Emotion and pride

[The Beatles]

We were brainstorming today, Freen, Rudder, Volky and me, and we came up with a lot of ideas that we'll try to summarise by and by, but Freen and I worked out a specific idea that would draw you into the game more immediately.

The idea is that if you care about the game, you will want to play it more. If you take pride in what you've built, if you can take pride in it, you'll start getting emotionally invested in it too. So some of our ideas were about how to make sure players can take pride in their empire or achievements or levels, and about how they can get emotionally involved.

Duels has been really popular. So we thought, why not have a game that's sort of like always Duels. The idea is, you can only attack outside your location. All of you at the same location (like Ankh-Morpork, or Uberwald or Klatch) are like one big family or clan. Not sure how many, but we both thought more than 2, but your thoughts are welcome. You pick a race (or you are randomly assigned a race), and after that you get a random location. Races are basically strats. Your location might affect your race bonuses. You can't delete for some number of days to make sure you can't just delete and try for another location right away. Randomness should balance things out.

Thoughts?

[Slasher]

Would there still be a way to move location that'd obviously cost a lot of whatever?

[The Beatles]

No. You get the side you're shuffled to. But on that note...

Here are some more ideas. Again, this is just brainstorming. How about instead of kills, when you get to 500 land, it counts as your citadel being breached. Your land is burned down, your troops and workers put to the sword (or some proportion of them, including your public market) are given to your opponent. Your spies are all hanged. Your resources are all taken. Finally, you get booted back into protection. The only things you keep are basically your name, number, experience, and things like history, messages, etc.

Maybe at this point you get randomly shuffled into another location?

The idea is to keep the thrill and objective of kills, without making them permanent. They just put you out of commission for a few days and you lose your chips.

Also there might have to be an overall objective, but I think the basic dynamic of kill-or-be-killed is the most fun. Maybe once only one "side" survives -- say Ankh-Morpork troops raze all the other villages in the game -- the round ends? Alternately it could be combined with a capture the flag kind of game where an admin player plays a highly powered account, and once that is killed, the round ends? I don't like that as much, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Thoughts?

I was also thinking that instead of villages in regions, we might do this as guilds in Ankh-Morpork. Obviously we'd have to use the game factor to make sure you only get a few of each unit rather than millions, and maybe houses instead of acres (also factored down). What do you think (especially Volky)?

[Freenhult]

I'm not sure. I think that might take away some of the emotional attachment of the account if its not allowed to die. Maybe we could give the accounts lives or something so they can only respawn so many times...?

[The Beatles]

The idea is that it's really discouraging to be killed, especially for a newbie. Going back to square one, and not losing your number, name, messages, etc., I don't think weakens the attachment. Also you keep your experience / level. That's important.

Also, realistically one person often has the chance of escaping from a losing battle. Not always, but sometimes. Makes sense to run away to fight another day.

[Freenhult]

The idea is that it's really discouraging to be killed, especially for a newbie. Going back to square one, and not losing your number, name, messages, etc., I don't think weakens the attachment. Also you keep your experience / level. That's important.

Also, realistically one person often has the chance of escaping from a losing battle. Not always, but sometimes. Makes sense to run away to fight another day.

Sure, which is why I gave the suggestion of a number of lives. I guess I don't see how you can value something when its advantageous at times to give it up and just try again. There should be a penalty to dying, like losing Exp or levels or something.

[Slasher]

Here are some more ideas. Again, this is just brainstorming. How about instead of kills, when you get to 500 land, it counts as your citadel being breached. Your land is burned down, your troops and workers put to the sword (or some proportion of them, including your public market) are given to your opponent. Your spies are all hanged. Your resources are all taken. Finally, you get booted back into protection. The only things you keep are basically your name, number, experience, and things like history, messages, etc.

Maybe at this point you get randomly shuffled into another location?

Fantastic idea! If the newbies haven't got to sign up again then they will probably carry on playing - this is probably one of the higher priority things that should be implemented

[The Beatles]

Losing exp levels sounds good to me. But nothing more harsh.

[Slasher]

Wouldn't they already be losing everything else anyways?

[Freenhult]

Sure, but is that really a big deal? They get to respawn vs permanently dying. Also, we all know its not THAT hard to rebound after a smashing...

[Slasher]

in all honesty i prefer to delete and start fresh as i did this set and may have to do again because i broke stuff in my strat due to not paying attention and trying to make a run of just a few turns while i was under attack and now everyone's overtook me lol, maybe make it an option to "respawn" or "create new account" or something?

[The Beatles]

I expect we'd keep the delete option, so you could always do that -- it just wouldn't be forced on you by a kill.

[Gen. Volkov]

I was also thinking that instead of villages in regions, we might do this as guilds in Ankh-Morpork. Obviously we'd have to use the game factor to make sure you only get a few of each unit rather than millions, and maybe houses instead of acres (also factored down). What do you think (especially Volky)?

Um, that could work, but there only a limited number of guilds.

[Ruddertail]

Erg - as I recall, we tried smaller numbers before, and it didn't go over terribly well. Also, putting us in a city really clashes with the aspect of food production. Longer post tomorrow - I must sleep.

[Ruddertail]

Ok. There's a bit here, and I've been out of the loop.

In terms of kills, I kind of like that. Of course, I would prefer an actual central city that can be sacked, rather than simply 500 acres (which is arbitrary, and doesn't introduce cities into the game). But yes, especially if we go with any sort of experience system, I think accounts need to be permanent on WoA, and persistent through the round on BFR. I don't think there needs to be a loss of experience or levels; ideally, cities/permanent buildings and stored resources are a big enough loss that getting all your cities/permanent buildings or whatever taken, and losing all your resources should be a painful thing.

In terms of the overall idea, I suppose that could work for BFR. However, while duels was always popular, few people ever just played duels. It was a fun interlude, but not permanent. Also, duels is not very conducive to people taking pride in their empire - it's conducive to going all out to destroy their opponent. This can be fun, sure, but I think it's a bad model for our overall game; getting experience and leveling up accounts, as well as making building a tenacious and long-term economy with thriving cities, etc. to support your military actions is a much better overall model - certainly for WoA, and probably BFR as well.

I suppose we could do the auto-divide by regions, but not make it duels style - instead, the strongest region at the end of the set wins. That might be good for BFR, since it's supposed to be more intense. On the other hand, I've always found clans and diplomacy to be one of the most interesting aspects of the game; this takes out the possibility of alliances, shifting alliances, backstabbing, etc. Forming a clan for BFR and leading them to the finish is one of the most fun experiences I've had here. . . good old UW.