This game was designed around the idea of convincing other players into your family. We still believe that this is a sound foundation to the game, but we have some proposals that we feel make the game much better.
1. Game Over when 51% of the Players In the Same Family
We have noticed that the game seems exciting as families are starting to form and everyone is frantically trying to help their family get on top. But as one family becomes dominate, we have seen that play seems to drop off. People seem to realize the result of the game and feel that there is really nothing left to do. We would like to keep everyone excited until the very end of the game.
We believe that ending the game at 51% allows for 2-3 families to feel that they have a chance to win the game right up until the game ends. This means that there is lots of strategy all the way to the end of the game, and provides a feeling that "if I just did this different, we could have won". This will spur excitement to join up with people from the last game to win the next game.
Mechanics:
This pretty straight forward. We will be adding checks to stop the game as soon as a family reaches 51%. We will freeze the game in that position, and inform all the players that the game is over. No more challenges will be resolved and no more money or troops will be given. The players will not be able to make any more moves, but will be able to view the final state of the game.
2. Don't Lose Business Level when Convinced
Currently, if you are convinced into a family, you will lose one level of your highest business. We have found that this is a very large penalty, and greatly discourages people from joining up into families. We will be removing this, but we will still keep the benefit of gaining a business level when you convince a player into your family. Players can still lose levels to their businesses through sabotage.
3. Underdog Respect Bonus
Everyone has experienced bad luck early in a game, and in some games that means that you are always behind and might never be able to catch up. We are proposing an ability to overcome this disadvantage, and to provide a way for late joiners to feel they still have a shot. We are proposing adding an Underdog Respect Bonus. This will not effect the mechanics of a challenge, but allow the Underdog to receive larger amount of respect for out witting a better player with more respect.
Mechanics:
All players will be able to up to 100 points of respect per challenge. This will be constant throughout the entire game. We will then take the difference between the 2 players respect and use that value to determine the Underdog Bonus. The bonus will at a max allow the player to make up 25% of the difference. If the difference is less then 400 respect points, there will be no Underdog Bonus.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Challenge Changes
Challenges are the most important part of the game. We are constantly trying to find ways to make challenges more fun and interesting. Here is a list of our latest choices on how to make challenges better:
1. Troop Ratio Determines Death Percent
We wanted to make challenges about more then just who has the most troops. We wanted to provide a way for a player to use skillful reading of an opponent to greatly effect the out come of the a challenge, and we feel that the ratio of the the troops deployed into the challenge provides the correct mechanism. We have designed this feature from the perspective the defender, but the attacker can second guess the defender to get the best results.
The defender determines the death percent of a challenge by how well he picks the ratio of an the attackers. If the defender picks the exact ratio of the defender, he will kill all of the attackers troops in the battle and lose none of his own troops. The worse the defender picks the ratio of the attacker the less of the attack troops are killed and the more of the defenders troops are killed. The worst case scenario the defender will lose all of his troops and kill none of the attackers troops.
Mechanics:
The ratio of muscles to dames is reduced to a single value by dividing the muscles by dames or dames by muscles to give us a value greater then 1, but we max the value at 10. If the ratio was dame heavy, then we make the value received from the division negative. We compare the attacker ratio value to the defender ratio value. The closer the numbers are together the more the higher the death percent is for the attacker. The farther apart the numbers are apart the less the the death percent is for the attacker.
This means that the best case scenario for the attacker is if they pick a 10/1 ratio and the defender picks the opposite 10/1 ratio. If the defender chooses a 1/1 ratio, they are guaranteed to cause a 50% death percent. We have decided to balance this through how much respect the Defender earns in a battle. Please see the next section for details.
2. Defender Earns Respect Based on Matching of Troop Ratio
Currently, the attacker earns respect based on how many convince points and sabotage points he earns in a challenge. This will not be changing, and the attacker will not earn any respect based on the ratios of the troops. The max respect that a attacker can earn in a challenge is 100 points of respect.
The defender will earn respect based on how well he matches the ratio of the attackers troops. This is calculation of the ratio matched is done the same way as with the Death Percent. So, the Death Percent is closely linked to the respect earned with one major difference. Since picking a 1/1 troop ratio give the best odds to the Death Percent, we will give more respect to Defenders that don't take a the most risk. The closer the defenders ratio is to 10/1, the more respect they will earn in a challenge.
3. Can Only Defend if Cooperating with Target
This is the biggest change that we are making, but we feel will benefit the challenges the most. The biggest complaint we have received has been about not understanding the out come of a challenge. This would be a simple process if it was one person/group against another, but our challenges form a complicated metrics of many against many. We have not been able to figure out how to effectively display this.
We would like to move the challenge structure to a many to one. This will allow all the attackers to have a view that feels like it is a simple one-to-one challenge. It will provide simple values that you can see the direct cause and effect of the troops the attacker used against the troops the defender used. We still have the complexity of aggregating the results for the defender, but we have not been able to fix this while to keeping are Slow Play goals.
Mechanics:
The defense will center around the target. If the target doesn't defend, then there will be no defense for the challenge. Any players that try to defend will not have an effect and will be shown that their defense failed. When the target is defending, only players that are cooperating with the target (deploy the exact same troops), will be help in the defense. If the target is defending and players join with different troop amounts, they will fail to help the defense. Any players with a failed defense will not lose any of their deployed troops and will earn no respect, but they still lose the deploy cost of joining the battle. So, it is very important to coordinate defenses.
These mechanics don't support a family being able to keep a member, but does support a player's ability to great effect which family they want to be in. If they were forced into another family, they have the ability to help their old family convince them back. We believe that this will provide a much better experience for most players.
1. Troop Ratio Determines Death Percent
We wanted to make challenges about more then just who has the most troops. We wanted to provide a way for a player to use skillful reading of an opponent to greatly effect the out come of the a challenge, and we feel that the ratio of the the troops deployed into the challenge provides the correct mechanism. We have designed this feature from the perspective the defender, but the attacker can second guess the defender to get the best results.
The defender determines the death percent of a challenge by how well he picks the ratio of an the attackers. If the defender picks the exact ratio of the defender, he will kill all of the attackers troops in the battle and lose none of his own troops. The worse the defender picks the ratio of the attacker the less of the attack troops are killed and the more of the defenders troops are killed. The worst case scenario the defender will lose all of his troops and kill none of the attackers troops.
Mechanics:
The ratio of muscles to dames is reduced to a single value by dividing the muscles by dames or dames by muscles to give us a value greater then 1, but we max the value at 10. If the ratio was dame heavy, then we make the value received from the division negative. We compare the attacker ratio value to the defender ratio value. The closer the numbers are together the more the higher the death percent is for the attacker. The farther apart the numbers are apart the less the the death percent is for the attacker.
This means that the best case scenario for the attacker is if they pick a 10/1 ratio and the defender picks the opposite 10/1 ratio. If the defender chooses a 1/1 ratio, they are guaranteed to cause a 50% death percent. We have decided to balance this through how much respect the Defender earns in a battle. Please see the next section for details.
2. Defender Earns Respect Based on Matching of Troop Ratio
Currently, the attacker earns respect based on how many convince points and sabotage points he earns in a challenge. This will not be changing, and the attacker will not earn any respect based on the ratios of the troops. The max respect that a attacker can earn in a challenge is 100 points of respect.
The defender will earn respect based on how well he matches the ratio of the attackers troops. This is calculation of the ratio matched is done the same way as with the Death Percent. So, the Death Percent is closely linked to the respect earned with one major difference. Since picking a 1/1 troop ratio give the best odds to the Death Percent, we will give more respect to Defenders that don't take a the most risk. The closer the defenders ratio is to 10/1, the more respect they will earn in a challenge.
3. Can Only Defend if Cooperating with Target
This is the biggest change that we are making, but we feel will benefit the challenges the most. The biggest complaint we have received has been about not understanding the out come of a challenge. This would be a simple process if it was one person/group against another, but our challenges form a complicated metrics of many against many. We have not been able to figure out how to effectively display this.
We would like to move the challenge structure to a many to one. This will allow all the attackers to have a view that feels like it is a simple one-to-one challenge. It will provide simple values that you can see the direct cause and effect of the troops the attacker used against the troops the defender used. We still have the complexity of aggregating the results for the defender, but we have not been able to fix this while to keeping are Slow Play goals.
Mechanics:
The defense will center around the target. If the target doesn't defend, then there will be no defense for the challenge. Any players that try to defend will not have an effect and will be shown that their defense failed. When the target is defending, only players that are cooperating with the target (deploy the exact same troops), will be help in the defense. If the target is defending and players join with different troop amounts, they will fail to help the defense. Any players with a failed defense will not lose any of their deployed troops and will earn no respect, but they still lose the deploy cost of joining the battle. So, it is very important to coordinate defenses.
These mechanics don't support a family being able to keep a member, but does support a player's ability to great effect which family they want to be in. If they were forced into another family, they have the ability to help their old family convince them back. We believe that this will provide a much better experience for most players.
Starting a Blog
Hello all players of MobWorld: The City Wars.
I have been writing a lot of design specs for the developers of The City Wars games to get their opinions on features that will be added to the game, but then I realized that I was missing the most important part of the game: the players. I have starting this blog to provide a space where the players can see what is happening in the development of the game, and to make comments before the features are implemented.
Your comments will greatly affect the direction of the game development, and we look forward to your input into the development of the game. So keep an eye on this blog to get all the latest skinny.
Thanks,
Jeff Goetsch (ElJefe)
I have been writing a lot of design specs for the developers of The City Wars games to get their opinions on features that will be added to the game, but then I realized that I was missing the most important part of the game: the players. I have starting this blog to provide a space where the players can see what is happening in the development of the game, and to make comments before the features are implemented.
Your comments will greatly affect the direction of the game development, and we look forward to your input into the development of the game. So keep an eye on this blog to get all the latest skinny.
Thanks,
Jeff Goetsch (ElJefe)
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