Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227 
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
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Post by Raspofabs on Oct 23, 2014 13:43:32 GMT
Though I would still warn you for clogging up the interface if you keep each settlement 'seperate' in design, since having dozens of different settlement types to scroll through won't make the game play any better. (I'm sure you can think of adequate ways of dealing with the, be it through 'clever' resource production settlements or through other means that reduce the clutter.) Wouldn't want the settlement interface to be the timeline all over with a scrollbar that takes 30 seconds to get through. Timelines and menus don't interest me. I prefer to leash a follower to a plot, and then have that plot grow, and upgrade into a village / town / city. I think I'd prefer to have the level up button have a twin that specialises it. Have you played kingdom rush? I like the linear, then split idea for upgrades. This would let you plot out a few places then upgrade towards a goal at a later point. That or maybe have a generic Settlement squish power, but the power has an "option" to change / make a new settlement of a type based on the current size, and the types of house / settlement that are in the squish. Also, that would mean you'd have to be able to squish settelments together. That would probably feel a bit like levelling up in Final Fantasy Tactics. Anyway, I prefer "at the point you interact" menus / options, over large menus full of choices. Overall I believe that Godus has been taking the 'stick' approach a bit too often, trying to force players to play in a singular effective way by making it the only valid way and punishing all others. As opposed to using the 'carrot' approach and making specific ways more attractive through improved results. I'm not shy of a stick, but it has to be one that can be avoided, or has to be a lesson to be learned. Like in most racing games, you learn to not go too fast around a corner otherwise you end up sanded, in Godus you can learn to not overpopulate, otherwise pollution rears its head, and you end up with a dead settlement, and an expensive clean up job before you can try to build it up again. |
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Post by Danjal on Oct 23, 2014 14:10:53 GMT
I agree with you that such an interface could very well prove to be even better. From what you've posted (now and in the past) it seems that your view on how to do things meshes well with that of what a lot of the PC crowd would like to see in general. The idea that you have a 'basic' version that grows or upgrades overtime and gains specializations once certain criteria are met (population size, belief, production, technology etc) does appeal to me personally. The Kingdom Rush concept as you propose is also very viable. Though as I've come to understand. Peter and the design team disagree there and would rather go with alternate routes that in terms of gameplay end up being very limited and limiting. =( As for using the stick, the stick has its place. Thats for sure. Its just that currently, there's only the stick. "No you're playing the game wrong." seems to be a prominent opinion by some people at 22cans. I certainly hope that that will change. Enlightening to read your opinion and thoughts as always Raspofabs! |
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Post by engarde on Oct 23, 2014 14:53:48 GMT
Weird I was trying to quote Raspofabs and I NEVER got textual content when I saved it - so I've deleted my failed attempt.
So
'in Godus you can learn to not overpopulate, otherwise pollution rears its head'
not sure I'd agree with that statement.
Yes a few updates ago I noticed my mines and surrounds looked scourged and happiness dipped - so beautify et al corrected it.
Homeworld is mostly dead for me now with no expansions there but I do swing in and do some house keeping, and the happiness does dip - but I can find neither unhappy followers nor scourged land that suggested mining excess, but again beautify and fountain help it.
It's all very well to say do not over populate but homeworld had a 5k max pop level, so once I hit that I stopped building mines or farms etc - I have a round 6k pop currently - I've seen other players have 20k population on homeworld.
To get the mines to get the ore in a reasonable time - before they trebled in time to collect - needs a lot of mines. Which means more population which means...
Equally
'Timelines and menus don't interest me'
nor me but I keep having them force on me.
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
Steam: raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Oct 23, 2014 15:32:48 GMT
'in Godus you can learn to not overpopulate, otherwise pollution rears its head' not sure I'd agree with that statement. Yes a few updates ago I noticed my mines and surrounds looked scourged and happiness dipped - so beautify et al corrected it. Homeworld is mostly dead for me now with no expansions there but I do swing in and do some house keeping, and the happiness does dip - but I can find neither unhappy followers nor scourged land that suggested mining excess, but again beautify and fountain help it. The current game doesn't hurt you for mining gems that much, indeed, you can just beautify it away as you say, but I was referring to a potential pollution that makes this feature work. Something that is much harder, more expensive to rectify, and better for the player to prevent rather than treat. I'd suggest some kind of radioactive swap or "drain" of souls, that makes it so that building there is just pointless for some considerable time. I should change "you can learn" to "you could learn", to make it more obvious I'm not talking about any existing pollution mechanic. |
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Post by engarde on Oct 23, 2014 16:06:24 GMT
Fair enough
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Post by Gmr Leon on Oct 23, 2014 17:11:43 GMT
Edit: -Transfer of people would be great too, which wouldn't totally solve the overpopulation problem (as Danjal and I have proposed, there are numerous "easy" ways to do this), it would still reduce it slightly. Could be adjusted similar to other resource transfers at the lighthouse. -Worlds dedicated to back and forth combat could be a thing now, similar in some respects to my voyage suggestion earlier, except perhaps even more active than I proposed (maybe no total conquest of these worlds or something? basically turn them into a follower meatgrinder for quick access to resources through looted enemy villages). The overpopulation problem could be fixed with the ideas I've seen from you guys. I prefer the solutions that are to do with inherent difficulty of maintaining larger populations. I'm not sure who's ideas I'm merging here, but my favourite is some combination of the following: - cities that pollute, and having a birth rate that can go negative, but are the largest source of belief.
- farming villages, have to be small otherwise farmer to farm distance affects gathering time.
- trade towns, medium size, large enough to have enough workers to process resources, which are required to push cities past their natural popcaps.
- coastal villages, hill villages, other hamlets that are concentrated around resource gathering and production all in the intention of 10x or 100x empowering the cities that they are feeding.
- Building any of the smaller places near a city makes it affected by the pollution.
- Building too many small villages near each other makes no sense as they usually are small because their gathering requires "space" from which to gather, and overlapping helps no-one unless it's orthogonal resources, such as the hunters can work side by side with the foresters, as they don't interfere, but farmers and foresters make no sense as the trees would get in the way of the fields, and miners wont share because of the unique landscape requirements.
With that, I think it would be inevitable that people would build more realistic towns, cities, and villages that provide and produce, and consume, resources. In my opinion, it's really important to enforce through gestures of what is possible, rather than take the whip to someone because they are not doing it how you intended. That's why I don't like the new "high resource" areas. They are the wrong sort of positive reinforcement. Out of curiosity, why do you prefer difficulties of maintaining larger pops over difficulty of maintaining any stable pop? Not that I don't also enjoy that at times, mind you, but it puts me more in the mind of games like SimCity and Civilization. It's an interesting, but somewhat strange vibe to try to integrate into a game that feels more like a RTS, at least in my mind. If you were to implement that, it seems like it could more easily turn somewhat tedious if not well-calibrated. Anyway, going more into the specific ideas you describe, I think they would all make the game far, far more interesting than it is now. My only minor concern/frustration is that I'm also heavily vested in the civilization to civilization interactions, which this doesn't go into too much detail on. As much as I find developing my own civilization interesting, I find the possibility of interacting with other ones to be what keeps me building and unlocking ways to interact with them. It's part of the reason I don't have too much time spent actually building and maintaining cities in SimCity games, and more time destroying them. >_> If it's all going nowhere/towards nothing other than my goals, but the game does not (because it simply cannot, often by design) recognize them, then...I'm going to find more fun in seeing the city disrupted than seeing it built up. Similar to how in open world games, if the plot loses your interest, you make your own goal what gives you the most freedom within the system, which is generally breaking/disrupting other systems in place. Every other system is intended/carefully designed and tries to instill a sense of progression, but often misses the mark through making it feel like busywork. See: Destiny caves for a great recent example. Or any other MMO farming/grinding spots. Those emerge as a result of design failure to better acknowledge player interests. In Godus' case it would be carefully sculpting to make only size one abodes/farms/mines. Anyway, sorry, slight tangent there. I've been on an emergent interactions/systems bend lately, much prefer very loose designs that still challenge players but also give way to their own approach to the gameplay. |
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
Steam: raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Oct 24, 2014 8:11:00 GMT
Out of curiosity, why do you prefer difficulties of maintaining larger pops over difficulty of maintaining any stable pop? Not that I don't also enjoy that at times, mind you, but it puts me more in the mind of games like SimCity and Civilization. It's an interesting, but somewhat strange vibe to try to integrate into a game that feels more like a RTS, at least in my mind. If you were to implement that, it seems like it could more easily turn somewhat tedious if not well-calibrated. Why? Because I am not a designer and very likely it's just what I'm thinking right now and I don't have the experience to notice that I was being fixated on solving a symptom not addressing the true problem. I think your kind of insight is of utmost importance when designing a game. I have never worked as part of a design team, and I think that is probably why I still design like a programmer, I design by asking "what's wrong?" and try to solve the problem. It takes someone like you make me realise that I might be solving a problem that is inherent in the basic rules of play. If I ever start my own company, I'm going to stick my finger in design decisions, but I'm not ever going to be lead designer  |
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Post by Danjal on Oct 24, 2014 9:17:12 GMT
To be fair, I think that there is a flipside to that coin.
Which is EXACTLY what is happening to Godus right now - by having it designed by someone who has no insight with the internal mechanics.
Someone who doesn't ask the question "What is wrong?" and instead only looks at the marketable potential and 'design' of the game.
A good game ultimately needs both sides, not just one or the other.
From observation, Godus seems to go through its design very single-mindedly. Each 'fix' or 'solution' appears to be tailor-made for a single symptom, without looking beyond it and asking the question "What is wrong, what causes this symptom to be there in the first place?"
Bandaids are being placed to stop the superficial bleeding, but the internal hemorrhaging is being ignored.
All because on the surface it is a more profitable fix.
Taking those steps back, then looking at the whole situation/problem objectively - thats needed to find a good solution.
Thats why I believe Early Access as a model has such great potential, because you have eyes on the ball from all sides.
Its next to impossible not to have SOME people notice and remark on something you yourself have overlooked.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Oct 24, 2014 17:13:15 GMT
Out of curiosity, why do you prefer difficulties of maintaining larger pops over difficulty of maintaining any stable pop? Not that I don't also enjoy that at times, mind you, but it puts me more in the mind of games like SimCity and Civilization. It's an interesting, but somewhat strange vibe to try to integrate into a game that feels more like a RTS, at least in my mind. If you were to implement that, it seems like it could more easily turn somewhat tedious if not well-calibrated. Why? Because I am not a designer and very likely it's just what I'm thinking right now and I don't have the experience to notice that I was being fixated on solving a symptom not addressing the true problem. I think your kind of insight is of utmost importance when designing a game. I have never worked as part of a design team, and I think that is probably why I still design like a programmer, I design by asking "what's wrong?" and try to solve the problem. It takes someone like you make me realise that I might be solving a problem that is inherent in the basic rules of play. If I ever start my own company, I'm going to stick my finger in design decisions, but I'm not ever going to be lead designer Mm. I think I can see where you're coming from. I have a habit of getting ahead of myself and looking at where I envision the overall piece coming into being, but once it comes to the details, as much as I can figure them out, it quickly diminishes my interest in putting them together so the whole piece will emerge as I'd imagined*. I guess that's more of a design mindset than engineer/programmer mindset, but much of my inspiration comes from taking an engineer's sweep through what I can observe in something, then falling apart when it comes to building the necessary components part to actualize it. *Mostly because of not being able to predict user interest and knowing that generally what I'm imagining isn't all for myself, since I'll already know how to navigate it/explore it. Nothing less exciting than walking about a house you designed and built, in my opinion. Reason I don't have much built in Minecraft really, it all feels hollow without something else interacting with it. However as Danjal notes, you do need something of a back and forth balance of designer/builder, because while I can easily imagine the basic concept and some basic components, I'll probably be overlooking some interesting additions. For example, I can design and build some great static homes in Minecraft, but you might say, this would be more interesting with a complex switch/lock system to open/close doors and windows, something I wasn't thinking of because I was too busy thinking of the overall appearance and feel of the structure. Similarly, you might point out that the structure is missing easily accessed routes because I was too busy thinking of how much more interesting it would be to figure out how to get in through odd angles. I might have noted those problems at first, but got too caught up in trying to implement the higher level ideas that I forgot to revisit them, after all. Which fortunately doesn't happen too often in my case, normally I just get too lazy to finish addressing and implementing them and never release stuff. Instead what typically happens is that something completely new is introduced from someone else's perspective that I hadn't initially considered, despite how stupidly obvious it seems in retrospect. I think this is a lot of where Danjal and I butt heads in these discussions, actually. Danjal sometimes/often approaches it from your angle, whereas I'm always striving for a blended perspective of fine details and bigger picture. Kind of a, no point in fixing the wiring if you can replace the lightbulb and no point in replacing the lightbulb if the wiring needs repaired situation, if you will. I often take the first approach, given our limited take on how much we can affect decisions at 22cans, while Danjal and others take the second approach because, well, switching out how we interface with the gameplay mechanics won't actually change those mechanics and their unappealing qualities, which I absolutely get. But being stuck as an observer, I find it hard to drift too far one way or the other. |
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Post by Danjal on Oct 24, 2014 18:29:26 GMT
However as Danjal notes, you do need something of a back and forth balance of designer/builder, because while I can easily imagine the basic concept and some basic components, I'll probably be overlooking some interesting additions. For example, I can design and build some great static homes in Minecraft, but you might say, this would be more interesting with a complex switch/lock system to open/close doors and windows, something I wasn't thinking of because I was too busy thinking of the overall appearance and feel of the structure. Similarly, you might point out that the structure is missing easily accessed routes because I was too busy thinking of how much more interesting it would be to figure out how to get in through odd angles. Hehehe, this amuses me greatly - because I literally end up doing the opposite. I focus on the internal mechanics, the purpose and functionality - and I dress the surroundings afterwards. You could say that I build from the inside out, as opposed to from the outside in. Reasoning that you can often tailor-make your outer design, to fit the inside mechanics. But once you've build your room, its harder to fit things inside if you forgot to account for the extra room needed (which then forces you to expand). Its also why in Minecraft I generally get bored with 'vanilla' play and move on to modded, because the mods offer so much more versatility and functionality. Or even aesthetic options (some of the furniture mods are amazing). The upside is that when the two visions collide, it enables people to see problems or possibilities that the other overlooks. Which can lead to surprising revelations or solutions. |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Oct 24, 2014 18:53:36 GMT
However as Danjal notes, you do need something of a back and forth balance of designer/builder, because while I can easily imagine the basic concept and some basic components, I'll probably be overlooking some interesting additions. For example, I can design and build some great static homes in Minecraft, but you might say, this would be more interesting with a complex switch/lock system to open/close doors and windows, something I wasn't thinking of because I was too busy thinking of the overall appearance and feel of the structure. Similarly, you might point out that the structure is missing easily accessed routes because I was too busy thinking of how much more interesting it would be to figure out how to get in through odd angles. Hehehe, this amuses me greatly - because I literally end up doing the opposite. I focus on the internal mechanics, the purpose and functionality - and I dress the surroundings afterwards. You could say that I build from the inside out, as opposed to from the outside in. Reasoning that you can often tailor-make your outer design, to fit the inside mechanics. But once you've build your room, its harder to fit things inside if you forgot to account for the extra room needed (which then forces you to expand). Its also why in Minecraft I generally get bored with 'vanilla' play and move on to modded, because the mods offer so much more versatility and functionality. Or even aesthetic options (some of the furniture mods are amazing). The upside is that when the two visions collide, it enables people to see problems or possibilities that the other overlooks. Which can lead to surprising revelations or solutions. For sure. I tend to go after a synchronous approach, literally the organic approach of internal formations and external formations coinciding to produce something great. This way instead of having to wrap up some machinery at the end, I'm wrapping all of it together as I go and getting something more fascinating at the end than if you put an ugly shell around some fantastic internals.* *coughdwarffortresscough* Two of my favorite examples of some devs adopting this approach recently have to be both Limit Theory and No Man's Sky, by offloading some of the aesthetic/mechanical fittings to procedural algorithms, they're able to increase overall complexity while retaining elegant aesthetics and smooth user experiences. A wonderful version of what I'd love to teach myself to do some day or work with others that know how to make that happen. Another example of this, by the way, is Spire by Hitbox Team. It's not getting nearly enough attention due to its too little to show yet state, but they've some interesting ideas concerning this as well. *Just imagine if your body waited till the end to wrap up the bones in muscles, or the muscles in flesh, it's as bad as trying to fit the bones into muscles or the muscles into flesh. D= Latter's maybe a little more of a mess than the former, but with the former, you've gotta remember all the nerves, veins, lymph vessels, tendons/ligaments, etc. at which point you may never wrap it up. Much, much better to do stuff at once as you're going from region to region. |
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Post by Danjal on Oct 24, 2014 19:40:02 GMT
The problem with the way you describe it is that you need to know everything beforehand - or continually have to alter things as you go on to make sure the end result is still fitting.
There are some developers and designers out there that can pull this off, but on the whole most will rely more on one side or the other.
And while it is true that sometimes, you end up with marvelous insides and hideous (or 'absent') outsides (a.k.a. dwarf fortress), at the same time its a good idea to keep in mind that Dwarf Fortress isn't particularly something that is commonplace. Or even realistically plausible on this scale.
If it had been developed with a smooth exterior surface in mind.
Unless you have some really skilled and insightful people at hand, its often hard if not outright impossible to account for everything and keep everything smooth.
Sometimes, you need to figure out what all the bones, muscles, nerves, bloodvessels and other organs are - before you can put it all together into a single body.
Afterall, "Homo Sapiens v0.1" didn't necessarily come featurecomplete =P Things were added and removed along the way.
So there are flaws and oversights with either approach. Having a good looking human is nice, but if he's lacking certain features then it all falls apart.
Similarly, having a fully functional human is nice - but if he doesn't have the looks well... He may not be having much luck getting a date. =P
Which I guess is why there's so damned many different models.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Oct 24, 2014 19:51:51 GMT
The problem with the way you describe it is that you need to know everything beforehand - or continually have to alter things as you go on to make sure the end result is still fitting. There are some developers and designers out there that can pull this off, but on the whole most will rely more on one side or the other. And while it is true that sometimes, you end up with marvelous insides and hideous (or 'absent') outsides (a.k.a. dwarf fortress), at the same time its a good idea to keep in mind that Dwarf Fortress isn't particularly something that is commonplace. Or even realistically plausible on this scale. If it had been developed with a smooth exterior surface in mind. Unless you have some really skilled and insightful people at hand, its often hard if not outright impossible to account for everything and keep everything smooth. Sometimes, you need to figure out what all the bones, muscles, nerves, bloodvessels and other organs are - before you can put it all together into a single body. Afterall, "Homo Sapiens v0.1" didn't necessarily come featurecomplete =P Things were added and removed along the way. So there are flaws and oversights with either approach. Having a good looking human is nice, but if he's lacking certain features then it all falls apart. Similarly, having a fully functional human is nice - but if he doesn't have the looks well... He may not be having much luck getting a date. =P Which I guess is why there's so damned many different models. Yup. Nature's got it easy. Fortunately I don't mind the continual alteration model, especially if you can replace the necessity of conscious attention with computed/procedural attention, but if that's not in the cards, you have to make a series of choices to get as close as you can to whatever ends you're after. (And now I'm thinking of Civ: Beyond Earth and some of its translations of software design to real-world materials and I can't wait to pick it up sometime.) |
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Post by Spiderweb on Dec 23, 2014 20:55:42 GMT
There is a hell of a lot in this thread so please forgive me if I repeat anything someone else may have suggested as I new on these boards and thread was TL;DR.
My idea would be to use brushes more as opposed the leashes.
What I mean is. If you want your followers to mine. You paint an area. Miners actively search for these painted areas and dig away the painted layer. As they return they deposits minerals back home. Home would be a purposed abode rather than settlements(to start with) I think this should also apply to farms, paint a farm area and they find space and build a farm. Could also have lumber brush, followers grow and harvest trees. Fishermen etc I think a brush is not as forceful as leashes.
I also think sculpting should come with some sort of area of influence temple or similar powered by the belief from your followers that you don't collect it just accumulates, if you reach a max for the temple you can upgrade it to a larger temple with a bigger area of influence. But you can only sculpt in that. But you do it for free! That's right no belief!
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Post by hardly on Dec 23, 2014 21:50:46 GMT
There is a hell of a lot in this thread so please forgive me if I repeat anything someone else may have suggested as I new on these boards and thread was TL;DR. My idea would be to use brushes more as opposed the leashes. What I mean is. If you want your followers to mine. You paint an area. Miners actively search for these painted areas and dig away the painted layer. As they return they deposits minerals back home. Home would be a purposed abode rather than settlements(to start with) I think this should also apply to farms, paint a farm area and they find space and build a farm. Could also have lumber brush, followers grow and harvest trees. Fishermen etc I think a brush is not as forceful as leashes. I also think sculpting should come with some sort of area of influence temple or similar powered by the belief from your followers that you don't collect it just accumulates, if you reach a max for the temple you can upgrade it to a larger temple with a bigger area of influence. But you can only sculpt in that. But you do it for free! That's right no belief! Sounds good, let's do those things. |
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Post by hardly on Dec 23, 2014 22:03:08 GMT
My ideas from a while back are in this link. There are other threads where I've put up positive suggestions but who knows where they are buried. The great tragedy of godus has been that while the community has at times provided genuinely positive, constructive and eloquent feedback this has been useless to 22cans as they chase the great mobile dollar. godus.boards.net/thread/220/constructive-design-ideas-godus |
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Dec 23, 2014 23:05:02 GMT
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Post by Spiderweb on Dec 24, 2014 8:19:45 GMT
Before I get into some constructive suggestions for GODUS I want to mention the most recent video. Peter obviously is distressed by the level of community fury about the state of GODUS. Now there are some pretty strong views about the fairness of that. I don't want to get into the blame game in this thread but before I offer up some positive suggestions for GODUS let me say that 22Cans you don't have to implement changes to get us off your back, you just need to tell us about specific changes you are going to make that address our concerns. Once we have confidence that you are moving away from FTP on the PC we will calm down.
The current situation with GODUS is like a car going the wrong way down a one way street. 22Cans is the driver and the gaming community are the passengers. We are shouting at you to turn around and go the right way, 22Cans response has been to drive faster, we shout more and 22Cans say "well go faster I promise" in response. You need to hear us and do a 180 degree turn. Its not the progress that matters so much as the direction of travel. So if you want to cool things down a bit just make some promises that are broad (gives you room to move) but that clearly show the divergence between PC and Mobile that you will deliver. If both games keep moving in the same direction this wont end well for anyone involved.
Now my positive suggestions for mechanics. I've tried to work within the context of where GODUS is today.
•Priests, temples and such - I think priests collecting belief and taking it to a central building (church, temple, mosque, etc) that automatically beams that belief into space is great. I read it somewhere on the forums and its a good idea. This will be an automation of the belief collection that also adds variety to what your people do.
•Mountains are for mining - One of the reasons people flatten all the terrain is because (1) we have to hit population limits and (2) there is no benefit to mountains. Mountains should be for mining (low mountains for stone perhaps and high mountains for ore), you should only be able to mine at a certain altitude. This will encourage us to leave/build high points for mining. I'd consider starting the map of flat and incentivising the player to build mountains for their people. A mountain could also boost the belief/happiness of the nearby people e.g. Mount Fuji.
•Forests are for chopping - Same as with the mountains we strip the forests to clear land (probably the scarcest resource in GODUS) for expansion. We need to make forests cool. What if our people could be taught to sustainably harvest forests? What if forests were needed for building? What if we could grow forests with our powers? What if when we grew a forest it changed the way our followers worshiped us?
•Optimal altitudes - We want a varied map so we need all the terrain types to have their own purpose, if we can get say five different terrain types/heights that all interact with different resource collection mechanics that would really incentivise creating an interesting environment - sand/beach could be for fishing, plains for sheep, grass for grain, and higher terrain for mining.
•A real science system - One of the biggest complaints is about stickers. Stickers aren't actually that bad except for how we get them and how they are used. GODUS needs a science system. I suggest in the early ages priests also produce science which can be spent on "stickers" which can then be applied to different cards in the timeline. The timeline obviously needs to be reworked to make it less linear and to add choice but for now if you could get rid of the chests and make our followers build the stickers that would be a start.
•Great projects - In 1.3 it seems 22Cans felt we had too much belief, so to prevent us flattening the planet they reigned it back. If you want to soak up some belief then for a start make it so belief doesn't generate out of game, then give us some things to use it on other than expansion. I suggest great projects that look awesome and give us a small bonus somewhere but are more cosmetic than gameplay related. I'm thinking the great pyramids of giza, Notre Dame, the acropolis, the colossus of Rhodes type stuff. They would take a long time to complete but unlike some of our current timers there would be no limit on the amount of people dedicated to the task. So like 4 weeks of gameplay time with one person, but with 672 people it would take an hour. These projects would soak up manpower, resources and belief. There could be achievements for the people who build them first or build the biggest one in the case of a pyramid. Oh GODUS this is starting to sound a bit FTP. I just think that if you could look out and see some great works that have been constructed in your honour it would make you feel like a powerful god. Obviously there should be bonuses as well and these could carry over into some of the multiplayer games as well perhaps as long as it can be balanced. Belief is used in the construction of these because you need to inspire your people to build this symbol of your power.
•Take off the limits on belief and sculpting - You need to make sculpting cheap so we can do more of it and you need to make it easier. Reduce the cost of sculpting or increase the rate of belief generation. Also to make sculpting easier add in the option of holding the mouse to raise land or lowering it. That way it will be easy for us to make mountains. Give us multilevel sculpting early in the game. The challenge shouldn't be to expand across the map (that is why you have limits at the moment), the challenge should be to make an awesome civilisation. If we have varied terrain, great works, farms, mines, more professions, fountains and heaps of stuff to balance along the way then you wont need to hold us back from levelling the whole map.
•Fountains (and other gifts) - fountains are actually a cool idea but the way they were suggested by 22Cans is crap. No clicking on fountains. If we build fountains with belief that is cool although a stone resource requirement would enhance it. Once its built it should be automated (this goes for pretty much everything in GODUS please never have click, wait, click, wait, click for anything) with follower visiting to get the water they need. You could keep the happiness mechanic or you could do something else (see below).
•Self upgrading dwellings - Caeser and SimCity both have the idea of self upgrading dwellings that evolve as the infrastructure around them improves and as people get access to desirable resources. With fountains, and other improvements you could go down the path of having dwellings improve as the population get access to improved resources and services. Its an idea that is done before but it is a good one.
Ok that is enough for now. It would be awesome if others could chip in with their thoughts.
Remember you don't have to implement the changes to get us off your back, just tell us about the changes at a high level and once we get the idea that your taking FTP mechanics out and moving away from mobile we'll be more patient and you'll be less stressed. It might take 2 years to make GODUS a good game off the backs of money spent by whales who play the mobile version but if that's what it takes lets get started now. One final point, Peter mentions minecraft a lot which is fine because it is a great game but the truth is minecraft looks like shit. So maybe some of the changes can be included and not animated that well. If you automate belief without priest collection and beams into the sky as an interim measure that is fine, just tell us your vision and give us a reprieve from FTP and well be grateful I promise.
Oh and you should bring your ideas to us early in the brainstorming process. You have hundreds of people here you can spitball with and I bet you'll get better results if you bring us Peter's earliest ideas and bounce them around on the forums for a week.
I'm cooking dinner so I'll come back and edit this later.
Awesome ideas, maybe now we have a different design lead he might be receptive to this discussions. I also do think 22cans are missing a trick, I never really did forums before Godus, but to me if they had embraced the community via a Game council or such (as GK suggests in his farewell post), they'd have a bunch of basically free employees. We give our ideas, suggestions and time for free, we discuss the minutiae from design and engineering/development angles even before implementation, we QA for free. If he had said, I'm planning to use cards and stickers or squish settlements together what does the game council think, I got to develop for mobile due to revenue, thinking of using gemswhat would make for attractive features in both PC and mobile or even how does that go down with the community he would of known they weren't good ideas before he even implemented. Proves how old school Peter really is. |
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Post by hardly on Dec 24, 2014 8:42:28 GMT
To be fair we did tell george we didn't want the game council but the reason for that is we didn't trust the relationship with peter not because a game council was a fundamentally bad idea. There was no point implementing a game council when they were already ignoring the main thrust of the feedback.
There have been so many great ideas on this forum and steam but they all went into the void. It was never really explained to us why different ideas weren't considered but we basically put it down to the fact that 22cans didn't want to develop the type of game we expected based on kickstarter.
Even Fabs did some brainstorming with us which was great but he had no influence on the design process. What you generally find in the community is a fairly universal view of what sucks about godus and what would improve it as we see with the acceptance of your suggestions. The problem is that there is/was a bottom line that meant that any suggestion that went against mobile design couldn't be considered.
It's possible furious moo has enough control to strip godus back like a bad paint job and rebuild it but I seriously doubt it. He would need to decouple it from the money maker mobile and that would be tough. If I'm wrong and he does start down that path it's possible the game will improve and evolve in an interesting direction.
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Post by militairensneuvelen on Jan 12, 2015 13:24:09 GMT
Hey lads and ladettes, This is a very interesting thread with lots of great idea's. Many of those idea's must have crossed the minds of several different people here. I think we need to know a bit more about game assets & Godus (technically) so we can think of sensible suggestions. What would adding X amount of follower types do to performance? I can imagine that it would scale down, comparing a follower(scripted,animated,sound) with a tree (animated asset), and further with a rock/abode(pretty much dead). Some info about this would be nice. Also, how feasible is adding extra combat types anyway? It requires quite a bit of scripting/AI next to what regular followers do (go to plot X, animation B, fatigued?, go home) Specially if AI needs to make tactical decisions (attacking the closest target could well be the best thing possible, overhead wise) How achievable would adding 2 types of plant to each biome? (Basic plant on basic soil. Add "beautify" you get plant B, Add swamp you get plant C???) How achievable would changing the use of rocks like imagined in the plants idea be??? (Basic rock on basic soil. Add "beautify" you get Ore, Add swamp and you get coal(or something else)  ) Because I kinda feel like "Blinkin" from Robin Hood: Men in Tights ("guessing where the enemy comes from" (see, he's blind...)) We need some boundaries or at least ideas what can and can't be done. Pretty please with sugar on top. (Maybe in a separate thread even) |
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