Week 3 Thoughts

Blight
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  1. The badge prices seem kinda high:

I’ve played a handful of MP games now and met a lot of great
players. Several times I would have liked to have bought them badges but 10/20
coins sure seems like a lot for something that is purely ornamental. I mean,
that’s more coins than you get for winning the game. I’m a new player so coins
are pretty dear at this point; is it the case that older players have more
coins than they know what to do with?

I noticed on the Trello board there’s a ticket for “Do a better a job of selling the fact you can buy a badge for players.” I wonder if the price isn’t part of it (?)

  1. The social aspect:

So I’m coming hear from Kongregate, and I’m really looking forward
to the official launch because it’s a great place to chat with other players. (Right now the beta is restricted to the equivalent of premium Kong users.) As well, I noticed on the MP Page, you’re
encouraged to “Form a clan!” I spent a little bit of time on the Trello board,
but didn’t see anything: are there plans for having an in-game clan feature? (Or am I missing something?) I would be very much interested in something like this because I like talking about this
game =)

  1. Idea for combat experience:

Currently each unit gets +1 per combat, meaning a squad of
trollish spears will get +25 (if all survive) while a hydra will only get +1.
What if combat experience was 1% of the individual units base power (rounded
up) with a +1 minimum? So the spears still get +25, but the hydra now gets +20,
the rune dancer would get +2, and the marsh prince +5?

  1. Not exactly a bug, but an unexpected mechanic:

My understanding is that zombies always more towards the
nearest settlement, and I just assumed that would mean the nearest inhabited settlement.
Below it looks like the one group is heading towards Green Mud and not Short
Pool while the other is heading towards Jaggy Watch and not Hunter’s Mud. These
zombies sure are going to be disappointed to see that everyone left a long while
ago.

(I do think they should be programmed to head towards the
nearest inhabited establishment.)

PS: The Trello board idea in which the different races of
zombies behave differently seems intriguing. (I bet that would be a lotta work
though in recalibrating all the maps.)

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Glad to see continued feedback! Some thoughts:

I’ve gone back and forth on this. On the one hand, ten coins is definitely a fair chunk of change to spend on something purely ornamental, as you say. On the other, high prices make possessing player-awarded badges more special. So it boils down to what the devs see as the role of these badges, and how much they value giving vs. owning badges relative to each other.

I could also see them reducing the price just of the “animal”-tier badges, while leaving the “monster”-tier at 20 Coins. That would provide an opportunity for both types of award: those that are easy to give as a sort of “thanks I appreciate your play”, and those that are really valuable to own because they represent a big expense on the part of the giver.

I believe so, but not until sometime after the initial release. It’s a large planning and development effort.

There are actually a couple of “clanwar-style” maps already in the rotation. The larger, symmetrical maps (e.g. Celestial Pools) were originally envisioned as team vs. team maps, where each side competes to clear their zone first (though overall victory is still required for anyone to win, of course!). Again, this obviously represents a pretty significant technical undertaking.

There has been a little discussion on this topic a while back, and I think there was some general agreement that Monsters in particular could benefit from a different combat experience mechanic. On the other hand, I personally like the fact that different units scale differently, so I don’t think it should apply globally. More diversity leads to more fun, in my book.

Yep! The zombies must blight every single town, whether populated or not, in order to declare victory. Primarily this is because there are various cards, like the Spider Rider or Marsh Prince, that can add population to any unblighted settlement. So there’s never a guarantee that a city will remain empty, even if it is at some point.

Honestly I doubt it would be a big change to their current behavior. If anything, it would probably be a nerf, since it would become possible to simply hire out small zones as a form of soft compulsion. As it is now, even if you get everyone out of the way, the zombies are still coming to chase you down.

I think this will be awesome if and when it happens. It’ll definitely require recalibrating all the maps, but many of them already need updates anyway, so I don’t think it would actually add all that much work. Especially if the devs decide to release a mapmaking tool :wink:

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Hello Bunny24. Glad you found your way over here from the Kong.

Blight will open up to all players on Kong in about 2 weeks. Penny and I will be working only part time for a few weeks while we visit relatives, and I dont want to unleash hordes of players on the game without being about to fix bugs and do support 24/7

(I see you now are now the top of the All Time leaderboard over there!)

I do want to add more Clan features. I spend a few days researching what a clan is in various games but I discovered it means a lot of different things to different people. I think we want to approach it slowly and systematically, but I’m not sure where to start.

I think probably the first things should be a public player profile, a url you can visit for any player that shows thier level and badges. (the same as what you can see in game now) Then some kind of way to link up these profiles.

Anyhow, lots of work to do there.

I think combat experiences should be percentage based. 10% for each combat. If you can get a unit to survive 10 battles I think he should be walking around twice as big!

I think it would be fun to try and keep your experienced armies reinforced!

I could easily get zombies to disregard empty settlements, but I don’t mind the strategic advantage of employing a town that the zombies will still move too.

The way I see the fiction, and I should see if I can get Blighted Pea to work it in somewhere, is that each settlement has its own church or shrine that attracts the zombies, not the people themselves, otherwise the zombies would be attached to armies.

Anyhow, as I said, thanks for the feedback. Really appreciate it!

Jay.

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With regards to empty towns.
The undead are not drawn to those still living, whose flickering essences move around so quickly, it is only when they meet that the undead respond.
Instead they seem drawn to the towns, the places that have been lived in for many years, where the aura of the living have soaked into the area.
Or maybe in what remains of their minds is an urge, an overwhelming pull to go ‘home’ and the beacons of life draw them like a moth to the flame

2 Likes
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I’d “Like” this more than once if I could, but I can’t, so here we are. This is exactly my vision of the fiction.

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@Aran I like all the little bits of fiction you’ve been coming up with. Keep up the good work!

@bunny24 [quote=“bunny24, post:1, topic:5522”]

  1. The badge prices seem kinda high
    [/quote]
    True. This certainly makes them unfeasible for newer players. On the other hand, you can get the problem where older players have piles of coins lying around with nothing to spend them on, since they already have all the cards they need. Considering that coins are the main meta-reward, that would be a waste of opportunity too.
    So yeah, not really a “right” answer there atm.

I actually like that the monsters don’t get combat experience. It’s one of the ways in which they distinguish themselves from the regular units: They are essentially a way to “buy” a boost in power, but without the combo and scaling potential and not having any economic benefits.