***Community Design: God Powers in combat--DEV THREAD***

FuriousMoo

I'm not clear on what you're saying and I would like to be. Are you saying that a separate belief/combat meter for battles is technically not feasible or simply something you do not want to do for some reason? I'm not the only person who has offered ideas which would use a separate belief system in combat to mitigate the problem of god "over-poweredness" (amazing new word you've invented). Seems to me IMHO that you must either have a separate belief system to power combat or muck up the core game completely.

But you seem to be going in the direction of keeping the same belief meter for all aspects of the game and looking for side effects of use of god powers which would hamper or limit their use. Again, I'm not sure why. Wouldn't this hamper and impede their use in the main game? Lord Ba'al made the suggestion of radiation as a side effect of meteors and comets which I like on its own merits but which, it seems, would totally muck up its regular use in the Godus world. Once again, is there a reason you do not want a separate combat meter?

You said this thread is not "dead." I hope that's the case. Is it possible that as you move on to new DEV threads that you give some kind of bare bones roundup or synopsis of what you have derived (if anything) from the discussion or what direction you are leaning toward. It's not just a matter of curiosity. Clearly even tentative decisions to go in a given direction or even to not go in another direction may have an impact on the feasibility of ideas in subsequent threads. Such a synopsis of the decision making process as we move along would likely be beneficial to everyone concerned and generate input which may be of more use.

Perhaps you already plan such a "roundup" of where the process stands and I just need to be patient and bide my time until you are ready. It is your job after all and I'm sure you are busy with a multitude of other things. For me it is just one of many hobbies and I have my actual real world work and life to boot. But it has caught my imagination.

Another possible way to create more structure with this project, which I have mentioned before, is for you to take those ideas which you deem to have some merit and drop them into a special dedicated thread called "Ideas Thus Far With Merit" or some such thing. You could even make it a thread to which there is no posting allowed. It would exist as a reference for members to look at and hopefully enhance and narrow their feedback on subsequent threads and perhaps not continually post ideas which are simply outside of the realistic or useable.

My sole point with this post is to enhance the process.

Thanks.

This has been said before but I want to restate it for clarity. Yes current belief allows you to store up say 1m belief in which case if you have a power like like meteor which costs like 6k belief then you can cast it 100+ times.

One solution is to have charges which recharge. So you'd have a dial for meteor and when it was expended it would recharge based on belief generation. This would mean you could balance the game based on the maximum possible belief generation rather than having to balance the maximum possible belief sorted (impossible to know).

Moo, I realise you need to compromise, especially early, but if you avoid balancing forever in favour of answers like "how do I make meteor so shit they don't actually want to use it" then the game will suck. After all it's even less practical to implement a tactical mode in the game that rewards timing and percison with powers.

Godus needs to be a simulation, your people need an economy and their needs to be a meaningful connection between my power as a god and the greatness of the civilisation gave worships me. If you don't go back to the economic fundamentals and create interesting tensions in the game then you may be able to claim the game is "more complete" which might be nice for peters credibility as you tick of promises with token features but it will still suck.

Okay. Well, I feel as if I've been thrown a bone (tail wagging) and there was even some meat on it. I think some things have been clarified a bit. Thanks FuriousMoo . Now I'm going to work on my newly discovered "patience." Wasn't that a "virtue" or something?

So, to put some flesh on my idea (above). Linking the current happiness bar with what's happening in terms of war or battles makes sense both in terms of storyline and programming. People are less happy during wartime to begin with. Now if, for example, meteors start falling Followers in nearby abodes and settlements wouldn't "know" that it was their "god" at work and it was a good thing. They would just "hear" huge explosions and become increasingly alarmed and unhappy. Sort of the "fog of war" kind of thing. Even soldiers on the front lines would become more and more nervous not knowing the mind of their god or whether a stray meteor might hit them etc.. Okay, so far so good. The belligerent, attacking tribe, assuming they are godless barbarians, may simply be in a berserker rage and not have their happiness drop off much at all. One or two may flee from the immediate vicinity of a meteor strike but that's about it. The more powerful the god power used the more the overall happiness meter falls. At some predetermined point in the dropping of the happiness meter Follower troops begin to turn tail and run in terror from the front. Cowards! If the meter drops to another predetermined point they all break ranks and retreat. At this point, as I said before, even one or two barbarians can take the field and win the battle. So, when just one or two Followers retreat from battle this would be a huge warning to the player to stop using god powers until the happiness meter moves upward again. The problem of god powers overwhelming battles has been solved and turned into an element of strategy at the same time. Use your god powers judiciously and enhance the chances of victory. Use them too much and insure your own defeat.

As to the finer details I just don't have enough information to comment. How many barbarians are there? How widely are they dispersed? Obviously the degree that the happiness meter would fall relative to distinct god powers and the point at which Follower soldiers would begin to retreat from battle would need to be tested and balanced to assure that use of god powers could be a pivotal strategy when used judiciously but disastrous if overused.

The other big plus with this system is that it would have no negative impact on gameplay during peace time. Players would merely have to use the more powerful god powers over a period of time and allow the happiness meter time to move back up or throw some festivals and plant some trees or beautify to move the meter back up.

All elegant IMHO. 

When I first read your comments about meteors and happiness I saw the word happiness and stopped reading. I did this because I hate the way the current happiness mechanic is implemented.

Then I came back and read your later posts and I do think your idea of meteor's impacting happiness/wellbeing has merit. You could do this through happiness or through some other measure of wellbeing. I think it would be cool if meteor created a giant cloud covering the world like with the dinosaurs and if your people went around coughing.

If you went down this path you'd have to consider what unhappiness/unwellness might lead to and ensure it was proportionate with the gain from using meteor. It would be interesting to have little rebellions from unhappiness.

I agree, the purpose this would serve is give a general indication as to what direction the deveopment would *want* to go with the project.
Certain ideas that either are outside of scope, not compatible or otherwise not suited for whatever reason can be easily flagged and discounted or atleast shoved to a "not currently usable" pile. If the core concept of the suggestion is desired by the playeraudience, then people will see if they can rework the concept into a more useable suggestion.

Meanwhile the concepts and ideas that ARE usefull or can be worked with would give a more defined indication as to what direction everyone wants to go.
Whether it is the players or the developers. Right now there is a chasm in between. With nobody really knowing where this is going. And people are all giving suggestions based on their own preferences and expectations.
Expectations that have been WIDELY out of sync ever since the kickstarter was funded as evidenced by both kickstarter backer responses aswell as Steam Early Access response.

My main reason to push for transparancy has been for this. To give some clear indication of what the hell is actually happening and where Godus is heading.
So that the backers and supporters can give more directed support rather than just shooting blind and HOPING that the ideas are usefull - but more often than not being useless and seemingly being ignored causing frustration and annoyance all around.

It would be a small matter to set up a bunch of milestones or other indicators as to what is usefull, what is already used, what is outside of scope and what is outright impossible within the current set of limitations (be it time, finance or tech).

////////////////////

Whatever solutions are chosen, I'm of the opinion that choice is key. Making Finger of God non-lethal should be a choice. One player may want the ability to "permanently" deal with a pesky follower, while another would only want to temporarily incapacitate them. Something that in this case could be easily balanced out through cost.
The "lethal" FoG would be slightly more expensive in that you hurt the happiness of your followers. Possible belief cost connected to it could apply aswell.

This would effectively be a toggle choice - the player goes one route or the other. And that choice would have further repercussions down the road.
It is up to the development team to decide whether they'd want such a choice to be "permanent" (example, you get a one or the other choice in the timeline) or to grant the player an active toggle to switch between them (thereby complicating design if that toggle options is kept for more powers down the line).


Similarly "godpower" vs "manpower" should be a choice. As you say neither should have a clear advantage making them "better" than the other.
Though they should have clear distinctions.
Whether it is that allowing your followers to do things themselves gives them certain perks down the line because you enable their freedom and to a limited point "free will".
Or even in some cases just because having them do it will save you belief cost expended (and thus belief grinding saved).


To me, the lack of choice in Godus is a big problem. And because a lot of the game has been determined through mobile development I don't know whether it is even possible to significantly overhaul the core game to address that issue at this point.
Which is why to me, it is essential that the dev team shows which ideas are usefull and can be worked with and which can't. Because we could want the world for Godus - if its not possible or viable than no number of suggestions will alter that. And at this point we don't have a clue where this is going.
The lack of activity will make many lose interest and move away and thats how projects end up abandoned (due to lack of funds and interest).

As I said in another thread a minute ago, if belief generation and an element of risk were added to this game, god powers in combat would be handled. This game is being designed as if the combat and non-combat parts are separate games. It's why so many people are coming up with combat-specific mechanics to make artificial limitations. I see two fundamental issues that, if addressed, would make this whole issue moot: the belief system needs an overhaul and there needs to be risk added to the game.

The game's entire belief usage, generation, and expenditure system needs to be reworked from the ground up. Godus needs easier and faster generation of belief, more things to spend belief on, and cheaper costs for all god powers. This makes it so belief stops being something used once every half-hour rather than having constant usage. It's the first thing that differentiates the pc players' expectations from that of mobile players. It also sets up the potential for people to actively use that belief rather than horde it.

Risk is what forces people to stop hording belief. Every rts has to figure out how to deal with "turtling". Godus does nothing to address it because players have no risk of losing. No god should be able to amass a million belief without losing. The fact that people are able to do so just points out a fundamental flaw of Godus' design. With a risk, a god has to spend belief to actually take care of followers. If destructive god powers were limited by belief generation but generation wasn't so glacial that the game became a chore, then it's possible to have it so god powers could be used within reason but not steamroll the enemy without tacking on caveats and exceptions all over the place. There weren't timers in Populous or Black & White, yet players couldn't just steamroll their opponents.

Just slowing down collection isn't going to change things, just slow the pace of the game down even further.  The idea of manually collecting belief makes sense for a mobile title where the player is safe.  Without risk, the only deciding factor to the combat is how long it takes the player to end it.  Belief needs to be looked at all the way from what generates it to what uses it so it will fit in with a faster pace.  Manual generation is only going to create problems as combat becomes more part of the game. 

What and how belief generation is handled goes all the way into how structures are implemented in the code.  Each building takes up resources for generation and stockpiling belief rather than just affecting the rate belief is placed into the global pool.  Reworking belief needs to start from that base and work all the way up to what uses it.  Hell, every single building has its own timer and mini-infrastructure around belief management that's wasting resources that could go to more interesting mechanics. 

Risk or speed aren't the problem - right now belief is a numbers game.
You guys ever played World of Warcraft?

Notice how World of Warcraft had both its health and damage statistics aswell as its gold value completely inflate adding zeroes with each expansion?
Where hundreds to thousands were the 'high point' in Burning Crusades, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands are the norm now.


Godus' belief is following that same example. Which is because we have flat ways of gathering belief - and no true standard to measure things against.
How can you compare a 100 belief utilitarian Finger of God to a meteor or other "big god power".
The costs of powers are just gonna get higher and higher and higher making it a grinding game.
And like it or not - grinding isn't fun. Your main resource to get through the game shouldn't be grinded actively all the time.
Its something that you should almost passively collect constantly so you can always do the things you need to do.

But at the same time you should not have so much belief that you can throw around volcano's and other massive 'miracles' left and right.
To achieve this goal some form of distinction has to be made.
There is a reason why most games work with a range of resources some more rare than others. And often locking the really powerful units, weapons or items away with rare resources.

Without such a limitation, people would make entire legions of that powerful item. It becomes a matter of who has the biggest. And thats poor design.
Thats no longer a matter of choice or tactical thinking. There is little planning involved other than a numbers game.

While this scaling belief system is the "easiest" resource system. Its highly flawed in that most people don't handle scaling well.
Godus has already show it doesn't handle scaling well in how the belief costs skyrocket through the roof - and we haven't even reached the mid to late ages yet... Are we going to be looking at belief costs of millions per power? Cmon... thats just sick.