50 dollar bounty?

jere · 2014-02-04 06:02:25

Seems too low to me. I had 16 starting bounties overnight. Normally, that'd be $3200, a reasonable wage for a mid tier house. Now it's just $800 for over a dozen people coming. Not enough to buy a gun!

Cent · 2014-02-04 09:09:27

Yeah... Im still making money just fine with tool resales from people dying to early commits, but I fear for the lowbies who don't get as many kills with less complex houses.

cbenny · 2014-02-04 09:57:01

I love the change to bounty levels. For the first time my house lasted through the night, and it's because I didn't accidentally gain hundreds of thousands of dollars while afk.

TheRealCheese · 2014-02-04 10:15:59

cbenny wrote:

I love the change to bounty levels. For the first time my house lasted through the night, and it's because I didn't accidentally gain hundreds of thousands of dollars while afk.

But Jason has stated several times that you're supposed to be able to lose everything while not at the computer, part of the concept is to make you worry.

TheRealCheese · 2014-02-04 10:17:42

And to me it has basically only changed that I don't make enough money now to make my house safe enough to last through the night. As an example, someone came in and died with a low bounty but a bunch of tools and the increased value because of it brought on another dude with twice the tools who bruteforced it and killed my wife in the process.

protox13 · 2014-02-04 10:25:16

I‘m still getting about the same amount of money via tool drops- had to burn $10k in just one hour this morning in fact. I think a bounty of $100 or $200 would be fine, but maybe the house owner should receive only some of the tools a dead robber was carrying (say half or a quarter value with random tools, since dying a messy death would probably not leave everything you’re carrying intact), and/or reduce their resale value. Helps eliminate the problem of rich home owners having more tools than they know what to do with, too.

protox13 · 2014-02-04 10:26:29

TheRealCheese wrote:

cbenny wrote:
I love the change to bounty levels. For the first time my house lasted through the night, and it's because I didn't accidentally gain hundreds of thousands of dollars while afk.
But Jason has stated several times that you're supposed to be able to lose everything while not at the computer, part of the concept is to make you worry.

Yes, but it shouldn't be inevitable.

RevealingGekco · 2014-02-04 10:27:41

The $50 bounty is great for keeping your house value from ballooning out of control during inactivity.

It's not so great when you're building from scratch... I was starting over yesterday and getting enough funds to construct a build that would last overnight was really a matter of luck. The $50 dollar bumps are constant, but not enough for any significant improvements. I got lucky when a few robbers with a decent tool loadouts died. I say lucky because my house was pretty low value, and their margin for a perfect run would have been narrow... or maybe even non-existent.

It would be nice if there was some way to allow you to get a steadier income during those initial stages, where you are probably logged in, without letting your income balloon due to suicides when logged off.

Maybe if you got a small cash bonus for your first 10 house kills, which drops off once the kill count goes higher.

cbenny · 2014-02-04 11:19:04

protox13 wrote:

TheRealCheese wrote:
cbenny wrote:
I love the change to bounty levels. For the first time my house lasted through the night, and it's because I didn't accidentally gain hundreds of thousands of dollars while afk.
But Jason has stated several times that you're supposed to be able to lose everything while not at the computer, part of the concept is to make you worry.
Yes, but it shouldn't be inevitable.

When the bounty was still $200, I didn't worry about my home when I went offline for the night because I knew that it was going to get ruined. It was guaranteed.

Now that its only $50 there's a chance that maybe this time it won't.

---

I find it funny to picture my characters daily routine when I log in. Wake up, take a look around the house, call the police to have them pick up the dozen or so dead bodies lying around the house for the bounty, do some home improvement, then head out to rob some houses while leaving his wife and kids in a room with a bunch of pit bulls to watch his house as it's broken into several more times that day.

jere · 2014-02-04 11:21:32

I love the change to bounty levels. For the first time my house lasted through the night, and it's because I didn't accidentally gain hundreds of thousands of dollars while afk.

Wot? You were getting thousands of bounties per night?!?!!?

cbenny · 2014-02-04 11:34:59

jere wrote:

I love the change to bounty levels. For the first time my house lasted through the night, and it's because I didn't accidentally gain hundreds of thousands of dollars while afk.
Wot? You were getting thousands of bounties per night?!?!!?

That's a bit of hyperbole.

All I meant was that when I went to bed my wealth would balloon much further than I wanted, making the amount of money in my vault much higher that the amount it would cost to break in and get it. Now that my wealth goes up much slower I have the chance to go to bed without ballooning up too high.

jere · 2014-02-04 11:46:46

Ah, I get what you're saying.

Minor spoilers: there's a moment in Papers Please where you're gifted an astronomical amount of money. You're given the option to keep or burn the money. Surprise, surprise: the money quickly becomes problematic.

I wish we had the same choice here. Some of us don't want house value to balloon, some of us do. Most people know roughly how much money they can safely defend.

It would be great if you could set a cap on your house value and automatically donate any extra bounties/tools that come in. Your house is worth $1500 but you know it probably won't make it with more than $2500? Set your cap to $2500 and then you can stop playing the game for a night or even a week with a chance of it surviving.

TheRealCheese · 2014-02-04 11:54:02

I get what everyone is saying but my main gripe is still that a 50$ start bounty makes early expansion tedious and slow. Perhaps as has been suggested some variation on the 'once you've earned 15 bounties people with no successful breakins dying in your house only awards 50$' thing.

super_maçon · 2014-02-04 12:02:20

jere wrote:

Ah, I get what you're saying.
Minor spoilers: there's a moment in Papers Please where you're gifted an astronomical amount of money. You're given the option to keep or burn the money. Surprise, surprise: the money quickly becomes problematic.
I wish we had the same choice here. Some of us don't want house value to balloon, some of us do. Most people know roughly how much money they can safely defend.
It would be great if you could set a cap on your house value and automatically donate any extra bounties/tools that come in. Your house is worth $1500 but you know it probably won't make it with more than $2500? Set your cap to $2500 and then you can stop playing the game for a night or even a week with a chance of it surviving.

Jason did that change to avoid house bumping yes, my last 4/5 game before this change repeat this scenario. I did have a house who went to 500$ ( my starting vault with the 2000 $ starting budget ) to 13 000 $ in 4/5h00 afk.

I supposed there some better fix thou, i guess this one didn't require a patch.

ventuswings · 2014-02-04 12:42:51

I know I'm parroting myself here, but lowering the sell value of tools would much help alleviate both problems.

Bring bounty back to $200 which is enough money for beginning houses to kick off, while reduced tool prices would much more effectively and significantly prevent the house value from skyrocketing. When people die, it's $1000 from tool value (NOT the measly $200) that becomes problematic - and these tool values are not available to lower-end houses, who need boost the most. Hell, slash tool sell price to 1/4 and number of money from the starter kit robber would plummet from current $1050 (1000+50) to

EDIT: $700 (500+200).

Bah, Maths.

Last edited by ventuswings (2014-02-04 13:09:44)

protox13 · 2014-02-04 12:45:17

ventuswings wrote:

I know I'm parroting myself here, but lowering the sell value of tools would much help alleviate both problems.
Bring bounty back to $200 which is enough money for beginning houses to kick off, while reduced tool prices would much more effectively and significantly prevent the house value from skyrocketing. When people die, it's $1000 from tool value (NOT the measly $200) that becomes problematic - and these tool values are not available to lower-end houses, who need boost the most. Hell, slash tool sell price to 1/4 and number of money from the starter kit robber would plummet from current $1050 (1000+50) to $450 (250+200).

Absolutely agree. The lower bounty is not making an appreciable dent in the money I'm accumulating.

super_maçon · 2014-02-04 13:08:30

I agree too, don't bash me i'm the one who open that thread on steam.
I read here that bounty amount was on server side so i guess it was a quick temp fix...
That game must be such a nightmare to balance.

I'm glad that Jason did agree that house value going too high too fast was an issue thou.

I love building houses and watch people reacting to it, i would be sad if i couldn't try some bigger budget when i'm doing it right.

Cent · 2014-02-04 13:39:33

I realise though, that this new bounty system means that most of your income will be from collected tools. Which means its entire value goes to the safe. If a robber buys 2k of tools, and dies at your door step, your wife gets 25, and your safe gets 25+1000 in tools. The chance your safe will be busted while you're offline and that you'll lose the majority of your income is actually worse than before because the wife plays a much smaller role.

jw2pfd · 2014-02-04 14:01:43

The reason tools make up such a large part of the game's economy and your personal currency is so that it is always more cost efficient to successfully rob with the tools than it is to sell them if you rob a house of appropriate value. If you gained too much cash too fast from bounties, then you have way better cost efficiency for purchasing tools. Tools have to either be sold at a loss or use them successfully in robberies. I think that this is an important aspect of the game. It doesn't need to turn into holding on to your tools and having bounty cash too easy to acquire that you just wait for it to roll in and use it to buy the tools you need.

The cash from bounties should only be a little extra on top for clever house design that brings in robbers to die at the result of your cleverness. I am fine with the bounty being $50 now with the possibility of it changing down the road if there ends up being less fresh suicide robbers.

EDIT: It seems that bounties have been raised back to $100 - http://steamcommunity.com/app/249570/di … 6805565496

EDIT2: But now I've had another bounty of $50 come in after receiving a bounty of $100?

Last edited by jw2pfd (2014-02-04 15:10:54)

JoeBlow · 2014-02-04 18:34:12

protox13 wrote:

ventuswings wrote:
I know I'm parroting myself here, but lowering the sell value of tools would much help alleviate both problems.
Bring bounty back to $200 which is enough money for beginning houses to kick off, while reduced tool prices would much more effectively and significantly prevent the house value from skyrocketing. When people die, it's $1000 from tool value (NOT the measly $200) that becomes problematic - and these tool values are not available to lower-end houses, who need boost the most. Hell, slash tool sell price to 1/4 and number of money from the starter kit robber would plummet from current $1050 (1000+50) to $450 (250+200).
Absolutely agree. The lower bounty is not making an appreciable dent in the money I'm accumulating.

THIS. I have seen every single day that I build my base house, it generates enough to expand a little, I leave the house in the morning or go to bed at night with less than $500. Most of the time less than $300. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I come home or wake up and my house has been pillaged and I have $0.00 left. Reviewing the tapes is like "Groundhog's Day". People come in with no tools and die. Price goes up a little bit. Repeat a few times. Now two or three people come in with tools and die. Then the price goes WAY up and the VERY next person comes in with a large number of tools (but still low enough to make a profit) and they lay waste to the place and get the vault.

Each time, I have rebuilt over and over and over again. Recently I hit it really big with an (extremely) lucky score (carrying 5 water, clubs and steaks) and took over 5 hours and more than $15,000 building a house. Left this morning with $250 and no tools. Come home and exact same thing. Except now the LAST thing I want to do is go try to rob even an easy place because all that time and game money spent just poofs if it isn't so easy.

I KNOW that is the core concept, and I love Roguelikes because of Permadeath. BUT...it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that you have to start completely over every time you log out for 6 hours.

It would be WAY better to keep the bounty where ever it is now and drop the tool reward to 1/4 or even less. IMO it would be well worth the effort of a version release. As it stands now, I don't even feel like playing because of the inevitable feeling of having wasted my entire evening the night before.

jw2pfd · 2014-02-04 19:01:50

JoeBlow wrote:

I KNOW that is the core concept, and I love Roguelikes because of Permadeath. BUT...it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that you have to start completely over every time you log out for 6 hours.

The only forgone conclusion is that if your house increases in value, then it is more efficient for robbers to target. This exists because your house should become more of a target while you are away. I believe that it's been stated by the developer that hopefully you do feel worried between long periods away from your house. You should also feel whatever it is you feel when you see that your house has been destroyed. These emotions don't occur once you change it so that the expectation is that the house can survive easily.

An interesting side effect is that a lot of us players are trying to combat that feeling as we speak. Some players, like myself, will spend a lot of time trying to get a home that's relatively secure and hope that it lasts while we are away. This is all in spite of the fact that if we keep playing the game, then at some point we will die or get robbed. I think that this game is an amazing experience and one that I am still enjoying very much even though I died completely as a result of my fault recently after I had put a lot of money into a house and it had lasted for three days.

I am not saying that there aren't potential ways to tweak the numbers and balance to make a better overall experience; however, I do believe the game functions pretty well as it is. Is the argument that you would rather have your house get destroyed after it's lasted two days? five days? Or is it safe to say that it will never feel satisfying to have your house destroyed regardless of how long it's been? I'd much rather have the feeling that my house is in much more imminent danger.

Also, reducing the resale value of tools would slow down house value growth, but it also reduces purchasing power which limits the ability to improve your house and purchase tools for attempting robberies. It would slow down all areas of the game.

super_maçon · 2014-02-04 19:25:09

jw2pfd wrote:

I am not saying that there aren't potential ways to tweak the numbers and balance to make a better overall experience; however, I do believe the game functions pretty well as it is. Is the argument that you would rather have your house get destroyed after it's lasted two days? five days? Or is it safe to say that it will never feel satisfying to have your house destroyed regardless of how long it's been?

It's not about days really.
My freshly made house from tonight just went from 400 $ ( my starting vault with the 2000 $ starting budget ) to 3000/4000 $ in two hours.
I just got two bounties ( that's now 2*100 $ ) but the first one had 20 dog meat the other one i'd say was a 2000 $ back pack.

I would love to feels insecure tomorrow logging back in to check how much i made/lost. But let's face it when i'll go to bed it's over.

Last edited by super_maçon (2014-02-04 19:28:31)

JoeBlow · 2014-02-04 19:31:15

jw2pfd wrote:

JoeBlow wrote:
I KNOW that is the core concept, and I love Roguelikes because of Permadeath. BUT...it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that you have to start completely over every time you log out for 6 hours.
The only forgone conclusion is that if your house increases in value, then it is more efficient for robbers to target. This exists because your house should become more of a target while you are away. I believe that it's been stated by the developer that hopefully you do feel worried between long periods away from your house. You should also feel whatever it is you feel when you see that your house has been destroyed. These emotions don't occur once you change it so that the expectation is that the house can survive easily.
An interesting side effect is that a lot of us players are trying to combat that feeling as we speak. Some players, like myself, will spend a lot of time trying to get a home that's relatively secure and hope that it lasts while we are away. This is all in spite of the fact that if we keep playing the game, then at some point we will die or get robbed. I think that this game is an amazing experience and one that I am still enjoying very much even though I died completely as a result of my fault recently after I had put a lot of money into a house and it had lasted for three days.
I am not saying that there aren't potential ways to tweak the numbers and balance to make a better overall experience; however, I do believe the game functions pretty well as it is. Is the argument that you would rather have your house get destroyed after it's lasted two days? five days? Or is it safe to say that it will never feel satisfying to have your house destroyed regardless of how long it's been? I'd much rather have the feeling that my house is in much more imminent danger.
Also, reducing the resale value of tools would slow down house value growth, but it also reduces purchasing power which limits the ability to improve your house and purchase tools for attempting robberies. It would slow down all areas of the game.

I completely get what you're saying. But having to start over every single time I walk away for 6 hours just isn't fun. I spent almost that long building the house being painstakingly careful with everything. I'm not saying to remove tool rewards. I am saying reduce them to increase the time you actually get to have a house. I spent 5 hours building it and never got to play the game while it was still functional.

Last edited by JoeBlow (2014-02-04 19:31:40)

jere · 2014-02-04 19:41:36

There seems no way to increase/decrease bounties/tools and make everyone happy because every situation is different. Has anyone read my suggestion about caps?

It would be great if you could set a cap on your house value and automatically donate any extra bounties/tools that come in. Your house is worth $1500 but you know it probably won't make it with more than $2500? Set your cap to $2500 and then you can stop playing the game for a night or even a week with a chance of it surviving.

It's not like it gives you any unfair advantage; all it does is allow you to have a healthier relationship with TCD and play at your own pace. Also, this would somewhat mitigate tool dumping through multiple accounts.

jw2pfd · 2014-02-04 19:46:34

JoeBlow wrote:

I completely get what you're saying. But having to start over every single time I walk away for 6 hours just isn't fun. I spent almost that long building the house being painstakingly careful with everything. I'm not saying to remove tool rewards. I am saying reduce them to increase the time you actually get to have a house. I spent 5 hours building it and never got to play the game while it was still functional.

May I ask what you mean by "never got to play the game?" If you were building a house and came back later to find out it had been robbed, then it sounds like to me that the game is functioning exactly as intended. The game is designed to provoke an emotional reaction out of you when your work is destroyed by someone else. It does depend on your goals when playing games in general and your specific goals playing this game. For me, I have lost everything multiple times and expect to die again in the future and I am very much enjoying the experience.

super_maçon wrote:

But the odds tell me that when i'll go to bed it's over.

Exactly. There are posts where people say it would be better if they felt like their house could last even a single night. The game is designed AGAINST having that feeling of security. My previous post asked some rhetorical questions to illustrate the idea that it's not supposed to feel satisfying when someone destroys your house and you lose everything. It might be frustrating that you lose it after one night. It might be equally or more frustrating to lose it after two days or whatever period of time it happens to be. I feel that it works better when the danger is more imminent and would be against making changes for the specific reason to make houses survive "easier" or longer.

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