New Take on the Building System

[gingerbear]

I know I already had a thread about the building system, but it had a different direction of the game heading, this musing tries to fit in more.


Core Concepts:

• Remove the grid shards entirely.
• City level up by clearing around.
• Buildings are rewards/results of doing quests.

City Leveling

Right now cities require grid shards to level up, and also sufficient empty space around. Rob already played with the idea of leveling cities simply by clearing around, and I think that this idea in itself is indeed good: the process of leveling the towns wouldn't change much, except for eliminating the "boring" part of accumulating and disposing of grid shards.

There has to be some more to it, of course, so it doesn't feel too plain:

• Cities can grow in different shapes. We have circular cities right now, and although it's really easy to calculate with, it might get boring after a while, considering the variety of shapes the game already has. There could be cities that grow in triangular/hexagonal or quadric form, which would also mean that they would require different clearing patterns. Their icon on the map could also follow their shape, of course.
• Leveling up a city grants bonus XP as a reward. This would help in XP farming on tanks that are less frequently used.

Building Tech Trees

Assuming the cities get different shapes, the different shapes could predefine what buildings are available to that city. For example the basic circle towns get round enemy nerfing facilities, the quadric towns get the quadrilateral enemy nerfs, and so on. Since the current color code for cities would be superflous on the map (as every city would be pink forever, since the moment they can grow and become blue they will do it immediately and turn back pink), alternatively this color code could be used to show the "type" of the city, if they remain the same boring circular ones. There should be "core" buildings too, available for building in every city.

City size could be also a constraint/condition in the building tree. Assuming buildings can be leveled up too (and imho they should, since right now just about everything can be leveled up), the upper limit of their level can be the city's current level. An example could be for conditions is the following: "small quadrilateral enemy nerfing facilities" can be built from city level 1+, mediums only from level 4+, while big ones from level 8+, so the city size matches the enemy size they can affect. In theory this sounds good, but I think the major problem is that the bigger a city gets, the less enemies there are to bother with, which makes some of the "late tech" buildings actually useless. This could be solved with preset structure packages, and the city size would only increase the number of slots available, but this idea still needs tweaking.


Constructing Buildings

The keyword is construction. I'm not a fan of "building by destroying", even though I admit it would work well in the case of the city levels. (Note that in that case it is not really an act of building, but more like freeing space for further building... similar to cutting out forests.)

Now, since grid shards will be removed, there should be still some sign of effort around that would make the players feel they are contributing. I think using specific items for building might have a lot of quirks, as it won't change the shards' tedious collecting nature, even worse, as these items would hog storage space.

So, what could be a viable (and possibly entertaining) solution? Make buildings as quest rewards:

• Each city that reaches its first level would start out with a "Central Hub", that middle white spot. The players have to drive over it so they can open a new window, which lists the available buildings and the quests that have to be done to build them.
• Each building for each level would get a new, randomized task (so leveling up the same building wouldn't mean the same boring task on a harder grade).
• There would be also a progress bar to show the quest's progress. The players that are willing to participate have to sign up for a quest.
• Everyone who participates in a quest would recieve bonus XP once it is done and the building is built. There is no limit on how many people can apply for the same quest, but to avoid "quest farming", only those who have done at least 5% of a given task would count as participating. (Note that if they do an event together, for example the task is killing 30 drills, then upon killing a drill everyone around that spot would get +%)
• A player should be able to take up to a maximum of 10 quests at the same time, and I also think there should be a time limit on completion. The harder the task is, the more time there is to complete, and there might even be an on-time finish bonus to encourage doing the job fast.
• Quests completed / buildings built could be also featured on the top list. Moreover, aside from the XP gained, there could be an item reward every X buildings built, similar to the exploration / convoy drops, so those who are dedicated to be "citizens" would still be able to collect items on a slower rate.
  

Some Building Ideas

There have been many good ideas regarding buildings in several threads, here are some new ones to fit the current state:

• Comlink Extension: This building increases the distance one could make before being recalled. Leveling it up would increase the range too.
• Radar Station: This building increases the range in which the city can spot nearby convoys. At level 10/15 it could change into Route Control Station, which would see the entire convoy route that passes through the city. (These routes could be highlighted by a faint green glow on the map.)
• Transmorphing Hub: By default, changing tanks outside a city should be disabled. This building would lift this limit for the sector the city is in. Once built, the sector would get a small sign to notifiy players about this. (Could be in the description part only, to avoid icon clutter on zoom-out.)
  

[amitp]

BTW the Trello currently has these:

• grow cities to fit cleared radius
• eliminate sockets
  
• eliminate gridshards
• set max city size
• give item award for growing a town

It's quite possible that new types of buildings will come but not just yet.

[rob]

I like the differently-shaped-cities idea.

I'm not convinced we'll ever see buildings again, but I like the idea of more stuff to do, like quests. What if the quests were not "kill 30 drills" but instead were "kill this one giant fortress over there" and it gives you an on-screen arrow that points to the big boss guy -- a mini-zeta or something. Then you get a team to clear a path out to the mini-zeta and fight it. When you kill it, you complete the quest and get loot and xp and the city gets boosted somehow. Or maybe per-city quests would be too common...maybe several quests per region?

I'd prefer to avoid having to sign up for quests. We can just give bonus XP to those present at the death of the quest boss. It makes things much simpler.

[lights]

Sept 4, 2013 10:56:52 GMT -5 rob said:

I like the differently-shaped-cities idea.

I'm not convinced we'll ever see buildings again, but I like the idea of more stuff to do, like quests. What if the quests were not "kill 30 drills" but instead were "kill this one giant fortress over there" and it gives you an on-screen arrow that points to the big boss guy

Why not both? It would give a lot of variety if there were both types of quests, like kill 5 drills or kill 1 boss. The more "grindy" types of quests could lead up to the final "mini-boss" quest, which levels up your city.

Another way to fix the too many quests problem could be to simply have fewer cities. If there were only 1-2 cities per reigon, there could be many quests per city and we still wouldn't go overboard.

I think the quests idea is really good because it gives people a checkpoint system for clearing a region rather than clearing a whole region at once, which might be too large a task, which discourages people. Instead of mindlessly clearing structure after structure, there would actually be mini-goals to focus on and work towards on the way to completing a major goal.

[ohyou]

Sept 4, 2013 10:56:52 GMT -5 rob said:

I like the differently-shaped-cities idea.

I'm not convinced we'll ever see buildings again, but I like the idea of more stuff to do, like quests. What if the quests were not "kill 30 drills" but instead were "kill this one giant fortress over there" and it gives you an on-screen arrow that points to the big boss guy -- a mini-zeta or something. Then you get a team to clear a path out to the mini-zeta and fight it. When you kill it, you complete the quest and get loot and xp and the city gets boosted somehow. Or maybe per-city quests would be too common...maybe several quests per region?

I'd prefer to avoid having to sign up for quests. We can just give bonus XP to those present at the death of the quest boss. It makes things much simpler.

If you want to copy Realm why didn't you just keep Realm? I'm not saying I have any great idea about it but this just sounds like the same old same old.

[quicklite]

Sept 4, 2013 17:37:25 GMT -5 ohyou said:

Sept 4, 2013 10:56:52 GMT -5 rob said:

I like the differently-shaped-cities idea.

I'm not convinced we'll ever see buildings again, but I like the idea of more stuff to do, like quests. What if the quests were not "kill 30 drills" but instead were "kill this one giant fortress over there" and it gives you an on-screen arrow that points to the big boss guy -- a mini-zeta or something. Then you get a team to clear a path out to the mini-zeta and fight it. When you kill it, you complete the quest and get loot and xp and the city gets boosted somehow. Or maybe per-city quests would be too common...maybe several quests per region?

I'd prefer to avoid having to sign up for quests. We can just give bonus XP to those present at the death of the quest boss. It makes things much simpler.

If you want to copy Realm why didn't you just keep Realm? I'm not saying I have any great idea about it but this just sounds like the same old same old.

Because this game, though borrowing many features of realm, is nothing like it in the slightest. Just because Rob likes the idea of realm features in grid, doesn't mean that he doesn't want to try something new. It's like rob's post about Steel Chaos in the pre-Kabam forums. He learnt from that experience, and tried to incorporate a good number of steel chaos's features into realm, as well as starkly avoiding other features he didn't like/wanted to try to make a game without, which in grid/realm terms are soulbound loot and permadeath respectively, as sb loot was fundamentally broken, whereas while permadeath worked really well, though rob wanted to try something new.

However, on the topic of quests, I vote that some sort of balance should be achieved. By this I mean that you select a city/building you want to level/create, and then you are given a set of 3 quests. Those could be anything from killing a big thing to killing several smaller things to (possibly) retrieving and delivering an item from somewhere. The quests would be harder to do depending on the level of city/strength of building. I agree with hype that any number of people can help with these 3 quests, but you must at least do something to help to get your reward.

[ohyou]

Sept 4, 2013 18:11:39 GMT -5 quicklite said:

Sept 4, 2013 17:37:25 GMT -5 ohyou said:

If you want to copy Realm why didn't you just keep Realm? I'm not saying I have any great idea about it but this just sounds like the same old same old.

Because this game, though borrowing many features of realm, is nothing like it in the slightest. Just because Rob likes the idea of realm features in grid, doesn't mean that he doesn't want to try something new. It's like rob's post about Steel Chaos in the pre-Kabam forums. He learnt from that experience, and tried to incorporate a good number of steel chaos's features into realm, as well as starkly avoiding other features he didn't like/wanted to try to make a game without, which in grid/realm terms are soulbound loot and permadeath respectively, as sb loot was fundamentally broken, whereas while permadeath worked really well, though rob wanted to try something new.

However, on the topic of quests, I vote that some sort of balance should be achieved. By this I mean that you select a city/building you want to level/create, and then you are given a set of 3 quests. Those could be anything from killing a big thing to killing several smaller things to (possibly) retrieving and delivering an item from somewhere. The quests would be harder to do depending on the level of city/strength of building. I agree with hype that any number of people can help with these 3 quests, but you must at least do something to help to get your reward.

Trust me, I am all for having something to actually do in this game, but copying the main mechanic of progression in realm just seems like an easy way out to me. Maybe I am failing to grasp the concept or something but having another static enemy to hunt down does not sound like any fun to me.

[gingerbear]

Sept 4, 2013 20:56:34 GMT -5 ohyou said:

Maybe I am failing to grasp the concept or something but having another static enemy to hunt down does not sound like any fun to me.

That only shows a limited concept of what a quest could be, ie. killing stuff.

Just some ideas on top of my head that could be given as quests to the players:

- Kill stuff (duh)
- Deliver "this quest item" to "that town". The quest item will have be placed in your temp storage with a 6 hour expiration time. Dying with the item or it expiring naturally means failing the quest. Target town or shortest path leading there could be fortified with extra enemies.
- Have at least... type quests: ...10 tanks unlocked, an applied augment level 13, ...at least 3 empty long-term storage slots, etc.
- Do at least type quests: get comlink'ed in at least 3 different sectors, find 2 new towns, etc.
- Draw on map quests: an area in the sector gets a tileset of different colors, you have to kill everything above to "draw" out the shape: bonus score if the surrounding tiles remain untouched (this would require heavily infested areas to draw to).
- Move on map quests: similarly to the previous, there is a continous, long, zig-zaggy line drawn on the map, fading out slowly. The task is to move along it (destroying towers if necessary) as far as you can, gaining more XP the further you get before it expires.


If you tell me not even at least 1 of these sounds any fun to you, I think you might be a bit on the problematic side of gaming.

EDIT

Trust me, I am all for having something to actually do in this game, but copying the main mechanic of progression in realm just seems like an easy way out to me

What is the main mechanic in realm to progress?
- From level 1 to 20: kill stuff.
- Get better mid-tier equipment / pots / ut : map bosses and dungeon instances
- Get better high-tier: endgame dungeon instances.


What is the main progression mechanic in Grid?
- From level 1 to infinite: do anything you want (kill, explore, build), you will likely get XP for it.
- Get better mid-tier equipment: do anything you want, the reward for it will be meldable
- Get better high-tier equipment: do anything you want, the reward for it will be meldable. If you are lazy/efficient, kill endgame enemies (convoy) to do so.

[rant]
I don't see how would any addition of quests would make it too similar to RotMG, in fact, I don't even get why would you even want to compare. Why don't you compare it to Starcraft 2? Or Eve Online? Or Farmville?

I suggest to rename Grid12 to "ThisIsNotAFrigginRotmgCloneDammit". [/rant]

[amitp]

RotMG started out with only one big quest, to kill 25,000 monsters to trigger Oryx. The original idea was that the out of the things going on in the game world, “things to do” emerged naturally. If you have an overarching goal (kill 25,000 monsters) then the subgoals would be quest. They wouldn't be spelled out by the game itself, but emerge from players breaking down the main goal into exploration and killing. You'd explore to find new areas, then you'd kill monsters.

That was a bit uninteresting. So then they switched to a more interesting main quest: you have to kill a certain number of bosses. The players still have to figure out the subgoals themselves. If we need to kill 50 bosses, then we need to explore, find bosses, organized little groups, and kill those bosses. On the side there are other goals such as finding loot and leveling up that are implicit.

In the end they added quest arrows to point at those subgoals, without actually assigning quests to you or having a quest log or showing progress bars or in any way directly telling you what to do. Why? Because as you get more players, they don't actually all communicate and pick subgoals. You need the system to give you some options. But they're just options. You can come up with your own subgoals if you want, but the system provides some suggestions.

In Grid12 we have a main goal of 5000 fortresses or 10 regions or 500 convoys or whatever. The subgoals are something we have to come up with ourselves. Hey, let's explore and find some towns. Hey, let's figure out where the convoy is going to go. Hey, let's clear the convoy path so that we can better fight it next time it shows up. Hey, let's level up the town. Hey, let's add some buffs in this region. The map gives us hints like the quest arrows did in RotMG. It shows us explored/unexplored areas. It shows regions (areas of buffs) and towns (places where you need to construct buffs). The map shows convoy routes. Regions also tell us about zetas.

As the number of players goes up, I think you need some way to generate and communicate subgoals. The map seems like a nice way to do this if the subgoals are shared among all players. A quest log could be useful if the subgoals are different for each player. Gingerbear's suggestion is interesting in that it's taking shared subgoals like buildings and having players accept individual sub-sub-goals that contribute towards the shared subgoal. The design goals of this game were originally more about shared goals, but over time it seems like more and more of the gameplay is about individual rewards (augments, prisms, modules, tank unlocks, etc.). A year ago I would've said no quests. But now I don't know anymore. :)