Built an empire! Now what? (Needs a story/player character!)

So you built yourself a wonderful little city. Your hearthlings are happily practicing their trades. You’ve killed every monster who dares lay its grubby little mittens on your stockpiles and you’re wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. All of which can be done in a fair number of hours. So, now what?

The issue I’ve found with Stonehearth is that there’s not much else to do when you’ve built your city. Of course, most of the fun in a city builder is… well… building a city. However it does wear out after a while because there’s not a lot new you can do in a replay. It’s essentially the same formula over and over again because your hearthlings have no story, no personality, and no distinctness other than being little mindless minions to do your bidding.
Enter solution:
You’re a wealthy businessman/woman who is on a mission to settle new land. You could be a noble king or a ruthless tyrant. The role-playing possibilities are endless. It’s your story. The point though, is that being able to be a king or queen of your new land will give you direction to go, and endless options to explore. I’m not going to pretend I know whether implementing something like this in game is easy, but it’d make all the difference. Because you’re no longer “God”, you can now fall in love. Get married. Have kids. Have your kids succeed you in a newgame+ with harder, newer enemies. Send your settlers on quests. Raid other kingdoms. Create feuds. Create political agendas. Hold festivals. Hold tournaments. Lead armies into battle. Lead dungeon expeditions. The possibilities are truly endless. All I’m saying is, if you introduce a player character, you have the basis to expand what is a superb city builder (but not much else) into something absolutely incredible.

A marriage between Harvest Moon and Stonehearth with a little Skyrim affair in between. The result would be a game that everyone (not just city builder enthusiasts) would want to get their hands on.

Thanks for your time. :smile:

4 Likes

welcome to the discourse @Mio :smile:

though i do agree, the game in its current state can get boring after awhile, you must remember its still in alpha with tons more content yet to be added.

1 Like

Thanks! Absolutely. In fact, it is because I know that it is in alpha that I’m offering a suggestion of what I’d like to see and what it can become later down the road. :wink:

Apologies if I came off as negative.

3 Likes

The concept of a player character has come up here and there, from what I remember. I believe Tom initially said that they wouldn’t be doing this in order to preserve the third-person / ‘minimal hands-on’ approach for the game they’re aiming for; however, he has also mentioned the potential for Stonehearth “sequels”, which would take a significantly different turn on gameplay and might be more akin to your suggestion. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the exact details he gave, but I believe if they did end up doing sequels, the second game would be more like an RPG–maybe like Cube World with city management elements–and the third would be a sort of “dark lord simulator”, being in charge of evil forces, dungeons, etc.)

Personally, I would really like the option for a personal unit in the game. It does mean more personal control in the game, but if the unit has the potential to undertake any branch of classes and offers an equally immersive playing experience, it could be fun to play around with.

My concern is the unit becoming too valuable or overpowered, given its possibilities. Maybe a comparison from another game to start with would be the Explorer unit in Age of Empires III?

And of course, even if Team Radiant doesn’t design something like this in the vanilla version of Stonehearth, I would be incredibly surprised if the modding community didn’t come up with something along these lines.

2 Likes

from what i heard when i first joined the discourse,

  • stonehearth II was about creating a character and playing in a RPG style game, going around exploring and helping out player created towns from Stonehearth

  • Stonehearth III was where you were an evil mastermind building a dungeon, filling it with monsters, and defending it from characters from Stonehearth II

course, this was all just thoughts being tossed around from the streams, never actually confirmed.

2 Likes

I think the easiest way could be to have the goblin with the fancy swagger, not die just run away, after he is beaten and just have him come back with more and stronger goblins over and over again.
Same Models,
same logik,
just more of theses dialog windows and change in stats and equipment. This could already proof difficult to with stand those attacks and players could compare how many waves they defeated.
Like a tower defense, just with your hole city.

no offense, but i don’t really see a point for TR to code/make that, as goblins are just the early game “cannon fodder” type enemy’s, eventually we will get orcs coming after the goblins are defeated, and then even tougher baddies.