Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

Roborob · 2013-06-11 11:40:10

Dr. Noid brought up an interesting thought in another thread. I would have replied there, but I felt it would have diverged from the main point of the thread too much.

DrNoid wrote:

Indeed, the question is: How to entice people to make houses that are interesting to rob.
That means the "goal" of the game should change from "Make it impossible to be robbed" to "Make as many people as possible try to rob me"
Instead of trying to stop people from making NP-Hard houses, having an NH-Hard house should not make you "win" the game.
Though I think that would be hard to combine with the theme.

It seems to me that the issue that keeps cropping up is the fact that the "ideal" house is too hard or too tedious to solve with any degree of enjoyment (although I suppose that depends on who you ask). With that in mind, what if we tried to change the system in such a way that these tedious designs aren't the ideal solution? One thought I had was to change the way money was earned in the game. What if, instead of a salary, money was earned primarily via failed robbery attempts in your home? If you die during a robbery attempt you drop some portion of your cash in the house you were trying to rob. When the homeowner returns, they can collect the cash. The reason this would be different than the current system is that, although still viable, the tedious designs aren't necessarily the "ideal" ones. An ideal house (from the homeowner's perspective) would be a house that the robber feels they can easily solve, but is actually trickier than they accounted for. In theory, people would shy away from the current "impossibly hard" houses and instead look for the low hanging fruit.

A rather drastic change (but possibly an interesting one) would be to not keep money in the vaults at all (or perhaps just an exceedingly modest amount). Everyone keeps their money on them at all times. With all the crime going on, players keep their savings in the only spot they feel is 100% safe: in their pocket. Paintings and equipment could still be stored in the vault. Family members would still be left behind, possibly in harm's way. The number of paintings in a home would stand testament to the owner's hubris and greed. Homebuilding would become the main focus of the game (as it is now the primary source of income), leaving robbery to be motivated by greed and desperation. If players take pride in their home first and foremost, they will be more likely to choose their robbery targets more carefully (which would involve avoiding houses that seem impossible to solve). Hopefully, what this would result in boils down to:

House too easy: Easily robbed and doesn't generate income (via robber deaths)
House too hard: Nobody risks their lives (and house designs) and doesn't generate income
House sweet spot: Robber feels like they can solve it but die via deception and trickery

This is just a rough idea I had from earlier today and I decided it was time to finally post (I've been lurking for quite a while). I'm sure there's plenty that I'm failing to consider, but I was interested in hearing what you guys thought.

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-11 14:12:13

Interesting thoughts here.

I'm knee-deep in work on v9 right now, which includes "infinite" backpacks that get ditched at the end of every robbery (no house is unbreakable, but carrying a comprehensive set of equipment on each robbery outing is expensive and sub-optimal). We'll see how this improves the direction of the game.

After that, if it doesn't work, we can continue searching for other tweaks.

ukuko · 2013-06-11 15:37:06

Roborob wrote:

Homebuilding would become the main focus of the game, leaving robbery to be motivated by greed and desperation.

But if there was little in the house worth robbing, and everything to lose, why would people bother robbing? If everyone decided to stay home and there was no wage there would be even more of a cash drought then there currently is.

bey bey · 2013-06-11 18:34:11

Well, I really believe this is the wrong direction, since I don't feel like putting so much thought into a house that can be brute-forced by anybody, but we'll see how it goes...

I think the problem here is that most robberies are already carried out with starting cash, and 100 saws aren't that expensive, so every house can be broken by somebody just for the fun of it. Let's see how it goes but I know I'll be stacking up on cheap tools and breaking every house within reach of the startiing cash just because I can.

bey bey · 2013-06-11 18:56:41

As an addendum: This REALLY makes a suggestion that happened some time ago essential: Of the starting cash, only a small fraction should be useable on tools. Say 5000 for the house, 1000 for the tools (or even less). Otherwise, robbers would then have a huge advantage from the start, seeing how pitbulls cost way more than crowbars etc.

Matrix · 2013-06-12 02:52:37

The thing is you only have 2 options. Make a game where it's possible to build houses that are too tedious for most players to solve with X tools or make a game where you can't do that (i.e. any house can be breached with X tools or X is somehow dynamic to achieve that). Those 2 options could be divided further based on the amount of information that's available to the player (e.g. limited vision, blueprints, full vision).

v5 was about making tools obsolete and limited vision with no blueprints
v6-8 is about making tools obsolete and limited vision with blueprints displaying the starting state

Now some players suggest a change to animals where they would only move when they see you. So what they really want is just being able to see things move at all times. Hardest houses will just shift from electric circuits and animals to electric circuits only (animals will still be used to trigger security/trap switches, but not so much for the magic dance effect). The next dominant design will be 9 trapdoor chains with their logic inside a room walled off with a steel wall that is at the same time the only source of electricity for the trapdoor chain. Probably the next related suggestion will be to make it possible to see or somehow get info for all other things that "change state".

I think that doing small changes like that is not the right thing to do at this point. Now the changes need to be drastic (like introducing blueprints was) until we find the right kind of gameplay. The kind that Jason envisioned for this game. From the point of view of a hardcore logic player the current state of the game already has the right kind of gameplay. It can't get much better than this... equal starting state, no randomness/unpredictability, consistent rules and update propagation, obsolete tools (so no randomness/unpredictability there either), but all that means nothing if Jason wants a different game.

I can't speak for others, but I started playing this game because I liked the idea to be able to use tools to break into other houses. I thought this was the core gameplay but I was wrong. Most houses are unbreakable and in v5 they were also unsolvable. Now they are technically solvable but the puzzle is often something that most players wouldn't even call a puzzle. This strategy is effective because it totally eliminates the unpredictable part of the robbery, i.e. what tools will the robber bring and how will he use them? But for the robber that's part of the game. Without tools the game changes from a burglary step-movement arcade to a scrolling electric circuit and Manhattan movement hardcore puzzler. Players playing the game (solving puzzles) inside 3rd party programs or on the blueprints instead of ingame already says a lot about the issues with this.

So one thing that could drastically change the gameplay is changing tools in a way that prevents house owners to make tools obsolete in any way. Of course the aftereffect will be related to the way this is implemented, but we won't really experience it until we try.

Like I said in the other thread, tool prices will have to be tweaked a lot (maybe, thematically, this even means that some house tiles prices will have to be changed).

bey bey wrote:

As an addendum: This REALLY makes a suggestion that happened some time ago essential: Of the starting cash, only a small fraction should be useable on tools. Say 5000 for the house, 1000 for the tools (or even less). Otherwise, robbers would then have a huge advantage from the start, seeing how pitbulls cost way more than crowbars etc.

This would help keep tool prices at about the same price levels without the need to change prices too drastically. However, if we don't increase tool prices the money you get from a robbery will allow you to buy many tools and the problem will just emerge there. So the starting credit is only part of the issue. But anyway, implementing this would make it possible to fine tune the impact the starting credit has on building power and tool power separately, which I think is a good thing.

Matrix · 2013-06-12 02:58:00

Food for thought: maybe you shouldn't be allowed to buy tools in this game, but instead the only way to get tools would be from failed robberies of other players. You could still get some tools on respawn.

While this opens up many issues that would have to be taken care of it has quite some potential.

Next thing you know this game will be a trading card strategy game disguised as a burglary game

The first trading card game with permadeath? Shut up and take my money!

Last edited by Matrix (2013-06-12 12:15:17)

bey bey · 2013-06-12 04:22:22

I'd say the biggest problem is that once you accept permadeath, you can always use all the tools you can buy at the beginning just to crack houses - there's no obligation to contribute a house of your own.

I'd say that a robber who built a proper house and had a successful robbery will probably be more careful than somebody coming from starting cash and thus less of a purely destructive threat. If something's going to break the game, it will be people buying incredible amounts of tools with starting cash and demolishing anything in their sight. Heck, after all the annoying houses I have seen, I might go on a pointless rampage as soon as I get the chance. Die, chihuahuas, DIEEEE!!

Also, I like the idea of a "starter kit" of tools that you get upon start (together with building cash), and then you have to earn your pocket money. That would keep a flood of brute force burglaries for the hell of it at bay I think, while every house can still be broken in the end. Well, tricky...

Last edited by bey bey (2013-06-12 04:31:08)

jere · 2013-06-12 05:23:13

I'd say the biggest problem is that once you accept permadeath, you can always use all the tools you can buy at the beginning just to crack houses - there's no obligation to contribute a house of your own.

Yea, the problem is that if you're determined to rob one of the top houses, $6k is immaterial in the face of a $20k+ payout. If tools were more expensive and/or the starting money lower, you might instead build a house and wait for salary to roll in before attempting that.

Laffinty · 2013-06-12 07:17:09

jere wrote:

I'd say the biggest problem is that once you accept permadeath, you can always use all the tools you can buy at the beginning just to crack houses - there's no obligation to contribute a house of your own.
Yea, the problem is that if you're determined to rob one of the top houses, $6k is immaterial in the face of a $20k+ payout. If tools were more expensive and/or the starting money lower, you might instead build a house and wait for salary to roll in before attempting that.

Except that houses that dont use magic dance or something like that are insanely easy to crack atm with blueprints
and its hard to build a reasonable house even with 6k imo (reasonable aka you will still ahve money when you come back)

bey bey · 2013-06-12 09:44:37

Laffinty wrote:

jere wrote:
I'd say the biggest problem is that once you accept permadeath, you can always use all the tools you can buy at the beginning just to crack houses - there's no obligation to contribute a house of your own.
Yea, the problem is that if you're determined to rob one of the top houses, $6k is immaterial in the face of a $20k+ payout. If tools were more expensive and/or the starting money lower, you might instead build a house and wait for salary to roll in before attempting that.
Except that houses that dont use magic dance or something like that are insanely easy to crack atm with blueprints
and its hard to build a reasonable house even with 6k imo (reasonable aka you will still ahve money when you come back)

Well, but WITHOUT blueprints, 6000 could design something that is at least a challenge...

But I do see the problem, that with the sophistication that blueprints brought to the magic dance, house will only be solveable by bruteforce in many cases. The doggie-kittie-pen things would basically require a lot of wirecutters to be solved...

largestherb · 2013-06-12 11:28:11

bey bey wrote:

The doggie-kittie-pen things would basically require a lot of wirecutters to be solved...

most of these i see right now .. you don't want to cut the power, unless you have a lot of ladders.

hey, how about portable battery that provides power for x moves? or wires you can hax in~ or your own buttons you can drop!

edit: this is lame but i like my idea of inserting your own switches and wires.. it is ... hacking!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-06-12 11:50:22)

bey bey · 2013-06-12 11:41:04

Well, I meant the changes hinted at by Jason, that is a.) wire cutters for ALL electric floors (on and off) and b.) unlimited backpacks, so take 15 wirecutters and 15 ladders, and 100 crowbars to punish the doggies for trying your patience.....

Last edited by bey bey (2013-06-12 11:41:34)

largestherb · 2013-06-12 11:52:22

oh yes, sorry!

i am still sceptical about the whole increased/delimited backpack thing. it would seem in the best interest of the rich to spend $10,000 to ensure that everyone else has $0 so they can't afford tools to just smash through the riches layers of defence.

however, i am very eager to see it!

Matrix · 2013-06-12 12:06:06

largestherb wrote:

i am still sceptical about the whole increased/delimited backpack thing. it would seem in the best interest of the rich to spend $10,000 to ensure that everyone else has $0 so they can't afford tools to just smash through the riches layers of defence.

And why wouldn't that be a valid strategy? If it makes players play the game it's a good thing.

You could still buy tools with the money you get from the salary when you return to the game.

Last edited by Matrix (2013-06-12 12:09:05)

largestherb · 2013-06-12 14:04:20

Matrix wrote:

And why wouldn't that be a valid strategy? If it makes players play the game it's a good thing.
You could still buy tools with the money you get from the salary when you return to the game.

but it would be the ~only~ strategy. i feel like it might drive more people away, instead of 'make a really hard house and evolve it when someone finally does figure it out' it'd be more 'make a really hard house and then kill everyone else and keep killing them and hope the new starting cash isn't enough to just waltz through my $100,000 house'

still, i don't know what the new tool prices will be. i don't know what the new starting money will be. i don't know if building materials will cost the same. the only thing i know for certain about v9 is that wire cutters will finally counter grids that are off.

i definitely look forward to it and i hope i am proved wrong and it pushes the game into a state with more than 3 houses to look at. but i do fear the idea of rich players being able to shout 'SWAP PLACES!!!' and kind of 'forcing' everyone to suicide and start again. don't forget to fill your backpack before you go to work, i guess?

an ability to export/import your building code from the building screen would be nice, by the way!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-06-12 14:06:16)

Matrix · 2013-06-12 15:15:08

largestherb wrote:

but it would be the ~only~ strategy. i feel like it might drive more people away, instead of 'make a really hard house and evolve it when someone finally does figure it out' it'd be more 'make a really hard house and then kill everyone else and keep killing them and hope the new starting cash isn't enough to just waltz through my $100,000 house'

First you would have to get to that $100,000

Another strategy is to make a house that is not worth robbing for the amount that a robber would have to invest in tools. Of course it will happen that sometimes players will just rob you even if they lose the money, but this happens now already. The challenge for the robber is to find the cheapest tool collection that makes it possible to get through the puzzle or breach the house.

If the right price balance is reached this could actually be quite fun, but it definitely won't just work right from the start.

bey bey · 2013-06-12 15:20:01

Probably the best thing is that even as a house owner, you would be tempted to use some of your salary to fill a box with tools that cannot possibly let you down (ah the hybris!) and try your luck, and having to ditch all of that by leaving, you would scout, wander, and probably be lured into getting yourself killed in the process. The idea is growing on me. How brilliant would it be for the owner of a top house to die while just having a looksie...

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-12 15:56:47

First of all, the ideal balance would be for the starting money to be just enough to buy tools that could rob (with skill and luck) a starting house. So, yeah, the cost of saws will go up!

My idea for this game is one where you "climb the ladder" and get knocked back down again many times along the way. But you should have no chance of robbing a top house immediately after a fresh start. You're a low-level crook at that point. Well, maybe you have a chance if you've been scouting that top house extensively in your past lives. But even then, with all that info, maybe you know you need more tools than you can afford right now. *That* is an interesting state to be in, right? Where you know you can knock down a top house if you can just scrape together a bit more money from hitting smaller houses. Of course, if you get robbed in the process, that will block you, so you'll need to quickly build better-than-average security.

The hope is for this kind of tight balance.

In v5, it became possible to build an unbreakable house for $1400, and tools meant nothing in such a house. So, right off the bat, any player could become a king-pin. In v6-8, I'm pretty sure that changed, to where it was pretty hopeless to build a viable house with the starting money (maybe not, if you studied really hard), but tools were still useless in the top houses. So, a low-level crook had just as much chance at breaking a top house as a rich player (it's all about who studies the blueprints the smartest).

Anyway, in that way, my hope for the game was very Roguelike. You know, "how deep can you go in these dungeons?" That's very similar to, "how high can you climb in the house list?" In a Roguelike, you're never going to get to the bottom (at least I'm not going to!). In this game, you're never going to stay at the top for very long. But you'll climb up from the bottom again, and it will be different next time, because the whole world will have changed, as player designs change and different players are knocked down.

The other hope was to have an intransitive-relationship (aka rock-paper-scissors) arms-race in place. As people built dog-heavy houses, everyone would carry a lot of guns. But if you knew that everyone was coming in with guns, you'd build a wiring-based house with no dogs at all. And then if that trend caught on, people would bring lots of wire cutters and stop carrying guns, in which case building a house with a lot of pits would be good. And then people would start carrying ladders in response. But there would be no optimum point, and it would constantly churn and cycle. Very similar, in many ways, to the way the colors work in Magic, where you can spot and take advantage of the current deck-of-the-day trends.

Doesn't that sound cool?

Obviously, so far, the game has pretty much accomplished none of this! Along the way, I was listening to the game as it evolved, and seeing interesting places where it was going that I hadn't envisioned, and kind of fostering it in these other directions. "Oh, people are going to build things 9-walls thick? Well, lets see where we can go with that."

The backpack limit always felt so natural and unchallengable.... that's just the way backpacks work! Obviously, I can't change that. Yeah, I could make it bigger (like, 16 slots), but it was clear that wouldn't change anything (people would just make walls 17 thick), so I didn't do that. As the game progressed, I gradually let go of my dreams of an item-vs-obstacle arms-race cycle....

Laffinty · 2013-06-12 16:04:02

Well, if theres just top-tier houses to steal from cause everyone else again has <$100 then it may be kinda hard to "climb the ladder"
but i'll wait and see

bey bey · 2013-06-12 16:20:47

jasonrohrer wrote:

The backpack limit always felt so natural and unchallengable.... that's just the way backpacks work! Obviously, I can't change that. Yeah, I could make it bigger (like, 16 slots), but it was clear that wouldn't change anything (people would just make walls 17 thick), so I didn't do that. As the game progressed, I gradually let go of my dreams of an item-vs-obstacle arms-race cycle....

I think, the suggestion of tools as well as house elements increasing in price depending on how many you own holds some potential for this. The house owner can use 50 electric floors at horrendous cost, hoping nobody will bring 50 wirecutters, but after some initial scouting, somebody who is on to this will bring an incredibly high amount of those, etc. Sounds like an arms race to me. A bit more asymmetrical, but it could hold potential. Something to consider for v10 . The nice side-effect would be that starting houses would have to diversify their defences and thus be a lot more unpredictable as to what to expect.

Last edited by bey bey (2013-06-12 16:21:32)

zed · 2013-06-12 18:47:49

Worth thinking what the new "optimal" house will be in the v9 jason has described. Without meaning to sound pessimistic for the sake of it, I suspect the answer is: a vault behind as long a line of trapdoors and steel walls as can fit, opened by a pet-mediated magic-dance bitlock, with the pets and logic being distributed around the sides of the map so that finding out the logic would cost as much in tools as bruteforcing to the vault.

I hope things can be tweaked such that this isn't how it turns out, but I'm not currently seeing how.

Matrix · 2013-06-13 00:16:37

jasonrohrer wrote:

The other hope was to have an intransitive-relationship (aka rock-paper-scissors) arms-race in place. As people built dog-heavy houses, everyone would carry a lot of guns. But if you knew that everyone was coming in with guns, you'd build a wiring-based house with no dogs at all. And then if that trend caught on, people would bring lots of wire cutters and stop carrying guns, in which case building a house with a lot of pits would be good. And then people would start carrying ladders in response. But there would be no optimum point, and it would constantly churn and cycle. Very similar, in many ways, to the way the colors work in Magic, where you can spot and take advantage of the current deck-of-the-day trends.

Turn-based or real-time multiplayer games (MTG, Starcraft) can achieve this in other ways, because there both players build up their "defence and attack" at the same time while trying to manage their resources. Outplaying your opponent usually means managing your resources and/or units better, making better "moves", reacting to the opponents' "moves" in real-time (in MTG you can play instants) or on your next turn, counter his strategy and (usually with card/dice games) a bit of luck.

But in asynchronous multiplayer (unless it's a turn-by-turn game) most of that happens in advance for the defense side, then the attack side gets to play and the defender can't react anymore. If you want to have the meta intransitive-relationship, the opponents would have to be chosen at random and the player would have to pick the contents of the tool pack in advance. That's how some other asynchronous "attack the base" games solve this problem. When you decide you want to attack another player you need to choose your army composition in advance and then you pay some money to initiate the attack and the game will pick a random opponent for you (the selection process can be based on your rank instead of being random). Once an opponent is selected you get to see what you are going against (their army/base) and what's the reward (if you manage to win). At that point you can attack (you have the right army composition or the reward is worth the risk) or pay again to look for a different opponent (you have the wrong army composition or reward is not worth the risk/time). Some of those games also have a revenge system where you can directly attack once any player that attacked you recently.

In TCD this would mean that instead of the house list you would just get to see a random house (the blueprint + house money, maybe also attempts/deaths) and from that screen you would need to decide if you want to attack or if you want to "move" to the next house. This promotes what you describe in your post. Attackers try to bring tools that work for the current house design meta and defenders try to build houses that are strong against tools that attackers usually bring. And with the revenge system in place (where the defender can rob the attacker's house back directly once) you are still allowing those revenge house raids to happen.

The current TCD system didn't achieve that because the attacker is free to pick exactly the tools he needs (and this part won't change with v9). That's why defenders decided to protect themselves by ruling out tools altogether with 9+ walls/traps and/or electric grids (this part will somehow change with v9 but in a rich house there will just be more traps to break through if the puzzle will be tedious to solve).

So if intransitive-relationship arms-race is what you want then a random enemy selection with blueprints and tools chosen in advance is something to think of but the problem is that such system needs a large player base (maybe you could throw "restored" old houses that had > 0 deaths in the mix to have enough "content" until there are enough "live" houses). The backpack might have to be somehow limited for this system because I don't think that the
leave-the-backpack-behind-if-you-flee mechanic would work well here, or maybe?

Last edited by Matrix (2013-06-13 01:05:00)

dalleck · 2013-06-13 01:43:12

Interesting conversation here, and also an interesting suggestion Matrix...

All I wanted to add was that, with blueprints gone, can the vision limit be increased to stop at a single wall? At the moment you get quite a bit of vision through even two walls and I think that is giving away too much of the mystery of a house.

By robbers vision being limited by a single wall, you could condense more of a level into the given 32x32 space.

bey bey · 2013-06-13 02:36:57

I like this idea, Matrix, but permadeath makes at least revenge unfeasable. Every time somebody broke my house, I checked up on the guy and at least half the time he didn't exist anymore (and my paintings were back in auction). Just a robbery for robbery's sake without any revenge possible. And, to be fair, I did the same quite a few times, just breaking a house for the fun of it. So maybe the problem is the two fun ways to play the game? Building OR robbing, where each is done best by keeping the other to a minimum. This is, if I get it, part of the idea behind the changes: making robberies more attractive to home-owners and home-building a prerequisite for successful robberies.

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Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

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