Development Chronicles Continue
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First, the fun stuff. A picture from my brother-in-law/game-artist
Now, for the less fun, but interesting stuff.
The following is a continued list of design complications, and the approaches I plan to take:
Rank
In my last post, I discussed my dislike for Rank. In American style games, where BBGs rank you based on power, there are no viable ways of climbing the ladder. It is impossible to defeat the person above you because he is, by definition, more powerful. So, everyone in the game is stuck attacking downward, picking up few gains, and all players end up growing at the same linear rate. This is not fun, and thus a bad design choice.
In Euro style games, where power and score are separated, and players are ranked based on score... we have some improvement, but still an ugly mechanic for the player to deal with. Namely, why spend money on power if it doesn't increase your score? And, oppositely, why spend money on score when it doesn't improve your power? Making this decision is not fun for the player, and I want to avoid it.
So, I have designed an experimental solution to this problem which I think is fairly cleaver. Because I cannot take rank out entirely of a bbg (it would leave players guessing at who to attack, and pure guesswork is tedious and boring), I have come up with a system I call Castle Upgrades. With Castle Upgrades, all players will be ranked according to their Castle Level (CL). A high CL will have both pros and cons. The pros will be higher rank (a perceived value to those who want a high rank), and will increase your military strength by 10% for each Level (added, not multiplicativel). It will also be a requirement for unlocking key features such as technologies and treaties. The Con will be that a high CI will cause other in-game items to cost more.
The idea behind this is that any player can climb through the ranks simply by upgrading his or her Castle. So, as long as money is available, obtaining a higher Rank is not the issue. However, since CI increases the cost of all other goods in the game, there will be a theoretical, difficult to calculate point at which it is optimal to upgrade your Castle. This will cause players who upgraded too early to fall in rank later in the game. It will also, I hope, keep players who upgraded too late from climbing very far. Although I do not desire a large amount of rank-swap, I believe this situation is more enjoyable than no rank-swap situation.
Power
There are 2 methods I plan to use to break up the balance of power amongst the players. The first is to use a 3-tier combat approach. Each player will have the ability to invest in combat, espionage or magic. When fighting, military will fight military, spies will fight spies, and wizards will fight wizards. Its basically like paper-rock-scissors.
Now,I hate the paper-rock-scissors approach. And its not possible to design a solid tactics system in a large scale PVP BBG. So, what is my reasoning here? Well, there are a few things. First, the idea is that even the wealthiest, highest ranked player will not be able to successfully guard against attacks from all 3 attack types. Even if I give defense a mod of *3, it will be very difficult for even the best defender to appropriate his funds equally. Second, because I am building this system around zero-player-losses (ie, getting attacked and losing does not cost the player anything), it creates more fun on part of the player to build his offense in lieu of worrying about the holes in his defense. Third, there will be indications in-game what a player may be weak to, so there will be 'some' tactical planning required to scope out your targets. There would be many better systems for combat if this were not a BBG. But since players will be competing against a very large user base, and there will be limited to no NPC's, this is the only approach I can conceive.
The 2nd method relies on the traditional model of increasing fun through increasing game space. When a user is given many options on how to increase his military power, and each of those options has both pro's and cons, it increases the number of possible decisions (or game space). With more decisions comes tougher optimization, which I hope increases both fun and replayability.
All of this is experimental, but after considering it all for 7 years, I can only hope.
Anyways,I feel like I'm coming to a premature stop, but that is all for today. Until next time.
Now, for the less fun, but interesting stuff.
The following is a continued list of design complications, and the approaches I plan to take:
Rank
In my last post, I discussed my dislike for Rank. In American style games, where BBGs rank you based on power, there are no viable ways of climbing the ladder. It is impossible to defeat the person above you because he is, by definition, more powerful. So, everyone in the game is stuck attacking downward, picking up few gains, and all players end up growing at the same linear rate. This is not fun, and thus a bad design choice.
In Euro style games, where power and score are separated, and players are ranked based on score... we have some improvement, but still an ugly mechanic for the player to deal with. Namely, why spend money on power if it doesn't increase your score? And, oppositely, why spend money on score when it doesn't improve your power? Making this decision is not fun for the player, and I want to avoid it.
So, I have designed an experimental solution to this problem which I think is fairly cleaver. Because I cannot take rank out entirely of a bbg (it would leave players guessing at who to attack, and pure guesswork is tedious and boring), I have come up with a system I call Castle Upgrades. With Castle Upgrades, all players will be ranked according to their Castle Level (CL). A high CL will have both pros and cons. The pros will be higher rank (a perceived value to those who want a high rank), and will increase your military strength by 10% for each Level (added, not multiplicativel). It will also be a requirement for unlocking key features such as technologies and treaties. The Con will be that a high CI will cause other in-game items to cost more.
The idea behind this is that any player can climb through the ranks simply by upgrading his or her Castle. So, as long as money is available, obtaining a higher Rank is not the issue. However, since CI increases the cost of all other goods in the game, there will be a theoretical, difficult to calculate point at which it is optimal to upgrade your Castle. This will cause players who upgraded too early to fall in rank later in the game. It will also, I hope, keep players who upgraded too late from climbing very far. Although I do not desire a large amount of rank-swap, I believe this situation is more enjoyable than no rank-swap situation.
Power
There are 2 methods I plan to use to break up the balance of power amongst the players. The first is to use a 3-tier combat approach. Each player will have the ability to invest in combat, espionage or magic. When fighting, military will fight military, spies will fight spies, and wizards will fight wizards. Its basically like paper-rock-scissors.
Now,I hate the paper-rock-scissors approach. And its not possible to design a solid tactics system in a large scale PVP BBG. So, what is my reasoning here? Well, there are a few things. First, the idea is that even the wealthiest, highest ranked player will not be able to successfully guard against attacks from all 3 attack types. Even if I give defense a mod of *3, it will be very difficult for even the best defender to appropriate his funds equally. Second, because I am building this system around zero-player-losses (ie, getting attacked and losing does not cost the player anything), it creates more fun on part of the player to build his offense in lieu of worrying about the holes in his defense. Third, there will be indications in-game what a player may be weak to, so there will be 'some' tactical planning required to scope out your targets. There would be many better systems for combat if this were not a BBG. But since players will be competing against a very large user base, and there will be limited to no NPC's, this is the only approach I can conceive.
The 2nd method relies on the traditional model of increasing fun through increasing game space. When a user is given many options on how to increase his military power, and each of those options has both pro's and cons, it increases the number of possible decisions (or game space). With more decisions comes tougher optimization, which I hope increases both fun and replayability.
All of this is experimental, but after considering it all for 7 years, I can only hope.
Anyways,I feel like I'm coming to a premature stop, but that is all for today. Until next time.
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