There has been a lot of discussions about what people would like to see in the game and what they like so far. However, not so much about what people don’t want to see, this is something that could be just as useful to the developers during development as what people want to have. So for you what would be a bad addition to the game or some change or game play mechanic that you wouldn’t enjoy or want?
For me I can think 2 things that I wouldn’t like to see.
Firstly, if they limited the amount of classes you could have at a time such as only allowing you to have 3 animal tamers at any one time. This would really reduce the level of freedom in making a city the way you want it to be and make everyone’s city feel very similar as everyone is capped on how many of each class they can have, this would also effectively put a stop to almost all progression at some stage in the game. This also applies to overall population don’t cap populations too low, a city with 25 people isn’t a city.
Secondly, how quickly we gain and how fast we lose citizens I don’t want to have to spend 5 hours playing before I get my first new citizen and I also don’t want them to be killed off after 10 mins. I am not saying the game should be easy, getting a city up and running should be a struggle but I don’t want to have to spend hours watching my citizens gather up food as this just isn’t fun. Gaining new citizens should be quite quick so as to get things up and running so you always have new things to be doing.
So these are mine, what are the things you don’t want and hopefully some of these answers will be useful to the developers and could stop them from making terrible mistakes that will surely ruin the whole game (like some larger game developers, not mentioning any names), though I’m sure that wont happen.
As the game will be highly moddable, I am not soo much afraid of things which are in the game and which I don’t want to see.
However, what I absolutely would love not to see once we hit December… a lot of people complaining that the game is not ready (which is obviously not the plan for Stonehearth by December).
losing your citizens is up to you… if you dont plan accordingly to feed and defend your citizenry, well…
with regards to gaining new units, we think the general idea is that players will be able to “acquire” citizens when they need them, and not have to wait on a random spawn time…
Yes as the game is highly moddable this puts it in a very advantageous position as if you don’t like something you can change it, most things anyway. As for people complaining about the game not being finished in December I hope we don’t see it but I am 99% sure we will see it happen anyway, as I have seen it happen so many times before.
Teleportation of items and people. Maybe a special ability of high level mages, but not en masse. I want to struggle with trains/caravans to move things a distance.
seems somewhat fitting that today’s flash stream is covering stockpiles…
they are being designed to be customizable, in that the player can decide which types of materials can be stored per pile… as for the number of items? im not sure if that was touched on, but im sure there will be limitations…
It covers types of items such as you’d have toggles for animal products or furniture. However he also stated a potential for a super advanced mode where you can have more distinction, actually feedback on the categories was asked about and you can find the list in the thread for the stream.
I don’t want to see unicorns…that’s about it. Maybe unicorns blood after we killed them all and use it in elixers, but only then will anything unicorn related be acceptable.
I don’t want StoneHearth be the kind of game where people need to pay DLC for have some interesting feature, like need to buy a WorkShop DLC for modding the game or purchase the script used for create the .JSON for the animation with 3DS Max.
I don’t want Stonehearth to not have (DOUBLE NEGATIVE FTW) communistic politicians. All of my worlds must be blessed by the power of the new virtual soviet order.
First, I agree I don’t want to see caps on unit types on Stonehearth, I wan’t as much freedom as possible in choosing.
But the main thing I DO NOT want to see in VANILLA Stonehearth, is it being TOO easy, or TOO relaxing/casual.
If you don’t set things up right, you SHOULD die off within the first halfhour or so for not planning sufficiently, or for setting your city up right next to an ogre camp or in a haunted forest or whatnot. And even if I spend hours, or days building up my city, I don’t EVER want to have an “unbreakable” city. I should constantly be striving towards improving. Not get to a point where I can yawn and sit back and let the game play itself. I want there to be a constant danger of having everything unravel, or having a monster swarm eat everyone.
Edit: I mention vanilla Stonehearth because I noticed 90% of the time when a thread like this comes up people say “It will be moddable you know”, which I feel is a cop-out answer. Not all of us here are going to be modding gods.
Dash has a point. I want to be able to play survival Stonehearth, and I want it to be balanced so that I always have to be working to survive. Of course the Devs have said that there would be this mode and a “peaceful” mode as well.
But I’m also thinking more long term. I want to see many multiplayer modes. Combat style games would involve combat (of course) but with goals. For instance, Domination: Key points or building on a map change to the players color when he controls them. Points are awarded for how long you hold each building. Games can be played to a point value or time limit. Modes in this genre could be:
King of the Hill
Domination
Rabbit (needs explaining)
Another genre of combat games is “Race” games, and again they either have a “point” limit or a time limit. For example, Build the highest tower. Either build to X height or at the end of X minutes whoever has the highest tower wins. Modes in this genre could be:
Race to point X
Build the most X
Build the largest building/highest tower/etc
Create the most archers/swordsmen/farmers
Harvest the most crops/pigs/cows/bats/berries
The game needs to be able to measure the size of houses or walls or whatever and run a timer and/or keep a count to trigger end game conditions. These style games allow for all kinds of choices. Do I actually attack or do I just build a few defensive walls and focus all my building on the tower. Do I move a worker into the Hill for some early points or wait until I have an archer to take the hill?
Yes I’m sure your’e right on the acquiring citizens when you want but isn’t it still linked in some way to food supplies, so really what I should have said is that I don’t want food gathering to be something that takes a long time until you have enough for a new citizen, especially as in the early game you be very limited in how many citizens you have at your disposal which then limits what you can do.
Well we know there will be an easy mode for those times when you want to relax or build without the crippling fear of death; which is good.
Obviously this sort of thing has to be balanced and I’m fully expecting that balancing to occur throughout and beyond 2014.
Everyone has their own understanding of and gets their own enjoyment from different levels of difficulty, so I personally would hope that there is a moderate level of difficulty with the ability to alter options to either increase or reduce the difficulty in whatever way we want!
While I agree that it would be nice to have some sort of button for ease of access, I wonder how easy it would be to create said button if it didn’t exist. For example, modifying the spawn of enemies, or increasing/decreasing food production/cost of “buying” a worker, etc. I guess its just a matter of how easy the code for that sort of thing is to access (and how much of a pain it is for someone to try to balance).
