The Castle Doctrine Forums

I have been thinking along similar lines.

Maintain one "damaged map" for the owner to discover on the next return home, and maintain just one tape to go along with it (the result of the last successful robbery before the owner came home).

Reset the house for robbers every time, until the owner comes home, and then the damage from the last robbery becomes permanent (for the owner to fix up, or not fix up).

(And obviously combine this with a mechanism to allow one successful robbery per player until the owner returns, to prevent one player from exploiting their discovered solution to the house over and over).

But the cash would still drop and drop over time as each robber takes a share.

A few problems:

1)  Family becomes fully protectable (put them behind enough walls and dogs, and then robbers can't use accumulating damage through multiple vault runs to eventually reach them---though this is already a problem for one-time robbable houses)

2)  How to deal with damage that occurred during family deaths? (what if the robber cuts through walls to reach the family, but that damage isn't saved, then the family being dead doesn't make sense to the owner who returns home later, after several more robberies that don't affect the family).

3)  Family no longer can be instrumentalized to reach a hard vault (by killing one at a time to get damage to save).  So, why will people waste money protecting the kids?

4)  If the one tape saved for the owner shows half the money being taken, but the owner sees that a lot more has been taken, how is that accounted for?  Seems like we'd need to still save/show all tapes, but only save the damage from the final one?

Hmm... though I wonder if some of this house scarcity stuff wouldn't just be solved by the one fix (preventing a successful robber from hitting the same house again until the owner returns).  I believe that many of those $0 houses were brought to $0 by one robber hitting the same house over and over until nothing was left.  Preventing this would leave at least something hanging around for other players to go after.  Also, maybe if this were combined with all houses receiving salary (even broken ones), it could be a nice match.

There is something very powerful about returning home to find your house ravaged by multiple break-ins, and I don't want to lose that...

This is part of the aesthetic point of the game.  You're building traps that are going to perma-death some other player and make THAT player lose everything (lose their house, their family, their paintings, and all their hard work).  It's only fair that your traps would do the same thing to you.

Security (even in real life) also has a cost for the person who the security is meant to protect.  In a bad part of a big city, you might have 4 locks on your door.  But you wouldn't have 100 locks on your door, because that would be too much cost for you getting in and out.  You also could have an automated turret to shoot burglars, but you don't have that because it's too dangerous to you, the owner (what if the turret shoots you by mistake?).  If you have a vicious attack dog protecting your house, there's a good chance that the dog will turn on you (or your kids) eventually.  The majority of people killed by pitbulls each year?  The OWNERS of those pitbulls (for real!).

And, in the game, what good is a lock if the owner can't get in without dying?  So, you can't just design anything you can imagine.... you must design something that keeps others out while also letting you get in SAFELY.

And, you face the same risks that the robbers face when you enter your own house.

Yes, this leads to a lot of frustration, even for me, when I play my own game.  But I think a lot of this has to do with how we are used to playing modern video games:  very casually and sloppily, because nothing you do really matters and there are no real consequences (just reload from the last save).

It is possible to play this game extremely carefully and NEVER die.  This is the way you would behave in real life if you were handling deadly traps.  You wouldn't just charge in....  you'd install some back doors first.  You'd test every part first.

Note that this is not unfair, ever.  Death is never random or unpreventable.  Death is always your own fault.  Which makes it feel even worse!  When you die in FTL and lose your whole ship, most of the time, you can blame it on a bad roll of the dice.  That's comforting!  And it makes you want to play again, immediately, because the dice might roll differently next time.  But in this game, there's no one to blame but yourself for death.  Not comforting, and it makes you want to quit playing.

I'm trying to make a game that gives you a different experience from anything you've ever had in a game before.  Otherwise, what's the point of making it?

Well, someone robbed two people (including me!).

Also, someone has died (I can see such things in the admin view).

But yeah, people are being more careful.  Still, only 6 people have tried it so far....

Come on!  I need more testers on this server.

Yeah, there aren't tapes for everything.  Only if the robber dies (because those are fun to watch) or does something permanent (like steals something or kills family).

Tapes are the biggest data load on the server, because each user generates many, and they have to stick around for a while so that people  get a chance to see them.  A hard house can already accumulate many, many tapes.  The top house currently has 144 tapes.  Not only is that a data storage issue, it's also a pain for the owner to look through.

We could double all these problems by storing tapes for robberies where nothing significant happens (scouting trips).

Of course, it's also possible to build a house with a one-way gate at the entrance, so each scouting trip results in either success or death.

They're also not visually identical.

Apparently, there has been a fraud!

Hmmm... felt like doing that myself back when I lived in New Mexico....

Right, it's only if the house itself changes, either through being edited or being robbed successfully.

The idea is that people usually use "Ignore" for houses that they think are impossible.  So if someone gets through, it might be worth another look.

So far, only one painting has been purchased.

Yep, anyone who has lost their download link, please email me.  I'm changing subject line of this thread to make it more clear.

Okay, it's done now!

I hope this wasn't too hard on Mr. Gill.

Sorry for the folks who were thrown under the bus in this process!

There was even one person who bought a painting mere minutes before I did the reset...

I'm going to wait a while on this one.

The idea that new players have no hope of defending for any length of time.... well, that's kind of the point of the game.  It's about a false sense of security.  Everyone should be violated eventually.  Yeah, not everyone is Zed, but even he got his in the end.  There's nothing wrong with a new player getting their house broken into.  I mean, if they are NEVER broken into, that would be much worse, at least in terms of my aesthetic goals.

In v5, the home owners had a huge advantage (hidden information).  New players had no chance of breaking into those 50+ houses.  No one had a chance, unless they were cheating.  Robbers are risking permadeath trying to break in.  Their one advantage was the weakness of the family, but it was still way out of balance.  I mean, a homeowner doesn't risk permadeath at the hands of a robber.

In v6, the robbers now have a bigger advantage, which matches their risk better.  Homeowners have an added advantage in the family behavior, though.  I think it's much more balanced, both for new and expert players.

I remember seeing a bunch of "Let's Play" videos from v5.  Some new player, the reviewer, was going out to try robbing houses for the first time.  Try 1, of course, is the top house on the list.  Step in door, get instantly fried.  Try 2, second house on the list, step in the door, get instantly fried.  "How are they doing that?"  It was baffling for them, because they could see nothing about how the trap was working.  Now at least they could check the blueprints, see the complexity behind the walls, and move on.

Also, even a new player making a dog maze is likely to make something that ends up being one-time robbable.  Protecting the family is pretty natural, too.  So, they get robbed, but not mowed to the ground.  They fix up their house and try again.

I haven't made up my mind one way or the other about whether blueprints for all houses should remain.  I'm just kicking it down the field for a while.