The Castle Doctrine Forums

Raisane

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 36

Prize money for not using tools

right now you see people conquer your room with the use of tools really easily sometimes, and i'm not saying this because i think tools should go away.
my point being is that people can get these tools really cheap, and are thus encouraged to use them on every room they encounter.

but what if a room gets a bounty (not the person) depending on the amount of people who died in it (maybe something with ip's so that if one person dies 20 times in one room, it counts as 1 dead) and people can collect that bounty by conquering that room without the use of tools. (bounty goes to 0 the moment the owner loses his money)

what i hope to achieve with this:
- people will use tools to get into hard rooms that are almost impossible to beat
- people who see a room they think they can beat without tools, and will try it until they're cornered (and than use the tools)

this will result in:
people can now actually see more people trying to beat their room without tools, so they can see which trap forced people to use them, and thus use that single trap in their next design

(this one i hope) people will make rooms more challenging instead of simply impossible, enjoying watching the tapes instead of being annoyed by someone beating your hard-made trap by a few tools (which isn't wrong, but can still be annoying)

colorfusion

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 537

Re: Prize money for not using tools

This kind of already exists.
You have to buy tools, so if you're using up money on conquering a house then you're not really getting the full amount of money that you could from it.

Raisane

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 36

Re: Prize money for not using tools

i don't think 75$ is prize money, not to forget that in my idea, it changes depending on the room

Matrix

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 137

Re: Prize money for not using tools

right now you see people conquer your room with the use of tools really easily sometimes, and i'm not saying this because i think tools should go away.
my point being is that people can get these tools really cheap, and are thus encouraged to use them on every room they encounter.

The number of tools is limited to 8 so try to make traps that require more than a single tool to be completely disabled then you can force people to use up all their tools before they reach the "end rooms".

but what if a room gets a bounty (not the person) depending on the amount of people who died in it (maybe something with ip's so that if one person dies 20 times in one room, it counts as 1 dead) and people can collect that bounty by conquering that room without the use of tools. (bounty goes to 0 the moment the owner loses his money)

what i hope to achieve with this:
- people will use tools to get into hard rooms that are almost impossible to beat
- people who see a room they think they can beat without tools, and will try it until they're cornered (and than use the tools)

this will result in:
people can now actually see more people trying to beat their room without tools, so they can see which trap forced people to use them, and thus use that single trap in their next design

(this one i hope) people will make rooms more challenging instead of simply impossible, enjoying watching the tapes instead of being annoyed by someone beating your hard-made trap by a few tools (which isn't wrong, but can still be annoying)

I like the way you are thinking but there are quite some implementation problems with what you are suggesting.

Define "room". How does the game engine recognize a "room"? What about houses that don't use walled rooms but instead use areas that contain puzzles or traps? How do you recognize those?

But anyway, I agree that some tools might need some price rebalancing.

Raisane

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 36

Re: Prize money for not using tools

^ with room i meant house, i call it a room because it's one big room as a house, and not divided into multiple rooms (like a kitchen) etc

Matrix

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 137

Re: Prize money for not using tools

^ with room i meant house, i call it a room because it's one big room as a house, and not divided into multiple rooms (like a kitchen) etc

Whoa! That's what I thought at start but then what you said next changed my mind

i don't think 75$ is prize money, not to forget that in my idea, it changes depending on the room

If so, then I agree with colorfusion. You can sometimes save up to 1k (if you used at least one pistol) if you don't use tools to get through someone's house.
Many houses have less than 5k in the vault so that's 20% or more saved!

This also changes "per room" (per house) because different houses might require different tools to break through.

Not to mention that many good houses require you to make a few scouting attempts first where you use all 8 tools and then commit to a final run where you probably use a few more tools so in practice you can save a lot if you manage to get through a house without using tools.

And last but not least, sometimes there is no safe way to check a trap without using tools. For those who actually want to survive the game as long as possible while robbing others, tools become important and they use them a lot. They use them to figure out how traps are set up or in order to escape houses that have escape protection. Once they figure out most of the traps then they usually defeat them without tools in order to advance further into the house where they can use all the saved tools for traps that are further in.

And believe me, playing in this way consumes quite some money on tools. So your idea is already implemented you just don't see it in action too much because you don't see tapes for attempts that don't result in deaths.

Last edited by Matrix (2013-04-09 10:57:22)

pavram

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 8

Re: Prize money for not using tools

To survive a long time (I was one of the top 5 houses for the last week; until I died today to a bug - I just robbed house number 3 for 68k cash!! bringing me up to 110k cash and 2 houses later bug death - reported it to jason too) you just don't go into houses that have escape protection. period.

If you want to live; you don't go in.

As an aside;
I used to have escape protection on my house; but decided it was unsportsman like.  And instead went all-in on decoys.  I never got to compare my kill death ratio with my decoys to the unavoidable escape protection as I died before the weekend.  (I got hundreds of attempts at my house over the weekend; and only ~50 over the last week despite being in the top 5).

Matrix

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 137

Re: Prize money for not using tools

To survive a long time (I was one of the top 5 houses for the last week; until I died today to a bug - I just robbed house number 3 for 68k cash!! bringing me up to 110k cash and 2 houses later bug death - reported it to jason too) you just don't go into houses that have escape protection. period.

This is good advice for those who don't want to explore such houses.

However I have never died to an escape protection. All my recent deaths while playing the game where due to a server bug. I also never had any escape protection in my house. And even if I would make one it wouldn't be the cheap type that most others do. It would be something that is not obvious.

My advice would be that once you have enough money to make the house design that you want, don't rob others at all because eventually you will die to a server bug even if you are playing safely. When this specific bug gets fixed then you can start robbing again and even enter houses with escape protection as long as you play it safely.