Messages

121

Skyward Collapse / Re: Biggest improvements needed - discussion thread

« on: May 08, 2013, 08:59:57 AM »

I don't think I want a hot key to bring up a resources page, I pretty much want to see them all the time.

Like a bar along the top or bottom that has each resource icon with a number next to it, and when a unit gets produced or you plop down a building, the little red "-4" floats over the wood number (or whatever) and disappears after it decremented the value.

When you highlight a building and see you need 8 log icons to build it, and you quickly see on the bottom, oh I only have 6 log icons at the moment, I need more. And the tooltip for the building says under log icons that log icons are produced by the whatever.

On-demand resources are a bit funky, but I suppose the global bar could just show the maximum number you have based on the feeder resources. So when you built something that requires say bacon 4 bacon, that that really represents the loss of 16 pigs (or whatever, I don't remember the ratios), then you represent that by having -4 float above the bacon, and -16 float above the pigs.

The bit about seeing the base resources all the time, yeah, I second that one, big time.   I think that one's very important, as the UI stuff goes.  Alot of time is wasted just moving the screen to a city and checking it there.... and even MORE is wasted when I then realize, I'm looking at the wrong color city for what turn it is.   A nice bar along the side or bottom of the screen displaying each resource and how many are there would help a TON.


As for the on-demand stuff.... hmmm.  I do think that having the city center buildings give a list of what production structures are and arent active within them is important.... because that'd be a nice, quick, easy way to check which production buildings I have, and thus decide on what else I think I need in such and such city.

But, there's ALSO things like mythological creatures or whatever that want the production items.... yet are NOT bound to cities (which is a good thing), and thus only need one production building somewhere in the world, and particularly in the early bit of the game, it's very easy to NOT have such and such building, but not be aware of it.   There are plenty of times when I'll go to place an ice giant or something down and am like, "Wait a minute.... I *dont* have a smelter anywhere?".   

122

Skyward Collapse / Re: UI overhaul

« on: May 08, 2013, 08:49:46 AM »

Alright, update to 0.805

Turn confusion is not so big an issue now, though I'm not sure if that's due to the buttons or my familiarity with the game. I'll test it out on my brother later, but I was hoping to let him play through the new tutorial too. In theory turn confusion should be mostly solved, so I think I can save my brother's inexperience with the game for testing the tutorial, which is more important.

Point 2 has not really been addressed; the UI still makes checking your resources etc. unnecessarily difficult. I'll spell it out again: display the global resources at all times, and keep the local-to-town information in each town centre's pop-up.

Aye, this.


Other than that, the bit I mentioned earlier in this thread, that for me still stands as of .805.   Still one of the things I want to see most (other than the resource info and such).

123

Skyward Collapse / Re: Biggest improvements needed - discussion thread

« on: May 08, 2013, 08:46:10 AM »

I created a discussion thread because the rules for posting in the other thread sounded scary. I have no business posting in there because I can't speak for everyone.

This may go toward "feature complete", but I can sum up the improvement I think is most necessary as: Objectives, objectives, objectives!

There are lots of nice things you can do with the interface and tutorial and displaying information, but right now, I can figure out how to plop down buildings and create units just fine. However, I can't really test the game for "fun" because there is no direction at all in what I need to be doing, and there's so much different feedback on the "what you should be doing" should be, that I don't even know what to *pretend* the objectives are when I play.

Without a goal to the game, it feels like a tech demo more than anything else. It's like if I playing Carcassone in the middle of the game being designed, and the creator said to me "just place down tiles, make cities and roads and stuff, is it fun?" we'll work out the victory conditions later." I'd say, "the tiles are pretty, and I could see a cool game being made out of this, but I don't know what that game is yet."

That's exactly how I feel about Skyward Collapse right now.

This.

I'm still playing the game right now, but.... it feels less like playing a game, and more like I'm jamming things in random spots, and pursuing rather vague goals that I made up randomly myself simply to continue the testing process, searching for bugs and simple balance issues.   Actual strategy I use is always related to situations that I set up myself for the testing, generally by firing off large powers arbitrarily.   That part is still interesting and good, in that the large powers create those situations, but I'm not using the big powers for any real REASON.  The chaos has no real point right now.

If I WERENT a tester though.... and was just a player, either coming into this, or watching/reading about it.... I'd be bloody lost.  As best I could tell, the only goal is:  "survive", and the method to do this is: "create stalemate".  And that would appear to be the end of that.   I'm not very clear on wether or not you guys have chosen to go forward with the VP idea or not (it SOUNDS like you are), but if that's the case.... having that in there before showing off the game too much would seem to me like a good idea, since it would be part of the major "framework" of the game, right?   Same if you're going to add like, side-objectives or whatever people were calling those.


I think some of the UI things and such are important too, but I think the "basics" of the UI, like it's overall look and such, are what people reading about the game and seeing screenshots or whatever are mostly going to notice, and that's already there; extra tweaks, basically quality/polish stuff with the UI, can possibly wait a bit.   Maybe.

124

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - New Tutorial

« on: May 08, 2013, 07:58:38 AM »

Oh, I didn't know you only ever needed one Carpenter per faction.  I was building one per woodcutter.  The same for the other buildings.  Good to know.

This is one pretty annoying aspect. Actually, I'd suggest either making it impossible to place duplicates in a town, or changing the tooltip of the town center to show the buildings there (with resources being moved to an external panel. There's really no reason to put global resources in an annoying corner).

Not quite...it's actually one per town you need Lumber in.  It's a bit confusing, but it does give the player more control over military production.  I like it that way, but it might not be compelling enough for all players.

Aye, this.   The way that production works is good in a gameplay sense, but I too found it very confusing to understand, for quite awhile.   And it's an important aspect, so..... yeah.

It might be a bit over confusing.
In theory it allows you to choose what units you produce in given city. In practice units have overlapping requirements which means that you are forced to choose some of them anyway. Unless requirements could be tweaked a bit to be less overlapping. (I don't see use for arsonists really... and I need to trigger them to get ballistas and be at mercy of rng to decide which one gets produced)

Agreed on the Arsonists.   I did a Mantis suggestion about this here:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11267

A simple suggestion just to boost their base damage;  right now, they simply dont do enough, particularly against buildings, to have a real impact.   They also have the bizarre tendancy to like attacking other UNITS even when they're pretty much standing on enemy buildings. 

125

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 08, 2013, 06:57:55 AM »

I believe that a "Random Event" system in combination with victory points can work out quite well

Example:
Once in a time you get a challenge that modifies the balance from one side or requires you to get certain goals. you are required to resolve it in X turns. Upon completion you are either granted Victory points, resources for a side of your choice or a "Token Recharge".

Random events could be:
-Use a god token
-Throw out X mythological tokens that are being picked up at side X(Those tokens should be refunded of course).
-We want a larger army! Build a new city that can build marauders.
-20 bandits spawn, Kill them.
-One side gets a character with god-side powers and the other side gets a lot of resources
-A bandit god spawns(W/O got tokens, that moves out of itself) both sides get a lot of resources.

Random events could have turn limits to get additional rewards.

I believe that random events can make the game harder and can give short term goals, effectively keeping the game fresh and yet adding challenges based on the difficulty. This might also give an initiative to unbalance the game even more well also getting "rewarded" in case you survive something(i.e. more utility).

Such system could both punish and reward the player at the same time for both short and long term which in my opinion makes it quite interesting

Aye, this.

I particularly like the idea of having extra rewards (whatever those might be) for completing such and such in a short time.  There would inevitably be risk to that, which is good here.

126

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.805

« on: May 08, 2013, 06:53:25 AM »

Well I'm not Misery, but I'll say that what I was really for in the playback was simple:

1) Follow the unit when playing it's action.
2) When play stops for that unit, don't jump immediately to the next unit, wait until I hit play to jump to the next.

The old system allowed what I wanted except for the underlined part.

Yes, this actually was helpful to me as well.   A bit much clicking, but I could stop and examine as much as I want (without having to manually pause, which since I'm kinda spacey is easy for me to forget), and could simply slow down on the clicking to make that less of a problem.   

127

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.805

« on: May 08, 2013, 06:52:07 AM »

Guys, we're not ignoring interface additions... But yeah, we are, right now. You want feature completion and goals first, I presume, right?

Misery: pretty much all the mantis tickets were counter to what you're saying, so that's all I had to go on. That said, you can still play the way you wanted. Turn off auto-follow. Tap spacebar when you want to center on a unit. Pause whenever you want. Run at 4x speed (same as your old 2x). That said, what would make this more convenient for you?

Hmm, mostly just the auto-center WITHOUT the auto-follow would help.  It's pretty rare with games that I'll come accross something that can give me that kind of headache, but.... every now and then it happens, and the auto-follow here is one that can cause it.  Heck if I know why.   But simply being able to jump easier from one to the other would be a help;  I tried the spacebar for this, but it's very fiddly about it.  I end up somehow managing to still miss seeing things entirely, even when I tried slowing it to 2x instead of 4x.  And I could swear there were times when I'd hit it with an audible click but nothing would happen.   Not to mention that some days I cant repeatedly click/hit keys that much without making my arm flare up bad (this being one of those days, sigh).  The game isnt too bad about repetetive clicking overall, but anything that reduces it at all is useful to me.


That's about the only change that I'd need;  there's other UI issues of course, but that's honestly the only one that really gets in the way of the gameplay.   The original setup worked fine in my case, though there was a bit of additional clicking. 


Feh, and no matter how many times I explain that, I feel it's a bloody stupid reason for anything.  I cant do much about it aside from more damn pain pills though.



Aaaaaanyway.  On the note of the other UI stuff.... yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say, that bit can come AFTER all of the gameplay bits.   I'm more than willing to wait on that stuff if it means getting to try out more of the new changes sooner

Not to mention.... it seems logical to do it that way ANYWAY.  It'd be pretty silly to change the UI, and then later everyone realizes that the changes made after that cause it to need to be changed AGAIN.   

I'll have more feedback on this patch later.  Aint had enough time with it yet.   Started a new game, still in the early bits of it.

128

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.805

« on: May 08, 2013, 04:00:18 AM »

Argh argh argh.


Ok, I did find one thing I dont like:   The action viewer.  Ugh.  This thing went from "good" to "I cant even look at it".


Previously, I had it as such that it was moving at 2x speed, to keep military units moving pretty fast, but it would stop after each one to give me a moment to think about and grasp what it had just showed me, notably who attacked who for how much damage.   I also had it to auto-center on each one..... but NOT auto-follow.

When auto-follow is on, A: it gives me a near instant headache, and B: I cant tell what in the hell is going on, because *everything* is shifting all over the screen.   Having no pause between isnt helping either, it's like "Ok, watching this now, that guy just attacked... wait, now this guy is moving, and he.... oh wait, we're on the thrower, and... agh, the screen shifted with the rock, and.... what the heck did I even just watch?   Who just struck at who?  What's even going on?"


REALLY annoying.   That, and the default speed of movement is that of a brick in sludge.


I'm also noticing one thing:  Despite the change to building placement, I'm *still* ending up with huge blobs of buildings, which ends up being just as hard to look at.    I'm thinking that if things are going to be extremely city-focused, the cities need to be much further apart;  right now they only need to be about 6, which, considering the radius of them, is.... next to nothing.   It may as well just be the huge resource heaps all over again.

129

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 08, 2013, 03:37:01 AM »

Well, on that board-game front, it was my partner's interest in the initial previews that got me signed into alpha... then he discovered that it was turn-based and there existed no animations. ;P

*le sigh*
For the difference of ~33*6 little pngs to imitate attack actions.

Unfortunately, despite that in gameplay terms it DOESNT BLOODY MATTER AT ALL, this one (lack of animations and such) is likely to be a sticking point with alot of players.   "My guys dont run in place endlessly or spray blood everywhere while going "GARGH!!!!" when they get hit.  This game is so bad!!!11"

Le sigh indeed.

I swear.... with recent gaming trends, I now understand lines like "they dont make 'em like they used to" or "back in my day, such and such was better than this crap you get today!".   And I'm waaayyy too young to really be saying such lines as often as I do.

130

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 08, 2013, 02:42:13 AM »

Addendum:
 To me, a game at release should demonstrate what is possible with further work, and it's okay if the game is moderately polished. A lot of indie games need to be released before feature completeness for your exact financial reasons. To buy time for that post-release work, it will be good to have a dozen propositions in and other ways to encourage players to refine their game. On the other hand, I see current problems e.g. with you guys having to hit 100 challenges to get to player level 10, and to me that's a harsh goal to make 100 fun challenges in 12 days.*

 ...hence I suggested Favour as the way to build player levels, so you don't have to hit exactly 100 and can make sure every challenge is worth its name. VPs as Favour -> levelup will fulfill most of your goals. It's easy to understand as RPG Exp., all of your challenges/edicts become antes that you bet the Master you can fulfill in a single game (thus becoming carrots as you earn more Favour), and if the challenges are done well they will be fun and explore new mechanics.
 
 Whatever you do, don't randomly hobble the player for no reason. This isn't DF and it will alienate your midcores. Provide sticks intrinsically in challenges and random propositions/petitions. Every random hobble, I think, should be the possibility of being subverted for you ends or avoided for an action cost.

 *Also, if the challenges are in any way like Steam Achievement lists, then statistically 95% of the players will never achieve them all. Every game on that service has this exponential decay as you scroll down the %-completion list, and you'll merely lock out the more casual gamers from gaining higher profile levels.

Agreed on this one.    I think the same way about games at release.   I'm just hoping that the game will do well enough to make it POSSIBLE for them to keep working on and adding things to it.   Continuous work didnt end up being viable with Valley 2, and that really was quite a shame... would hate to see it happen with this one.

And particularly agreed on that last bit too:   I know I dont speak for everyone, but I would haaaaaaaaaaaaate having to do bloody everything in order to unlock everything.   I tend to be the "hardcore" sort of player when it comes to most games, but at the same time I'm sort of an anti-completionist in that I hate achievements, have very little patience, and rarely care at all about 100% completion, or even being anywhere near that amount.  Yet I'd hate to be locked out of different features because of that.

131

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.805

« on: May 08, 2013, 01:47:11 AM »

Had a look at the changelist..... this really sounds like a good update.   Getting rid of the clusters of Chapmen is a good thing, particularly when your actual armies are abundant later in the game!

Everything else here looks good too, though I have to say I still find the enlightenment system baffling.   Correct me if I'm wrong, but it provides the city with total invincibility while it's maxed out, yes?   I dunno, that mechanic seems..... out of place, to me.   Hard to explain why.   


I also suddenly realize.... I have *no* idea what crime does or how it works....


And the new mechanics for captured buildings sound MUCH better.   .....provided they have immunity to Smite (which is how I've been dealing with them;  blast them, replace them.... easy) 

132

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - New Tutorial

« on: May 08, 2013, 01:38:09 AM »

Oh, I didn't know you only ever needed one Carpenter per faction.  I was building one per woodcutter.  The same for the other buildings.  Good to know.

This is one pretty annoying aspect. Actually, I'd suggest either making it impossible to place duplicates in a town, or changing the tooltip of the town center to show the buildings there (with resources being moved to an external panel. There's really no reason to put global resources in an annoying corner).

Not quite...it's actually one per town you need Lumber in.  It's a bit confusing, but it does give the player more control over military production.  I like it that way, but it might not be compelling enough for all players.

Aye, this.   The way that production works is good in a gameplay sense, but I too found it very confusing to understand, for quite awhile.   And it's an important aspect, so..... yeah.

133

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 08, 2013, 01:22:41 AM »

Misery, if I have to reiterate it again I will.

I still hate VP's.

Which is no small reason why what I want has nothing to do with VP's.

If you start making the VP's themselves random and individually important rather then a checklist of doing many, you are eventually just making edicts that the player does not choose, or are not revealed at game start.

.....er..... but they ARE mostly revealed at game start, and in a list form.   It's right in the description he gave:

2. You are presented with 3 that you can work on at the start, and then 3 more that are grayed out that will come in after you complete the first 3 (each one that you complete brings in another one from the gray list, and then another one gets added to the gray list.  So it's incremental, not all-at-once).

And even that is only a simple model, probably very much up for tweaking.  It may well end up being:  "Ok, at the start, here's a list of 9 which will be all of them (thus, not leaving any that you dont know about).  You must complete the first 3 to open the second 3, and complete that to open the final 3".  Thus showing them all at the start.

As for not choosing them.... they could always just give an option to allow the player to choose if they so desire, or other variations that give more control.   That, to me, is boring as all hell, but that's no reason why it cant be an available option.



And the propositions thing you mention is..... pretty much the same thing, if I'm reading it right.   If the actual VP goals are thought out well enough, there'll BE several methods of accomplishing them. They're meant to ENCOURAGE diversity in strategies, not stifle it.  Simplistic examples like "use this thing" as a VP condition are just that.... examples, provided only to help explain the concept.   The only difference, by the original description of "propositions" VS the VPs, is that the goals of propositions are handed out at random times instead of at the start.... and that's it (and would be quite unexplained until that point).    Tying something like that in to the actual victory conditions.... would not go over well.   I'm generally fine with extreme randomness, much more so than many other players out there, but even I would be bothered by a system that doesnt even tell me HOW to win until some random point halfway through the game.   I want to know the basics of what I need to do to get basic victory RIGHT FROM THE START, and I'm thinking many others would feel the same way.    It'd be like, if playing one of the Civ games, you get 2/3rds of the way through and the game suddenly says:  "Oh, by the way, you can ONLY win via diplomatic victory now.  Good luck with that.".   That, honestly, would be the point where I simply delete the game, and I wouldnt be the only one.


The propositions thing, again, is a fine idea.  I'd love to see it.  But not as THE core of what you have to do to claim victory.  As side challenges though that pop up to mess with and challenge you?  That'd be pretty great.

134

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 07, 2013, 11:57:03 PM »

Few thoughts before I run off for the night myself:

Misery: Thanks for the clarification on VPs. That's actually really interesting, although I think that possibly having the players look through a list of 20 possible VPs to be working on at any given time would be a bit overwhelming, don't you?  I can't think of an interface there that wouldn't freak a midcore gamer out.

Regarding quests: It's kind of interesting, but the AI would generally go for them, and I don't really know what you mean by quest TBH.  I mean, if these are powerups or whatever, we basically already have that in the ruins and the mythological tokens, mixed between stuff you place and stuff you don't place.

Pepisolo: Agreed in spirit, but it comes down to execution.

Hearteater: I'm really looking for One System To Rule Them All.  Not just because I'm super limited on time (which I am), but also because I think that's key to being able to understand what is going on.  If I have three categories of objectives, how do we show that on the screen?  How do I, as the player, begin to fathom what to do first?  Etc.  I like the idea of players being able to focus on 1-3 things at a time, but having some insight into what they will need to be keeping an eye on in the future.


Possible simple model.  We take Misery's idea of VPs and combine that with some of the other thoughts here:

1. We have 40ish VPs possible.
2. You are presented with 3 that you can work on at the start, and then 3 more that are grayed out that will come in after you complete the first 3 (each one that you complete brings in another one from the gray list, and then another one gets added to the gray list.  So it's incremental, not all-at-once).
3. You have VP goals per round, as Hearteater notes.  This would be set by the difficulty you choose, not really the map size.  Probably.  It's not granular enough to really do that unless we make VPs into 100 equals what people have been talking about 1.
4. In terms of co-op this will be extra tricky, but it can be balanced.  This also argues for more granularity, or even a floating-point number system so that the numbers don't get strangely large.  So you could earn, say, 0.33 VP from some action.


And that's basically it.  If the VPs are designed interestingly and well, these would provide all the randomization we need.  We could also add in more "calamity" type things like yellow towns spawning or yellow hordes on rare occasion or whatnot, but those would be just more sources of things to deal with, and difficulty-dependent as well.

That's a pretty straightforward model, and seems to take the best of what people like.  If people like this, we'd have to do another thread with VP ideas -- Josh and I already have dozens, but many of them are a bit inane and/or cross-game.  More heads are better than one.

Thoughts?

About quests:  I posted that before I'd had food/caffiene;  it made sense at the time... sorta. 

Anyway, that setup for the VP thing sounds pretty great to me.


Just a matter of people coming up with ones that are interesting/challenging/whatever.

Exhausted, but the key is organic randomness, not forced randomness.

Players need to react to randomness. If it is not random but constant across games, it is not random at all.

So tired, hard to clarify.


Having a player react to a needed random short term objective on the fly is reacting to randomness. Having a constant list of objectives to do is not random at all.

The VP system though is not meant to be a random pops-up-at-any-time sort of system.  It's meant from the start to be a throughout-the-game thing, which involves the conditions for victory.   Having these just pop into existence at any given time would be bad.  Random events and such are great, but that's just not what these are.  These need to be things that the player can apply strategy and planning to.

The randomness of them is in the selection;  you never know which are going to be on that list of 6 (3 available to start, 3 grayed out) until the game has begun.  Different combinations of VP conditions could affect your strategy in all sorts of ways.... but that's part of the point, is it's meant to be strategic, not based on mere reaction.  You wont know WHICH you'll get.... but you'll know WHEN you get them, and how long you'll have to complete them, which are the important parts.  When it comes to stuff like victory conditions, it is best if the player can plan an overall strategy to get at them.   If the game suddenly jumps at you with "GUESS WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO THIS THING NOW", it'd lead to nothing but trouble.

Not to mention that by the game's very nature, more randomness will occur as you begin to implement your strategies towards each one;   you may choose one of them to go after to start with, but your plans could be thrown off by your AI troops, or sudden bandits, or unexpected effects from large-scale powers you activate, or whatever, which could change your planning overall;  it may suddenly become more viable at that time to do one of the other 2 currently available ones instead.   Which IS a case of the player reacting.    Really, I honestly dont think there's any lack at all of having to react to things in this game;  heck, there's ALOT of it already.   If the balance is holding perfectly, it's a bit stale, but the moment you start applying big powers or tactics or whatever that knocks the balance out of place (which you'd need to do to accomplish VPs), well.... yeah.  You're going to have PLENTY you'll need to react to.   That's been the case when I've been playing it anyway, if I throw out even a not-quite-as-crazy thing into the mix, like one of those "5 guys can use this" effects, I'm GOING to have stuff that I'll need to react to afterwards, which may cause me to have to use another major effect, which leads to MORE of that, which.... yeah.  You get the idea.



If there are random event sorts of things as you suggest, it'd be a seperate thing from the VPs, more along the lines of bandits and such (and I do indeed think it'd be nice to have more such things).

135

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 07, 2013, 07:36:07 PM »

Another idea regarding propositions.  Quests for our sides to compete over! For example, one of the tiles that flips might reveal The Golden Fleece (or whatever Norse/Greek treasure/item you want). It may or may not have monster guards, but now soldiers from both sides may (or might decide not to) shift focus to grabbing that. With the side that claims it getting a buff.

Players could choose to intervene, help one side, or try to prevent either side from getting it as its just too powerful for mankind  Entirely based off their own choosing as well. Totally agreed with Misery on challenges being limited, part of the reason I listed achievements as my least favorite idea.

Ooh, this one I really like.  A tile/location that appears that contains a quest or objective or something..... this would be interesting in that the PLAYER can ignore or focus on it if they want....  yet they always have to contend with the idea that the AI may, or may not, depending on it's whims, go off and grab it on it's own, so at the very least the player would have to pay attention to it, because it's completion means a big effect going off.   This, I think, adds even more to the "manage all of these sword-wielding maniacs" theme of the game.  As again, it's a concept that is something they can do that's not JUST basic chopping (even if it INVOLVES lots of chopping).



And to answer the question about the VPs,  the idea I'd had was simple:   There's a list of possible VPs that you can do, right?  Like, one of them might be, I dont know, "kill the god on one side", which might give you a heap of points.  There's tons of these that are possible.   Well, if there's a big list of these, right, say there's like 40 of them, it'd be interesting to me if the game would choose 20 of them randomly (totally arbitrary numbers here), and those are the ones that I can actually DO during that particular game.   This keeps things interesting, and ALSO means that there isnt always a best/easiest/simplest few VPs that the player can ALWAYS go after.  Different combinations of these could get.... interesting.  Particularly as, theoretically, these could impact each other, like the "kill a god" one might make certain other VPs harder to get if you do it, but some other ones might be easier to get.


Hope I'm making sense.  Not sure I am.