Messages

31

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 11:23:57 AM »

If VP's are key to the game, you remove the sandbox element which I guess is not so bad except it clashes with the whole creator background...

Maybe this is where the disconnect is. This isn't, nor was ever supposed to be a sandbox game. It's first and foremost a strategy game where the goal is balance and not annihilation. The idea with the victory points is that when you do some things, it makes the balance harder. So, if you are finding ways to mitigate the effects unbalancing of the tokens, then you are doing what you're supposed to be doing. The challenge is supposed to be in finding balance in a situation that is difficult to balance.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:36:57 AM »

Well, for one thing, it's a LOT easier to balance. We don't have to try to figure out things like "well, is this unit worth more than that other unit?" Since individual units won't be directly scoring.

So the core was that scoring was not as implied not fun and opaque in the notes, but rather hard to balance?

Because somehow these VP's sound even less fun and opaque. There are both less ways to get them and they are now necessary.

For example god tokens- The goal may be that they are meant to cause chaos. In practice? I'll be hunting ways to isolate them so they do not cause chaos. See the disconnect? Not fun.

It's not that the points weren't fun. I think they were. The biggest reason we got rid of them was the first part of the note, they are a HUGE time sink. Seriously, I didn't get an exact count, but, there were going to be something like 500 different ways to score points under the old system (with things like edicts potentially adding multipliers, stuff like that). It was taking me hours just to come up with any kind of a decent first guess as to how those different scores should relate to one another, and it would have taken probably months of re-balancing, even after release to get it actually right. With VPs, there will be a lot fewer things to score with, and the granularity will be much lower, meaning that designing the system will take far less time.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:22:10 AM »

I still don't understand how this is different then scoring, aside the latter was optional.

Well, for one thing, it's a LOT easier to balance. We don't have to try to figure out things like "well, is this unit worth more than that other unit?" Since individual units won't be directly scoring.

Sounds like victory points could shape but well. Definetly think there should be -something- to encourage unbalanced play and a way to judge how things are going beyond pass/fail.

Well, the encouragement would be that doing things like using the really unbalancing god tokens would be worth more VPs.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:07:07 AM »

Ok, one last bit of input from me before I go to bed:

How might the list of these work?  One idea I'd had.... if there was a decently large list of available VP-producing things.... would be to have them a bit randomized.   Like, say there's 40 total, right.  Maybe the game randomly highlights 20 of them at the start of the game (start of each round?), and those are the ones that are active and will produce VP if done.  something like this could be totally optional, turn it on/off before the game, adjust how many are selected.... yada yada yada.


It's a bit of a vague idea, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.


As leaderboards go, they're not a bad idea, though I dont see them as necessary.   They're a nice addition if they can be done.

There is going to be a bit of randomization, and, it's not quite how you're describing it here, but, it's not too far off either. I don't want to go into specifics yet, I'll do that when I get a draft of the new tutorial up, but, I think you'll be happy.

The leaderboards are ... possible, I'm not sure about those now.

35

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 09:53:28 AM »

I actually quite like the idea of victory points, but it also should refund the lost points to bandits if you take things from them again ^^ Would be nice for new players if they could turn it off though.

They won't be optional, but, there will be the ability for newer players to need fewer in order to win.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:30:05 AM »

Don't like it.

I like the idea of judging game performance based on it, and maybe even tying leveling up to the highest VP you get in a game.

But I don't like it being the deciding factor of whether you win or not outright.

I prefer organic factors to encourage the dynamic rather then this arbitrary one.

It still fundamentally encourages the fight to the bottom of stability, except it just raises the bottom. It really doesn't change anything except make another box to "check" during a game.

And it still will have to go through several balance passes of what VP's are, and how to prevent cheese...

I fail to see how it really is much different then scoring, except scores were optional and this is not.

What sorts of things do you recommend?

37

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:13:46 AM »

In case folks are just watching this thread. We'd love to see your comments on this: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13011.0.html

38

Skyward Collapse / Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:00:47 AM »

Ok, so, in this thread: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13006.msg145536.html#msg145536 , Mick posted the idea of Victory Points.

Chris and I have been talking, and we like the idea, and wanted to know what you guys thought of it. I see it working something like this:  Use a really strong god token? 3 VPs! Get an enlightened city? 1 VP! Each additional town? 1VP! Lose a town to the bandits? -3VPs!

Then, in order to win, a player must 1.) Keep one side from wiping the other out. 2.) Do whatever actions the edicts for that game require and 3.) Obtain the requisite number of VPs.

If #2 and #3 are completed early, and neither side has wiped the other out, the game could end at that point. Or, perhaps players could keep playing to see how high of a VP score they could get, maybe.

Of course, this make the current set up with round length tricky, because obviously it will be easier to score x number of VPs in 40 turns/round than it would be in 20. So, the thought there was to limit the granularity a bit. Make it so that basically, players could choose to play only 30, 40 or 50 turns per round, then come up with appropriate VP goals for each.

This would do two things:

1.) Adds motivation to use powerful, balance killing god-tokens, which I think is going to be an issue otherwise.

2.) Adds a sense of "I played really well this game vs. I really squeaked by" that players (correctly) feel is missing with the scores now being gone.

Thoughts?

39

Skyward Collapse / Re: Enlightenment - broken concept?

« on: May 06, 2013, 07:29:53 AM »

I think something is broken with enlightenment, for sure. I'm not sure the best way to solve it yet, but, this certainly isn't intended.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 07:26:03 AM »

Wouldnt it make more sense to simply set basic values for different units/structures, and leave it at that?  I cant see why Edicts and such would necessarily need to come into play as far as the scoring goes; they're more of a framework than anything else, from what I've seen of them.  Not to mention, keeping such a scoring system nice and simple would probably work best here;  that's about how I'd do it, anyway.    Heck, it doesnt even necessarily need to be a full-on scoring system.  It could end up being more like a tally system; keeping a total count of how many units/buildings/things were destroyed in total, with the encouragement to cause more and more of that.  Wouldnt be AS interesting, but it'd at least be something.


Hmm, that's a shame though.   I hate to say, but the game does kinda lose my interest at this point, I think.  Even just in my initial playthrough, I realized.... there's alot of cool options here, but I wasnt USING the majority of them, as I got further and further into that playthrough.  When things were already balanced.... which they were, it's not at all difficult to simply maintain balance in this.... there's no reason to use anything that isnt basic structures.  The game would have to forcibly warp the balance pretty darn hard on it's own to make many of those objects useful in a practical sense, but doing that sorta goes against the concept of the player being the one to cause the chaos.   

I know theoretically the player could use the big crazy things or whatever just to use them, in a sandboxy way, but that wont ever occur to me without reason.   Makes me think of disasters in the Simcity series.   Alot of players think those are fun..... but I never touched them, because they have no purpose or use.


For now, I'll just watch development of this one from the sidelines, I think, and see what happens with it as things continue.

A tally system would certainly be easy to implement, but, would it really be engaging enough to be worth it?

As for why the edicts effect points... they all change the game, some significantly, some less so. And many of them make the game more difficult, but, by varying amounts. If the idea behind a score is "How well did you play" shouldn't something that makes the game more difficult to play well award more points?

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 06:37:07 AM »

I believe Tigersfan mentioned somewhere that the current score values and such were all just placeholders;  AKA the actual coding and mechanics of it are in place, but none of the values have really been set yet.

And yeah, additions to it can be made down the line if need be, I think.

Yes, the coding/mechanics were in place, but, it was actually becoming increasingly difficult to really come up with a scoring system that made sense to me. Things like "Well, the edicts obviously need to effect the score, but, by how much? What about the challenges? Should the effect the score?" were actually really hard questions to answer in any way that made sense. It could probably have been done, but not without a LOT of back and forth and dial adjusting that likely would have taken months to get close to right. And, while right now, my money would be on them not returning, I try to not say never around here.

I remember him saying that also.  Let's not forget we still have several meta type stuff (edicts?) that haven't been added in.  That's pretty much what I'm looking forward to (fully fleshed out objectives) for reply value. Once we actually have the stuff that adds to the depth of the game, we could make that judgement.
On score specifically, wasn't that going to be how we leveled up our profiles?

Nope, this was always going to be via the challenges. Some of the challenges were based on score, and those need to be eliminated, obviously, but it was always going to be via challenges. Similar to 10,000,000 if you've ever played that.

42

Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: [alpha feedback] Cyborg review

« on: May 05, 2013, 10:19:50 AM »

Scores are meaningless right now. They are placeholder at the moment.

43

Skyward Collapse / Re: Buildings questions

« on: May 05, 2013, 09:55:46 AM »

Buildings can't be captured individually, but the town as a whole can be.

44

Skyward Collapse / Re: Alpha 0.802 out.

« on: May 05, 2013, 09:54:00 AM »

I couldn't install the patch.  I loaded the game up for the first time and saw the patch button, but the music was too awesome and I could not click on it until the track finished.

Ha! Same thing for Valley 2. Wonder what the lyrics are for this one though. Clearly not in English, so what are they?

The lyrics are in Old Norse. Pablo really went the extra mile there, IMO.

They are from the Havamal, which is an ancient Norse poem (think Proverbs from the Bible). Roughly translated, they are:

Cattle die,
kinsmen die
you yourself die;
I know one thing
which never dies:
the fate of the honored dead.

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Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: SC Score Contest!

« on: May 03, 2013, 10:28:16 PM »

Keep in mind, the scores are totally placeholder right now. They are going to almost competely change in the coming days.