Sorry, but when I read this line, I took it as “If you win you gain, if you lose, then no harm done”, which to me is an all reward-no risk situation.
I’m not categorizing them as war and peace, but I was saying that if you always choose the easy way out of just giving the goblins or whatever the challenge it is what it wants, then why are you playing on non-peaceful? If options like this continue to other conflicts of being able to just ignore them outright without any consequences, then again, why not just play peaceful mode? To allow a person to not be punished for choosing to ignore the game is hurting those that want a challenge and rewarding those that don’t want to play a different mode for whatever reason.
Now that being said, all quests, challenges, whatever don’t have to be 100% life or death. A few examples from the other post talking about the flip side of this conversation, shows the player can be punished to a point that it’s annoying, but not life threatening. Take what I said about a disease rolling through your town.
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This disease could still be cute, as Theme Hospital has a whole list of funny problems. That being said, anyone who’s affected by said plague just goes on bed rest like a downed soldier.
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If untreated, they stay in this state for a stonehearth week (needs to be tuned).
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If treated by only an herbalist, it lasts for 4 days.
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But if the player sends their men on a quest for the cure, say Dragon’s Drool, then it cures the town instantly upon use, as well as the town never has the problem again…at least with this disease depending on how you wanted to handle repeating it.
In this conflict, the player can still choose to ignore it like you’ve said, and they just have to have no production for a couple days. But if they do, they could end up with a Dungeons & Dragons like campaign that would add to the story of the town. Maybe even a new decoration of the cure for the Herbalist.
As for rage-quitting, you can’t fight that. Anything can cause someone to rage-quit; hell a lot of people now do over the stupid undo button. A while back, we had a user post about how they basically wanted a strategy guide to always win in Stonehearth. Well as any experienced player knows, there’s not a set defined way. But if we start catering to that ideal, and hold the hands of those that quite the first time they have to think, then what kind of game is that going to create, not just over-all, but for players that are, and when the new ones become, experienced?
And don’t take this as I’m out to attack the player by using the term “punished”, I just don’t have a better term for holing a player accountable for playing.