Messages

136

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 06:49:29 PM »

If VPs were a core.mechanic at thw beginning,  and not seem to be such a drastic last minutebaddition id put.more faith in it being not a band aid.

If we were talking about a big, big developer under a big, big publisher.... I'd agree with you.

This is what I love about indie devs though:  They can get ideas like this, that sometimes come from the community that they're actually bothering to interact with, and can VERY QUICKLY get it into the game and get to testing/tweaking it.   It's not just Arcen that does this.... I've watched plenty of other indie devs do this during alphas/betas, and honestly, it works out well pretty darn often.   The developer knows what they really want out of the game, and they're not going to choose such and such idea to go in if it doesnt go with the ideas/concepts that the game is designed around.  I'm going to guess that there's probably already been alot of behind-the-scenes talk about this one, and decision-making and all of that.   It wouldnt be added if it couldnt honestly fit with the current design model.  And it's not THAT much different from the original concept, which did in fact include a mechanic (scoring) designed to push the player towards doing risky stuff.  The game was designed around SOMETHING of that nature being there;  it's just that the "something" has changed a bit in such a way that it should now work better (without altering the design of the various other gameplay mechanics).

137

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 06:30:01 PM »

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.

I am not a part of the alpha, so perhaps my opinion does not reflect the state of the game. HOWEVER, i do think that any and all of us on the forum have a voice in 'if' and 'how' this is approached. Granted Arcen has the right to build the game they choose. But the players have a right to let Arcen know if they feel it is what the players 'want'.

Anyway...

I Like the idea of VP's in the same manner as the previous point system, in that it lets me see how i did this time versus the last game i played... did i do better or worse?

But i disagree 'STRONGLY' with the 'they are not optional' thing. If you want to make it interesting, or side-step points for whatever reason, then fine, but don't make me 'have' to use the VP's if i don't want to.

In AI War the optional expansions allow me, if i choose as a player to add complexity, or diversity, or more or this or that if i want. In none of the games do i have to have each and every DLC turned on or I can't play. Forcing players to do so, i think will only antagonize them. That is only my opinion.

Anyway, that is my two cents, the other forumers and Arcen are free to think and do as you see fit and  i really think the game looks interesting, so i won't hold my breath and turn blue and tell you its points or nothing!    But I will say that i probably will get the game regardless. I just wish i had a 'choice' rather than a requirement in how to play the game. Thats all.

-Teal

The reason, as I understand it, that the VP thing WONT be optional is simple:  It will be THE cause of the central challenge of the game.    Obvoiusly the bandits and RNG and wacky AI of your guys is part of the challenge, but it's not the MAIN part.  It's more meant to go alongside other mechanics.    It's like in Dwarf Fortress:   Part of the challenge of the game is that you cant directly control anyone, and have to rely on the AI of each dwarf, and their various whims and interests and emotions and yada yada yada.   BUT.   This, in and of itself, is actually NOT enough to provide the player with difficulty/challenge/tough situations.   It HAS to go alongside other things.   If you just sit there and dont actually do much, sure, the AI will do SOME things that are a bit loopy and require your attention, but not that many.   Instead how it works is, the player decides "Ok, I'm going to work on THIS project/goal right now", and in the process of taking tons of actions to accomplish this, the player is engaging the AI to do stuff more and more;  and the more this happens, the more risk there is of something really damn loopy happening.   The key there though is that the AI's goofiness *and* the player's own actions and choices have to both work TOGETHER to create the situations that make the game what it is.


If the VPs were not there, and the game was just "A: survive.  B: follow current edict rule", what would happen is this:   The player starts, right, and starts out building up each side.  Mostly, almost entirely, this would be done by structure placement.  The red and blue guys would get almost the exact same structures in the exact same numbers.   Basically, one mimicking the other.   Players would do this because it is "balanced".  Oh, there'd be bandits and some RNG wackiness and AI goofiness, but that's not too difficult to deal with on it's own.   So, one side mimicking the other.... with a little bit of constant tweaking (rather minor tweaking) as you continue to build up both sides mostly via structures and placement.   Using things like mythical creatures, or god tokens, or taking actions that ARE NOT balanced?  Wont happen.  Not without encouragement.  A huge amount of the game's content will go untouched without encouragement/reason, and this also means that a huge amount of the game's STRATEGY will go unseen by the player.


I'll give an example here:

In my last game session, I was testing things, right, and I figured, ok, let's test out this Singasteinn gizmo that the red guys have.   The Singasteinn takes a big blob of bacon to create (), and it's effect reads:  "Grants the first five humans to claim it the ability to attack multiple times per turn, as well as keeping them from taking damage in return when they are the one striking an opponent.   Can be used 5 times total."  It's a bloody powerful, unpredictable item (as most such things in this game are).   In my test, what I did was, I figured, OK, the red guys are the ones using this, and they'll be the ones recieving it's effects.   So I'm going to build the blue guys up for a few turns, give them an advantage, so that things will balance out when I actually use the item on the red guy, and I dont risk everything going horribly, horribly wrong.

So, I did this.   I built up the blue guys for awhile, and forced the red guys to stagnate a bit.   When things were where I wanted them.... I dropped the Singasteinn.  I dropped this in such a place where I was sure that 5 red guys would grab it and gain it's power, and then they'd go up against the now-more-powerful blue guys, and I'd get to see exactly what happens and watch for bugs and so on.


Yeah, well, that's not how it went.


What ACTUALLY happened:   1 red guy grabs it.   Being dumber than a sack of hammers, he DOES NOT proceed to use it's effects on various blue guys that were within his rather long reach.  He instead.... attacks some pigs.   Next, a couple of other red guys that were in the area, well.... they decide that wandering off like morons is the best damn idea EVER, so they do this.  THREE blue guys, instead, manage to grab the thing.  Hoboy.  2 normal human units, and 1 nasty already-increased-in-level siege unit.   In other words, the already much stronger team just got a BIG boost..... the OPPOSITE of what I planned for.   Got worse than that though:  The 5th and final unit to grab this was a damn bandit that came out of bloody nowhere, a powerful siege unit.  It grabbed the thing and almost instantly annihilated/captured 2 or 3 red buildings nearby, before I had the chance to do anything.

So, suddenly.... my plans had gone wrong.   I had taken a risk, by placing/using the Singasteinn, and despite that I'd PLANNED for it, the AI and RNG thwarted my plan.  And because it's such a powerful, risky item, it had a powerful UNbalancing effect.... now, I was in a situation where I needed to use strategy to get OUT of that situation.... or the blue guys were going to hit a point at which they would begin to snowball, getting enough advantage over the reds that it makes it super easy for them to get EVEN MORE advantage, and so on.



This all.... was very interesting, challenging, and fun to deal with.  The game really shows it's potential when stuff like this is going on.   And it didnt happen because the RNG decided "Here now this big horrible event is going to happen" like in some Roguelike.  No.... it happened because *I* chose to do something risky and balance-warping.  Just like how the game is designed to work.




But.... this was in a testing situation.   That was the logic for using the Singasteinn.   In a totally normal, non testing game, with the basic rules of "A: survive, B: follow basic edict".... WHY, exactly, would the player ever use the Singasteinn?   What is it's use there?   The answer is simple:  They WOULDNT.   It's too strong, too balance-shifting, too risky.  Even when you THINK you prepare for it, stuff CAN go wrong, and since it's so powerful, when stuff goes wrong in relation to it, it goes wrong HARD.  Players, as a rule, wont do things like this on purpose without a bloody good reason.  This behavior can be seen in pretty much any game.   There needs to be constant encouragement and reason to take the big risks, use the big powers that screw things up, do things outside of the norm of "maintain balance".   The VP system is meant to provide these reasons, to get the player to do things that bring out the intended game mechanics/effects to their full potential.   Without such a system in place.... things get dull fast.   Really fast.    THAT is why it needs to be there, and is why it's not totally optional.



That being said though, it's STILL a very open-ended system.   By it's design, you have TONS of routes you can take to get those VPs.  They're all risky, sure, but you can decide on which ones you want to go after based on the current situation and your current plans.... which is exactly how a strategy game should work.  And when things get loopy (and they will) as a result of going after them, you use more strategy and more tactics to get out of it.

You might even get a situation where it's like, OK, I did this risky thing to get some VPs, and it's screwed stuff up pretty badly.   But wait!  Maybe if I use this powerful god token on the now-weak guys.... and then do THIS and THIS over here, it just might get the balance back up, AND I might get even more VPs from using the token.   It's risky as well and could push things even further down the drain, but if it works, it's worth lots of VP and will be awesome!   


And that type of situation sounds just excellent to me.   I'd love to see that sort of thing pop up.   


I forgot what else I was going to say.   I wonder if I'm making any sense here.

138

Skyward Collapse / Re: Nick Trujillo Presents: Skyward Collapse Comic Page 1

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:07:40 AM »

That second panel in particular gave me a good laugh.   Particularly the character on the far right;  that's pretty much been my reaction when playing, when I'm watching the AI do something not-so-bright, which is of course quite frequent and often hilarious.


This artist is good, and this is pretty funny.   A good idea for promoting the game. 


I wouldnt mind seeing more of these later on, too, like if you do expansions or something (or even just for the heck of it) or in relation to other, future projects. 

139

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:01:31 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.

140

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:50:26 AM »

I definitely approve of this idea. I wouldn't worry too much about the "Do what ever to win, then stop" attitude, either. If folks want to play that way, don't waste effort stopping them.

Well why not sorta do both?  Give players a number they need to hit.   Whatever that is.   But ALSO encourage them to keep going past that point as far as they can, yet make it optional.   As for how to encourage it, heck if I know, that'd be for the rest of you to figure out, heh.


Either way though, the VP concept as a whole does sound like it should do the trick if implemented properly.   Definitely liking where this is all going.

141

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:37:16 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.

Hm, I think I see what you're saying here.

Like... encouraging the player to try for as many VPs as they can.... is a good thing, but if it's something like "just hit 40 VPs" alot of players will do exactly that number (the bottom).... and then simply stop accumulating or trying for them, and taking less risks.

142

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:11:31 AM »

Honestly, I like it.   This sounds like a very good solution.   It also sounds like a more "complete" goal to me, instead of just "survive and do the edict".   All 3 together sound better, if that makes sense.


In order to keep one side simply mimicking the other (which is part of the current problem), maybe have it be "Have one side use a couple of god tokens this round, but the other side must use none".  Objectives along that line are distinct things to shoot for, but they accomplish the goal of tilting balance as well.   Or maybe have both:  The "use one god token" is easier and might be, say, 3 points.  The "use two but only on one side" is a good bit harder and might be worth, I dunno, 7.   Stuff like that.   Is my only suggestion here.



It's a bloody good idea either way though.   If the game is encouraging the player to use the crazy "holy crap the blue guys all shoot 5 times at once and can fly for no apparent reason" sorts of items, the ideas behind the game should work just fine.   Particularly considering how MANY crazy items there are like that.   I think there's lotsa cool things that could be done with this idea.

143

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 08:03:45 AM »

I really love the mini-edicts idea by the way. The idea of each side having different contradictory edicts is a cool one as well.

Yeah, that's how I'd thought the original edicts were going to be.   Not just "Accomplish this by game end, using both sides at once", but instead, "Red side must do THIS.  Blue side must do THIS.  But both go in wildly different directions and are all sorts of lopsided, so good luck doing them without one side blowing the other to hell!".   Though, having the ENTIRE game to do something of that nature might still make it too slow to be all that tough.

I think the current Edicts work best as a framework.... the problem is that currently there isnt another concept within that frame.  The ideal situation (to me) would be:  "Ok, right now I wanna get the blue guys to do THIS, because of this thing over here that I've been given, but the red guys need to do this thing that goes in a whole other direction, and to accomplish both at once is going to make things really loopy because the red guys are going to end up with like 8 ice giants while the blue guys will have this horrible pile of siege units and a major effect buffing them and de-buffing the reds.... AND I mustnt forget the 2 main Edicts for the game as a whole".   And then of course you'd get random bandits and land growth on top of all of that, adding the finishing touches onto the balancing act.

However, if you know that round 2 and 3 were going to throw monkey wrenches into the works, it forces you not to only shoot for your primary objective, but to play a solid "general strategy" that will help set you up for whatever challenges come later.

That comes with its own set of problem. Two actually.

1. It puts the fate of your game in one very, very specific act of RNG. Yuck.

2. For round 1, it really constrains your options as you will be somewhat railroaded to take a single, generalized approach rather then a number of specific approaches that have the potential of doing a a narrow set of goals better.

Aye, is why I suggest that such a thing be optional;  you need to do the BIG edicts in order to win, that doesnt change.... but new pop-up-with-each-new-round things are optional.... you dont HAVE to do them if you dont think you can handle it or just dont want to, but it's alot more impressive and more challenging if you can win the game while defeating/fulfilling each of them that's thrown at you.


Also, omigod, ninjas.  So many.

144

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 07:33:16 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?

Oh, the tally bit was just an example I pulled outta who knows where.   As I said in my second post, where ninjas pop out of nowhere and we all post a heap of things all at once and I get totally lost, it could be all sorts of ideas.

The idea behind the score to me though was never just "how well did you play", but more of a "how far were you able to push things, how much were you able to wreck stuff and tilt the board with big effects while still recovering and maintaining everything?". 

145

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 07:23:40 AM »

I'd certainly like if score is replaced by more meaningful motivations to "play well". The edict system seems very AI-War, which I like a lot - and that's a game that has strong replay value without having a score.

My concern right now is how the game will play out. Score created a motivator (a weakish one I believe) to do things that seemed kinda dumb - like plop down overpowered myth tokens. Now, those tokens seems to serve more of the purpose of simply correcting imbalances, and are something you'd want to stay far far away from if things are mostly in equilibrium. Is this the goal?

Should I be building up a stockpile of hard to get resources to build these units, or should I ignore them completely and just "play well" so I never reach a situation where I need them. It sounds unfun to not try to build up for the powerful stuff.

Please keep in mind. I know things need to be implemented before I can judge the game as fun or not. All I can do not in the current state of the alpha is speculate.

What if every game had a big checklist of various things you can do for VPs (victory points). Like a point system, but with a variety of discrete objectives - where it's near impossible to complete all of them in a given game. For one example, you get 1 VP for every town center pair you have, up to a maximum of 10 (or whatever). You know, make points based off a set of very clear goals that the player can work toward, instead of them just finding goofy ways to game the system. This game has Euro-style board game roots, and VPs are a major part of that.

Aye, this stuff.

That's exactly my problem with it.   Explained a bit more concisely than I could, I think, hah.   I know the Edicts are there.... but what I've seen of those (that are listed so far) doesnt do it.  Like, the "build up 200 military units" one, for instance.   By simply doing (relatively) the same thing on each side, which is by far the most logical action, and making tweaks along the way as the RNG does it's thing, it's not an objective that would ever involve a major shift.   The other Edicts same exactly the same:  Where both sides need only do the same thing, never creating that tilt.   Worse though is that those are objectives that are done over the course of the entire game;  AKA, very slowly.   This game is at it's best when sudden, violent shifts.... perpetrated by the player.... occur, for reasons that somehow make sense. 


I'll point out, it doesnt HAVE to be a scoring system specifically.  I've been focusing on that idea too much in my yammerings on here, but it doesnt need to be specifically that idea.  Just that there needs to be SOMETHING motivating the player (constantly) to cause chaos and keep the balance out of whack while still maintaining,  beyond what the RNG might at times do (like bandits).  Something that makes the player say "Well, ok, things are balanced right now.... but if I want to try to get a lot of such and such, I need to prepare to cause some major mayhem here".   Preferrably with bigger, more risky mayhem bringing bigger rewards.   

Heck, one idea I'd had was something like mini-edicts, optional objectives that appear during each "round", yet are NOT the same for both sides, and are intentionally very lopsided and contradictive (so that pursuing them WOULD knock the balance all over the place, forcing the excellent strategic stuff to start up).    I know there's already bandits and all, but I've seen those as more of just a side danger.... kinda like barbarians in Civ, or similar things in other 4x games;  they're there, they provide some extra flavor and a little extra challenge and trouble, but they're never ever the central point of anything.   They merely add a little more to it and work with the bigger things that are already there.


There's probably LOTS of different ideas that could accomplish this very thing, though I havent any suggestions beyond that one.   I'm sure that you very creative devs could come up with something or other.   


EDIT:  Sorry, double post.    I was ninja'd, I tell you!

146

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 07:08:51 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.

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.

147

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 01:30:39 AM »

Different question for score-supporters:
 Is a broken-scoring system without high-scores and online-sharing better than no scoring system at release? You can't fix a broken score-board unless you invalidate all previous achievements - however, you can add in a scoreboard with a more balanced scoring system after release.

 The current problem is that scores for different activities do not reflect their difficulty at all.

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.

148

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 12:18:42 AM »

I'm just not understanding the point of playing the game without a score, or without some kind of win/lose system in its place.

Let's say that you just play to play...and you beat the game after 3 tries. Yay! Okay now what? Do I play it again and try something new? If I beat it the second time, how do I know if I did any better than the first time? If I play it a 3rd time, how do I know I did any better than the second time? Am I just playing to play? How can I even tell if I'm getting better? Does"better" even exist without a score or objective?

Seems something is missing, I probably just don't understand some aspect of the plan.

Yeah, same here.   Not to mention, when I play it I always get the impression that it was designed from the ground up to be played with scoring or something along that line in place, since the challenges faced by the player are most of the time also purposely created by the player.   And why create those challenging situations in the first place?  Because it gets you something, which originally was a higher score.   Makes perfect sense to me.... doesnt really make sense without it.

149

Skyward Collapse / Re: Buildings questions

« on: May 06, 2013, 12:03:52 AM »

From what I've heard about buildings, with no points, it doesn't seem to be very worthwhile to upgrade.

Even with the scoring, it still didnt seem very useful in it's current form.  There's usually better strategic options/necessities than the building upgrades. 

I like the IDEA of having the building upgrades, but..... hmm.   I dont know what I could suggest to make it better.

150

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 06, 2013, 12:00:55 AM »

It's a win/win situation, so long as the core gameplay doesnt attempt to FORCE players to get good scores (and it's very, very rare that they do).

It isn't win/win if the scoring is the hook to keep you playing.  Then its lose/win.  People who care about their score get a re-playable game, everyone else gets a one-shot.  In most cases, Achievements are superior hooks to scores anyway.  Not to mention in the early stages of a game a lot is going to be changing balance-wise.  As a result, any score system they tried to implement would be largely arbitrary.  Until the game balance settles more, we aren't really going to know what's worth a lot of points and what's cheap.  They've got a ton to do, quite a bit of it balancing.  I don't think trying to force out a weakly balance point system is useful.

Ah, but the exact same could be said about the achievement system.

To some players, it means alot.  I can understand this.

To others.... like myself.... it's utterly worthless. I ignore those, as I always have.  Frankly, I'd like it if games gave me the option to simply turn the accursed thing off.    Of all things I dislike in gaming, those are the absolute peak of it.   No amount of explanations or reasons will ever convince me otherwise.  I've loathed them since the moment they first appeared all those years ago.

Yet, adding achievements is still, even to me, a win-win situation, as with the scoring.... because I dont *have* to use them.  I can indeed utterly ignore them, and that wont impact the game for me at all.  It'll still be just as good to me without it.  Yet they will improve it for others.


You do not yourself have to understand why a system/mechanic/whatever like the scoring is a good idea for it to BE a good idea.   Part of the point is that it opens the game up to more players.   You may think the scoring arbitrary, but others will disagree.   And part of MY point is.... if you dont like the scoring, simply ignore it.   Hell, they could put an option in to simply turn it off.  There's little reason not to.    It's only a win-lose situation if it honestly impacts your gameplay to ignore it.... and since you seem to simply not care, and also since the game never forces any of it on you, that will never be the case.   But it *will* open the game up to more people if these things are included.  That's a simple fact.