I'm trying to decide whether I want logistic-based construction for burrows or whether burrow construction should be completely free.
Submit your interpretation on the poll here (but please kindly read the post first so you know exactly which is which).
http://newtopia.jtgibson.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=33
Dec 19 2006, 6:27 pm
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Unknown Person
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Construction building all the way! It sounds much more interesting, and I don't think it would be that painful unless it required too much waiting without much result.
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I would reason about three to five seconds per section of tunnel built -- but, of course, because mounds of dirt would count as filling up the tile, you wouldn't be able to store anything in a burrow filled with dirt until you removed the dirt. And since dirt is a powder, it'd be pretty meaningless to try to carry it one pawful at a time. =)
I definitely envision at least a few people leaving mounds of dirt on the surface. I'm not sure how to treat that just yet. | |
Jtgibson wrote:
I'm not sure how to treat that just yet. Rain? It could wash it away and possibly replace the grass with mud. | |
Eventually dirt could mound up to the point of being impassable, and in rain could become muddy in addition to being a safety hazard (slippiness, dirty). Mounds of dirt could also kill off vegetation beneath it, making for ugly dirt tiles.
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Well, If I was an herbivore and had a pile of rich dirt outside my burrow, I'd probably make a garden with it. Maybe a terraced garden.
...or something. But I'm thinking you mean those that don't really want to bother with it. In which case, maybe it falls back in on the lazy sods (<-pun intended). | |
The construction option sounds very neat....
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My vote goes for the construction option as well...
In a game such as this, isn't Time one of the most important resources the player will manage? Not necessarily in in-game terms, but in actual "How long do I need to sit here playing to get some results?" or "I could be doing X, but if I'm going to reach my goal, I need to be doing Y" terms? In order for their new home to have value to them, it needs to have cost them something (in this case, it costs them Time that they could have spent doing more "fun" tasks in the game) | |
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
In order for their new home to have value to them, it needs to have cost them something (in this case, it costs them Time that they could have spent doing more "fun" tasks in the game) That's a good point, and a weird thing about MMO's it would seem, IMO. No matter how cool the feature, people will value something more and come to 'own' it more, if they've had to put time and energy into unlocking it. Then, of course, you've gotta make sure it's not tedious, but it sounds like you're in no danger there. | |
Excellent point TMDI; time sinks are crucial for keeping players busy without inordinate award. But tedious time sinks drive players away. Fun ones are the Holy Grail of design. I think this building construction idea looks like a great time sink!
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I suppose construction has another nice feature.
Newtopia was going to be completely free to all (it is, after all, a fan game of Hedgerow Hall), so I have no way of charging people for the privilege of being able to build burrows. You need to spend progress points to acquire another claim flag, but otherwise anyone and everyone can build a burrow. With construction-based burrow-building, however, only those people dedicated to building a burrow would actually be capable of doing so, so it reduces the frequency that every joe has a restaurant, kitchen, vault, loan and mortgage, etc. all in the same burrow. | |
What means cogitation?
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The dictionary is a great book, although some of its revisions -- especially Webster's in the 19th century -- messed it up a bit.
Here's a bit of a spoiler: you don't see the antagonist until near the end, but you ruin a lot of the story if you read the end first! | |