Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

jere · 2013-06-13 08:49:26

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.

Whoa, this has potential. The metagame where "these days people use lots of dogs" is hard to achieve when a) you can see everything people actually have in a blueprint for free or b) you can do a lot of free/cheap scouting or c) you can keep attacking the same house as many times as you want.

Matrix's random house idea seems to accomplish it though. The thing I would want to avoid is any tricks that let you still target particular houses; for that reason, I don't like a free "move on" button. If you want to move on/leave, you should probably lose your backpack contents. Otherwise, you just keep clicking through until you get to the house you want. It might be good to limit the random selection to houses with values greater than the 1x or 2x the total backpack value (purchase, not sell value). That accomplishes two things: the robber is guaranteed a positive ROI if they succeed and any robbers who pack minimally (e.g. nothing or 1 drugged meat) will have to deal with a lot of low value houses.

In a way, it reminds me of poker in addition to Magic, which used to have a gambling aspect itself. You have a hand, which might be sufficient or it might be worthless. At each point, you have to decide if you want to keep pushing it, go deeper, and risk more or if you want to cut your losses and leave.

I'm still somewhat attached to the idea of buyable blueprints. Maybe even more granular: an architectural blueprint with walls, a wiring diagram, a heatmap, etc. Being in the middle of a randomly assigned robbery and deciding on the fly that buying a wiring diagram might help you get to a safe (or even just escape) sounds pretty intense.

largestherb · 2013-06-13 09:28:40

i do like the idea of random 'npc' houses taken from old house designs that could help to 'fill out' the current house list. i have been shouting at ukuko about it for a few days

ukuko · 2013-06-13 09:51:48

jere wrote:

I don't like a free "move on" button. If you want to move on/leave, you should probably lose your backpack contents. Otherwise, you just keep clicking through until you get to the house you want.

I think a fairer solution would be to give you a random selection of three or so houses to choose from. Otherwise it'd suck if you kept getting assigned the 'impossible' house.

jere wrote:

I'm still somewhat attached to the idea of buyable blueprints. Maybe even more granular: an architectural blueprint with walls, a wiring diagram, a heatmap, etc.

I like this idea of separate blueprints — one for electronics, one for structure. Grids and doors could show on the former, pits and trapdoors on the latter. Guess we'll see how we do sans blueprints!

largestherb wrote:

i do like the idea of random 'npc' houses taken from old house designs that could help to 'fill out' the current house list.

I still think this would be better solved by robbed houses earning a basic wage. $$$

jere · 2013-06-13 10:19:02

I think a fairer solution would be to give you a random selection of three or so houses to choose from. Otherwise it'd suck if you kept getting assigned the 'impossible' house.

I thought infinite tools would make it so there aren't really any "impossible" houses anymore. I guess we'll see with v9.

I still think this would be better solved by robbed houses earning a basic wage. $$$

Agreed. NPCs would work for so many other games, but I think this is an exception. Victimization and affecting other human beings is really important here.

largestherb · 2013-06-13 11:34:10

jere wrote:

Agreed. NPCs would work for so many other games, but I think this is an exception. Victimization and affecting other human beings is really important here.

but there isn't really anyone to victimise at all right now!

i think i have leif half-figured out. clarence is just.. not even going to bother, this house is worse than adrian ernest pounds.
i could walk in and grab jeffrey's money because.. well, i know who it is and we talked about it as an explanation of voltage switches, etc.

and then the rest are broken one-time houses. robert daivd bowles was solved with two blowtorches. below him is $7 or less.

earning wages in robbed houses would be nice, more money in the game is not a bad thing. but if they are one-time it doesn't help anyone but the owner, and if they are really easy 'walk to the vault' they don't help new players learn.

how do we entice people to come and play this wonderful game?

bey bey · 2013-06-13 11:51:57

Well, the money on broken houses somehow made people not rob proper houses at all anymore. I don't build a house right now because I just don't feel like wasting two hours on puzzle electronics that don't really have any playing value. To be fair, your house seemed to be the only playable one in the roster right now and it has the kind of puzzles that keep v8 from being a disaster.

jere · 2013-06-13 12:04:56

but there isn't really anyone to victimise at all right now!

We're on the same page there. I don't think a handful of worthwhile targets is sustainable for an MMO with hundreds or thousands of people.

My answer to that. tl;dr: completely reset houses every time (no one-time robbables), pay robbed houses, and prevent multiple robberies from the same robber.

v9 should take care of the one-time robbable house automatically though.

bey bey · 2013-06-13 13:54:01

I hear you, but I think the destroyed house you return to is essential to the game. It might just need a massive influx of cash, maybe even bringing back the salary on broken houses. After all, it gets easy to accumulate wealth, but 50000 in your vault will attract some more serious robbers and set you back to zero. I'd rather favour the idea of more separation at the start (which is very unelegant, but might work), say you get a voucher for 1000$ for tools (or a set of tools), a 5000 voucher for house building, and 1000$ will be deposited in your safe after leaving. (Or something similar.) It needs tweaking but it might lead to more houses.

Matrix · 2013-06-14 01:13:30

bey bey wrote:

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).

Yeah, I know... happened to me many times as well. The system could still be in place for those other cases where the attacker is still alive. I think that the revenge option would be a nice feature, but it's hard to tell if it would work as intended.

jere wrote:

ukuko wrote:
jere wrote:
I don't like a free "move on" button. If you want to move on/leave, you should probably lose your backpack contents. Otherwise, you just keep clicking through until you get to the house you want.
I think a fairer solution would be to give you a random selection of three or so houses to choose from. Otherwise it'd suck if you kept getting assigned the 'impossible' house.
I thought infinite tools would make it so there aren't really any "impossible" houses anymore. I guess we'll see with v9.

When you decide to attack a house you would have to pay a small amount of money. The same goes for the "move" to the next house button. Without that (or some other clever restriction) it wouldn't serve its purpose because it would just be a random list with a tedious navigation interface (next only) that anyone could "scroll" through.

If you want to have a random selection system that allows the player to skip houses that he thinks he can't tackle, then the "move" to the next house action really needs to be the same as "cancel and attack again" functionality. Having "skip this attack" work in a different way than "cancel and attack again" just means that the system can be abused in some way (using one to achieve the same effect as the other, but not paying the same "price" or be subject to the same restrictions).

Even if someday impossible houses won't be an issue anymore, there are still other reasons why an attacker might want to skip a house.

jere wrote:

ukuko wrote:
largestherb wrote:
i do like the idea of random 'npc' houses taken from old house designs that could help to 'fill out' the current house list.
I still think this would be better solved by robbed houses earning a basic wage. $$$
Agreed. NPCs would work for so many other games, but I think this is an exception. Victimization and affecting other human beings is really important here.

Yes, if a system is put in place where houses can't be targeted directly at will, then robbed houses can start earning money again.

A random house selection system needs a large supply of houses to work as intended, so even if we combine active houses with robbed houses it still won't be enough. So the "NPC" houses would really be just "restored" old player's houses. Sometimes you will attack a house that no one plays anymore, but you won't really know that. And active houses will still be attacked all the time.

***

Before Jason said in this thread that

jasonrohrer wrote:

one hope was to have an intransitive-relationship (aka rock-paper-scissors) arms-race. 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.

I didn't know that he hoped to achieve that with TCD. But since he made that post I thought I'd share this system that achieves the same effect in some other games that could be regarded as similar in terms of the attack/defend gameplay.

However, I don't know if the random house selection system is really suited for TCD at this stage. It also depends on the direction that Jason wants to go with his game.

One issue is the amount of houses that the system can choose from. Another issue is that you need to have enough strategies and viable counters for this cycle to keep going or else the meta just settles with an optimal solution that doesn't have a viable counter and the cycle stops (at that point games usually perform balance fixes). Another thing that might happen is that it won't achieve the same effect in this game, due to how this game "works" and how it's played.

There are many reasons why this can fail.

jere · 2013-06-14 05:49:10

Ah yes, the problem with a comparison to the meta in MTG is that cards are constantly being released and the standard being changed. That's the business model.

For some reason, I don't see new tools and tiles popping up every few weeks in TCD.

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-14 16:47:50

Interesting, Matrix, we'll see what happens. As it stands, since you go into a house blind, you are paying to scout it with your scouting backpack. The outer walls may be concrete, but until you blast through those, you won't be able to tell whether it's concrete all the way through or wood in there. So if you come in with 30 explosives, you waste half of them if you run into a wood core. If you carry saws too, you waste those if it's concrete all the way through.

I'm not hoping for a very refined, predictable arms-race intransitive thing. Just a slight flavoring that may pop up from time to time and be at least worth considering as you build a house and rob a house. Also hoping for some dynamism that will result from it.

If Zed is right and there is one cost-optimal house design (using specific materials and patterns), that's obviously a problem. That could be fixed by making all materials the same price, but I don't think I'll need to do that. You know, if you build the "optimal" house, and everyone figures out you need exactly 17 torches and 22 ladders to pass that optimal house, then it's no longer optimal, right? Because as soon as you build it, the first person to show up with 17 torches and 22 ladders beats the house with no wastage. So as soon as the money in your vault reaches the crossing point where it's worth more than 17T + 22L, you're done. I.e., it's no longer the optimal house. The only way to slow people down is to build a house that no one has seen before (requires more scouting). Furthermore, you're encouraged to change your house out from underneath the scouts.

Regarding vision, you can see pretty clearly through one wall. That's just part of the "soft edge" on the shroud that looks too nice to change. A second wall is impossible to see through unless you've got your gamma cranked to max (in that case, you can see half way through it, at very low detail, depending on what's on the other side). I don't have plans to change this, because it's hard to make a shroud that both looks great and serves as a tight boundary on vision.

jasonrohrer · 2013-06-14 16:58:22

Also, if a game is well-balanced, meta can change without new cards being released. That may not be true all the time in Magic (it mostly changes because of new cards), but I have heard stories about it being true some of the time (where someone swept in to upset the current meta in an unexpected way and won the tournament). I've also experienced that first-hand (where I was searching for the perfect cheapo response deck to a friend's "super" deck, and I found the perfect artifact cards to beat him in a commons box---but of course he could have showed up with an artifact-smashing deck, and so on).

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#26 2013-06-13 08:49:26

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#27 2013-06-13 09:28:40

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#28 2013-06-13 09:51:48

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#29 2013-06-13 10:19:02

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#30 2013-06-13 11:34:10

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#31 2013-06-13 11:51:57

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#32 2013-06-13 12:04:56

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#33 2013-06-13 13:54:01

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#34 2013-06-14 01:13:30

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#35 2013-06-14 05:49:10

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#36 2013-06-14 16:47:50

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

#37 2013-06-14 16:58:22

Re: Changing the Concept of the Ideal House

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