[Dev Blog] Desktop Tuesday, Update on Steam Release, Plus Exp/Leveling Feature

Development
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I also like town exp. While it can easily be associated with less likable mobile games cluttered with IAPs (Godus and Clash of Clans are just 2), Radiant could easily make this into a good and original system for gaining citizens. To kind of go off of what @LeadFootSlim said, I do not like the idea of quests for town exp. While trading supplies (or even donating supplies to a town in need) could give you exp, the whole quest system is bothering. I also do not think you should be restricted by your town level. Instead of the villager bonus being a perk, it should be the whole point of leveling up. People should not be restricted by a number, but by the lack of a crafter/resources/settlers/et cetera.

This brings me to the other thing, villager leveling. As I said before, the level of something should not restrict a player. However, the level should make the settler work faster or build slightly better items (or maybe different colors). This way people would have an incentive to level up their settlers, without being too limited at the beginning of the game.

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I thought settler exp was always planned, but I guess that original idea was more ‘Level into new jobs’ than skills and perks.

It’s a good addition IMO, I’m hoping it’ll help give the citizens a little more personality and help me think of them as different people instead of ‘Generic worker A’ or ‘Guard #2’. I’d like to see these levels be more then a straight work speed bonus; Perhaps a system where each citizen is assigned a random, class relevant, perk when they level.

Workers would have the most generic perks with things like: Sprinter (runs 20% faster) or Swift hands (swing ‘tools’ 10% faster), and then each specialization would have their own subset like a footman: Strong Arm (+10% damage). This also leaves the option of giving some of your citizens silly perks on creation like: Coward (runs from battles - Removed if turned into footman), Narcolepsy (Falls asleep randomly), or Berrivore (Refuses to eat anything but berries), and/or the ability to award perks through non-level achievements like: Battlescars (Has taken x damage in battle without dying, takes 10% less damage)

It’s not perfect, but I’d rather see something that makes each settler unique then provide generic boosts.

I can’t say I disagree with the choice to remove town exp, it removes some of the citybuilding/simulation aspect and makes it a little more like farmville. You shouldn’t be given a new citizen for building a farm, your reward for building a farm should be surviving another few days.

I do think it would be great to feel like the settlement was developing, and not just growing. Perhaps instead of an arbitrary town experience bar have a development level, or tree. Rather than your town gaining experience for random tasks reward players for developing the infrastructure.

Caravan > Camp = Promote a carpenter, unlocks ability to build structures. Camp > Outpost = Promote weaver, unlocks soft beds, chairs, ability to grow cotton. Outpost > Settlement = promote stonemason, unlocks stone structures… etc.

You could have a branching ‘tech’ tree for this sort of thing too, so having T2 weaver and T2 stonemason could unlock something different than having T2 carpenter and T2 weaver.

I don’t mind how it’s implemented, as long as you’re not just given something for free.

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[quote=“TheWackyWombat, post:42, topic:7352, full:true”]
I thought settler exp was always planned, but I guess that original idea was more ‘Level into new jobs’ than skills and perks.[/quote]

This. So it seems we’re drifting from the original vision. I remember early discussions that a carpenter (level 1) would be the same as any other level one carpenter. Workers were always workers, they didn’t get any better unless they were promoted up the tech tree (presumably there were higher class workers to promote to).

In addition, we have lost the “food = worker” concept. I see this as having really bad implications in the future “player vs player” battles that are to come. If “food != worker” I the player do not control the pace of the game, the game master does.

I think these are serious issues worth discussing. I’m much more inclined to play the game above than where I see things going now.

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While I respect your opinion, I disagree with it.

I think worker = food is a terrible idea. I personally think that the immigration scenario is the best way to deal with additional settlers. It needs some work, as it is in its basic iteration, but I firmly believe new people joining should be based on your overall happiness.

If your town is successful, and its population happy, more people should want to join.

If your town is 180 turnip fields and a stockpile, with your entire population miserable because they have no shelter, then no one would want to join - and they shouldn’t.

Always interesting to see how opinions vary.

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I think the biggest problem in this discussion is, where the game should stand in the end. If the focus should be on battle or “versus multiplayer”, the immigration scenario won’t work. Even for a sandbox game the immigration scenario alone won’t fit. There should be a reliable way to get new settler. Even with “perfect” town thie immigration scenario is based on “luck” and waiting an hour for one new soldier is terrible, if you need 5 new footman to defeat the goblins. On the other hand just adding new settler for food would force situations, where you have just some farmers and one worker crafting weapons.

It’s a hard way to get out there without making the hole thing to complex. Some basic thoughts on that:

  • There need to be a player controlled way to get new settlers. Maybe with childrin who will grow after 2 or 3 days.
  • These player controlled way could get some conditions. When wer are talking more about RPG-Elements: something like “mother and father” need a bed, enough food and a basic happiness level. On this way you are forcing the player to build more than some fields.
  • The immigration scenario could vary linked to the happiness. This could indicate in the number of immigrants or there class/level. A happy and rich town would get some immigrants protected by a level 4 footman, while a poor town with many food just gets some vagabond like a level 1 standard settler.

Just some basic thoughts about it. But talking about the game pace, waiting for the immigrantion scenario is - at this time - the most annoying delay in the game…

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Going to agree with Froggy. And I know it gets thrown around a lot… but Dwarf Fortress does the immigration scenario wonderfully. The only difference really being that you get more than 1 at a time. The better your town is doing, the more you get, seems fine to me.

Obviously, Dwarf Fortress also has children, but the player has no control over who hooks up with with who… which also works great.

When the current game (Stonehearth) works correctly, I have WAY more villagers than I know what to do with as it is, and when they eventually add the ability to somehow change professions, I don’t see a problem.

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I think that the developers adding variety to the immigrants is part of the problem here, and this is only because there is currently no way to demote a class back to a citizen.

I think that all immigrants should be workers - this will allow the player to choose how they want to employ them.

I also feel that it definitely needs to be more intelligent, i.e, if my population is very happy, and I have a clear abundance of food, then a number of workers should join, rather than just one.

In my mod I have tweaked the cool down on the immigration scenario, and simply decline the professions I do not want. The system works!

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nods in the affirmative

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Pretty much.

Also, note that DF migrations happen at set intervals - unless they’re all scared off by the charred field of elephant bones and tree stumps of course (god I loved reading the Boatmurdered story :smiley: ). Accordingly, I don’t see a problem with the migration model in competitive multiplayer. Sure, you won’t get the same balance as a tournament map* for StarCraft 2… but so what? SH is a sandbox game, and on average your good/bad luck should balance out in such situations.

*Without a custom map at least…

I’m going to disagree, but only with respect to the final product - one in which I imagine getting several immigrants at once, and where you can demote and reassign your settlers, DF-style. The current “special event” model however, works best with just workers I feel (mind you, testing it for migrants with pre-existing professions is also useful IMHO, and it’s an alpha etc).

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I go for a combination of both. The possibility to get immigrants by scenario, but also for food.
So you can get a nice town and get people join your village for free. Or go the food route. But the people you get for food are always poor workers.
This way you have more options to grow your village.

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Ok, to all the comments above, the gist I get is random worker migration is insufficient for combat and other advanced Stonehearth modes/games. @Froggy I see your point, and I think that is why Radiant went down that path, but I’m keeping my eye focused on the big picture as presented during the kickstarter, and the current migration model is a change from what was presented during the kickstarter. Even @Tom said so during a steam.

For PvP modes to work I think you need a different “worker acquisition model”. Now I have nothing against having many different worker acquisition models for different game modes.

Lastly, the game masters judgment of my town might not match my play style then I am hamstrung by the game designers model not a deadly sandbox we all hope for. Currently I cannot sally out to get the goblins because I cannot replace my workers. The game master is limiting my play.

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In my opinion, the game masters set judgement is perfect for PVP. If you don’t build strong food driven community with good shelter… but your opponent did. They deserve a better “Migrant Wave” than you do.

It doesn’t restrict how you build your town, as i’m sure there is multiple ways to build a safe and thriving city.

Edit: I should add that i DO understand why you would be worried, but I think it will work better than you might think for PVP assuming there are some tweaks to how/when migrants arrive.

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That is my point - the current model is already restricting how I build my town.

Primarily you cannot spread out because your workers do not move to a central point when rally is pressed. If you spread out, and fight goblins, you slowly get picked off AND cannot replace lost citizens.

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Agreed, and as you indicate that’s more focused on the combat system than the migration system. I’m looking forward to rally points and patrol paths to take care of this in the future.

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The Migrant idea is perfect. I would love to see this implemented.

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glad town xp is not happening but hope the citizen version stays strong as it would be a good reason for footman to train or something

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This brings problems when a single dwarf are related to all the others by blood, some of which have inbred.

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Postponing Early Access was a good move. I haven’t checked the forums lately (too busy buying a house) so I had no idea until now.

Also RPG elements sound amazing, as well as leveling towns. As a mechanic that can be turned over later to the modders this is a really nice tool for all sorts of ideas. It fits the game well I think.

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I’m looking for “rally points and patrol paths” too but they don’t matter if you can’t replace your lost citizens at a faster pace than “migrations” allow. Without growth you have a purely defensive game with no offence capability because loses can’t be replaced.

In the event that you have a goblin “breakthrough” and lose half your villagers - now you have way more food, beds, and housing than you need - your citizens should be happy, they have great wealth, but I doubt most “game masters” would consider your city happy and healthy.

So now with an unhappy city you are in the spiral of death - unless - the game master then decides to “take it easy” on you. I don’t want to play a game that gets weak when I do. I want to have to build back up and fight tooth and nail to survive.

From a game design perspective - random migration system based on an algorithmic judgment of wealth/status forces the pace of the game to be limited to that algorithm, if you don’t meet that algorithms view you do not deserve more people. Having played Timber & Stone I know how limiting this model is.

One of the reasons I’m so passionate about this is an Extreme Programming principle of doing the “hard things first”. A migration model is easier than working out the long term consequences of a food = worker model. It’s taking a baby step to game design, the easy step, where now at this moment is where the hard things need to be tackled to set the direction of the game long term.

Start Stonehearth with a migration model and it will be stuck with one for a very long time - if not for the life of the application. And I think it is a bad direction that will limit Stonehearth’s potential.

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Interesting that I think food = villagers seems like the easier route by far both from a programming standpoint and makes the game easy.

However, I trust that whatever Radiant does, they’ll end up doing it well. Whether they go your route, mine, or choose another.