Brain or Brawn or Both

Don't mean to butt in but mini game/puzzle suggestions:

Something to do with the music on collection that's all over the place and doesn't have any real use. Reward for manually collecting the tunes.


A treasure hunt, chests open and give clues. To next location you have to sculpt to find each chest, with a large reward at the end or buried sculpture or ingame buffs.

If you keep stickers, complete particular sets or combine them together to give special rewards. Like gem crafting in infinity blade, Or doodle god, getting the right sticker together produce unique stickers you can collect and show off or give ingame buffs.

One peter suggested (in a video once), special followers (where's wally) randomly spawn, find them, kill them or boost them (kill "Larry lemming" by FoG over a cliff, or. "Mary meteor"-drop a meteor on her, "eddy currents "-kill by drowning for boost, "billy bolster"-boost him) for different rewards. Leap> Stats of number of times each has been killed/found (leader board).

Was in game immersion a feature I'd not unlocked... how many gems was that...

In voyage terms they were always poor and became worse on every re-tread, oh and game destroyingly bugging - do you want the incident references... nothing like forced restarts to really immerse you in a game. At least the AI scripted offered some kind of hope, only to be taken almost immediately away.

Step 0 is still Godus needs a better statement of what its supposed to be, until we have that it will continue not to be brawn or nor brawn or nor both, but neither and nothing.

It needs to allow elements of both techniques but I've seen zero to suggest anything we've been told has true design in it. The fact that we cannot progress without unlcoking specific games elements i.e. for all my games I've never actually needed builders in a settlement, currently no game element demands them - also in my post astari threat world archers do nothing. Miner and farmers though I cannot unlock beacons with out unlocking them

What do I mean, well everytime I start up my android game it says no two worlds are the same, not but they are 100% the same until I change them within the train tracks allowed to me - so its a hair splitting description of difference. I can relatively easily make the same good or bad choices in my mobile versus pc game and get a very very similar world. The splash screen also tell me to sculpt to find stickers etc because that is the way to become powerful, so not max population etc.

Okay, so I was reading this thread earlier today and for some reason it inspired me to start typing up a post. Somewhere along the line of typing it up I lost track of where I was going but because I typed up quite a bit I thought it would be a shame not to post it, so here goes.



Accomplishment

One thing that a lot of games have in common is that people who play them can derive pleasure from achieving some form of accomplishment. The sense of achieving a goal appeals to our human nature and makes playing a game worthwile and rewarding. Accomplishments can come in many forms.

Perhaps the most basic form is that of simply completing a task. Take the game of Patience for example. Every time you play Patience the goal is exactly the same and so are the basic setup and rules to follow along the way. The only thing that is different every time is the way the cards are laid out at the start. Despite the simplistic nature of the game there are many people who play it, whether it is to relax a little bit or to simply pass some time. When the goal is achieved an amount of pleasure is derived however small the sense of accomplishment might be for a player.

Another way to achieve pleasure from completing a task is by doing so by spending the least amount of time possible. As far as gaming is concerned this brings along an aspect of competition. A player could after all compare his results with those of other players to see who was able to complete the task the quickest, thus experiencing a sense of superiority. Even if there are no other players involved a player could still derive pleasure by attempting to beat his own personal best time. There are many games that are based on this principle, the first one that springs to mind is the rather simplistic Minesweeper.

A type of gaming accomplishment that is very similar to the one I just described is the one where the goal is to complete a task while attempting to gain the highest score possible. As with the time aspect the score aspect can be used to either compare results with other players or to attempt to beat one's personal best score. Again there are many games based on this principle, I don't think I really need to give an example.

A third type of game which is very similar to the previous two types is that where the accomplishment of a player is measure in levels. Whenever a player completes a level they are taken to a new level which offers the same gameplay but with a higher degree of difficulty. Take Tetris for example. The longer you manage to "stay alive" while playing it, the faster the bricks start tumbling down making it increasingly difficult to keep completing the task at hand.

Another way in which a player can derive satisfaction from a game is from the idea of achieving a goal by having to spend a lot of time on something. I will give the example of building a table. When you are building a table with your own hands and tools and shaping it and finishing it exactly to your liking might take you a week of hard work and patience, possibly even suffering an injury along the way, but in the end the result of the journey is rewarding. This same table could probably have been produced by a machine or in a factory or even simply bought in a store, but no pleasure would have been derived from it. Of course building a table is not a game. However, when I think for example of a game like A-Train by Maxis the aspect of having to spend a lot of time to achieve a goal is definitely present. The game consists mostly of a simulation that runs itself. At the start of the game the player sets up some basic parameters by laying down tracks and placing train stations and after that most of the time would be spend on waiting for a city to sprawl around the layout that was constructed by the player. From there on the player would now and then develop additions or change the way the trains run according to the way the simulation pans out or perhaps because that had already been the player's plan from the very start before even a single piece of track was laid down. Of course there is an aspect of strategy involved because simply plopping down tracks and stations randomly is unlikely to lead to a viable sustainable simulation, especially since there is a certain cash flow involved. The core of this game however remains that a player has to spend a lot of time waiting for their plans to (hopefully) come to fruition. Personally I find the idea of achieving a goal by having to spend a lot of time on something very rewarding.

Some people find it pleasurable to simply create something and compare their creations with those of others. This does not necessarily mean there is a sense of competition involved. The pleasure would be derived by following one's inspiration and seeing where it leads. Sharing the end result with other people and seeing what other people have themselves created can bring satisfaction to all parties involved and lead to people inspiring each other with their ideas and concepts. On top of this a person would derive a sense of being part of a community of like-minded people. I don't have any example in particular regarding a game where such a community exists but I could imagine that games such as Sim City could develop these types of communities around them.

Another type of game from which people derive satisfaction is the sort that has an intellectual aspect. This is where quizzes and game shows come to mind. Players derive pleasure by testing their knowledge regarding various topics whether they are measuring their results only to their own perceived standards or they are comparing them with the results of other players. There aren't too many computer games which rely on this concept but they are out there nonetheless.

Similar to yet different from the aspect of intellectuality is that of intelligence. Where intellectuality is based solely on knowledge, intelligence is based on both knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to an advantage. This is where the category of puzzle games fits in. Puzzle games come in many shapes and forms. The first example that comes to mind (although there are probably better ones) is Portal in which the player has to use and combine various objects in various ways in order to be able to progress.

People can also derive pleasure from the sense of being adventureous. For example by setting off to explore uncharted lands. A game that perhaps best uses this concept to its advantage despite not actually being an adventure game is Civilization. With every new game of Civilization the player will have to explore the uncharted lands in order to find appropriate spots to place settlements or to find hidden bonuses and the map is different every time. The idea of not knowing what you are going to find brings excitement. Adventure games also deliver the sense of going on an adventure, often in the form of a quest, however usually these games are static in the sense that they are exactly the same no matter how many times you play them. This doesn't mean though that they can't still be fun to play even when you have completed them before. Monkey Island for the win.



I'm sure there are other ways in which people derive pleasure from playing games but here is where I sort of lost track of what I was doing so I'll just leave it here and perhaps later on I'll find more inspiration. Or perhaps other people can add to this.

I haven't even really touched on multiplayer gaming and such so there is a whole lot which can be discussed or analyzed there. Also there are other ways in which people get pleasure from games that have nothing to do with accomplishments, such as for example role playing, which I haven't touched upon.

Do you even realize how much of this post reflects how I see "Happiness" and "Belief generation" should work in Godus.....?

Just change "Player" into "Follower" and the names of the games you mention into specific tasks in Godus.

When a Follower finishes a task, he/she gains "Accomplishment" (often used as a standard for happiness in the really real world, so why not in Godus)

And what if we also incorporated "worship" into this story. Thank the God(s) for being able to finish/accomplish a certain task etc.

So, a Follower finishes a task, goes to <insertplaceofworshiphere> and God receives "Belief" 



(Ok, this is not how suggestions should be made, technically, but I think it is a logical approach to "Belief", "Worship" and lives of Followers etc.)

Who do you disagree with?

I apologize for going off-topic and making a confusing post.
It had very little to do with "how to approach Godus, play style wise"

What I was referring to had more to do with follower mechanics and belief generation than anything else (Accomplishment is what drives real people, my idea would be to use accomplishments in Godus as well.
The player should get power (belief) because his followers are able to finish tasks etc. and not based on his "type of home")


Again, I'm sorry....

It should be something the AI/followers should be doing themselves.
eat/drink/sleep, then do chores (like farming/mining etc.).
Fulfilling those chores = accomplishment = belief generation.
If the player would be needed to arrange the required resources (like the different trees and rocks I talk about in this post godus.boards.net/post/14549 ) and the AI goes their own way.

Maybe too complicated....

I guess this does prove that players have vastly differing ideas of what Godus would/should/could have been.

Wires are not getting uncrossed here. At all...

Followers = AI as well... 
In my Godus world, I will not be ordering Followers around AT ALL.
They should do whatever lifeforms do. Live their own daily lives (eat/drink/work (and ONLY work on the Farm/Mine/Build/Worship AFTER eating/drinking/resting)
They should have needs (which they fulfill ALL ON THEIR OWN), the player makes sure our followers can get to the resources required)
The player should plant apple trees, let the river flow next to their abode, etc.

P.S. I never mentioned belief COLLECTION (I said belief generation. And the player having to collect belief him/herself is one of weirdest mechanics in godus...fwiw)
I don't want to order single followers around. They should do their own thing.
They should be doing stuff for themselves (eat/drink/sleep) and after that, they work for the player (by finishing whatever chores they do the player  (chores = Farmers farm, miners mine etc.).

Chores our followers do, do not equal chores for the player.... (a.k.a. f2p mechanics) ever... 
The main thing is that the player DOES NOT CONTROL followers AT ALL. (like in Majesty: Kingdom simulator)

The player only provides the resources (like trees, rocks, rivers. And the player digs to make buildable terrain)
That's all.
No clicking on abodes for belief collection (should just work like 99% of all other God games... that should go automatic) 

Anyway. I apologize again...