Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

meatfortress · 2013-06-05 18:23:11

Before anyone accuses me of being a Communist, hear me out (lol). I've been playing the Castle Doctrine heavily for a little over a week and I noticed a few things that bothered me. Mainly, how newbie unfriendly the game is, how unbalanced the economy is, and how those things discourage people from playing the game. Now, I absolutely love this game, and I would love to see more people play it, which would diversify the house list and bring more money/activity/fun to the server. But let me state a few things before I suggest a fix.

First, the economy in the Castle Doctrine is based on a system where we take each other's wealth, instead of mutually working together to build wealth. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's something to consider when thinking of ways to stabilize the economy. Sure, money slowly trickles in, but we can't rely on those hourly wages for anything. That extra cash's true purpose is to put a target on our backs. (Because the wages are earned while the person is away, and they obviously can't build or occupy their house while they're away. Unless they figured out a plan to gain the money then instantly return to their house to spend it, but that's really a lot of effort just to conceal a few dollars.)

I noticed the Castle Doctrine has two very distinct classes: The rich (people who understand the system and how to abuse/break/manipulate it) and the poor (people who either don't play the game anymore, don't know what they're doing, or are purposely keeping their homes in shambles to avoid upkeep/harassment). Sure, there's kind of a middle class, but they're very temporary and are usually reduced to the poor group (or sometimes skyrocketed to the rich group) within a few hours.

I also noticed that money in the Castle Doctrine is either a dire necessity (to build/complete a competent security system which protects your family and/or vault) or worthless (a number to fatten your game ego or access to unlimited tools to destroy people's houses with). I know what some of you are thinking. "What's wrong with that?" Because I thought the same thing a couple of days ago. Well, a heavily unequal distribution of wealth discourages people from playing, and we all want more activity on the server.

With all of that said, I have an idea for a simple feature that can help promote equal distribution of wealth: (tl;dr Starts here:) When a burglar successfully steals from a household or does permanent damage by killing family members, don't allow that burglar to return to that house for a period of time. (I was thinking until after the house's owner returns or after a certain amount of time has passed, like 24 hours. Or maybe both.) This will allow the victim to recover faster and force overzealous players to sit and plan out a burglary instead of just bringing in unlimited tools (over the course of several burglaries). As of the current patch, blueprints of everyone are accessible to everyone, so if you're one of those malicious/overzealous players, you can still enjoy the destructive nature of the game with this feature. It isn't that hard to cause major damage to most security systems with the information that is available. Those players just won't be able to completely cripple other players by using their knowledge and wealth to overwhelm them.

If the problems that I've addressed is the unique culture of the game, then let me know. I personally want more diversity and more activity, but like I mentioned I haven't been around here long.

metaldev · 2013-06-06 20:48:34

I think its a good thing really, because you may have been super rich... you got robbed.. and robbed and robbed and robbed while you were away... they killed your wife and kids for good measure. You suicide and start again with some useable cash. Thats the game, no?

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-07 22:16:14

I have thought about this.

In fact, this was the way the game functioned, back before it was released to the public. You could only rob each house once until the owner returned.

There was some concern for house scarcity, but letting one player rob the same house over and over just adds to scarcity (because other players have one less house to rob, if that one player hogs that house). Hmmm.... maybe it's this: I want this game to scale well from 2 players up to millions of players, and be interesting and worth playing all along that scale. I have played it back in the early days against just one person, and it was still really interesting (trying to get through each other's houses). But if there are very few active players, and you can only rob each house once, you quickly run out of things to do in the game.

In terms of middle-class players, I'm assuming that they're pretty safe from wealthy players, because those players have too much to lose and can't risk going into a semi-dangerous house. Is that correct? That's certainly how I feel once I become wealthy in the game (or how I imagine I would feel if I ever did.... ahem...).

meatfortress · 2013-06-13 22:03:23

Oops, I didn't mean to post and vanish. Real life is tricky. I'm also embarrassed for the massive initial post. I think I was going somewhere with that but forgot my intention halfway there. I didn't mean it to come off as a lunatic's musings.

metaldev wrote:

I think its a good thing really, because you may have been super rich... you got robbed.. and robbed and robbed and robbed while you were away... they killed your wife and kids for good measure. You suicide and start again with some useable cash. Thats the game, no?

Maybe that is the game. I haven't played in a week, but the last state of the game that I saw was the following: There are a few elite people at the top of the list. Either their systems are too complicated to break into or their houses are broken. The hardcore players with super-complex systems still want to play the game but can't really do much at the moment because the player base is slim pickings, so they will suck the weaker homes dry, kill their families, and destroy their systems just because they can. I'm not complaining only for my house. I'm speaking on behalf of my friends that also play the game and on everyone else's house I've been to where the entire home is in ruins, and dead family members and animals litter the area.

I rarely see the elite fall. (And they should rarely fall. No one should be punished for being good at the game.) But I noticed a lot of them are using their knowledge of the Castle Doctrine to be relentless. It irritates me but gives me motive to fight back, whereas my friends (and most people, I assume) are likely to get frustrated and leave the game.

jasonrohrer wrote:

I have thought about this.
In fact, this was the way the game functioned, back before it was released to the public. You could only rob each house once until the owner returned.
There was some concern for house scarcity, but letting one player rob the same house over and over just adds to scarcity (because other players have one less house to rob, if that one player hogs that house). Hmmm.... maybe it's this: I want this game to scale well from 2 players up to millions of players, and be interesting and worth playing all along that scale. I have played it back in the early days against just one person, and it was still really interesting (trying to get through each other's houses). But if there are very few active players, and you can only rob each house once, you quickly run out of things to do in the game.
In terms of middle-class players, I'm assuming that they're pretty safe from wealthy players, because those players have too much to lose and can't risk going into a semi-dangerous house. Is that correct? That's certainly how I feel once I become wealthy in the game (or how I imagine I would feel if I ever did.... ahem...).

Ah, it's nice to see that the "feature" was implemented before. I think I may be prematurely calling for change. There isn't too much to do in the game at the moment and limiting players even further may be the wrong way to approach this problem.

Anyways, I still feel like something is economically imbalanced. Since the starting cash was increased from $2,000 to $6,000, it feels like purchasing tools today has no real monetary effect on homes. But I don't know. I think I'm starting to rant again, so let's just end this post here.

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-14 16:20:21

Give v9 a try and see how it changes things. The mighty have fallen.

Laffinty · 2013-06-14 16:51:17

jasonrohrer wrote:

Give v9 a try and see how it changes things. The mighty have fallen.

Can't try much, too afraid of wirecutter+electric floor bug killing me since i dunno its details
and when i build a house thats semi-reasonable i dont have anything left for tools xD (not like i could get muhc of those for $2000 anyway)

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-14 17:37:21

That's been fixed!

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2013-06-05 18:23:11

Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

#2 2013-06-06 20:48:34

Re: Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

#3 2013-06-07 22:16:14

Re: Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

#4 2013-06-13 22:03:23

Re: Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

#5 2013-06-14 16:20:21

Re: Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

#6 2013-06-14 16:51:17

Re: Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

#7 2013-06-14 17:37:21

Re: Promoting Equal Distribution of Wealth

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