Discuss the massively-multiplayer home defense game.
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Anyway, someone should solve my house. It shouldn't be hard once you grok the ideas of this thread.
Are you the guy with all the money?
I painstakingly recreated that house (the bottom portion) and then realized memory was involved. Well, damn. That's a little bit more than I was expecting.
I was against free blueprints initially, but now having played it I wouldn't like to see them having a cost.
I can see it both ways. The idea of buying a blueprint and gaining secret knowledge though is rather compelling (e.g. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.).
Anyway, to me it's just another tool in your backpack. Except in the case of extremely complex circuitry (what optimal play has become), it shouldn't be required. Also, if you stand to gain $50k, then buying a blueprint for say $1k seems like a bargain. And either way, it'd end up free eventually.
I'm trying to put myself into the shoes of a new player and the thought is terrifying: any newcomers are living on the same block as the most hardened criminal masterminds. When defending, one has to have an in depth knowledge of the most complex wiring in the game or they stand no chance. Any of the old strategies that a new player might try are immediately defeated with blueprints. When robbing, they have to have that same knowledge. Most simple houses are going to be robbed clean by experienced players. The remaining ones are naturally going to be really well defended (combo locks have now been beaten out by obfuscated combo locks as the optimal strategy).
I was an EE/CPE major and loved playing around with redstone in Minecraft. I find wiring in TCD to be fairly straightforward, but I'm wondering if it might be a brutal learning curve for most players.
Maps are really neat, but I feel like we lost something. Let me quote Jason:
--A simple maze, made up of walls only, is more interesting than a combo lock.
--A room with only dogs and walls, where you have to figure out where to walk, in what order (DROD-style), is more interesting than a combo lock.
I'm not sure if Jason is only referring to undiscoverable locks, but either way I guess I'm saying I miss mazes a lot. The tension of walking down the wrong hallway is completely gone. The fog of war means very little now, whereas before it was truly terrifying. The promise of decoys, trickery, and diversions is no longer, not including wire obfuscation. I feel like the game we have now is really interesting, but mostly for highly experienced players who are trying to play optimally. But the game we had was really interesting too, was more intense, and was probably better for new players (i.e. mazes are easier to construct).
Thus, it'd be nice to try to maintain both kinds of games. Doing so would require a change to maps and I certainly realize that involves massive rework. Perhaps the game is OK as is. After all, it's a game about violation and it's meant to be brutal. On the other hand, I'd like to see more people playing and a shallower learning curve may help.
Anyway, the basic idea is to segregate, either sharply or fuzzily, players into map or no-map buckets. There are a few ways to go about it.
The most kludgy: players could start in a separate queue where no maps are available. Once they get enough playtime, money, or self-elect they move into the normal queue where all maps are available.
Newly spawned houses have no maps until they cross a certain value threshold.
Alternatively, newly spawned houses have expensive buyable maps, but the cost of the map comes down every time it is purchased or simply every hour until it becomes free.
This essentially recreates both kinds of gameplay: the old style where mazes are feasible and the new optimal play style. Experienced players might actually stick to the latter because they have too much invested and mazes are too risky. New players should have less to lose and they can stick to both building and robbing mazes until they learn the ropes.
Thoughts?