason to make houses survive "easier" or longer.

I feel like I am having a better time with the game if I have to use it and improve the design and build on its existing strengths and reduce the weaknesses.  Going to a job or bed shouldn't basically negate all that.  I am TOTALLY for the vulnerable house AND the Permadeath AND the loss of everything when it happens.  What I NOT for is having it happen every single time I open the game.  Reducing the tool reward would make it take a lot longer to become the target for the brute force attack.  And it would give you longer to work on an existing design to improve to see how long you can hold the brute forcers at bay.  THAT'S what I see as an enjoyable experience with Castle Doctrine.  But just rote generation of a $2000 design 87 times in the space of a week is not (numbers obviously exaggerated).

#24 Re: Main Forum » 50 dollar bounty? » 2014-02-04 19:31:15

jw2pfd wrote:
JoeBlow wrote:

I KNOW that is the core concept, and I love Roguelikes because of Permadeath.  BUT...it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that you have to start completely over every time you log out for 6 hours.

The only forgone conclusion is that if your house increases in value, then it is more efficient for robbers to target.  This exists because your house should become more of a target while you are away.  I believe that it's been stated by the developer that hopefully you do feel worried between long periods away from your house.  You should also feel whatever it is you feel when you see that your house has been destroyed.  These emotions don't occur once you change it so that the expectation is that the house can survive easily.

An interesting side effect is that a lot of us players are trying to combat that feeling as we speak.  Some players, like myself, will spend a lot of time trying to get a home that's relatively secure and hope that it lasts while we are away.  This is all in spite of the fact that if we keep playing the game, then at some point we will die or get robbed.  I think that this game is an amazing experience and one that I am still enjoying very much even though I died completely as a result of my fault recently after I had put a lot of money into a house and it had lasted for three days.

I am not saying that there aren't potential ways to tweak the numbers and balance to make a better overall experience; however, I do believe the game functions pretty well as it is.  Is the argument that you would rather have your house get destroyed after it's lasted two days? five days?  Or is it safe to say that it will never feel satisfying to have your house destroyed regardless of how long it's been?  I'd much rather have the feeling that my house is in much more imminent danger.

Also, reducing the resale value of tools would slow down house value growth, but it also reduces purchasing power which limits the ability to improve your house and purchase tools for attempting robberies.  It would slow down all areas of the game.

I completely get what you're saying.  But having to start over every single time I walk away for 6 hours just isn't fun.  I spent almost that long building the house being painstakingly careful with everything.  I'm not saying to remove tool rewards.  I am saying reduce them to increase the time you actually get to have a house.  I spent 5 hours building it and never got to play the game while it was still functional.

#25 Re: Main Forum » 50 dollar bounty? » 2014-02-04 18:34:12

protox13 wrote:
ventuswings wrote:

I know I'm parroting myself here, but lowering the sell value of tools would much help alleviate both problems.

Bring bounty back to $200 which is enough money for beginning houses to kick off, while reduced tool prices would much more effectively and significantly prevent the house value from skyrocketing. When people die, it's $1000 from tool value (NOT the measly $200) that becomes problematic - and these tool values are not available to lower-end houses, who need boost the most. Hell, slash tool sell price to 1/4 and number of money from the starter kit robber would plummet from current $1050 (1000+50) to $450 (250+200).

Absolutely agree. The lower bounty is not making an appreciable dent in the money I'm accumulating.


THIS.  I have seen every single day that I build my base house, it generates enough to expand a little, I leave the house in the morning or go to bed at night with less than $500.  Most of the time less than $300.  EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.  I come home or wake up and my house has been pillaged and I have $0.00 left.  Reviewing the tapes is like "Groundhog's Day".  People come in with no tools and die.  Price goes up a little bit.  Repeat a few times.  Now two or three people come in with tools and die.  Then the price goes WAY up and the VERY next person comes in with a large number of tools (but still low enough to make a profit) and they lay waste to the place and get the vault.

Each time, I have rebuilt over and over and over again.  Recently I hit it really big with an (extremely) lucky score (carrying 5 water, clubs and steaks) and took over 5 hours and more than $15,000 building a house.  Left this morning with $250 and no tools.  Come home and exact same thing.  Except now the LAST thing I want to do is go try to rob even an easy place because all that time and game money spent just poofs if it isn't so easy.

I KNOW that is the core concept, and I love Roguelikes because of Permadeath.  BUT...it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that you have to start completely over every time you log out for 6 hours.

It would be WAY better to keep the bounty where ever it is now and drop the tool reward to 1/4 or even less.  IMO it would be well worth the effort of a version release.  As it stands now, I don't even feel like playing because of the inevitable feeling of having wasted my entire evening the night before.

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