The Castle Doctrine Forums

Well, that ended badly.

This was by far the toughest house I've seen so far. Warning: there's lots of worrisome switch fiddling in the middle.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/429 … _james.mp4

I understood the principle of the final puzzle, but I couldn't work out exactly which setup to haul the dogs through.

So... in the end, I threw a brick at it.

Do keep us informed.

When we talk about sneaking, we're really talking about avoiding pitbulls, right? You can see where the pitbulls start, but its not so easy to determine where they will end up. There's been plenty of times post-blueprints that I've been cautiously peering around corners, unsure if I've got a pitbull after me. So there's still scope for sneaking, just now you can usually tell what a house is going to involve before you enter it.

I would argue that most of these puzzles are still fun to solve, though admittedly you may spend more time inspecting the blueprint than you actually do in the house. I accept that that's not enjoyable for everyone.

I think unlimited items would probably ruin things — if you were rich enough you could cut/kill your way to any vault.

It would be interesting to see what would happen with more realistic item usage/burden.

For example, say you had 4 slots and could only carry one of any item:

Gun: More expensive, but fires 6/8 shots
Saw/torch/crowbar: 8 uses each (breaks, runs out of fuel, breaks)
Explosives: 4 uses?
Ladder: You can only bring one. Single use. (Maybe raise the cost of pits/trapdoors)
Voltage Detector: Reusable (not that it's particularly useful anyway)
Wire cutters: Reusable
Brick: Reusable (You can just pick it up, right?)
Water/meat: 8 uses
Doorstop: Pack of 8

So you'd get a little more mileage out of your tools, but composing the right toolset for the house would a more tactical affair. I also like the idea that you'd be investing in tools — a pair of wire cutters can be used again and again and stored in your vault when you don't need them. 

If robbed houses still earned a basic wage (say what everyone earned pre wage-hike) then there'd be many more houses to rob, and much more cash to go round. There would also be a permanent catalogue of mid-level houses for newer players to cut their teeth on.

Both secret dances and combination locks are perfectly feasible without voltage switches.

I think the inclusion of blueprints has made the game a little easier, if anything. Easier not to trip over that surprise pit bull, for sure. It's also fostered a more thoughtful style of play, and less of the brute force suicide spam that was common before. Money is changing hands more regularly. There's also much less cheating — I haven't noticed anything obvious on my tapes, where it was commonplace before.

Sure, the passing of combo locks and electric-floor-dances has lead to far more complex (better) houses, but necessity is the mother of invention. Otherwise most of us would still be making lovely little mazes with a fail-safe combo/dance lock should you reach the other side.

The game is tough on new players. When v5 first came out EVERYONE sucked. And not just for two hours — for days, or even weeks. It takes time to learn how all the house objects work, and then how to use tools to overcome them.

The biggest difference for people starting now is that most of the 'cheap kill' traps are rendered ineffective by blueprints. I understand that that might suck for new players (who are missing out on some amusing slapstick circa v5), but it also balances the game out. When there's nothing but luck between you and the bottom of a trapdoor it gets real old real quick.

I'm a terrible person.

Yeah it'd be a shame to lose the impact of that reveal. Especially when you stumble upon a hoarder.

No mercy, Jason. No Mercy.

Please don't move the suicide button. All I see at the moment is

Suicide
Tapas

and I wouldn't want that to change for the world.

This would be my preferred route. I think this would temper the difficulty curve for new players and also reintroduce some of the fog-of-war tension when robbing new houses. I can see it now — the $6000 empty-looking honey trap...

I guess the blueprint threshold would be based on either ranking, time unbeaten, attempts, deaths or a combination of the above. I don't think you should have to pay.

Ah, yes. I thought as much. My confusion was mainly concerning the lack of visual feedback, but I guess there is no 'oscillation' sprite.

It might help to reintroduce the 'minimum wage' and pay a higher wage to those houses which haven't been beaten  yet.

I'm not convinced that purpose built one-time-beatable houses are a huge problem. If you do this you are basically opting not to play the game, and if you're not playing the game then you're not playing a role in its economy either.

An idea:

If your house has been broken for X weeks without you checking in and fixing it up it could be repossessed. This could remove you from the house list and leave you with a percentage of your cash, your security tapes and an otherwise empty house.