The Castle Doctrine Forums

There is an indication, but it's when you finally see the vault.  I know you that mean prior to entering the house; however, going to rob someone should always be a gamble.  That means deciding what information the robber should see.  As you pointed out, you can find out that a house is damaged sometimes from the front entrance.  Maybe you see a dead wife or a blocked off entrance which means no family is alive. That will let you know all of the value is in the vault.

There are ways to pick and choose your targets.  I think robbing someone needs to stay about as much of a gamble as it is currently.  Giving the robber even more information in helping pick targets would start to make target choosing more and more of a certainty and that wouldn't make much sense for the game.

I can't help but feel that your strongest opinions stem from the idea that you don't want people who play more than others to achieve things simply because they are playing the game more.  Your usage of the word scrub would seem to indicate that you don't want the current people who are having success to have success because you don't think it's achieved in a way that you agree with.  You also call for certain players being given some safeguards while away.  The goal seems to be to increase a house's potential survivability mostly for new and infrequent players.  You also seem to want to decrease the success of some robbers because they are sometimes making money off of new or infrequent players.

There is a good example of a change that was very necessary and threatened to undermine how the game was played.  Around launch day, the amount of defenseless $2000 0-0 and $1000 1-0 houses grew large enough that you could spend your time farming these to make a ridiculous amount of money.  It was changed so that there is now a five minute delay before a fresh start is listed.  This is a change that fits how the game should be played.  I agree that the game isn't about farming defenseless houses.  These houses will still be immediately targeted of course when on the list.

When I say defenseless, I am only referring to empty houses with only a vault and family.  You use the term "poorly defended" and I am trying to fully understand your definition of this.  A house could be poorly defended for many reasons.  I have robbed houses because people should have used sticking pressure switches instead of toggle switches.  I assume they are a new user and maybe they are still learning.  You seem to define poorly defended houses as ones that have enough value for robbers to bring tools and the owner hasn't had a chance to put the money back into that house.  I like the idea of using the phrase "adequately defended" instead.

Adequate defense could be looked as the balance between your house's security and design in relation to how much value your house has.  Robbers will tend to rob your house with tools only if there is enough efficiency to do so.  Of course, no house is ever truly safe and can be robbed by anyone at any time.  It is more likely they will be successful if they bring tools.  They are more likely to bring tools if there is more incentive to do so.  This all leads back to the idea that you can't control your house value while you are away from your computer.  This is essential to the game experience though.  You need to be increasingly vulnerable when you are away from your computer.  In my opinion, it's the only way this game makes sense.

Any safeguards given to new or infrequent players will be detrimental to what I perceive as important to the core game experience.

I remember seeing a post from the developer saying the time was changed to five minutes around the day of the Steam launch or the day after or so.  It was pretty ridiculous how much money and how fast it was being made from $2000 0-0 houses and $1000 1-0 houses.  You definitely can no longer "farm" those with ease.

House value is determined by cash+tool resale value only.  Paintings are not figured into the house list value.  When you enter the house of someone who has a painting, you see it on the left side.

I understand what you're saying.  Everyone has different expectations of balance and fun.  We obviously don't agree on the same things which is more than fine.  As far as fun goes, I have a story to share.

My personal experience is that I have spent six or more hours during a day and my house has survived the night on multiple occasions.  Earlier today, I had a three-day old house, $40k list value, two paintings, and plenty of money into it I am sure.  I decided to start robbing because I have been slow to take many risks.  I got deep inside a guy's house and broke through a wall to find fifteen pit bulls.  No worries though! I came prepared with tools as I have used the same building technique in my own house.  I killed a few and put most of them asleep.  I was now behind a wall of a combo lock and if I could look at the switches, then I hopefully could figure out the combination... then I stepped on a sleeping pit bull.  Yup, I died in the most amazingly stupid way imaginable and it was completely my fault.

A lot of people would hear that story and not call it fun; even though I put myself in a position where I had to start over, I had a whole lot of fun before, during, and after.  I can't say I was exactly thrilled about dying, but I expected it to some degree because I knew I was taking a risk.

Anyway, there WILL be many houses that survive tonight.  The comments that say logging off and back on later is a "guarantee" that the house is gone is not accurate at all.  Even if it's a common or prevalent experience, it's far from guaranteed.

The idea of caps to me seems like it's yet another way to give a feeling of security when the game is an exercise in making you worry about your house while you are away from the game.  The idea is that you can't protect your house while you are away.  This is frustrating as you can't be at your computer always and there are people who are able to stayed logged in and do more than you.  This is true for a lot of games actually.

I am okay with the idea of playing more than someone else might make your house more secure because it is still far from guaranteed.  I don't like the idea of adding features that give someone a simple option to select to mitigate how often their house is targeted and making it a less desirable target of a robbery.

I get that there is room to balance house value growth, tool prices, and tool resale value.  Each of these values also overlap with your potential robbing strength.  There is room for improvement surely and hopefully a discussion like this will bring forth the community's opinion as well as many suggestions to discuss.  I do mainly disagree with sentiment that your house is supposed to last the night or however long you have to be away.  This doesn't mean that there aren't potential improvements to make the game experience better.

@ventuswings: I agree that house value growth is probably tied to the quality of robber that targets your house.  The robber will more likely have a high potential robbing strength.  Robbing strength is directly linked to house value as well.  That is why changing house value growth would require careful and delicate balance.  I agree that the game benefits from a good ratio of danger to security.  However, each player is going to view what that ratio should be differently.

@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.

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.

Hah, well, at $2000 in tools, I guess it was a fresh robber who was either trolling or just completely oblivious to the vault.

I will do that sometimes if the wife is visible behind glass one step inside the house.  I wait to see if she comes to the front door with a shotgun.  It is also common that her movement will be blocked by a child and never make it to the front door as well.  Only takes me a hundred steps to figure that out usually!

The reason tools make up such a large part of the game's economy and your personal currency is so that it is always more cost efficient to successfully rob with the tools than it is to sell them if you rob a house of appropriate value.  If you gained too much cash too fast from bounties, then you have way better cost efficiency for purchasing tools.  Tools have to either be sold at a loss or use them successfully in robberies.  I think that this is an important aspect of the game.  It doesn't need to turn into holding on to your tools and having bounty cash too easy to acquire that you just wait for it to roll in and use it to buy the tools you need.

The cash from bounties should only be a little extra on top for clever house design that brings in robbers to die at the result of your cleverness.  I am fine with the bounty being $50 now with the possibility of it changing down the road if there ends up being less fresh suicide robbers.

EDIT: It seems that bounties have been raised back to $100 - http://steamcommunity.com/app/249570/di … 6805565496

EDIT2: But now I've had another bounty of $50 come in after receiving a bounty of $100?

I have seen a few comments to this effect between here and the steam forums.  This doesn't work for a couple of reasons.  Suicide after visiting a house with tools will put a chill on that house and prevent you from visiting it with that account.  This prevents that account from getting a fresh $2000 from suicide and revisiting the house with new tools to "beat it down".

Also, damage is only saved on a house if a robber successfully reaches a vault or kills a family member.  If you are the kind of person that has a house where your family members are easily accessible, then I guess it can be abused to some extent.  I doubt that this is much of a problem; it's also mostly the fault of the house owner if they allow the family members to be easily accessible.

Multiple accounts to attempt no risk scouting runs with $2000 in tools could be an issue for lower-end houses that are less secure.  Once again, I doubt that there are that many people doing this, but who knows.

I think the only bounties that are affected are that of "fresh" robbers.  Also, the bounty on a robber still goes up like before for each time he is successful in robbing a vault or killing a family member.