Wednesday, July 25, 2012

ideas on future mechanics

I probably should share my view on what dynasty I imagine =)

The mechanics I’d like to try out is about robbing. Probably once a day a farmer may send a pm to the demon saying which farmers he wishes to rob. Only amuletless manuls may go for robbery, so the maximum length of the list of the victims equals total number of manuls a farmer has minus number of amulets he has. The list may contain duplicates, but still each manul acts separately. When such pms are collected, at a certain hour (21UTC?) the demon should resolve them somehow along the following lines. All manuls that go hunting leave their houses. When a hunting manul reaches the victim’s house, he chooses a manul that sleeps at that house at random (so it may occur to be amuletless manul that just didn’t go hunting), and with a certain probability steals an amulet if the choice was lucky. After all attempts are made, the hunting manuls return. One issue is in what order should these attempts be made…

As for the amulets. I don’t have strong preferences here. It may be that the demon may privately reveal a Sacred Letter associated with an amulet for a certain compensation, Sacred Letters then form a Sacred Word (how long? 4? 5?), knowing which and possessing, say, amulets with first and last letter of the word, one may trigger a victory condition (possessing that amulets? receive some (hidden?) amount of CW and then the farmer with max CW wins?)
By the way, “the Demon is not a Farmer” proposal coming =) Otherwise I have a clear advantage of knowing which amulets mean what. And my bying ability is limited by 50 CW, which is not the right thing.

posted by quirck at 25 Jul 2012 01:58:13 UTC Comments (6)

Comments

Clucky: he/him

25-07-2012 06:10:33 UTC

really don’t think daily actions is a good idea. its summer, people are busy, need something with less busy work to get people to reappear

quirck: he/him

25-07-2012 07:37:30 UTC

Hmm.. In my mind, it’s not that much work compared to linking machines, though maybe I’m wrong… And people are always busy, for me the summer is the least busy season, for some people vice versa… If not daily actions, then what could it be instead? Slow down to, say, three days? Stop clock on weekends? I don’t like making hunting a one-time action that may be performed directly, because then it loses the relationship “go hunting - become more vulnerable to others hunting you”.

Josh: he/they

25-07-2012 14:01:20 UTC

Daily actions are always a good idea. craft them carefully and don’t overuse them, but people need to come to the blog every day and have something to do if the dynasty isn’t going to flop.

Clucky: he/him

25-07-2012 16:24:24 UTC

I disagree with Josh. If you need to come onto the blog every day, people will fall behind and just not play (see last dynasty). Its better to have stuff that lets people stay involved but still miss some days

Kevan: he/him

25-07-2012 19:34:38 UTC

It depends what your daily actions are. If it’s a well-designed grind-free action that you might not want to perform every day, then it gives players an interesting daily decision if they want it, without guaranteeing that the regular visitors are always going to be ahead.

Josh: he/they

25-07-2012 20:08:46 UTC

Precisely. It’s about having the imagination to apply them usefully.