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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 5, 2014 21:59:29 GMT
...They're seeing how people respond to high frequency behavior of other players and AI with the existing crappy Astari balance, I imagine (i.e. they've never said this explicitly), because they know this may happen in Hubworld. Knowing that, if players hate it, they need to figure out a workaround. Our solution, and their internally recognized solution to a rigged balance like this, is to outright annihilate the Astari. This isn't what they want in the more refined version of this gameplay, but they left it there as an out for the time being. I think what they wanted to see was the following: - Once players recognize the Astari behavior, how much more frequently will they jump in to play to counteract it?
- How long will they keep playing with this behavior, if they don't learn, or haven't reached, a way to counter it?
- How long will they keep playing with the behavior once they have found a means to counter it?
- How many players will quit outright, after even a "small" loss?
- How many players will take the losses in stride?
- How many players will opt to use their powers over the gifts?
I don't think they're at all concerned with how many annihilate the Astari over how many struggle with them to try to convert them all instead. They'd have to be absolutely silly to focus on that data point, given the existing balance and Peter's own recognition of how to handle them. What do you all think? I'm betting I'm slightly right and probably even more wrong, since my speculation that the Voyages were a big pathfinding testing grounds seems to have been proven wrong given the enduring dumb pathfinding, but this seems like it might be somewhat better speculation. Edit: Funny reddit version of thread. |
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Post by thedarkprofit on Sept 5, 2014 22:34:50 GMT
They will be following these for sure. A couple major things they will be looking at (implicit in some of those points):
Will people SPEND on gifts or powers to counteract?
Will people play less when the astari are killed off?
Some of this is a bit too evil mastermind from my perspective. I bet PM just thought it would be a great way to give a bit of content and try out the happiness mechanic since it was already developed but hadn't really had any teeth to your people not being happy without the conversions. As you point out if they are sophisticated enough their analytics could teach them quite a bit if they think it through, but then again they could just take a sample from the facebook rants about the astari. I think facebook won't count as forum use and will prove to be a venue where lots of more casual gamers will voice their displeasure or approval.
Thanks GMR as always for getting us to think Meta over the moment.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 5, 2014 22:59:17 GMT
They will be following these for sure. A couple major things they will be looking at (implicit in some of those points): Will people SPEND on gifts or powers to counteract? Will people play less when the astari are killed off? Some of this is a bit too evil mastermind from my perspective. I bet PM just thought it would be a great way to give a bit of content and try out the happiness mechanic since it was already developed but hadn't really had any teeth to your people not being happy without the conversions. As you point out if they are sophisticated enough their analytics could teach them quite a bit if they think it through, but then again they could just take a sample from the facebook rants about the astari. I think facebook won't count as forum use and will prove to be a venue where lots of more casual gamers will voice their displeasure or approval. Thanks Gmr as always for getting us to think Meta over the moment. You might be surprised. This isn't all that evil mastermind if you approach this from the PC development mindset. I don't doubt for a moment that the thought was to provide some content and a new mechanic, but I do doubt the idea of the existing balance being considered in any way functional and enjoyable. I'm very much of the mind that despite what much of the community chooses to believe, for good reason I might add, there is an undercurrent of PC focus and orienting muddled in with all mobile design aspects. PC players want gameplay that suits their desire for extended playing in multiple sessions over an extended period. Mobile players want gameplay that suits their desire for brief/occasional playing in multiple sessions over an extended period. The current Astari festival frequency fits with a PC player's desire, but surrounding designs discourage extended playing. The current Astari festival frequency does not fit with a mobile player's desire, despite surrounding designs that encourage brief/occasional playing. They need to find the optimal balance for PC players that follows with the desire for extended playing, which is giving them enough to keep them engaged till the festival to counter it. They need to find the optimal balance for mobile players that follows with the desire for brief/occasional playing, which is giving them enough leeway to not feel the need to constantly tend to the game. I think this is a pretty decent assessment of each audience's desires boiled down to a very basic level. |
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Post by Danjal on Sept 5, 2014 23:03:33 GMT
One flaw in this logic - the game does not provide a valid mechanic to counteract it other than slavishly boosting happiness in rapid succession.
Even if your reasoning is sound (and I'll admit that there's some validity to it), the way its implemented is almost guaranteed to have people give up sooner rather than later.
Annihilation or quitting are the only valid moves, there is no equilibrium possible. And if what you pose is correct, and this somehow is a test-phase for what is to come in hubworlds. Then I suspect they really NEED a third path to choose. Since annihilation will inevitably result in the extermination of a significant portion of the players.
Aslong as the only route that doesn't end up killing off either faction, this will be a mechanic that can't be upheld for persistent play. At best it'd work for instanced matches between players.
Ultimately, I think you might have hit one point many of us overlooked. Which is that 22cans might indeed want these statistics - whether they themselves originally realized it or not.
As it would be very beneficial to the design of the game to realize how many players would (will?) quit when posed with an obstacle such as the Astari, how many would resort to violence and how many would be willing to struggle through it without resorting to violence.
Though how accurate this information would be, when tested upon a mechanic as broken as the Astari? I don't know.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 6, 2014 0:52:05 GMT
One flaw in this logic - the game does not provide a valid mechanic to counteract it other than slavishly boosting happiness in rapid succession. Even if your reasoning is sound (and I'll admit that there's some validity to it), the way its implemented is almost guaranteed to have people give up sooner rather than later. Annihilation or quitting are the only valid moves, there is no equilibrium possible. And if what you pose is correct, and this somehow is a test-phase for what is to come in hubworlds. Then I suspect they really NEED a third path to choose. Since annihilation will inevitably result in the extermination of a significant portion of the players. Aslong as the only route that doesn't end up killing off either faction, this will be a mechanic that can't be upheld for persistent play. At best it'd work for instanced matches between players. Ultimately, I think you might have hit one point many of us overlooked. Which is that 22cans might indeed want these statistics - whether they themselves originally realized it or not. As it would be very beneficial to the design of the game to realize how many players would (will?) quit when posed with an obstacle such as the Astari, how many would resort to violence and how many would be willing to struggle through it without resorting to violence. Though how accurate this information would be, when tested upon a mechanic as broken as the Astari? I don't know. It's a flaw in the logic, I think, if you're focusing on the latter half of the data gathering which I'd say comes after recognizing the commonality of losses to the Astari. If you were to think of this as a spectrum/line of data, the first half is how they respond to meeting the Astari with nothing involved/at stake, then with something at stake and how they respond to those losses (patient/rage quit?), while the latter half is how they choose to approach the Astari from there (third and last bullet point). The more important set of data, I suspect, is within the first half since the latter half while absolutely still important, is clearly far from complete. There's no feedback to beating the Astari, no satisfying feeling of accomplishment, which is why you can find posts wondering about whether that's it or even how to recover them (part of me suspects these people are masochists). If they were concerned with the player behavior towards the end of the Astari/other civilization interactions, I would think there would be something more substantial to meet it, like how you're rewarded when finishing repairs on a beacon. We may hate the time it takes for the beacons to repair, but I don't think there's much denying that the satisfaction of it, even if sped up with gems, is pretty well done. The access to more land, the sound effect from activating it, it's all well designed positive vibes. It's on par with opening a chest for the first time to get some resources, mechanically it's a pretty ugly design for a resource system no doubt about it, but the overall animation and sound design is great to reinforce the desire to go after more of them. Defeating the Astari? Nothing. It's void of this, compared to the chest opening and beacon activation rewarding designs which have been there since the earliest versions of the game and the Voyage completions more recently. This tells me that this is very much focused on gathering the first encounter and enduring portion of data over the how to handle them/approach them and defeat/convert them data, since all the tools to do that simply aren't there, I think. From the uselessness of converted Astari before victory to the absence of rewarding designs for converting individual/all Astari or defeating them, the game is missing some critical and obvious elements to guide the player's interactions with the Astari past the attrition phase of the encounter. This makes sense in a really odd way for the first iteration of these guys, if you ask me, but the biggest weakness of it to me is including it now rather than at the soft launch stage. However I suspect that they simply couldn't with the previous settlement design, as they considered it much too clumsy to work with mechanically and visually in some ways. |
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Post by Danjal on Sept 6, 2014 1:27:13 GMT
Wait what? Beacon repair giving satisfaction? HOW?
Unless you count the feeling of "well that took forever, now I can finally see whats in the next section of land" there's no satisfaction, as there's nothing you do for it other than waiting.
You literally do nothing but initiate it and then wait till its done.
I have a hard time seeing how the beacons (or chests) are in any way "rewarding" at all.
I don't even pay attention to the effects of the beacons or chests - because after seeing then half a dozen times I've seen them all.
It'd be like watching a full season of a TV show in short succession, no matter how good the intro is, you're gonna want to skip it after the first couple of times.
And I've gotten to the point where I play without sound because it just doesn't add anything to the game.
If the 'solution' to a problem is adding fancy effects, then I'll pass. Cause thats never going to resolve any issues.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 6, 2014 2:02:45 GMT
Wait what? Beacon repair giving satisfaction? HOW? Unless you count the feeling of "well that took forever, now I can finally see whats in the next section of land" there's no satisfaction, as there's nothing you do for it other than waiting. You literally do nothing but initiate it and then wait till its done. I have a hard time seeing how the beacons (or chests) are in any way "rewarding" at all. I don't even pay attention to the effects of the beacons or chests - because after seeing then half a dozen times I've seen them all. It'd be like watching a full season of a TV show in short succession, no matter how good the intro is, you're gonna want to skip it after the first couple of times. And I've gotten to the point where I play without sound because it just doesn't add anything to the game. If the 'solution' to a problem is adding fancy effects, then I'll pass. Cause thats never going to resolve any issues. Haha, no. That's not the complete solution to it by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a contributing factor to making the completion more rewarding. As you point out, it loses its touch after repetition as I myself acknowledged in regards to opening the chests, but for that brief moment, it's there. The problem as with much of everything else in Godus right now, is that it's missing the crucial buildup necessary to make the action or completion feel like an accomplishment and in line with how the animation/sound effects are designed. Nevertheless that's not my biggest point in that post, my point is that since that capoff to the experience isn't present, I don't think they're terribly concerned with that area of the experience just yet. The difference between the Astari encounter and the beacons/chests/Voyages, in terms of the presence of what's intended to be a rewarding experience, is that the latter points are meant to eventually be somewhat more compelling/interesting as the pacing is improved while feeling more like a series of mini-accomplishments. However the Astari/civilization interactions, I'd think, would be as we might expect, a more major accomplishment with an even better rewarding experience accompanying their conclusion. You're coming at this from the angle, as you admit, of having seen these things too many times. Try to look at this from a position of inexperience and you'll find that, depending on what appeals to you, all the pieces are in the right place. The belief collection songs, formation of plots, the chest openings, the card and beacon activations, the Voyage completions, all of them have the right design in place in terms of animations and sound effects to reinforce a sense of minor accomplishments and constructive progression. The biggest problem is that all the buildup is lacking to accompany them, in most of the cases, since it doesn't feel great to set your people to repair the beacon or build larger abodes with the times they take to do so, nor does it feel all that great to have found the very obviously placed chests, collect the in your face belief, have the luck of the pathfinding to not get your followers stupidly killed, and finally get all the right stickers to activate your card. They've got the ends right for the most part in terms of feel, now they have to get everything else leading up to them in line with that. Once they do that, it should appear significantly more rewarding to do all of these things or whatever they happen to transform into. Frankly, the only thing they've almost got entirely right in terms of action-reward experience being 1:1 right now, I'd say, would be sculpting out the land to form larger plots. That's a great little experience each time regardless of how frequent it is, it's simply disappointing that the belief payoff doesn't entirely match it right now due to the time it takes to produce belief. Edit: It's much like the advice you see given to some budding writers or authors, where they're told to start with the ending and write backwards from there. I think that's what's going on here for the basic elements, whereas with the somewhat more complex areas of the game, while they may have some ideas for the ending, they want to get the hooks right first. This aligns with what Matthew Allen mentioned a few days ago. |
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Post by Danjal on Sept 6, 2014 2:50:12 GMT
Dunno, maybe I'm just the wrong person to ask, since I care much more about underlying mechanics and functionality than whether or not something looks neat. I look beyond the first couple hours of gameplay, beyond that first impression. Because honestly, its 20 months in - they should have more to show for themselves than a first impression... The belief collection 'song', the animations, all the things you're praising here. It all feels empty and meaningless to me. There really isn't much reason to do it, other than to advance the game (its a chore). I feel that there's so many missed opportunities with it that they could've used to do something great. Though its not just me, even if you'd look at feanix his GF example - she apparently likes to mix some "The Sims" into her Godus, desiring the ability to more fully track individual followers and have them actually have a life. Not just a random name walking out of a building and doing an animation. But actually having a 'person' you're going to influence. This is very much an underlying mechanic aswell, that you can fancify as much as you want afterwards. In terms of "completion" for the Astari, that right there would be a great entry. Have Astari affect your followers on a fundamental level. And at the same time provide some variety into your follower pool. Creating a more diverse opportunity for stories to develop, be it inside the game (by actually forming families and having them have free-will and desires of their own) or just in the mind of the player. For the most part right now, I'm not really feeling what you're pointing out as "well done" or "well balanced". Which for me comes very much down to the fact that it doesn't *do* anything. Its all just meaningless fluff. Sure, the first time you see it, it gives a good impression. But is that all a game is supposed to do? Give a good impression? Great, you got your customers in the store - they are now leaving because the store is empty / there is nothing to do... Even the sculpting (which I'll admit is probably their best mechanic) is often jerky at best. Getting proper control over it would be great, without it shooting beyond where your cursor is as that does get quite frustrating. If I'm looking at the expansion beacons. A great way to expand that would be to have your followers actually do some form of exploration in the area you're uncovering. Have them visually do something rather than building a gigantic campfire / lookout tower. The mechanic just feels off to me as all you're doing is waiting. Chests are the same, it looks neat, but its out of place and utterly random as they represent something that you as a god really should not be dealing with. Card and beacon activations are a bit too "in your face" to me, its not a monumental event or achievement at all - so why treat it as such? Is reaching a number of resources that passively generated really the pinacle of what Godus represents? Now we don't know what features are still coming in the future to tie it all together. But if I'd had to put a percentage to the current game. In terms of what I'd expected of a title such as Godus and what is currently available. I'd say that they aren't even at 20% yet. There are some base concepts in place, but they haven't been worked out yet nor balanced to function along another and to work towards a greater whole. In terms of pure content its massively lacking - but thats something that is mostly dependant on the fact that the base mechanics haven't been fleshed out yet. Creating more content without functional mechanics would just mean you'd have to go over all of it again at a later date to update it to the update mechanics. Given how they've been going so far, they slowly add a piece of terrain/map as they add new features to the game. The second island originally was mostly to lock away higher tier godpowers, this now got shifted to the Astari home-base. The first island is a series of valleys to provide you with convenient terrain to build your settlements and to access some hidden temples. All in all its very controlled, very linear. You don't really "achieve" anything as a god, other than trying to keep the land clean & orderly. And you're really only allowed to do so by following the 'instruction manual' so to speak. As there aren't a lot of 'valid' locations to build on this pre-made map. Its all tied into pre-defined valley's and ruins. It all makes me wonder what the development concept is for 22cans. They're flitting about putting in random disjointed (and thus unbalanced) mechanics and then leaving them without putting the machine together. They've got a bunch of random meaningless animations that look great by themselves, but fall flat without an accompanying structure. There's no clearly defined goal or target they seem to be working towards other than "we will be working on this for a couple years to come so we can take our time..." I mean, if we knew that they want to basicly "build the puzzlepieces" within an specified timeframe, and then work on putting the puzzle together after that. We'd have something to work with, we'd know what they intended with some of these loose mechanics that are being shown off as "finished". Because thats the impression that I've gotten from 22cans regarding some of the older mechanics, that they consider them 'done' and that they now move on to newer mechanics such as the Astari. (And just to make things clear - I definitely do not consider most of these mechanics to be "done", let alone balanced...) |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 6, 2014 3:07:40 GMT
Well, if nothing else, it looks like we're on the same page for the most part. Except I don't think anything is really well balanced in the game, but I think that was just a minor slip on your end.
I definitely see it as being extremely barebones too, but I'm starting to get a weird sense of how I think they're going at this. I think I can see why they're doing all this sloppy balancing despite our response to it all. I don't know that I really agree with it that much, but I think I can see why they're trying it the way they are. Part of me says they're dilating the timers somewhat for mobile and somewhat to gauge the limits of the mechanics, another part says it's to keep us busy as they're rapidly running through various different ideas along existing internal goals to apply to the game to see what might fit and work for release, and chances are it's a bit of both. Delays arising when they have to revisit what they thought they had come upon as a semi-stable iteration for us.
What's interesting and awkward about the entire process is that it's like you describe, like they're building out the puzzle pieces to hand off to us with an internal idea of how it should fit together while we're left confused because parts of the piece are missing and it's not fully painted yet.
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Post by Danjal on Sept 6, 2014 3:31:05 GMT
You mentioned that the "satisfaction" or "minor rewards" at various points in the game feel well implemented and balanced. That bit. I don't feel that thats "complete", because the minor accomplishments are empty and meaningless. Its lacking the accompanying actual game. Which isn't exactly a 'slip' on my end.  But yes, we're mostly on the same page it seems. Just looking at it from difference sides of the fence. And how I'd love to see more of that puzzle they're handing us pieces of. Like how big is this puzzle? What confines are we working within? How much is REALLY missing (cause that 50,5% marker doesn't represent anything...) That kinda stuff. =/ |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 6, 2014 4:09:53 GMT
I'm not sure how exactly to describe it, but I'm not factoring in the actual resource rewards (e.g. stickers/belief/etc.), just the whole experience surrounding what's meant to be/feel like a reward or accomplishment. I feel that that experience is mostly right/complete/well done in isolation, if that makes any sense. As we've gone back and forth over just now, though, looking past that at what's done to reach that makes it seem out of place/less appealing/rewarding/etc.
Does that make any sense at all? I can't think of a good term or phrase to effectively describe it, since it would lead you, as the above may have, to think I'm talking about the reward result and/or the progression (or in Godus' case waiting) to that result. I've tried to emphasize that I'm talking solely about the the paintjob of the reward and not the reward itself, if that works any better. Not the contents of the reward or the leadup, just the reward's cover.
Much like we like the art direction but not he mechanics, I'm thinking along the same lines for the reward.
Edit: Er, I think you do get what I'm getting at, but your use of balance is throwing me for a loop. I don't really consider the whole appearance of the rewards to involve balancing. Blah.
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Post by Danjal on Sept 6, 2014 5:20:54 GMT
Hehehe, I know what you're getting at.
If you'd look at it individually its definitely serviceable.
I just don't look at it individually is all.
I'd like me things have both form AND function. When one is missing, the other will suffer for that lack.
Put it like this, if there were accompanying mechanics backing them up, making it less meaningless fluff - then it'd definitely work without too much necessary tweaking.
Which ultimately leaves Godus as an empty shell right now. A pretty shell... But an empty shell nonetheless.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 6, 2014 5:40:31 GMT
Collecting seashells by the seashore only gets you so far.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2014 8:11:16 GMT
I can see how your suggestion may be possible Gmr. Heck, anything is possible with the 22cans team.
I choose to base my ill informed opinion on this matter on my perception of the game itself, the mechanics, and the observable actions 22cans has taken in the past.
When I observe the Astari solely on their base mechanics, I see nothing more that a silly freemium hook that psychologically plays on the mobile gamers to encourage them to return to the game more often than they would otherwise. PC gamers simply inherited the balance with the copy/paste Marmalade parade from mobile.
I've seen it implemented many times in freemium/pay to win games. Heck, I've personally read design documents that explain, in detail, the motivations behind similar mechanics. If you can instill an urgency in the player, a deficit that they have to fight against, not only will they return to the game more often, but they will be encouraged to spend more money to make up deficits, stay competitive in a multiplayer environment (stay tuned for Hubworld, right?), and hurdle heavy-handed attrition mechanics.
This makes all the difference profit-wise between a game that makes you think, "Gee, that was a fun game, I think I'll play it for a few more hours after work, but if not, heck, it'll be there when I get back to it" and a game that hands you a, "Gee, I wonder how many followers I've lost to the Astari? I better go check right after work. I hope I didn't lose too many farmers/miners... I can probably recover what I lost before bed time" experience.
Obviously those are hypothetical situations, but do you see what I'm getting at? The Astari aren't interesting in my opinion, they're a simple persistent attrition mechanic. What other purpose do they fulfill? Only 22cans really knows, and if those purposes cast a poor light on their business, I doubt they'd be willing to share. With all of Peters going on interview after interview about being a "like stern parent" and punishing gamers a bit, I personally have no doubt that this is what the Astari were specifically intended for. I don't believe for a second that the frustrations gamers are experiencing are due to "a slight miscalculation" or "a small oversight"... It's working as intended. Call me a crazy, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest, that once DeNa was brought on, they strongly suggested such a hook (based on analytics of course), and that's what lead Peter to his "Grand Epiphany".
These mechanics, as they are, are imo unnecessary on the PC version. That said, I have no doubt in my mind if the PC community hadn't raised such a stink about the gem store, to the point of 22cans reluctantly removing it from the PC version, they'd be all the more reluctant to budge on our side of balancing things. Why? Because that balance = money.
I am probably wrong. I probably need to lay of the caffeine, but dang, how much more obvious could they have been about it?
I hope I'm wrong. It would be really neat if you were right and they were just using the Astari as a gauge for the plausibility of their multiplayer structure.
tl;dr: I am wrong most of the time (ask my wife). Current Astari balance = Mobile Money.
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Post by thedarkprofit on Sept 6, 2014 11:49:32 GMT
Oh by the way one of the reasons that the Astari attrition gets ridiculous when you have a decent size civilization is that I believe they have their "happiness decay" set too high. If you look at some of the design docs they put out on follower happiness you can see that (at least in the planning stage) they had an increase of .001 in happiness decay for each follower. So a population of let's say 4k will be operating at four times the happiness decay as a starting civilization.
Since the design/development guys are probably not making parking lots when they test the mechanisms they aren't tuned for high population. So PM jumps on plays up to a few hundred guys tries out some astari stuff and thinks its balanced, where a good player has ten times his population (and ten times his happiness decay) and yells wtf every time they log in.
That is probably the biggest issue with the astari balance. I don't think anyone has mentioned this. Any thoughts?
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Post by engarde on Sept 6, 2014 13:24:47 GMT
I think it is more that after a few of us converted some and allowed the rest to swamp themselves to extinction they had a duh moment when we used the tools they gave us, in a very easy and hands off why that they neglected to consider. Going own the meteor route early on is so expensive and lacking in fine control we are now only left with FoG which takes so much time it makes it nearly useless. Go to wonder just how much in house testing they are using/doing given such fundamentally damaged elements continue to be pushed at us.
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Post by thedarkprofit on Sept 6, 2014 14:21:13 GMT
I think it is more that after a few of us converted some and allowed the rest to swamp themselves to extinction they had a duh moment when we used the tools they gave us, in a very easy and hands off why that they neglected to consider. Going own the meteor route early on is so expensive and lacking in fine control we are now only left with FoG which takes so much time it makes it nearly useless. Go to wonder just how much in house testing they are using/doing given such fundamentally damaged elements continue to be pushed at us. Took me two sessions with rapid finger of god to kill all of them without any other powers. Not sure if you've tried it but it is an area of effect power. Give them "the finger". |
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Post by Danjal on Sept 6, 2014 16:15:56 GMT
Oh by the way one of the reasons that the Astari attrition gets ridiculous when you have a decent size civilization is that I believe they have their "happiness decay" set too high. If you look at some of the design docs they put out on follower happiness you can see that (at least in the planning stage) they had an increase of .001 in happiness decay for each follower. So a population of let's say 4k will be operating at four times the happiness decay as a starting civilization.Since the design/development guys are probably not making parking lots when they test the mechanisms they aren't tuned for high population. So PM jumps on plays up to a few hundred guys tries out some astari stuff and thinks its balanced, where a good player has ten times his population (and ten times his happiness decay) and yells wtf every time they log in. That is probably the biggest issue with the astari balance. I don't think anyone has mentioned this. Any thoughts? Pointed this out before - its a problem not exclusive to the Astari. Godus has significant problems with scaling. The mechanics are tested on small scale and then let loose on the world without testing what these mechanics do once they get ramped up 2½, 5, 10, 20 or more times. It seems that some developers still don't grasp that exponential growth and numerical scaling can become a MASSIVE problem if left uncontrolled. I think it is more that after a few of us converted some and allowed the rest to swamp themselves to extinction they had a duh moment when we used the tools they gave us, in a very easy and hands off why that they neglected to consider. Going own the meteor route early on is so expensive and lacking in fine control we are now only left with FoG which takes so much time it makes it nearly useless. Go to wonder just how much in house testing they are using/doing given such fundamentally damaged elements continue to be pushed at us. The Astari start off with 250(?) people if I do recall correctly? You'd have to consistently bleed off hundreds of people as you're growing to feed into them to make sure that their happiness decay keeps pace with yours. The problem here is that the player gets drilled right from the start to expand. And gets tons of reasons to expand. (Hell, its the only real thing to do within the game) The Astari on the other hand do not expand at all, they just have a festival every hour and they can convert people through this. 3 simple additions here to fix this problem: - Followers must be able to die/starve (maybe even age?), if there isn't enough food to support a certain population, any excess you make dies off untill an equilibrium is reached. (Generating unhappiness from starvation and deaths). This indirectly poses the challenge to the player to produce food, and the excess here would go into the stockpile which can be used for boosting followers. (Bonus points if they make grain-boosts seperate from 'normal' boost....)
- Astari need their mechanic altered to suit their nature. They either need to expand on their own or need a different happiness mechanic to mirror their static empire.
- Cap or flatten the happiness mechanic for the player, it should not be a linear growth based solely on population count. Have flat increases aswell to counteract this.
Some examples being: Trees and decorations cause flat happiness, abode variety causes happiness, "space" around them causes happiness, beautified terrain causes happiness. (Countered by overpopulation causing some unhappiness, single type abode causing unhappiness (forming slums) and so on.
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Post by engarde on Sept 6, 2014 16:32:11 GMT
On my first play through I had just shy of 400 when I got astari-ed - two continuous days of play later I had lost over 440 and was struggling to maintain my 360 tier level. Two days and no progress saw me rewind and try again - where my avoiding farming saw me having so much less to deal with in astari terms I lost maybe 8 followers when they struck and I used the swamp to zap them over a couple of hours of festivals.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 6, 2014 17:55:21 GMT
Oh by the way one of the reasons that the Astari attrition gets ridiculous when you have a decent size civilization is that I believe they have their "happiness decay" set too high. If you look at some of the design docs they put out on follower happiness you can see that (at least in the planning stage) they had an increase of .001 in happiness decay for each follower. So a population of let's say 4k will be operating at four times the happiness decay as a starting civilization.Since the design/development guys are probably not making parking lots when they test the mechanisms they aren't tuned for high population. So PM jumps on plays up to a few hundred guys tries out some astari stuff and thinks its balanced, where a good player has ten times his population (and ten times his happiness decay) and yells wtf every time they log in. That is probably the biggest issue with the astari balance. I don't think anyone has mentioned this. Any thoughts? Pointed this out before - its a problem not exclusive to the Astari. Godus has significant problems with scaling. The mechanics are tested on small scale and then let loose on the world without testing what these mechanics do once they get ramped up 2½, 5, 10, 20 or more times. It seems that some developers still don't grasp that exponential growth and numerical scaling can become a MASSIVE problem if left uncontrolled. I think they may recognize it more than we think. I think they've got a plan in place for this that makes this make a load more sense once we see it (or think of it on our own). Most of our solutions are to scale these things back through challenges and stuff, I think they've got the same thought in mind, but different ideas. They want to make sure they get the production end of things right before they move on to the resource sinks. This is why they've revised the settlements so much, I suspect. I think it is more that after a few of us converted some and allowed the rest to swamp themselves to extinction they had a duh moment when we used the tools they gave us, in a very easy and hands off why that they neglected to consider. Going own the meteor route early on is so expensive and lacking in fine control we are now only left with FoG which takes so much time it makes it nearly useless. Go to wonder just how much in house testing they are using/doing given such fundamentally damaged elements continue to be pushed at us. The Astari start off with 250? people if I do recall correctly? You'd have to consistently bleed off hundreds of people as you're growing to feed into them to make sure that their happiness decay keeps pace with yours. The problem here is that the player gets drilled right from the start to expand. And gets tons of reasons to expand. (Hell, its the only real thing to do within the game) The Astari on the other hand do not expand at all, they just have a festival every hour and they can convert people through this. 3 simple additions here to fix this problem: - Followers must be able to die/starve (maybe even age?), if there isn't enough food to support a certain population, any excess you make dies off untill an equilibrium is reached. (Generating unhappiness from starvation and deaths). This indirectly poses the challenge to the player to produce food, and the excess here would go into the stockpile which can be used for boosting followers. (Bonus points if they make grain-boosts seperate from 'normal' boost....)
- Astari need their mechanic altered to suit their nature. They either need to expand on their own or need a different happiness mechanic to mirror their static empire.
- Cap or flatten the happiness mechanic for the player, it should not be a linear growth based solely on population count. Have flat increases aswell to counteract this.
Some examples being: Trees and decorations cause flat happiness, abode variety causes happiness, "space" around them causes happiness, beautified terrain causes happiness. (Countered by overpopulation causing some unhappiness, single type abode causing unhappiness (forming slums) and so on.
I definitely agree with some of the fixes you propose, in fact, I've made the second one myself because it's so ridiculously obvious just on a basic intrigue level (i.e. the Astari rapidly become uninteresting after you see their few behaviors). As my OP and ensuing conversation suggests, I think this is all for a pretty good reason. As a matter of fact, I think I may have figured out part of that reasoning, but I'm going to throw that thought in another thread since the topic is distinct from this one. I'm probably wrong, but if it's as I think, it's a pretty cool and compelling idea that can work fairly well between both mobile and PC. I read your entire post, so please don't mistake my snip for quickly skimming over it. =) I can absolutely see where you're coming from, on the surface along with every other really crappy element in the game, it's much easier to see this all as nothing more than a simple cash grab. Nothing more than your standard free to play/freemium attrition mechanic to get the hooks in you to keep playing, keep paying, and so on. The problem as I see it with this notion is as I've discussed here, it's got all the design of the hook, but it's not only dull, it's missing the bait. Converting Astari and even conquering them don't feel rewarding, they leave you wondering, "Was that it?" with them. Maybe the thought is all the other hooks are sharp and well baited enough to have a solid feedback loop of coming back, but I'm not so sure of that. If that were the case, then the Astari wouldn't even be necessary, everything else would be enough to keep them going, right? The Astari and the general idea of an opposing civilization, needs to be sharpened and baited before I'll be sure they're in the position they want them. I'm almost entirely positive this is the case because of that, this being our first exposure to them, and the questions popping up wondering what to do after completing the final beacon. All I'm hoping is that what we're seeing in terms of the rest of the mechanics isn't final or even close to final cut, because as we've discussed basically since the game hit Early Access, it's missing a lot on that front. |
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