Ok, i took some time to write down a post about next steps in development, I'd like people thoughts, here it is
I just had a skype session with snailbrain where i exposed some ideas/concept that would improve the game, trying to balance out fun with huc value and complexity
This will be a fair long post but should be read to understand current gameplay and discuss about the next step(s)
Let me repeat briefly the pros and cons of current gameplay to have a common starting vision of the game:
PROS:- random spawn + random banks (with variable life) let casual players join a relative small session without worrying about leaving their player on the outskirt, they just need to stand for 3 blocks over a spawn area to be removed from the bank. plus random placements remove the blockade problem, because a bot master or a dominator would have problem grouping his hunters and anyway random banks allow people to bank everywhere
- lifesteal and fight mechanics potentially allow people to fight in a balanced way, preventing blockades or suffering about being outnumbered (but could be improved a lot, see below)
- removing disaster penality prevent people loosing hucs too easily, discouraging them to create hunters after the safe period (now disaster just remove hunters refunding cost)
- pvp coins "lifestealed" doesn't suffer from miners fee
CONS:- spending 20 hucs to trigger destruct, cause pvp being too costly because in an even fight, many times both hunters will trigger destruct causing null action, but spending both 20 hucs, so if during a fight those actions repeat for too many times, the final winner (if any) risk to be anyway with a negative balance.
Doing some math, without considering the standard transaction fee but just the "destruct fee", you break the even after 10 destruct (if you win a 1vs1 you get 200, but if you had done 10 destruct you paid 200 too)
For the fight loser it would be even worse because he'd have lost the destruct fees + the hunter cost, so in a 10 destruct scenario, he would end up losing 400 hucs...
of course thing could even be worse if you fight for more than 10 destruct
moreover, someone could even harass you even spending more than what you are worthing, just to try to run you out of money on the wallet, that way you couldn't trigger destruct to defend and so every hunter you have on the map is exposed to others
- now destruct, despite the cost, can be spammed (high cost was added to prevent that), but this way, even connection issue could cause someone to lose because his transaction has been sent too later respect someone that maybe have direct access to the miner, and custom daemons could even try to send a new destruct earlier than the official daemon can (it has a check that prevent to send a transaction if you have another pending transaction on the same hunter, but if the modified daemon knows that a pending transaction is going to be included in the next block, it could already try to send a new destruct).
Spamming destruction make even the pvp too flat, you can't actually dodge and counter attack, but adding a "destruct cooldown" instead could add more tactical decision to the game.
- unluckily, current implementation process destruct before the move action, this prevent even a possible counterattack action with current implementation, because you can't create a move that close the gap and destruct right after, but instead it first destruct than close the gap, this way is impossible to make a feint or stay at safe distance then suddenly close the gap and attack
- as stated before, if you run out of HUCS in the wallet you can't defend/attack, so your hunter can just try to move (if you have at least money to send transactions) and hope to reach a bank to recycle
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there are other things i pointed out but now i don't remember, eventually I'll add them to the pros/cons list, anyway
let's now talk about the new proposed conceptTLTR, start from here:To prevent all stated problems, i've tought about implementing a "Ammo/Armor concept" for the attack gameplay aspect, here how it works
AMMO/ARMOR CONCEPTpreamble:
- a) - i think we could allow friendly fire attacks at this point, because random spawns removed the fixed, color based, spawn locations, and now everyone should be able to attack anyone, we could use colours to change some statistical/equip aspects
- b) - Destruct word should be replaced (the conecpt already has changed) by Attack
- c) - Destruct=>Move processing order should be inverted, first the moves should be computed, then the destruct, this way you can stay at a safe distance then prepare an action to move closer and trigger attack, this would cause first the hunter to be moved, then computing the attack action, allowing for feint and evade actions that now aren't possible
ok now the concept details:- hunter cost is 200 + 20 (200 goes as life as now, and 20 is increased, instead of actual 5, because now destruction doesn't cost and we need a way to prevent generation of too many hunters)
-When a hunter spawns, it has:
- a fixed amount of ammo that he can use to attack other hunters: 1 ammo = 1 available attack action
- a fixed amount of armor that will be used when the hunter suffer from an attack (this prevent losing "life", as long as you have armor)
- here we can use different colors to vary how many armor and ammo a hunter has (e.g. yellow start with 10 ammo/5 armor, blue with 5 ammo/ 10 armor, etc...)
- randomly, will be dropped on the map random items (armor/ammo) with random quantities, so you can pick up a +5 ammo item, or +2 armor, etc... (this is the previous heart concept, except that now it adds an amount of armor or ammo). To add some spicy, we may even compute how much ammo or armor value the item has, the very next block after a hunter picked up it, so you don't know yet how many weapon/armor you'll have next (or we could implement both: specified random items and "jolly" items
- a hunter will have a new action, called EVADE, that would be mutually exclusive with DESTRUCT, o you can choose whether to attack or evade an attack.
- both ATTACK and EVADE will have a cooldown timer, so you can't attack every block, you have to wait 3 blocks to attack again and you can use EVADE once every 25 blocks (we can use hunter's colors here even to differentiate the cooldown)
- when you run out of ammo, you can't attack anymore, so you have to find a ammo item or run away using armor to defend yourself using ammo (like now, if both attackwhile you reach a bank
- when you run out of armor, you can try to evade or use ammo to defend, like now (ammo vs ammo cause a null action, or we can choose to apply an hit so without ammo you die, need to think about this)
I'd say that we can implement this fairly fast, there is nothing technical different from current daemon implementation, GUIs must be updated to reflect new items and stats, but core developemt should be straight forward.
Domob, thoughts about implementation details?
If we agree I'd say we can implement changes (domob on core, me on my client and Unity3D developer on unity client) and than using domob work to create an open/closed testnet session to test changes and fights there
this way I think that the game would be really fun and more balanced, not based on how many coins one holds in its wallet and more skill and tactical based
feel free to express your thoughts
To organize better things, would be better if you reply here:
http://forum.huntercoin.org/index.php/topic,1981.msg5516.html#msg5516 but even here is ok
