View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0004351 | Valley 1 | Gameplay Idea | Sep 30, 2011 6:26 am | May 25, 2012 12:18 pm | |
| Reporter | JamesMowery | Assigned To | |||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 0.508 | ||||
| Summary | 0004351: Building Exploration Shouldn't Be A Grind, So Let's Fix It | ||||
| Description | I really enjoy A Valley Without Wind because of the great strides the devs have made to make the game fun, as opposed to simply making a game where you feel like you have to grind to get anywhere in the game. That being said, the one area that the game falls a bit short is with building exploration. Let me explain... Make no mistake, it is fun to explore the buildings. There is plenty to do. But it gets pretty dull the fourth, fifth, sixth time that you do it during a single sit-down with the game. You do it because it is necessary to collect loot, but it's just boring to me. Of course, the element of surprise — that any building you explore could have great riches inside — always provides a sort of challenge in itself, but, when all is said and done, there are far too many buildings to explore with far too little benefit to doing so. I now find myself passing up a lot of buildings because that part of the game has becomes dull, which I have noted other people mentioning in the forums. Yet, at the same time, I feel bad for passing up on these buildings, because, as I mentioned before, there is the possibility that there is something useful in these buildings. A change could go a long way in drastically improving this portion of the game. Underground dungeons already highlight when you scout a shortcut to another dungeon, when you find a gem vein, when you find an area that leads to a lower dungeon, when you discover boses and so on. This makes exploring underground caves interesting and exciting. Furthermore, you already know that dungeons are most likely going to offer these challenges, so it's no big deal to go explore an underground dungeon. Buildings do show you when there are shortcuts, they show you staircases, and they show you boses, just like underground caves. But the excitement that you get from underground caves isn't necessarily to be expected. And I would argue that it shouldn't be expected with every single building. But that is still a problem because of the amount of buildings. So one of two things could be changed to make buildings a much more rewarding. The first idea that comes to mind is that there should be some sort of indicator — what that indicator would be, I'm not exactly sure — that could highlight buildings that are worth exploring. Maybe this indicator will be displayed as a color on the minimap, or maybe it will appear on the building itself, or maybe something could be displayed to the player upon first entering the building. I don't know, but something along those lines could go a long way. And this indicator, whatever it might be, should give the player an idea of what this building has to offer. Of course, the indicator should embrace the whole concept of chance and mystery: nothing should be certain. It should, however, give the player a better idea of what to expect, or at least if there is anything worthwhile to expect if the building is explored. Depending on how this were implemented (if it was), there is a possibility to tie in the magical theme of the game too. Perhaps a special spell could increase the character's senses for discovering adventurous places or whatnot. There are a ton of directions that this could be taken. But it would make exploration less dull and more fun, which is what I believe the game should be about. I hope all that made sense. The other possible solution — which is probably easier to implement — is to make all of the buildings more interesting and worthwhile to explore. This means that each building should offer more to the player in terms of loot and/or boss fights. But it still becomes a balance issue because there are so many buildings in the game, and not every building should offer up bountiful rewards. Perhaps reducing the amount of buildings in the game could rectify this issue, but I actually like the idea of having many buildings throughout the game world; it adds to the feel of the game. So it's a serious balancing problem if you attack it this way. That's why I prefer the former idea — some sort of indication as to how "interesting" a building is. The dungeons are interesting. The strategic map is interesting. The surface dungeons are decent. But the buildings are boring. I think my suggestion could change that. Hopefully this will, at the very least, spark a meaningful discussion about how to handle building exploration. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Discussion Only | ||||
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More varied loot options and more interesting rooms are already in the works. I kind of like having to go into buildings to find out what they really have to offer, but you can already make some of these decisions from the outside. Larger buildings are likely to have larger interiors, so a huge modern is bigger than a small shack. Certain types of buildings have special rooms in them, such as houses which have studies and libraries where you can find books. I'm hesitant to mark this as a duplicate of one of the other building suggestion tickets, because there are some interesting ideas proposed, but I think we should try to consolidate that rather than having lots of similar tickets floating around. |
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The problem with adding more interesting rooms is that it doesn't address the underlying balance issue. It would, at least I would think, add more remorse for not exploring every single building in a region, which would actually add more to the sensation of grinding. Furthermore, the amount of effort that would be required to differentiate all the buildings in a region seems like a lot more work — and unnecessary work for the developers — that wouldn't address the underlying issue: there are too many buildings per region to explore. (EDIT: I shouldn't say that there are "too many buildings," but there are quite a few buildings to explore for each region. Exploring every building in every region is... a fairly time-consuming task.) Removing the buildings, in my mind, isn't the solution. So that's why I really like the idea of an indicator of interestingness for each building. That way players who prefer to explore more regions can go to a region, get an idea of the most interesting buildings, and then get out. But it will also allow those who prefer to perform more building exploration the ability to get more loot. I think that's a win-win situation, whereas adding more stuff alone could actually make the issue worse. |
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One thing to keep in mind is that, if I recall correctly, you aren't expected to explore all the buildings. And if you're after skill books, they predominantly only show up in libraries and studies, which are coloured yellow (although there is a slim chance they can also show up in offices, which are not coloured), so you can see them from two rooms away, meaning you don't need to explore every single room. The same thing applies to bosses. |
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Toll, I absolutely agree that it shouldn't be a requirement to explore every single building. That would be boring. I guess this also depends, too, on how it is determined what buildings have what loot. For example, I was just on a region that had 6 buildings of the same type spread out throughout five different surface areas. Do those six buildings have the same type of loot or similar value of loot? Or are they varied heavily? If things are varied up quite a bit, that is great. The problem is that there is a pretty good chance I'll never know which building has the best loot unless I explore them all. And this doesn't even include the 20 or so other buildings in that region on the surface. It's a lot of effort! And there's no doubt that it might be worth the effort to do so, but, at least to me, it feels like grinding. You just don't have that sensation with the underground dungeons. Now, if buildings aren't varied to a certain degree, then doesn't that seem a bit boring and predictable? Shouldn't there, say, be an algorithm that takes a look at all the buildings in a region and gives a certain few more loot and powerful items than others for the sake of randomness? I happen to be a fan of randomness, where some buildings could have nothing at all, most buildings have average stuff, and every once in awhile a building could have the jackpot. If that happened, I believe the game should offer up a way to present to you the buildings that are most interesting — those that have the highest chance of being the "jackpot." Balancing that is an issue in its own, but it is, in my opinion, a better solution that exploring every single building in every region just to find the biggest prizes. Admittedly, this could fundamentally impact the game in many ways, and could change the direction a bit. But I believe it is a good direction. But it has the advantage of appealing to different types of gamers: the first, like me, who likes to run through regions quickly, go to the most interesting stuff, and get out and explore other regions and advance the game quickly would be happy because they now have a sense of what is good and what is just average in the game world. I guess we could call this type of gamer the pure adventurer. Like I said, there is the potential to tie in the whole magical system with this type of detection stuff; it could add a whole new direction for the game, in fact. And, to be quite frank, the game already goes at great strides to help you find interesting stuff on the strategy map and in the dungeons, so why not expand that to buildings? The other type of gamer, the one — say, the explorer type? — would possibly like to go through most of the buildings in the region, to explore all the riches. They should, of course, be rewarded for their persistence; they will be able to nab more loot than the typical hit-n-run player. They are rewarded for their in-depth exploration, whereas the adventurer gets to go off and adventure and explore more tiles more quickly, which makes him/her happy too. So, what I'm proposing could have even bigger implications than I first thought. It could fundamentally alter the game, which is why I think it is worth talking about now. Because I think this could determine if the emphasis, at least in the short term, is put on adventuring — going out and exploring new regions — or exploration — searching every nook & cranny that each region has to offer. Striking a good balance is the challenge. |
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Certainly, there are some changes that can be made here. Exactly what the best way to do them is, I'm not sure... |
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Right now, the only building types that differ loot-wise that I've noticed are Houses vs. Ruins. Only the Houses (be it tree houses or angled houses or so on) have the possibility of having libraries and studies; I've yet to find a ruin that has one. Other than that, it seems all the loot is spread equally among them. That could be because there's not a whole lot of loot yet; aside from skill books, the only loots I can think of off-hand is health potions, magic potions, consciousness shards and dusts. And considering we're still in early early beta, I'm not sure it's worth it to start balancing this out, before we've seen a bigger picture. After all the basic building blocks are in place, then it'd be nice if some buildings were more "specialised"; i.e. one specific type of ruin could have a larger possibility of having health potions (although not all loot would be health potions, of course), while another would have a higher ratio of dust, etc. |
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It really does seem like a difficult decision. I, for one, imagine it will impact the game greatly in the long term and that one decision over the other could take you down a very different development path. If you add more content to all buildings equally, without much randomness: * buildings become more important * the appeal of exploring buildings is raised * the time dedicated to exploring buildings is increased * the efficiency of exploring buildings remains relatively the same * the regret of not exploring buildings is increased * the notion of grinding could potentially be increased If you add more content to buildings and add randomness WITHOUT some sort of indicator: * buildings become more important * a few buildings become more important than others, thus adding to the randomness of the world * the appeal of exploring buildings is raised * the time dedicated to exploring buildings is increased dramatically * the efficiency of exploring buildings is reduced dramatically * the regret of not exploring buildings is increased dramatically * the notion of grinding could potentially be increased dramatically If you add more content to all buildings but add more randomness WITH some sort of indicator as to the "interestingness" of a building: * buildings become more important * a few buildings become more important than others, thus adding to the randomness of the world * the appeal of exploring buildings is raised * the time dedicated to exploring buildings is either increased or decreased (at the preference of the player) * the efficiency of exploring buildings and collecting useful loot is increased * the regret of not exploring buildings is potentially decreased dramatically, if not eliminated * the notion of grinding could be significantly reduced, if not eliminated All of this might be an overly simplified observation — and I might be slightly biased — but I'm trying to be logical in my thinking. I think the latter option would appeal to the widest audience while also giving the entire audience more to be happy about. But that's only my opinion. |
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Yeah, I think specialising buildings towards certain forms of loot makes the most sense, if I want skill books I go searching for houses, this is about the only current instance in which the building type changes my interest in exploring it. If I knew that a certain building type had a greater chance to contain whatever I am after then that allows me to be more focused than simply have to search blindly. obviously that is sort of predicated on their being more loot types than as it stands but that seems like a fairly safe assumption. As a sort of aside, I think it's also important that loot is limited to 1 per room, though I wonder if consciousness shards should count towards that, because other wise you will generally feel compelled to explore empty parts of the room on the vague chance that something else is there. |
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Whew, okay, there's a lot of discussion here and I will freely admit I've skimmed only the original post. A few notes, before I get back to developing: 1. Buildings in general will be getting a lot more interesting and varied with more interesting stuff in them, loot-wise and otherwise. We keep getting suggestions along these lines, but it's just a factor of it being early beta, not intent or a design flaw. We just need some time! ;) 2. I like the idea of color-coding buildings or otherwise having them provide clues. That would probably work well as part of the "tooltip overlays over stuff while paused" function, actually. 3. You are never, EVER supposed to have to go into every building that you see. Quite the opposite. Know how when you play, say, Left 4 Dead, you see all these buildings (because it's a town or whatever), but you're only able to go into maybe 5% of them? Well, from a game mechanics standpoint that makes sense, but from a virtual world standpoint that's always bugged me. I wanted to do something where "if you can see it, you can go there." So here we are. But if you're in a post-apocalyptic version of, say, your own home neighborhood, would you go into EVERY house and every room in every house? I don't know about you, but there are 600 houses in my neighborhood. Forget about it! I'd just go into one or two that seemed interesting, or whatever ones seemed nearest if I was low on basic supplies and needed to restock those. 4. One thing that the game isn't really showing yet is something called Semi-Rare Commodities, which would go into the really large and cool buildings. For instance, in pyramids or those big military complexes in the thaw. Those would provide specific predictable rewards for buildings of that nature. Those become somewhat mini-dungeons that you can take on at will. And there's other stuff planned, too. I'm not saying there are not other things we need to do, but I can only digest so much at once. I'm plenty happy for folks to continue discussing this without me, but I have some further steps that I need to take with the game and buildings in general before I'll be able to really discuss this cogently. |
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I think too much rooms contain stuff. (Explorer/Completionist playing style) I find myself running to every corner of every room trying to find those CIV XP buckets. I think my life would be simpler if these were a lot more rare, and that rooms (apart from stairwells) were empty and marked as such. Not sure if that would stop me from exploring every dark area of every map... But atleast I would know I didn't miss a Mana Potion I somewhere :P |
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I hope folks feel that buildings are less of a grind than they once were. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 30, 2011 6:26 am | JamesMowery | New Issue | |
| Sep 30, 2011 6:38 am | jerith | Note Added: 0014847 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 6:47 am | JamesMowery | Note Added: 0014848 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 6:48 am | JamesMowery | Note Edited: 0014848 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 6:51 am | JamesMowery | Note Edited: 0014848 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:00 am | Toll | Note Added: 0014850 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:28 am | JamesMowery | Note Added: 0014858 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:30 am | JamesMowery | Note Edited: 0014858 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:42 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0014859 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:43 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Discussion Only |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:43 am | tigersfan | Status | new => feedback |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:50 am | Toll | Note Added: 0014861 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:53 am | JamesMowery | Note Added: 0014862 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:53 am | JamesMowery | Status | feedback => new |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:56 am | JamesMowery | Note Edited: 0014862 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 8:00 am | JamesMowery | Note Edited: 0014862 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 8:03 am | Terraziel | Note Added: 0014865 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 8:03 am | JamesMowery | Note Edited: 0014862 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 9:08 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0014888 | |
| Nov 14, 2011 12:14 pm | TNSe | Note Added: 0017520 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 3:01 pm | tigersfan | Note Added: 0018256 | |
| Jan 27, 2012 3:01 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => resolved |
| May 25, 2012 12:18 pm | tigersfan | Relationship added | has duplicate 0007686 |
| May 25, 2012 12:18 pm | tigersfan | Relationship deleted | has duplicate 0007686 |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - Gameplay => Gameplay Idea |
