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Game design

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Lorric:
Spoon, one idea, if you can think of a way, would be for players to have to fight their own battles. I don't know how you could do it, but some sort of game within the game, so even if there is a planman in the planning phase in the end each player is fighting their own battles and involved in their own fate.

Spoon:
The quarterbacking problem, as Battuta coined it, has definitely been on my mind throughout the whole game. That it might spoil the fun of the players 'getting managed' is a legitimate concern. I also wasn't really big on the fact that the person with the biggest mathhammer could determine the best course of action instead of the battlefield being more of a dynamic thing.

One of the things I intend on doing for whatever sequel might or might not follow is to have all the information required be available on a glance from the starmap itself, rather than the players (and myself for that matter) needing to dredge through a whole bunch of logs with numbers and text. However I had very little of this actually worked out, its mostly just vague ideas in my head. Been busy working on WoD and all that.

Designing a good game that works on a forum is quite a challenge though. There's a whole bunch of restrictions that you don't have with a board or video game. I'm trying to figure out how to add depth to the game without adding complexity and calculation overhead. I like the idea of adding some degree of competition within the game, (I did had some plans for that originally but was quite frankly, a tad overwhelmed) but as already mentioned, there is the issue of all information being transparant. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but something I need to keep in mind to either work around or work with. 

I'm personally really kind of a big opponent to games that work mostly on randomness. I get angry and frustrated playing a few games of hearthstone and knowing I could have won that game, but the cards I needed were randomly shuffled down in the deep pits of my deck. Or my opening hand continues to be rubbish even after a mulligan. One of the primary reasons why beams don't pierce shields in WoD is because I absolutely loathe the anti fighter beams in freespace. Wether you get hit and directly lose hull integerity that you cannot replenish is completely up to a random dice throw. In short, if a game comes down to 'you lose because you were skilled but just unlucky' I will probably hate it.
However that's when games mostly work on randomness. I can always appreciate a small amount of randomness. Like a battlefield operation will never go 100% as planned, there will always be random factors that you cannot control having their influence.

For the forum game I have considered adding in a small amount of randomness but ultimately decided not to. I am now again considering it, if only to make the mathhammers smaller... And to add in that 'battlefield randomness' effect. An other thing I considered but ended up not using (but am considering the possibilities of again) is having people be assigned roles different from just admiral. Like being in charge of supplies and reinforcements and such.

Enioch:
Hey, Spoon,

You cannot eliminate the 'quarterbacking problem' in a pure co-op game, where all information is available. A single player 'dominating' the others is not the problem: the problem is that, in such games, there is a clear and optimal path to victory (mathhammer, as you so aptly put it). The 'quarterback's' suggestions must be listened to, because they are actually the best way for the players to win the game. Introducing new player roles will  not help you, nor will simplifying the way the information is presented to the players (although I grant you that it will make the game easier to play).

You can 'beat' this by working on the above definition and 'knocking off' particular parts of it, e.g. 'pure co-op', 'all information is available'.

Competition: The problem with making an asymmetric strategy game (i.e. one in which every player has different 'units') competitive is balance. As a hypothetical example, if there is a competitive edge to the game, the fleets of a certain faction might have a slight but telling advantage, that will snowball throughout the game (i.e. better early-game performance). If you choose this path, you will need to be very careful about the stats/skills of the fleets.

Information: There is no way to restrict information sharing between players in a forum community (PMs and all), without their explicit agreement. What about using their capability to exchange information 'under the radar?' Use secret goals: give one secret goal to each player and one to each faction (shared between all players of the faction). Allow them to share information via PMs. See the game explode with misinformation and misdirection. There is nothing that can stop a player from claiming that he needs to follow goal A, but how can you trust him? What if a player betrays his faction goal to the others? What if...

Then, on game end, award points on successes and see who the winner is (if we've managed to defeat the Hierarchy).

Lorric:
Would we even work against each other at all with a common enemy that's going to be harder to defeat than before? The Hierarchy was difficult enough the first time. I know we basically shut the Hierarchy down at the outermost systems for the entire game, but there were times when I felt just a little more pressure from the Hierarchy would have seen it all collapse like a dam with a hole in it which gets wider until the whole thing is destroyed.

Also, we all I'm sure want to poke our noses around in Hierarchy space. For me personally I would have no interest in personal and faction goals with such a powerful common enemy and motivation to defeat that enemy. What good is jockeying against the other players if the Hierarchy just steamrolls everyone?

As Enioch says you can't eliminate the quarterback problem, so why not instead try to find ways to make individual players have more individual impact on the game? If we had a strategy phase and then a battle phase (where before we only had a strategy phase) and the battle phase involves each player having to do something to determine the outcome of their individual battles, that would mean each player made a meaningful individual contribution.

The more roleplay the better. Roleplay is solely in the hands of the players, but Spoon can also create roleplay. Speaking of which, the thing with Enioch getting his super fleet was a roleplay exercise. If it was possible to create more things like that, that would involve individual players more in the game.

Enioch:

--- Quote from: Lorric on April 15, 2014, 01:54:43 pm ---As Enioch says you can't eliminate the quarterback problem, so why not instead try to find ways to make individual players have more individual impact on the game? If we had a strategy phase and then a battle phase (where before we only had a strategy phase) and the battle phase involves each player having to do something to determine the outcome of their individual battles, that would mean each player made a meaningful individual contribution.

--- End quote ---

Because, if the problem that the player has to deal with is open to the other players as well, the optimal solution to the problem will be 'obvious' to everybody (or mathematically provable to be the best option), and there is going to be interference by the other players anyway. To eliminate the quarterback problem, you need to restrict the information available to the players as a whole in some way, and make the players who possess that information want to keep it secret.

And RP is 'soft' and time consuming; while it is very fun, you cannot base a game like this around RP, because there are no rules regarding how RP interacts with the game. And people might not have time for RP. No player should be forced to submit more than 4-5 lines of 'actions' each turn.

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