Matthew Allen
Former 22Cans staff
Full Time Rock Star
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Pledge level: Elemental
Steam: MrMatthewAllen
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Post by Matthew Allen on Aug 14, 2014 17:23:09 GMT
Since releasing Godus v2.1 last Friday we’ve had a lot of really useful comments from the community (as well as more than few support requests, too). This week, we’ve been hard at work implementing a ton of changes based on this feedback. The update, released on Steam today, includes a bunch of exciting new cards, new gifts and some important bug fixes. New stuff:- New Gift: Flag - allows you to put a flagpole in your world to increase happiness and look cool. (more flags to come!)
- New Gift: School of Fish - Fish can now be placed in the sea.
- New Card: Statue of Belief Collection - added, enables you to store some belief when you're not there to pick it up.
- New Card: Tree Buff - The tree buff upgrade card further increases the amount of belief produced by abodes in the vicinity of trees.
- New Card: Super Follower Boost - Boost your followers even more, making them work harder and longer.
Fixes:- Stopped campfires being created on top of gem seams and granite
- Fix for rock colours being wrong in some situations
- Fix for part of the fountain tutorial not appearing.
- Destination button in events now only appears if there is at least one event to pick from.
- Happiness and gift balancing
- Fixed some tooltip locations
- Reduced Astari Fire damage, to fix bug with them being too easy to kill
- Tree of joy springs up out of the floor rather than being dropped
- Gems only rewarded after all followers have climbed pit of doom steps
- Fix to prevent temples ending up in the water whilst sculpting
- Tweaks to happiness for homeless followers
- During leashing tutorial leashes, will only be accepted if they end on the layer of the temple itself or the one under it.
- Removing rotation snap back
- Balance file changes
- Settlements with courtyards now allow followers to go back home
- Minor colour tweaks to trees and beautify
- Fixes to Mac audio when sacrificing followers
- New splash screen text
- Revised colours for trees on various landscapes
Coming soon – mod our balance files!Probably the most frequently requested changes we make to the game by the Steam Early Access community and our Kickstarter backers is that we reduce the wait timers for Godus on PC and Mac. In the spirit of collaboration with the community, we will be implementing a major change to the way we set our balance files for all aspects of Godus. In the near future, we will be providing you with the ability to manually set many of the values within the balance files for yourself. We will then collate your feedback with the intention of making global adjustments to Godus on PC and Mac based on your collective contributions. You’ll be able to access the balance file values form with the settings menu: This will take you to the in-game Balance Changer, which will allow you set the values for Abodes… …for Followers… …and also for Belief. A simple interface will allow you to set these values however you wish. Want everything to be built instantly or to have Belief costs set to zero? Now you’ll have the ability to do so from within the game. You’ll then be able to update your game or, if you want to start again from scratch, restore them to their default settings. However, what we really, really want you to do is share your edited balance files with us and let us know how and why you think your changes make the game more enjoyable. We’re hoping there’s consistency in your replies, but we’re also aware that people will want to play according to their own preferred play style. It’s here that your feedback will be vital to help us understand why you’ve made particular changes. So, be bold! Be detailed! And please don’t skimp out on any of the more juicy parts to your reasoning. We want Godus to be a game that you keep coming back to, so what better way of doing that than by engaging our core players? As always, we keep a close eye on all of the feedback from our community, so please continue to share your thoughts in either our official forum, our Steam Early Access forum or the 22cans Facebook page. |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 14, 2014 21:54:15 GMT
I think its safe to say that the new gem calculations have completely broken the game. Rather than calculating it properly, the game holds the people there untill the next time the map is being loaded and then ejects them all at once as you can see here:  Now as for the balancing aspect. I suspect that this will blow up entirely. It will be impossible to find the "proper" balances between all the people that just either fill in random numbers or that lower it down to practically zero. I'm curious to hear the motivation behind this decision from the cans. It sounds very much like a childish "Well if you can do it better, HERE! YOU DO IT!" kneejerk reaction. Even if it is not, and there is a proper reason behind it (and there are various I can think of), it seems a bit odd to do this NOW. Some of us have suggested this months ago - and then it got ignored. So why now? And how do you intend to filter out the good data from the bad? Aren't you already swamped in Analytics data without context? Wouldn't adding more data to the pile make it even more impossible to find out where you should go? One reason I could think of for this, is to let the players tinker with balancing while the cans work on actually fixing some of the underlying problems. Namely - there's nothing to do in the game right now. But doing so would render our balancing completely useless as it would completely alter the new game balance again. So there's that. I suspect that I'll have to start over on a fresh and clean world - but given what I know of the game so far. It just isn't able to cope with the hundreds/thousands of followers trundling around on the map. |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
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I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
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GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 14, 2014 22:11:37 GMT
Not to mention that tweaking numbers in the config still doesn't change any of the mechanics those numbers adhere to. If the problem is in the mechanics no amount of balancing the numbers in the config is going to make a difference.
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Post by engarde on Aug 14, 2014 22:22:56 GMT
Ah but those who hacked their csv files previously or complained they wanted to be able to control the balance can no longer complain abut not having the control - that's a tick box somewhere to quieten some people's responses. Maybe I'm too cynical but I've zero interest in using this future feature. So I'll continue to complain about the poor default settings instead.
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Post by greay on Aug 15, 2014 1:40:27 GMT
Not to mention that tweaking numbers in the config still doesn't change any of the mechanics those numbers adhere to. If the problem is in the mechanics no amount of balancing the numbers in the config is going to make a difference. I'm halfway looking forward to this, for exactly this reason. Yes, the long timers are a serious issue right now. But I agree, the timers are only masking a more fundamental issue (somewhere recently I said that more than just "balancing" is needed to solve the problems the game faces.
Being able to play around with the numbers, and see how they all interact will make those underlying issues more clear, and possibly give us a better idea of how to fix them. I actually like pretty much everything introduced in the last update – none of it's perfect, or done, but they do add some depth or fix some issues with previous versions of the game. I love the way settlements work, now. I never really cared for the old ones, and while I did like the walls, the fact they were always round & that settlements couldn't grow was annoying. That's fixed. And the squishing of buildings into a big pile looks great (I think). The Astari are clearly busted, and need much more depth added to them, but I do like the idea. Happiness doesn't really work in its current state, but I think it's promising. And I think the game has a pretty good start of progression – again, it still needs work, but it's a start. - At the start, you can only sculpt sand & that's free. There's no resources. I think that's fine.
- Then belief is introduced, and you're mainly limited by that (for sculpting grass) and waiting for buildings to complete (to generate more belief). This, also, is fine. I don't remember what the times were at this stage, but they weren't too bad. They could probably be improved.
- Farming is introduced. Very early on, you unlock the "dramatically reduce build times" card. I liked this – the idea here, I think, was to shift the focus to the new resource. Now that wheat's the limiting factor, make the earlier stuff easier. Yeah, it's weird – did your followers not need food before? The fact that food is only required to build, and not as upkeep is also weird. Followers should really be able to starve. The game should change when agriculture is introduced, and I think these two things are hints of that. Build times and belief should be less of a limiting factor here.
- Mining. This needs something like what happened with wheat – there is a card that increases wheat yield, I think, but it's introduced too late. But it's a step in the right direction – at this point, wheat should start to be less of a problem and ore should be the limiting factor. Unfortunately, ore isn't really used for anything worthwhile (the expansion beacons is a welcome change from just adding a new resource requirement to abodes, but I don't think it's the right answer)
I'm not sure how happiness fits into the progression. I think it might be introduced too early? It's also something that I think players should be free to intentionally keep low, if they want to be that kind of god. But yeah, being able to tweak the balance numbers will make it easier to take a look at how this progression works (or doesn't). And being able to lower all the timers across the board, and increase belief generation (or decrease belief costs??) will make the game more enjoyable. But it doesn't fix the game. Things need to be more inter-connected. I like that there are resources, now, but I don't think I like how they're used. |
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Post by Danjal on Aug 15, 2014 1:53:21 GMT
I disagree, its not so much the timing. Doing it later would not change it.
The whole problem is that they are using all kinds of elaborate bandaid mechanics trying to dillydally around fixing the lack of actual game mechanics.
Ultimately, there is nothing to do in the game except expansion - which makes Godus a citybuilder and not a godgame.
You don't guide, you control.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Aug 15, 2014 3:12:30 GMT
I disagree, its not so much the timing. Doing it later would not change it. The whole problem is that they are using all kinds of elaborate bandaid mechanics trying to dillydally around fixing the lack of actual game mechanics. Ultimately, there is nothing to do in the game except expansion - which makes Godus a citybuilder and not a godgame. You don't guide, you control. Shh, this is direct involvement. It's what you've wanted so long...Everything else is fine, just twist the knobs, pull the levers, push the buttons and watch the subtle beauty that arises with minute value changes. Aah yes, this is what it's like to be a god right? |
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World Stroking Simulator 2014™
Master
Oh hey, Godus, that was a thing. Yeah. *shakes head*
Posts: 143
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I like: Indy games. Also decent studio games.
I don't like: Guess...
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Post by World Stroking Simulator 2014™ on Aug 15, 2014 4:53:03 GMT
"Godus 2.2 Excremental Update"
*goes back to playing the latest build of Dwarf Fortress*
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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 Aug 15, 2014 8:55:48 GMT
Being able to play around with the numbers, and see how they all interact will make those underlying issues more clear, and possibly give us a better idea of how to fix them. You're probably right, and we need people to experiment because it's not possible for just three designers to try all combinations, and again, they are in the office playing the game all the time trying to make things better, but sometimes you are blinded by being so close. Yes, wading through the balance files we receive will be a chore, but one that will be worth it because of precisely this, we feel like we need fresh eyes in order to see the right way towards a better game. And, I know it's not on the official release, but don't hesitate to make balance files that emphasise the bits of the game that you feel are bad. If you think timers on buildings are really bad, generate something that is totally hateful, like virtually infinite timers and really cheap gem-completes, so you can test to see what happens if the game becomes a resource driven building game. I'm not sure how far the balance files go towards being able to do these things, but it's worth a shot, and it will begin to prove points. |
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Post by dozvati on Aug 15, 2014 10:38:06 GMT
like virtually infinite timers and really cheap gem-completes Hell, 24 hour beacon reconstructions and only needing 100 gems? That's a mere 10k belief to rally up, and the way the gems > belief cards work out, you get more than you put in. It's relatively easy to filter in 125 moguls for your death-based gem system. It's taken me marginally less time to expand the distance it took me beforehand, now the only thing I have left to do is sculpt more room for more houses. Wait, that circles back to the "Why do we need flat land for Abodes anyway?" thing... hm, |
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jpw
Master
Posts: 159
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I like: Populus
What I thought Godus was going to be...
I don't like: Waiting
Collecting belief
Stickers
Sculpting
Voyages
Managing settlements
Not being a god in a god game
Chests
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Post by jpw on Aug 15, 2014 11:27:37 GMT
Redesigning the belief happiness aspects:
It was on observing the little red people running away from my awesome power of moving land and having it snap back because I had no belief, that it occurred to me the whole happiness and belief system is the wrong way round. As it stands if I use my godly powers I loose belief, yet my follows rush to look at what I have done, and stand in awe. Conversely if I do nothing then when I load Godus up again in an hour or so my people have generated lots of belief. This seems to be the wrong way round. Also as mentioned elsewhere if I treat my followers badly, they become unhappy, but what if I were a follower? What would I do if I saw a vengeful god killing others, and smiting those who converted? Would I convert? Damn no!
Idea:
Belief is generated by godly activity, not by inactivity. For example sculpting becomes universally free, as a god we can sculpt to our hearts content. This raises the belief bar, much like the existing happiness bar, or the belief quota. But over time my followers become less impressed with sculpting and so the bar increases at a slower rate.
As for the more elaborate godly powers let’s say the meteor strike, rather than using up belief they also generate belief, but can only be used once your belief has reached a certain value.
So what reduces belief? Well inactivity. Your belief bar ticks down as you remain inactive. You ignore your people and obviously they will start to think you don’t exist. As their belief in you dwindles so does your ability to use the more powerful God spells, and your followers convert. So if you tend the land and look after it – (happy) followers who believe in you, if you destroy the land and demand human sacrifice – (unhappy) followers who still believe in you, if you do nothing – followers who stop believing in you.
Obvious problems then begin in multiplayer or against AI tribes, even if your power is limited to the geographical sphere of influence of your people what becomes of the battles of old. Well they would no longer be a rush to build as many houses and get as much belief as possible. But what would they be?
I will certainly be setting my sculpting costs to 0, when the file edits come out. I might raise the costs of all other powers. I think gem cost should be scrapped.
Misc. rant:
As for cards will we be able to reduce the number of stickers needed to unlock a card? I think card unlock could again tie in with belief. Combine gems, stickers, happiness, and belief into one resource.
I think the reasoning in my first paragraph is sound, my game implementation is a totally off, to say the least, but could there be a way that works taking into account the whole future battle enemy tribe issue.
As for exploration, why not set specific design targets, like creation of colonies?
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Post by morsealworth on Aug 15, 2014 11:59:25 GMT
Well, that's what I virtually meant by sustained belief.
Let me re-iterate. Imagine belief not like a resource that is stored, like, for example, Tiberium in C&C. Let's make the belief a constant flow-type resource like energy level in the same C&C. The belief generation depends on faith o the people and eventually goes down. If it reaches zero for the follower... Well, he's no longer a follower. Therefore you have to impress them by miracles and relics (which do not raise belief, but make it decay much slower, think traditions and stuff.
Miracles reserve/use some of this constant resource. So it isn't just unlocking by level of resource, it's using the resource. Of course, the miracle will release its handle eventually (immediate release for some miracles like B&W style miracle forest, gradually, cooldown-style for an orbital kinetic bombardment - just like meteorite, but cooler).
See, three areas on power bar:
1. Not believing - cannot use. Can be converted in Faith by impressing the followers.
2. Faith. The Belief level you can use.
3. Gratia. Grace. Power of belief being recycled by god and now in use. Slowly changes back into Faith if followers let you.
And of course, population increases the maximum bar as every citizen may have some faith in him. Amount isn't really fixed and depends on the character of the follower. There are different types of faith, after all. You should influence that parameter indirectly. It's supposed to be a living world, after all.
And I remember talking about the same thing on the backer forums before the alpha. Was the idea THAT bad?
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 15, 2014 12:17:02 GMT
You're probably right, and we need people to experiment because it's not possible for just three designers to try all combinations, and again, they are in the office playing the game all the time trying to make things better, but sometimes you are blinded by being so close. I see, so instead of looking at our feedback Peter and Jack are playing games. |
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Post by Deth on Aug 15, 2014 12:37:51 GMT
You're probably right, and we need people to experiment because it's not possible for just three designers to try all combinations, and again, they are in the office playing the game all the time trying to make things better, but sometimes you are blinded by being so close. Sorry to harp on this and I know you did not do it and can not really do anything about it. But again, as a Alpha player, This is what we were there for, but because Peter did not like what we were saying or maybe it was Jack, maybe we harp on Peter to much and it is really Jack that is the evil puppet master behind the scenes, but I digress. I am sure there are Alpha players out there that would like to help test internal builds. There might even be some people that like collating the data from the mod files. I saw someone asking about the Student training forum on the main forum. Maybe some of them might do it so they can say. "Hey I have some experience working on a game." I know that kind of thing may not be a big part of game design and building but it is a part and unpaid internship is a path into something they want to do. Again maybe something you can suggest in a meeting to help free up some dev time. |
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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 Aug 15, 2014 13:23:54 GMT
You're probably right, and we need people to experiment because it's not possible for just three designers to try all combinations, and again, they are in the office playing the game all the time trying to make things better, but sometimes you are blinded by being so close. I see, so instead of looking at our feedback Peter and Jack are playing games. Nope, no plural, just Godus. |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 15, 2014 19:46:45 GMT
I see, so instead of looking at our feedback Peter and Jack are playing games. Nope, no plural, just Godus. I see, so instead of looking at our feedback Peter and Jack are playing a game. |
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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 Aug 15, 2014 21:40:10 GMT
Nope, no plural, just Godus. I see, so instead of looking at our feedback Peter and Jack are playing a game. If I was a CM, I would ignore this. From what I'm reading, it sounds like you're trying to raise my hackles, but as a coder, I look for the symptoms of the bug and I have to guess that you don't need me to answer your comment. What you want is an apology for being treated disrespectfully. I'm really sorry that I'm not the individual causing this pain, because if I was, I'd be doing my best to change how much of your feedback, ideas, suggestions, got the attention that they deserve. And yet, here's the thing: it's not that your contributions are not getting through, or aren't getting attention. I have been lead to believe that the designers read and use the compiled reports. So, where's the problem? I've not been on the forums long, but from what I have read, I get the feeling that no-one has told you what they thought of the contributions, and that's because there isn't as much transparency in the design process as the backers feel they deserve. I agree that it's not been obvious where your ideas have already been used, but this thread has been an example of how an idea, with some interaction, can turn into something completely different, or can be the inspiration for something apparently unrelated. To fix this, on Monday, I am going to see if I can get Jack to do some archaeology; make him find some old meeting notes or something about what they saw in the older reports and how they were used and mutated into what we have done, or are planning to do. And from now on, I'll try to repeat that process if it will help make it more apparent how important you are to us. |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 15, 2014 21:53:20 GMT
If I was a CM, I would ignore this. From what I'm reading, it sounds like you're trying to raise my hackles No, that's just a dry form of humour. I don't always use smilies. I think George knows me well enough by now to detect this. |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Aug 15, 2014 21:56:06 GMT
I look for the symptoms of the bug and I have to guess that you don't need me to answer your comment. What you want is an apology for being treated disrespectfully. I'm really sorry that I'm not the individual causing this pain, because if I was, I'd be doing my best to change how much of your feedback, ideas, suggestions, got the attention that they deserve. And yet, here's the thing: it's not that your contributions are not getting through, or aren't getting attention. I have been lead to believe that the designers read and use the compiled reports. So, where's the problem? I've not been on the forums long, but from what I have read, I get the feeling that no-one has told you what they thought of the contributions, and that's because there isn't as much transparency in the design process as the backers feel they deserve. I agree that it's not been obvious where your ideas have already been used, but this thread has been an example of how an idea, with some interaction, can turn into something completely different, or can be the inspiration for something apparently unrelated. To fix this, on Monday, I am going to see if I can get Jack to do some archaeology; make him find some old meeting notes or something about what they saw in the older reports and how they were used and mutated into what we have done, or are planning to do. And from now on, I'll try to repeat that process if it will help make it more apparent how important you are to us. Dude you are awesome. |
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Post by hardly on Aug 15, 2014 22:08:15 GMT
Ive suggested this a few times but as a future process how about instead of 22Cans doing something, you coding it, it being released and us flipping out, how about 22Cans start a discussion of an idea on the forums and we kick it around for a bit. Like when you suggested stuff before and we said yeah that's cool definitely do that. For other ideas maybe we can explore the pros and cons together.
I don't expect you to own this Fabs but there has been a huge number of suggestions punted up and lots of what do you want threads but never that Ive seen any real dialogue or feedback from 22Cans about why things weren't acted on. I suspect a lot of this is tied up with the joint mobile/PC design. They've probably been lost now but Danjal in particular did these enormous consolidation threads summarising all the feedback to make it easier for 22Cans to consider.
Personally I want Jack, Peter and the whole office to play the game a lot. I'd like you all to take a day off and just play GODUS for 8 hours straight. I have no problem with them playing it. But I want them to engage in a discussion with us as well. This could involve the CMs documenting feedback and them giving it to them (rather than them being present on various forums) but we do need some feedback either from the designers or via George and Matt. Otherwise it look likes feedback goes into "special filing".
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