Suggestion: Always available houses

Eldrad · 2014-01-25 14:38:00

At the moment houses become unavailable to rob (and removed from the list of houses) fairly regularly. This has led to talk of there being a group of high value houses which are being macro protected (which I haven't seen evidence of this personally so assume it's not happening in significant quantities). It's also annoying when you're scouting a particular house and someone then go back and have to wait for someone else to finish their robbing run. Similarly if someone's robbing your house you have to wait for them to finish before you can get to your tools (or purchase new ones).

These aren't game breaking but they detract from the fun a bit as you have to wait for other people to finish what they're doing before you are allowed to do the things you want to do (as game population grows this issue would likely intensify as large numbers of people interact with the houses at the top of the list).

Therefore I'd suggest allowing multiple people to interact with houses at the same time. This could get messy particularly with high traffic low security houses (most notably $2000 value empty houses), but for the most part houses are either likely to be low traffic or it's unlikely that two people will impact the house in overlapping runs.

I'd propose the bellow resolution to contentions with a complete timing ordering being decided by the server (events could be triggered and checked either when they happen or when the robber exits the house).

1) Robber Aaron kills family member vs Robber Beth kills family member.
a) 'first' to kill wife gets money from wife, second does not get money.
b) 'first' to kill any family member saves damage to the house, second does no permanent damage except if they kill the wife 'first' in which case they do no permanent damage except for replacing the wife with a dead body in what ever location she happens to be in house which saves rest of damage.
c) Any time a robber is successfully the first to kill a given family member all other robbers in the house are given a warning that wife/son/daughter has died. Optionally they could be allowed to keep all their remaining tools if they exit the front door.

2) Robber Alice opens the vault vs Robber Bob opens the vault.
a) 'first' to open the vault gets money and tools, second gets nothing.
b) 'first' to open the vault saves damage to the house, second does no permanent damage.
c) Any time a robber is successfully the 'first' to open the vault all other robbers in the house are given a warning that the vault has been opened. Optionally they could be allowed to keep all their remaining tools if they exit the front door.

3) Robber Alice opens the vault vs Robber Bob kills family member.
a) both get respective payouts.
b) if possible merge damage to the house by setting any squares damaged/modified by Bob then setting any squares damaged by Alice, alternatively just save the vault opener's damage.

4) Owner changes house vs Robber opens vault/kills family member.
a) Resolve money/tools in time order, ie robber gets the rewards that were on the wife/in the vault at the time the server decides they were successful. (Note if robber kills wife then later dies this could mean money being temporarily gone then returning)
b) The robber always sees the house as it was when they started their run. Any damage they do which should be saved is applied to the new version of the house if the square type has not changed for non-mobiles or applied to a mobile of the same type if it exists (this is assuming that the server does not have a way of determining which dog is which).

DethBringa · 2014-01-25 14:53:12

Sounds like a lot of extra work and would probably cause more issues than it would solve. With regard to disappearing houses tho, I write down all the names of people that successfully rob me. The one person that made it through due to a fault of my own is on the list. However the ones that magicly picked the right path vanished and have never reappeared.

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-25 19:26:16

They died since then. I looked into this case (more details in the other thread about it).

Eldrad · 2014-01-25 19:51:36

If this is the most popular the game is ever likely to be then it's probably not that big of an issue but it is mildly annoying at the moment (in terms of either being unable to rob a house again that you've just scouted or being able to get into your own house to buy tools when you're at the top of the list). If the game becomes significantly more popular this issue seems like it could quickly go from mildly annoying to unplayable.

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-25 20:23:23

It's really important to me that everything in the game be "real" in terms of outcomes and consequences. When you're in a house, you're the only one in that house, and what you actually do there has real consequences. Some real person out there in the world is waiting for you to get out so they can watch the tape.

The cool thing about this game is that the number of houses on the list scales with the popularity of the game.

There are currently 176 houses on the list... no shortage to chose from. Yes, there may be some contention for the top houses... but I'm not even seeing that. I'm hitting RELOAD over and over, and that top-8 list isn't changing.

I get that if you are "working" on breaking a house, it can be annoying to have it go off list for a while. For all you know, though, it could be the owner fixing it up in reaction to all of your scouting. This is natural and okay.

SomeGuyNamedDavid · 2014-01-25 20:31:56

I feel like players should at least still be able to buy tools while someone's in their house. It wouldn't decrease the amount of money in the vault or held by the wife until the robber left the house. If the robber ends up stealing more money than should technically be in the house, he would get whatever money he'd get if you hadn't bought tools, and you'd drop to $0 instead of negatives. So the game would technically generate new money to give to the robber, covering the cost of the tools you bought while he was in your house.

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-25 20:40:47

I have thought about this, but decided against having a "tool store" outside the home. People have also suggested a "van" that you can load up (but people would just use that to hid wealth). Anyway, with your suggestion, there'd be the danger of someone "spending it all" if they thought they were for-sure robbed.

In the current game, if you're locked out and need tools, it's a good time for tool-free scouting

SomeGuyNamedDavid · 2014-01-25 20:51:08

Well, "spending it all" would have its upsides and downsides. If it turned out you did get robbed, the robber still gets his full reward, and at least you got yourself some tools before it was too late. If you didn't get robbed after all, it's too late to get your full balance back, you can only recover half of it if you sell your tools now.

In the majority of current houses, precautions are taken to make sure that you can't scout tool-free, by either making it clear that there's no backing out once you're in, or trapping people who step in too far.

Garcian · 2014-01-25 21:14:37

Eh.. there's a huge race towards $2,000 houses.. I'm sure there's bound to be some conflicting issues while solving few.

SomeGuyNamedDavid · 2014-01-25 21:29:57

Yeah, while I like the tool-purchasing idea, I don't feel like multiple people robbing the same house at the same time will work well.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-01-25 14:38:00

Suggestion: Always available houses

#2 2014-01-25 14:53:12

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#3 2014-01-25 19:26:16

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#4 2014-01-25 19:51:36

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#5 2014-01-25 20:23:23

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#6 2014-01-25 20:31:56

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#7 2014-01-25 20:40:47

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#8 2014-01-25 20:51:08

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#9 2014-01-25 21:14:37

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

#10 2014-01-25 21:29:57

Re: Suggestion: Always available houses

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