This thread is for discussions on Gamplay altering town progression. To come up with idea’s, criticise (other) peoples idea’s (constructively of course), and combine ideas to solve problems. Feel free to do any of those.
What is Gameplay Altering Town Progression?
GATP is the idea where your town progression choices change the gamplay to a different style, which is connected to your choices. For example, let’s say you chose an economic town. Then, getting net worth requirements (a difficulty for other towns) is easy for you because of buffs and stuff like that. However, other things are harder, like fending off attacks or keeping people happy. The basic idea is that you use the strengths of your town to overcome your weaknesses. An example of that might be a deal with a patrol of a nearby military town to guard the other rims of your map, so less invaders trickle through. This is in reward for money, of course. The net effect of this is that no town type has an easier game, but all town types play differently by putting emphasis on different gamplay aspects.
This is the origin of the idea.
The case for GATP
It answers what thriving means in the surviving-thriving concept
So the dev’s have had this concept of your town struggling to survive, only to thrive when basic obstacles have been overwon. We know prettty much what surviving means early game, the basic needs, start-up problems and goblins who think they can get a little loot of off your puny little encampment. However, GATP asnwers the question about what gameplay is when you thrive. The answer is: you draw from your strengths to overcome your shortcomings, so you keep afloat in a wider world that takes you seriously.
It solves the question: how do we balance the player attention of all the different gamplay elements
How much attention should combat draw from the player, seeing as some players want to be engaged in it, but others don’t, and would much rather be building buildings. The same is true for the building system as well. Those are good questions.
GATP can answer these questions by saying: maximum engagement!
You see, if you chose a military town, you chose for your attention to be drawn more to combat, so you will. If you didn’t choose a military town, you still have to deal with a maximally engaging combat system, but by design, you have options to use your strengths to avoid combat, and thus avoid having to put attention into it.
Basically, you get to see the depth of the gamplay systems you chose to focus on in town progression, so you know how to balance things as devs.
It accomodates the many different playstyles that the stonehearth player base has.
This is an aspect of previous argument, but it is important so I call this one out explicitly.
Is solves the progression balancing problem
Over at the A24 feedback thread, there was this problem where the buffs your town gets are wanted by other town types, thus creating buffs that were better overall than others. This of course interfered with the players choice and vision of what type of town they were going to create. With GATP, that problem is solved, since you can give bonuses that are in line with the type of town to create the strengths that the town needs to combat it’s weaknesses. A religious town gets happyness buffs, a military town gets combat buffs, and an economic town gets monetary buffs.
By design, these buffs/town strengths should be able to solve all problems the world trows at you. So by design, no one buff is better than the others, they are just different.
What we can discuss
How can cities use their strengths to overcome their shortcomings, what kind of quests and events do you get, and how do they help you. What should certain cities be good at?
And anything else you think about the topic, really.
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