Question for a dev about resources.

[Eddie]

If a dev reads this and is willing to respond I would like to know the reasoning behind making the co-op resources limited to only one player who picks it up, to me I feel it would really take the teamwork out of the game. No hate, just curious on that decision.

[Ocke]

That was not an easy decision. At first we did have one resource drop for each player. The problem this posed was that players would max out the maze very very quickly and the building phase degenerated into upgrading after only a wave or two, depending on the map. This proved to be incredibly repetitive and dull and we had to do something about it.

We also tried to divide the resources evenly among all the players. This didn't work either as the resources got so stretched that a player could only build a tower every third wave or so. Not very fun either.

So now we deal the resources out in two crates, one for tower bases and one for resources. We are hoping this promotes cooperation and communication among the players and that griefing can be minimized. If griefing is a big problem we'll have no choice but to change it but from the start we really want to trust our players to not be ♥♥♥♥♥.

[Axial]

I can see it being problematic for public games. How much so remains to be seen...

Fortunately I play with the same group of friends so it will be much less of an issue for us. Having said that I still think there will be "resource races" when disagreements are had.

If the situation does become untenable you could always implement menu/server options so players can select how resources are handled be it Sanctum 1 style, Sanctum 2 style, Round Robin Resources etc.

Hopefully things work out the way you intend but the internet in general inspires a certain level of pessimism.

[¬ Octo]

this doesnt look like a "fun" mechanic, and your assumption that players are not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is just wrong as you'll realize very quickly... well, we'll see

[J4mesG4mes]

Round Robin style please, and after 30 seconds they become free to pickup by anyone. If nobody picks up the resources at all they then get randomly assigned to one of the other 3 players who were not selected for that round of resources at the start of the "combat phase". Essentially the resources are not lost, but they do not get utilized for that round.

Looks like public MP games are going to be a ♥♥♥♥ elite-fest if you don't do this. Seriously, just band-aid it now.

This could be one of those things that tanks the Metacritic Score because people are loathing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and are generally unfun if they have to force themselves to be fair. Same reasoning that is used for is that, "It's a glitch if the developer doesn't fix it or say it's a bug" and then proceed to abuse it to no end.

[EvilTarium]

on one hand having a dedicated maze-builder could be sweet. trusting sombody not to just hog the resources for giggles is a bit much. we should be good though, most of the people ive hated in sanctum 1 have been people who just bounce around not hitting enter or sell my stuff without asking me.

[TigerHawkins]

Another thing to note about resources is that building 1-2 towers per wave with multiple people may sound very very VERY unbalanced compared to Sanctum 1, the towers actually get their damage multiplied by the number of people in the game. So if there are 4 people, the towers will do quadruple the damage, just so it does not become ridiculously deleveled.

[Cozy]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Octo Computer in technical COMMA:

this doesnt look like a "fun" mechanic, and your assumption that players are not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is just wrong as you'll realize very quickly... well, we'll see

Can we atleast appreciate the fact that they have faith that we won't be total asses to other players?

[Kyorisu]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Shadix CF:

Can we atleast appreciate the fact that they have faith that we won't be total asses to other players?

No because it seems clear to me at least in this regard that the devs have lost touch with reality. You can have all the faith in the world but people will still be ♥♥♥♥♥.

[seretogis]

I can appreciate the thought that went into this decision, but along with the others here I highly encourage you to assign resources (be it round-robin or equally split) in public games. If it is at all possible for someone to semi-anonymously grief others on the internet, they will do so. I likely will be playing private games with only a couple other people that I know well, but for the sake of public games please at least include an option to handle the resources in a different way when creating the game.

[Rhi]

The inability to build towers if you split resources might be solved it you treated building towers the same way as upgrading them-- you can pool resources to build the tower, then someone else can come in and finish it off for a built tower. If you end up not building a tower with the pooled resources, they'll be returned to you at the beginning of the battle phase. It's still kind of risky and encourages teamwork (because those resources could go to other towers had you not pooled them like that), but eliminates (some) resource trolling/ (all) race-to-the-resources.

^-- I realize this idea might have already been viewed/discarded. I don't know the game mechanics, obviously, and I'm only going off of one livestream I've watched and information on this board.

I mean, honestly, it's not a problem for me, but it just seems... it's something new that I don't like, because I've played some multiplayer in Sanc 1 and I loved how my partner could go build/upgrade his own towers while I was building mine.

[Eddie]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ahvaren:

The inability to build towers if you split resources might be solved it you treated building towers the same way as upgrading them-- you can pool resources to build the tower, then someone else can come in and finish it off for a built tower. If you end up not building a tower with the pooled resources, they'll be returned to you at the beginning of the battle phase. It's still kind of risky and encourages teamwork (because those resources could go to other towers had you not pooled them like that), but eliminates (some) resource trolling/ (all) race-to-the-resources.

There was a mechanic similar to this in Sanctum 1, in co-op if you were building or upgrading and didnt have enough it would tell other players how much you needed to finish it and they could lend a hand.

[Mystra4]

There was a mechanic similar to this in Sanctum 1, in co-op if you were building or upgrading and didnt have enough it would tell other players how much you needed to finish it and they could lend a hand.

Right. Then you had people trying to upgrade towers only they had, or that all other (able) players combined could not afford. And they did it for a minute and a half or more.

The devs are not completely daft - They made a CO-OPERATIVE game, so it's not too much for them to ask that the players CO-OPERATE. Their problem, however, is that they're giving players the opprotunity to NOT CO-OPERATE - and on the internet, this opprotunity will be taken, all the time. It's human nature, apparently...

Another thought I just had -- I admit I like to get a little silly in games sometimes - doing things like posting annoying TTS chat - but the important question is, who does that hurt game-wise? As compared to, not sharing resources that are needed to play the game?

[Reb Militia]

I don't like this at all. Let's all be ♥♥♥♥♥ to each other so the devs change it back to Sanctum 1 mechanics.

[Shoey]

Why not just make it so that the HOST (which I could underline or something here) of the server would be the one to recieve the Resources? Or maybe at least give hosts that option when setting up a server to limit griefing or something along those lines. Or maybe make it so that the host has first dibs, or that he can like transfer resources to other players like how you can partially upgrade towers?

[Aria of Valor]

Would it be possible to give each player there own drops, but change the cost balance based on player number so that they can still make stuff but that it's more limited? (such as only being able to build 1 tower instead of 2, or increased cost to fully upgrade, etc.) Or was something like that already tried?

Not sure if this would help much, but shared block resource isn't as big of a deal as shared tower resource is. So possibly keep block resources shared but give everyone some tower resource? (maybe even give diffferent players different amounts depending on the player? like phase 1 player 1 would get 200 tower res and player 2 would get 100 tower res, but turn 2 player 2 would get 210 tower res and player 1 gets 105?).

Just brainstorming, anyone else got any ideas to make it work better?