The Castle Doctrine Forums

betrunkenaffe

Member

Registered: 2013-09-08

Posts: 2

New Player Feedback

Allo,

I thought I'd give my starting thoughts on this so that hopefully it will be of some help. I like the concept of the game but you can tell that there is definitely more work to be done (as expected of alphas everywhere).

As a new player, I would say my starting frustrations with the game are twofold and I'll go into more details after the summary. Loss of tools upon entering houses forces me to scout (which is punished by chills).

a) I can't practice breaking into houses due to the chills locking down even houses that I entered and immediately left.
b) It is fundamentally impossible to make any reasonable defense with starting cash.

A) Breaking into houses

When you first start playing, you enter houses without tools, see a pitbull and leave OR you wander around until you find something you can't just go through (electric floor, pit, etc) and then leave. This is effectively scouting and thanks to the chills, is utterly killed for a new player. You'll likely end up scouting a few places before you settle on trying one, if that one kills you, you are effectively locked out of all those places for the next hour. If you go into a house blind, you've just wasted all of those tools because you can't leave with them even if you crack the safe (how is it a good thing to arbitrarily punish players for successfully getting to the goal?). So you could enter with a drugged meat and there be 3 pitbulls or none. I recognize that brute forcing houses is a bad thing, but removing scouting as an option seems overkill. Change chills to only count the house if you've interacted with a non-door item inside the house and let people keep their tools! Everyone I've mentioned the loss of tools both on leaving and on success have basically agreed that it doesn't actually make any sense, which to me at least breaks immersion.

B) Defending your house

Your wife is more important than the safe, she makes the money and holds just as much cash as the safe (until that first person kills both pitbulls). You can't defend the wife, for 200 bucks to kill a pitbull, you are half the cash richer, likely all the cash since why bother worrying about the rest of the meager/nearly non-existent defenses. Now assuming you have the time to babysit your account every 20 minutes, you might be able to get the money to defend the house over the next few hours. That is a lot of sitting around and a lot of time out of a new players life not actually doing anything. If you don't babysit, your wife is dead, you are bankrupt and suicide the next time you log in (effectively restarting having learnt nothing except how your time could be spent playing another game which doesn't punish you for having a real life or wanting to sleep). The amount of money earned per hour either needs to be heavily reduced so you aren't an instant target every 20 minutes OR the method of the cash being paid out needs adjusting (likely a combination). I saw a suggestion on the forum to have a certain amount "not available" to be stolen, I would like to suggest the idea that the money you make goes to vault, the money your wife makes doesn't UNTIL you log in. Once you log in, it's open for stealing. This way your house would increase in value but not at instant theft proportions. Assuming a house isn't robbed in 2 hours, you could just buy 5 saws, 1 club and still see profit.. that is.. for the babysitters.. You also should put a timer on it so I can actually know when to expect the next cash deposit since those that play for a while have the timing down and rob the new houses as soon as it's worthwhile (and usually before I get any feedback of money in the bank).

Last edited by betrunkenaffe (2013-09-08 11:16:52)

jere

Member

Registered: 2013-05-31

Posts: 540

Re: New Player Feedback

a) I can't practice breaking into houses due to the chills locking down even houses that I entered and immediately left.

Actually this is a really good point. I don't see any reason why you should be locked out if all you did is step in and out (i.e. <= 3 steps). In fact, it might be worthwhile to only limit the chills to houses in which you brought tools. I'm pretty sure that's a major reason why the new and old chills were added: preventing homeowners from repeatedly trying to brute force houses with starting tools. So why not let players scout tool free without consequence?

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Golden Krone Hotel - a vampire roguelike

largestherb

Member

From: england

Registered: 2013-05-27

Posts: 381

Re: New Player Feedback

if you have no house and are just robbing, right now it seems to be

pick first house on list, have a peek. buy tools and have a deeper peek. got the vault? yay we learned something hopefully! did you steal $2000 or more? go to next house. did you steal less than $2000? suicide and go to next house.
next house, same deal.

it seems obvious when you look back at it, but yes indeed i used to visit a few houses before deciding one to rob, then being annoyed by chills. oops.

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: New Player Feedback

The chills are there whenever you scout for a good reason:

If they're not there, then you can scout freely when you have $0, then figure out a weakness in a house, go home and kill yourself, get $2000, and come back with $2000 in tools to break the house that you just scouted in your previous life.  Not make it to the vault?  Get out safely, go home, kill yourself, then get $2000 more, and come back to that same house again.  Each time, you can cut through in a different direction.  Suicide was not supposed to feel like an easy way to get more money over and over like that.

Sadly, this change is extremely brutal to new players, who end up getting locked out of robbing just by naively poking around.

Perhaps it could be fixed by only adding a chill if a tool was used in the house somewhere, like you suggest, Jere.  And that would make sense---your ghost is haunting the houses that you actually "touched" in your previous life. The real danger is cutting through over and over with $2000 in home-suicide money, and this "touched" rule would prevent this.

As for dropping tools in a house.... with an unlimited backpack, there's nothing else stopping you from "just carrying everything, just in case."  You have to think carefully before going into a house.  You don't want to waste tools!