How do I make money?

awesomebill · 2013-10-22 23:39:18

So I thought my wife earned money? Ive yet to see her earn me a dime. Also I dont seem to make any money outside of robbery and bounties. Im currently broke. I cant rob houses, and no one will risk robbing my house because I have no money at all. I thought that over time I could earn a little cash just by playing.
If my wife does not earn me money then she is pretty much useless, and that makes me sad. The trailer that led me to buy the game, also led me to believe that my wife was useful, and that she would be missed if killed. currently I cant see what shes good for, other then pushing panic buttons and holding a shotgun. thats just not good enough.

joshwithguitar · 2013-10-23 03:04:28

Hi awesomebill, welcome to the forums!

Jason has recently been experimenting with how you make money in the game and removed salary income (including the wife's) from the game with v20 replacing it with bounties. This was to discourage passive play where players build almost impenetrable and uninteresting fortresses and then rely on their salary to make money. The bounty system is designed to encourage interesting house designs which tempt players to explore them.

As you can see this can create problems when you end up with $0 as you are unable to buy tools to rob and your house does not attract visitors. So $0 in the bank is situation you should try hard to avoid. It is because of this that the wife is most useful. Whenever you alter your house half of your money goes into the vault and half of it to the wife so that if your vault is robbed she will still hold half your money money for you when you get back. You can then use this for repairs, buying tools and temping robbers. So while the wife is not as valuable as she used to be she still has an important role.

If you want to make money when you have nothing in the bank there are only two options, either take risks robbing without tools or be patient - eventually someone will leave some money easily accessible and you can use this to start the ball rolling. If you have some cash the best way to make money is to build a house that tricks players into dying but also makes it hard to get to the vault. Robbing can also be extremely lucrative as long as you are careful.

Good luck! I hope this helps.

dalleck · 2013-10-23 04:31:00

Yeah this issue of 'getting the ball rolling' has been in my mind since I have tried this new version. It is great, but I think the economy lacks that much needed 'push' to get you off to a decent start. It used to be salary, or before that, empty starter houses, and before that, the vast ghost-town of living-dead houses, which was kind of cool actually.

Anyways, I had a left-of-field concept for a way for the game to give out small sums of money: The Hit List. This would kind of be the mirror side of the bounty system, The player could enter the hit list just like the house list, but it will display a family member and the sum to be earned. Houses will only be listed if that owner has ever robbed or murdered, with an appropriate sum of money awarded accordingly, perhaps increasing per failed attempt by players.

Once a hit has been complete, that house is removed from the list until that owner again robs or murders, and another family member will now be the target.

Last edited by dalleck (2013-10-23 04:31:49)

jasonrohrer · 2013-10-23 12:38:47

Yes, this was an issue that worried me greatly as I initially thought about bounties (or, more specifically, with bounties replacing salaries). Wouldn't the economy completely dry up? Wouldn't the whole game freeze? But it turns out that it doesn't, and that player motivation really is key to getting a handle on how all this works.

Over the years, I've seen players (in all of my games) behave in seemingly ridiculous ways repeatedly (no, endlessly) if the game somehow rewarded that behavior, even if the reward came in an unexpected or subtle way.

So, you might say... "turtling in a house and just waiting for money to trickle in hour by hour through salary, and checking/spending salary every 10 minutes would be boring and tedious---no one would ever do that!" Well.... you'd be wrong.

Any viable strategy---especially a low-effort one---is like the game whispering, "hey, you should play this way."

And then players who are playing your game in such a way will call the game itself boring and tedious. And you'll say, "But... no it's not! You're just playing it wrong! If you play it this other way, it is really rich and interesting."

But they're not actually playing it wrong.

ANYWAY...

Now there's a learning curve problem, because the game doesn't explain bounties explicitly, and players who played previous versions are expecting salaries.

Though salaries were never explained explicitly (until they were earned), very similar to bounties (you will become aware of bounties the first time you earn one, by looking at your tapes).

So...

I'm not sure how much I should worry about this problem. The game already, obviously, has a lot of things for the beginner to grapple with. The bounty stuff is almost on a metagame level (and has no direct effect on beginner house building and robbing). You've got $2000 to spend.... it says it right there. The salary was always kind of a surprise for beginners anyway.

Also, my guess is that naive house design is pretty good at attracting a bounty or two.

As far as the wife being less valuable, well, I have worried about that too. She always had the value of keeping half of your money safe in a different way, and that's been amped up a bit.

I still feel like killing myself if she's dead (because I realize that my house will be less long-term viable now, even if I fix it up, and if she's dead when I come home, it means I likely have $0 left).

So, she's gone back to being a symbol for salting another player's earth. Though now she's a more equal partner in home defense as well, and she brings a stronger "modern Castle Doctrine" flavor to the game (where home defense is all about shooting intruders in modern discourse, but that was totally absent in the game before).

awesomebill · 2013-10-23 14:40:12

Well there are so few people playing the game right now, I think something needs to change here. Not sure if more people were playing when salaries were around but this dead ends way to easy.

You said that you thought it was boring for people to wait around to make a lil money for robbery supplies, but I think its really boring to sit around and wait for someone to rob my house or give me a bounty( still not sure what that is, but as you said i dont think it helps the problem). If there were more people playing it would be a different story, but Ive yet to see more then 6 people on in the 2 days that Ive started playing. The six people playing are not going to risk their lives for the 300 or so ive got in my bank.

So I dont have enough money to try to rob folks, and the money that i do have is there to bait people into my home, and its just not enough. I know this is not an easy problem to work out, but im pretty sure the player base is suffering from it.

The only money Ive been able to make was over 5 lives ago, when i murdered a clearly new players wife and got 500 from her. If the only way that new players can make money is by preying on new players (and ive seen that suggested a few times now) thats not a viable game plan, that can only cause your player base to shrink.
Please make this game fun! I want to love it, but there is just nothing left for me to do, other then make a really gimpy house on a 1000 budget and then hope thats enough to lure in a newbie.

also at 400 for wire cutters, Im pretty strapped to figure out how to make a decent house and still have any money left for supplies.

Last edited by awesomebill (2013-10-23 14:43:54)

largestherb · 2013-10-23 15:07:51

including my house i count eight houses right now. that is the most houses i've seen in the neighbourhood for a very long time

awesomebill · 2013-10-23 15:18:18

ok so i missed one, and forgot to count myself. Point being I 50 people were playing it would be less of an issue, but with this kind of player base some kind of salary system is needed.

Currently it is a dead economy. There are not enough people living and dying and getting robbed for there to be any money up in the air. People put most of their money into their homes, then die trying to rob other peoples home leaving no money for anyone.(actually im unclear on this, I think i made 500 on one person who died in my home, not sure if that was a bounty or some portion of his money.)

There is just not enough money going around. You have no middle class, people are either poor or rich, with no way to move up in the world. At this point the game is completely hands off for me, Ive nothing to do but sit and wait and see if someone fails to rob my home. been doing that for hours now

Last edited by awesomebill (2013-10-23 15:20:35)

largestherb · 2013-10-23 15:32:11

oh no, don't get me wrong. money is slow and hard and tools are.. almost not worth the spend if you don't know what is behind that door that costs $2400 to crack open. could be another power door.

in the last incarnation of the game, with the player and wife earning 'hourly' money, there was still no/very little money going around. because the people who had a 'secure' house could safely count their coins, and the moment any home of a poorer person started to look a bit too rich, the rich person would come along and completely obliterate it - without thinking about the cost, because money didn't matter.

it was like this

TOP HOUSE > crushes any house below it at all costs, spending to $0 if necessary, because their wages will just roll in safely.
OTHER HOUSE > starting cash is too wank to even think about cracking the top house, starting cash was too wank to build a house that could survive the wrath of the top house.

as jason said, the wages just lead to mass turtling, and once a king turtle or two are established, it is almost impossible for anyone else to get near them. however this is also possibly just a problem with low player numbers as well..

the low population is definitely making the game hard. hard to play without getting frustrated/bored at the lack of content/cash, hard to develop/design as.. well, it is hard to tell what would happen if there were, as you say, even 50 fairly active players would be shockingly different, i think.

awesomebill · 2013-10-23 16:50:10

I think a possible solution would be some kind of auto-tax system. Just as players get an hourly wage they should also get taxed an hourly wage. The hourly tax should only be taken out of their hourly salary, and not their actual bank. This tax should get more severe as a player gets richer, until they make basically nothing per hour.

This way people wont get super rich off salary, only robbery. And the salary will mostly aid starting and middleclass players, rather then just padding the pockets of the rich. As I said before, the game in its current state is way to hard to get into, so much so its practically broken. Some kind of padding to make it easier for people to get started would most likely help get the ball rolling.

joshwithguitar · 2013-10-24 01:36:56

With the current number of players the only way to play is to log in a few times a day and put in time when there are a few interesting houses to rob and leave it when there is nothing. I understand it is hard as a new player but it is certainly not impossible. Since version 20 I have regularly been dying in self checks after putting effort into making awesome houses, having to start again and a few days later building a new awesome house and dying in a self test. I couldn't do this if there was no money available. This morning I stole $10,000 from a house and spent only $100 on tools.

With current building prices you can do a lot with starter cash, especially if you use it to do a little robbing before you start to build (and if the robbing fails, just start again). And as there is no real risk going into houses when you just start out you don't need to leave much money in the vault to get someone to try to rob it. Hell, when I restart I generally try robbing every house whether it has money or not. If I die am just boosting the economy and leaving more money around to grab once the chills wear off.

dalleck · 2013-10-24 03:37:49

joshwithguitar wrote:

If I die am just boosting the economy and leaving more money around to grab once the chills wear off.

Actually that is an interesting point. You can essentially earn $500 an hour by suiciding in an easy house a number of times. But only if the server is empty.

Last edited by dalleck (2013-10-24 03:38:32)

jasonrohrer · 2013-10-24 12:39:53

Bounties work like this:

Every robber starts a new life with a $500 bounty on their head. When they reach a vault, it goes up by $500. When they kill someone, it goes up by $1000.

When the robber dies in your house, you get whatever bounty has built up on them (see the tapes with the skull icon, and mouse over the tape for an explanation).

I'm pretty sure the only problem right now is a lack of active players.

While I was away on vacation, things got pretty bad, with the number of unique players per day dipping down to a low of 5.

Since I've been back and releasing new versions (and emailing the player base about the new versions), the game peaked at 23 active players about 6 days ago.

Now it has settled down to around 13 active players per day. But it seems to generally work even with these few players.

By "work," I mean that if you build a tricky house with your starting money, you can come back in a few hours and see who died there, and maybe spend that bounty money to improve your house or rob others.

Hard house still get more and more attractive to rob over time, because bounties build up there.

What's happening right now is that I'm putting all my ducks in a row to release this sucker on Steam. And when that happens, we'll have no trouble with the player base. It will be crazy.

But even in the mean time, as I lead up to the final Steam release, I've got some other stuff in the works that will bring many of our existing 4,600 players back into the game.

joshwithguitar · 2013-10-24 17:37:25

I'm not so sure the only problem at the moment is the lack of players. Mr Temples house is a classic turtle house, but this is not stopping it from making money. Sure, no one but a starter with nothing to lose would take more than 5 steps in his house without a large amount of tools, but starters have no problem seeing what is behind the pits. I have even been lucky enough previously to guess Mr Temples code (a while ago now), so it can even be advantageous suiciding in his house on the off chance that you guess the code and get to his vault. There is certainly no disadvantage and so Mr Temple will keep pulling in $500 here and there from both new and old explorers with fresh lives. This result would be magnified with a larger player base.

So the whole idea of removing "turtling" as a viable strategy hasn't exactly worked.

Perhaps the bounty on first time robbers needs to be decreased to create more of an incentive to trick the players that are actually attempting to get out alive rather than just be able to rely off the money from suicide runs.

largestherb · 2013-10-24 17:43:47

can we get a countdown to steam release so i can fill every tile of my house with concrete?

jasonrohrer · 2013-10-25 08:32:41

Well, turtling for a rich player can be okay and inevitable. In fact, some players might be motivated to turtle at various different times (before going to bed, for example).

However, what has changed now is that turtling is no longer a viable strategy in every situation. In particular, it is no longer a viable start-up strategy.

There was a time when every house in the game looked something like Mr. Temple's, even if it was just a starting player's scary facade. If they could scare people away for an hour or two, they could bootstrap themselves past that point.

And a house that scares people away for an hour to two is essentially "non-content" for the game.

Now I feel like we're closer to a point where the only viable bootstrap involves building some kind of viable content for the game. SOMETHING to walk through a bit. SOMETHING to think about and poke at for a bit.

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The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2013-10-22 23:39:18

How do I make money?

#2 2013-10-23 03:04:28

Re: How do I make money?

#3 2013-10-23 04:31:00

Re: How do I make money?

#4 2013-10-23 12:38:47

Re: How do I make money?

#5 2013-10-23 14:40:12

Re: How do I make money?

#6 2013-10-23 15:07:51

Re: How do I make money?

#7 2013-10-23 15:18:18

Re: How do I make money?

#8 2013-10-23 15:32:11

Re: How do I make money?

#9 2013-10-23 16:50:10

Re: How do I make money?

#10 2013-10-24 01:36:56

Re: How do I make money?

#11 2013-10-24 03:37:49

Re: How do I make money?

#12 2013-10-24 12:39:53

Re: How do I make money?

#13 2013-10-24 17:37:25

Re: How do I make money?

#14 2013-10-24 17:43:47

Re: How do I make money?

#15 2013-10-25 08:32:41

Re: How do I make money?

#16 2015-05-03 14:59:07

Re: How do I make money?

#17 2015-05-03 19:39:26

Re: How do I make money?

#18 2015-06-02 10:21:52

Re: How do I make money?

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