Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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The dog still sees you, it's just that pit-bulls don't step next to dead animals unless you're on that tile (true for chihuahua's as well). However, you don't even need that setup - if your dog is an even number of tiles away, the robber will need to shoot it, unless he's *really* clever about using your house.
Ah, I missed that bit in the wiki. It's certainly counter-intuitive, given that nothing is occupying the tile.
And the house also needs to be designed in such a way that the robber can't use a loose chihuahua for cover when approaching the pit bull. It's such a convoluted, arcane setup that requires the whole house to revolve around it - is it really the best way to address the problem of suicide robbers?
The cat will move right into the electric grate on the first turn, meaning it can no longer move away and the pitbull will move down if you are adjacent to it.
Something was off in my initial testing and the cat wasn't moving on the first turn. But my retest demonstrates that it does, so that part is settled. The part I don't understand is why my pit bull never gains visibility of the robber without him being adjacent - but I'll concede that it now appears possible to guarantee protection for the wife and family with this setup.
However, this still doesn't address the larger concerns of the game. This is the first I've seen this setup, so it's certainly not commonplace. I think the vast majority of players will simply have their families killed over and over again until they get frustrated and give up, and making such an arcane setup mandatory isn't the best way to address this issue. It also does not address the disparity in costs between the suicide robbers and their victims.
http://castledraft.com/editor/k3o1zc should protect completely your wife from starter life robbers, unless I missed something. You can make it a lot cheaper on top of whatever trap you have already set up for your vault, and there are certainly designs that are cheaper still than this.
Aside from having to design the house such that the cat will never move downward in response to the player's movement, what is preventing the player from bricking the cat, clubbing the pit bull from the cover of the cat's corpse, and shooting the wife?
A suicide life robber can't afford more than one gun, so a strategically placed pitbull and a gun for your wife is all it takes for complete defence of your wife from $2000.
I don't need to escape; I only need to kill the wife to get my kicks and ruin your day. Can you show me a setup for $2k that protects your wife?
EDIT: Perhaps the problem lies with free suicides, and a limit to the number of suicides in a 24-hour period should be implemented.
That deals with my number two suggestion. Protecting the wife on a $2k budget is nigh impossible against those robbers who are targeting her.
EDIT: After doing some testing of my own and getting the hang of using the weapons, I am now convinced that starting players cannot adequately protect their families against targeted attacks. The real griefing in this game comes not from targeting the same player multiple times, but rather targeting the families of those players who are obviously on a budget. The griefer need not concern himself with recouping his losses, as simply committing suicide gives him a fresh $2k to continue his killing spree.
I hadn't previously seen mention of "chills," so I assumed there was no such mechanic in place. So unless I am being revenge robbed by players with multiple accounts, then there is a different explanation for what is happening.
With the exception of one simply lucky robber in my first house, all the robberies successfully committed against me have immediately followed my nabbing a larger-than-usual bounty ($1700+). Since revenge robbery is apparently unlikely, I now think that the extra cash is suddenly making the house more attractive to a more vicious and prepared class of robbers. But because I hadn't yet had the opportunity to reinvest those funds and prepare to defend against the higher grade of criminal, I am still being victimized by my own success.
So I'd like to revise my #1 suggestion to: "Allow the homeowner to retain some of the cash from a successful robbery." The exact proportion is up for debate, but allowing the homeowner to lose everything means that nothing is left to repair the damage done by a class of robbers whom the homeowner initially didn't intend to attract.
Hello, all!
I just started playing The Castle Doctrine a few days ago, and I am absolutely hooked. I love this game, and I think it has fabulous potential to grow. Thank you, Jason!
Here are my suggestions for improving the game:
1. Make robbery riskier.
My impression is that the majority of players who rob do so with reckless abandon, likely making only token efforts (if any) to build their own houses before setting out to destroy the work of others. Dying means nothing to these players, as they have invested nothing in their character - they'll happily start over with a fresh $2k in order to "get back" at the last person whose home did them in. From what I've been able to determine, the vast majority of the robberies successfully committed against me to date have been "revenge robberies" by someone who fell prey to my design. But aside from the entertainment provided by the security tapes, my only other reward is to have their reincarnated avatar kill my family and destroy my work.
Robbery could be made riskier in a number of ways, but I think the best solution would be to impose a 12-hour cooldown on being able to rob the same house twice with the same account. Hence if the robber fails in his first attempt, neither the robber nor any of his subsequent incarnations can invade the same home again within the cooldown period. If you wanted to allow "casing" a house, simply limit the number of invasions to two in a 12-hour period. But the revenge robberies are problematic because they entail no cost to the robber and they punish the home's designer for succeeding.
2. Disincentivize killing the family.
The family is incredibly difficult to protect on a $2k budget. They are prime targets in revenge robberies. And not only does the wife carry half the money, but killing any family member makes all damage done permanent - making subsequent robbery attempts all the easier. For a new player, even just losing the wife generally entails committing suicide and starting afresh.
The disincentivization could be implemented in a number of ways, individually or concurrently. You could set a lower cap on the amount of money carried by the wife. You could simply award the robber with a bounty for killing the wife instead of taking it out of the owner's pocket. You could allow purchase of replacement family members at a cost that scales in accordance with the owner's remaining assets. You could make the house unavailable to rob after a family member is killed until the homeowner can return and make it available again.
Alternatively, you could make the family easier to protect by allowing them to traverse household objects - but I understand that there may be technical limitations to this.
All my current concerns with the game can be traced to those two issues. I think the game has incredible potential, and I want to see it grow and flourish. I love this game. Thanks for reading!
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