The Castle Doctrine Forums

Great thoughts from everyone here!

vraeden:  going to watch Star Trek is a good thing.  My goal is NOT to make a game that will hook you for hours and days and weeks non-stop, where you can't stop playing and forgo sleep and real life!  The game is always fair, never random, and when you die, it's always your fault (which makes it even more painful and frustrating and rage-quit-inducing).  This is a game that pays you for every solid hour that you stay away from it.  Rage quitting in disgust is part of that equation.

A suggestion for a community-driven ingame regulation system to deal with houses that are unbeatable in practice

One thing that the community could do, is to let others know which houses fall into this category and which do not. But for that to be effective, and actually part of the game itself, there would have to be some kind of "house voting system" implemented. And not just the voting part; some kind of threshold filtering would also have to be implemented at the same time. So the house list would still show houses sorted by the amount of money, but would hide all those houses that were voted "unbeatable in practice" by the community.

This wouldn't be a score (or star) based voting system, but only a simple to use upvote/downvote (+/-) system.
The upvote part of the system would be hidden (internal) and upvotes would be automatically cast by the server every time a robber reaches the vault.
So the actual GUI would only have a single button "Report this house as unfair" that would be placed next to the "Rob this house" button.

If a player reports a house that house is grayed out (or marked in a different way) on the house list (for him only) and the "Rob this house" button is disabled. Yes, if you report a house, you can't explore it anymore. The player can still revoke the report by paying a small price, for example $500. This is to discourage false reports, but still give the player an option to revoke it if they misclick or change their mind. If they revoke the report they can enter the house normally again.

Of course all vote manipulation preventing mechanisms would have to be implemented as well, such as:
- one vote per house per account
- no option to change your vote:
    - once you steal from a house's vault you can't report it anymore, unless the house gets edited
    - once you report a house you can only revoke the report by paying a small price, but you get 1 free revoke if the house gets edited or robbed
- editing a house must reset all the positive votes but keep all the negative ones to prevent quick meaningless edits from manipulating the voting process. Players who already reported this house would see it was edited and get a free revoke, which would allow them to recheck the house free of charge if they wanted.

If a house would fall below a set threshold, it would be put at the end of the list. The threshold would be a configurable server-side value, that could be tweaked based on the community size and based on how the game evolves. But all this only solves part of the problem; it gets rid of the "unbeatable" house spam at the top of the house list.

The other part of the problem is that the owner would still be able to rob others and increase his money (even easier now, since he would be "off the radar") so another mechanism would have to be put in place, that would prevent this from happening. At this point I don't really see a way to do it, that would be "fair" for everyone and at the same time prevent the manipulation of the system itself. Instead I will suggest an implementation that cannot be infinitely manipulated but still gives the house owner the chance to get back into the game.

So here is how I imagine it would work.

1. If a house gets reported by many players and at the same time not many players reach its vault, this house would naturally drop below the set threshold value due to the low upvote/downvote ratio.

2. The next time the house owner enters such a house, he sees a message saying, "You broke the eight tools rule of the Thieves' code. The Thieves guild is keeping an eye on you! Be careful!". At this point the owner can edit, test and prove the house as he would do normally, but if he decides to leave the house, a message would pop up saying, "Do you really want to betray the Thieves guild?"
2.A. If he chooses "Yes", he leaves the house but is killed by the members of the Thieves guild. A black screen pops up with a message explaining that he got killed by the members of the Thieves guild, because he betrayed them.
2.B. If he chooses "No", he stays inside the house.

3. If the stays inside he has a few options.
3.A. He can make some edits to the house and then give away all his money, tools (he would keep any tools in the backpack) and paintings (the paintings would go to the auction), by choosing the option "Bribe the Thieves guild by giving them all your belongings."
3.B. He can decide to keep the money, tools and paintings, but lose his house (he would just start in a new empty house), by choosing "Flee the house with your family and all your belongings"; or "Flee the house with all your belongings", if the whole family would be already dead.

4. Choosing either option would allow him to leave the house safely again. At the same time the votes would be reset, and his house would be put back at the proper spot on the house list (based on the amount of his money). So if he gave away the money and kept the house, he would have to start robbing again to get back all the things he lost; if he kept the money, he would have to remake the house from scratch.

5. But there's a catch... these options (3.A. and 3.B.) can only be picked once each (could also be once only) per respawn, which means that if his house keeps getting reported and falls under the threshold again, the only option left is to die and respawn — by leaving the house and getting killed (option 2.A.) or using the already implemented suicide option. After a proper respawn all votes and all options reset. It's a new, clean start.

How would this affect the game?
- There would be an option to report houses that are unbeatable in practice.
- The owner would have one or two chances to reset the votes and get back into the game. Failing that, eventually he would have to respawn and lose everything.
- The top of the house list would actually contain houses that the community thinks that are fair and solvable in practice. This should create a better experience overall.
- And hopefully, given some time, even players that now create "unbeatable in practice" houses, will adapt and start making houses that are "solvable in practice".

Since this is a community-driven system it will adapt to changes in the game itself as well as the metagame. This means that the system is not tied with the game mechanics and won't limit the game design possibilities, unlike most other fixes that would actually have to change the core game mechanics just to address this issue. Making fixes directly to the game mechanics has one big drawback; every time you introduce new traps/tools/mechanics you have to take extra care to not reopen the original issue. This additionally limits things that you can actually add to the game and slows the development; either because you take extra steps to make sure you won't break the game again; or you accidentally break the game and you have to come up with new changes to fix it again.

Creating a community-driven regulation system has another interesting advantage. Not many think about this but when an item is added to the game it's usually added with specific use cases in mind. Some of those use cases are interactions with other items. But players always figure out ways that the developers didn't think of, which creates an interesting situation; sometimes these unintended uses enrich the game, sometimes they are overpowered, and sometimes they just plainly break parts of the game. A community-driven regulation system can actually deal with many issues (balance or greifing) that result from the players' abuse of a game mechanic.

Taking into consideration that Castle Doctrine has one developer, I think that investing some time into developing a community-driven regulation system will pay for itself in the long run. I think, that then, the community could actually reduce the burden that all these balance issues bring to a single developer, while he would be able to focus on new features and adding new traps/tools/mechanics into the game.

So is the community fine with a self regulating system or are you concerned about it?  If you are concerned, explain why.

I'm pretty sure that buyable maps in v6 will fix this.

As Guest23 pointed out, the house was still fun/cool to study even with the map.  Puzzles (real puzzles) are still possible even with a map of the puzzle.

The real question is whether buyable maps will be meaningless if everyone is just sniffing the protocol to see the maps for free anyway.  Of course, most people aren't sniffing the protocol now... they're just looking at all the debug info that the game spews out.  But even if I turn that off, it will be a matter of time before some mod is widely available to sniff the protocol.

Of course, "bought map" will be attached to the security tape.  So, if you get through some really hard house without buying a map, you could still be caught at cheating.

tip: money in safe is 7915, so just try out that one (wife is still alive).
could someone tell me my name?

colorfusion wrote:

I'd like to say though that it was only due to hackers that I went to combo locks, and in my house the majority of people still die on the first non combo lock section.

That is an understandable reason then.

Still, running into an almost certain deathtrap is especially little fun for newbies. Even less so when it's almost the rule. Aside of two houses (and even so one was only doable after about a dozen trial and error runs, not sure how the owner managed to do it without tools, and the other one seems to be some sort of secret steps to make animals go certain ways that's just as impossible to figure out), all the advanced ones I ever ran up against had some sort of a "1/1000 chance you get it right, shucks mate"-lock after no later than the first "normal" unavoidable trap, which is just designed to make unsuspecting people stuck in there. Hardly an anti-hacker measure.

I also noticed that there's no way the family can ever leave the house in almost all of these. Are they all dead, or is it an exploit?