Children? Why bother?

[anglefroghammer]

In my current game I got a wife and had a baby with her as soon as possible the child was born fantastic. Now the problem is that I then go off and expand the village and obviously it takes a year for a child to age up this makes logical sense but in the game this means that I've unlocked everything, maxed out all my levels and all the work in the village is automated and my child is still a child, not even old enough to apprentice a job. At this point in the game I'm not really needed to do anything, I've done the main quest and loads of little side quests and there is nothing left to do except wait for my child to grow up. It seems to me there are 2 ways to fix this; 1) Add more in game content for end game so that I'm still interested late game 2) Make children grow up at a faster rate. Now I know there are settings you can set to make a season 1 day or something like that but the default settings are the experience most people will be having.

[Cocco]

The third way is: Play slower - run not. And play not with unlimited options. Then it is not possible to unlock all in a few years and skill all NPC to max.

And play with a season of 3 days, not longer.

If you don´t do that, it´s your mistake, not a mistake from the game.

[LeBurns]

Honestly this is where I'm at. My child is five. So I have 13 years before I can retire and turn the village over to him. And yes, it seems to be taking forever. I'm using the time to level up villager's skills, grow the village overall, increase my own skills, increase the heir's affection (which I think is supposed to increase their skills, can't confirm though). There are little special quests the spouse and child can give, which break up the monotony a little bit.

Note I'm playing with the game on the default settings so still on three day seasons. Feel I need that time for the villagers to finish their field work and such.

But like you I get why they must use years for the heir to actually grow up. I think I would prefer just more filler quests. But for right now I'm just trudging through it.

[anglefroghammer]

Originally posted by Cocco:

The third way is: Play slower - run not. And play not with unlimited options. Then it is not possible to unlock all in a few years and skill all NPC to max.

And play with a season of 3 days, not longer.

If you don´t do that, it´s your mistake, not a mistake from the game.

I think maybe you misread. I am on default settings. I am on 3 days seasons within the 12 years I've been playing I've unlocked every thing and maxed out my skills. My villagers are also almost all maxed out and I'm making 5k daily. There is nothing for me to do of any use. I could produce stuff I suppose but my raw material production matches what I use pretty much so why would I? To make more money? Why would I want more money?

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by anglefroghammer:

In my current game I got a wife and had a baby with her as soon as possible the child was born fantastic. Now the problem is that I then go off and expand the village and obviously it takes a year for a child to age up this makes logical sense but in the game this means that I've unlocked everything, maxed out all my levels and all the work in the village is automated and my child is still a child, not even old enough to apprentice a job. At this point in the game I'm not really needed to do anything, I've done the main quest and loads of little side quests and there is nothing left to do except wait for my child to grow up. It seems to me there are 2 ways to fix this; 1) Add more in game content for end game so that I'm still interested late game 2) Make children grow up at a faster rate. Now I know there are settings you can set to make a season 1 day or something like that but the default settings are the experience most people will be having.

You've got it easy. Look at this:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160877774

I dunno how many kids there are now, maybe 70? 80? They're everywhere. Like a plague. I can't ride the horse across the village any more because 10 kids will be wandering around every street:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160875241

You gotta wonder what they'll do, as I've only got jobs for a few of them. I just bred a whole generation that will probably be unemployed, lol. Just makes me glad I'm not a RL politician, because I'd have probably done the same thing for reals :)

When I realised I was gonna get 30 or 40 kids back-to-back, I started to worry. But when I realised each family was gonna pop a second sprog then I stopped worrying. It's gone so far beyond anything I can fix. Might as well embrace the chaos?

Anyway, to the point of this post, which is simply to say that you're overthinking the problem you have. It's the same problem I have. You did everything, there's literally nothing left to do, and you have to wait (in my case) another 11 years for the heir to come of age.

Except, this isn't the problem :D

After all, what do you think will happen then; there will suddenly be stuff to do? Nope, there will still be nothing to do. There is no end game in Medieval Dynasty. There are no wars, existential crises, and no possibility of annihilation.

Personally I'll go find other games to play, and perhaps return (again) in a few years to do another run on maximum difficulty, uber-hardcore mode, and treat the thing more like a survival sim. Maybe set it to 10% skill/tech xps, x10 animal/bandit health, etc. Set it up so I probably won't even survive it, lol.

By then they'll likely have added everything they're ever going to add, and it'll be fun :)

But yeah, that's the fundamental "flaw" with Medieval Dynasty; there is no end game (yet). There's no way to fail, so ultimately you reach a point where everything is done, and that's all there is to it.

To be fair, it's fine. It's good value for money considering the hundreds of hours I spent playing it. I would recommend this game to anyone interested in the genre.

It was always going to reach a natural conclusion though, and your heir (eventually) coming of age isn't going to change that in any significant way =:)

[Morb The Menace]

Originally posted by anglefroghammer:

Originally posted by Cocco:

The third way is: Play slower - run not. And play not with unlimited options. Then it is not possible to unlock all in a few years and skill all NPC to max.

And play with a season of 3 days, not longer.

If you don´t do that, it´s your mistake, not a mistake from the game.

I think maybe you misread. I am on default settings. I am on 3 days seasons within the 12 years I've been playing I've unlocked every thing and maxed out my skills. My villagers are also almost all maxed out and I'm making 5k daily. There is nothing for me to do of any use. I could produce stuff I suppose but my raw material production matches what I use pretty much so why would I? To make more money? Why would I want more money?

Cause the game lacks actual content to keep people busy. If you're an achievementhunter, perhaps do those while you wait for your kid to grow up. But even with the kid grown up, there is still nothing to do other than a rinse & repeat of the same boring mundane fetch or kill quests, or your 700th hunting run. They opted to put their time in dumb memes instead. So have fun with your kid screaming kamehameha or listen in to a star wars quote

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by Morb - Achievementwhoring:

Cause the game lacks actual content to keep people busy...

They opted to put their time in dumb memes instead.

I feel this is somewhat unfair :D

There are plenty of things to do, and setting up a village so it's more or less fully automated is kinda cool. I'm almost 500 hours in, and can honestly say I really enjoyed the vast majority of that time.

I've got more hours in Medieval Dynasty than I have in Cyberpunk. I pretty much extracted every drop of juice to be had from Cyberpunk, so the fact that Medieval Dynasty is beating Cyberpunk in terms of (my) hours played is no mean feat.

Just because a game has an end (in practice, if not principle) doesn't mean it's a bad game. It's a village-building sim, not an empire builder. Short of having wars or bandit invasions that could potentially wipe you out, I'm not entirely sure what else they could do?

[Morb The Menace]

Originally posted by Mowglia:

Originally posted by Morb - Achievementwhoring:

Cause the game lacks actual content to keep people busy...

They opted to put their time in dumb memes instead.

I feel this is somewhat unfair :D

There are plenty of things to do, and setting up a village so it's more or less fully automated is kinda cool. I'm almost 500 hours in, and can honestly say I really enjoyed the vast majority of that time.

I've got more hours in Medieval Dynasty than I have in Cyberpunk. I pretty much extracted every drop of juice to be had from Cyberpunk, so the fact that Medieval Dynasty is beating Cyberpunk in terms of (my) hours played is no mean feat.

Just because a game has an end (in practice, if not principle) doesn't mean it's a bad game. It's a village-building sim, not an empire builder. Short of having wars or bandit invasions that could potentially wipe you out, I'm not entirely sure what else they could do?

Where do you read that I stated it's a bad game? It is badly managed as it still feels like an EA game with the lack of them playtesting their updates. It turns into a "wait for the next season" game when you've reached city stage, which doesn't take long. You even highlighted what I said about it. It was alright for hunting achievements.

In case of the content, you don't need combat for it.
Events where special traders roam the map, knights passing through, a convoy of the king
Helping build a jousting tournament in the name of the king. Squire for a knight during a tourney.
Getting tasked to remove the broken useless buildings that clutter the new map after they served their purpose.
Events where food becomes scarce, a disease, anything that impacts daily life to give a small challenge for the month
Nearby village got raided; rebuild, help with food, ...
Challenges such as archery (like the 300 point quest)

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by Morb - Achievementwhoring:

Where do you read that I stated it's a bad game?

Ah, sorry. I extrapolated that you thought it was a bad game from comments like:

"Cause the game lacks actual content to keep people busy."

"But even with the kid grown up, there is still nothing to do other than a rinse & repeat of the same boring mundane fetch or kill quests, or your 700th hunting run."

And "They opted to put their time in dumb memes instead. So have fun with your kid screaming kamehameha or listen in to a star wars quote."

Which, hm, lemme see...was...yup, pretty much all you said. Generally speaking, if a player thinks a game is in any way good, then they usually have at least one positive thing to say about it :)

But yeah, moving on...

Originally posted by Morb - Achievementwhoring:

It is badly managed as it still feels like an EA game with the lack of them playtesting their updates. It turns into a "wait for the next season" game when you've reached city stage, which doesn't take long. You even highlighted what I said about it. It was alright for hunting achievements.

In case of the content, you don't need combat for it.
Events where special traders roam the map, knights passing through, a convoy of the king
Helping build a jousting tournament in the name of the king. Squire for a knight during a tourney.
Getting tasked to remove the broken useless buildings that clutter the new map after they served their purpose.
Events where food becomes scarce, a disease, anything that impacts daily life to give a small challenge for the month
Nearby village got raided; rebuild, help with food, ...
Challenges such as archery (like the 300 point quest)

I think we're on the same page with our view of the end game, or rather, the absence of it. However, none of the things you mention would solve the fundamental problem. A few extra things to do here and there aren't the issue.

The real question is, past a certain point, why would you continue playing? And the answer for some players (myself included), has to be "Because you can lose everything (i.e. fail)".

Really, an end game scenario would require us to be doing something with all the stuff that we built. Something risky. Something that might not work out. While the challenge is there, then the interest is there.

Without this, then whichever way you wrap it up, sooner or later we did everything. At this point some players will continue to potter around indefinitely with what they built, but other players will need to move on.

As I said before, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Medieval Dynasty is great insofar as it goes. It's good value for money, and they've done a good job as far as I'm concerned.

But if you're one of those players that's thinking "it turns into a wait for the next season game", like you, me, and presumably the OP, then unfortunately, there's no reason for us to keep playing at this stage (after the achievements are done), given there is no effective end game.

It is what it is :D

That said, I wouldn't rule an end game out at some point in future. I was reading somewhere recently that they had "surprises" (or similar) in store in late 2024 or 2025. I can't imagine what that means. Adding various bits and pieces would not surprise me. The only thing that would surprise me was if they added an end game, but who knows?

Reading anything into a short and potentially easily misinterpreted comment is almost certainly wishful thinking in my book. You'd have to assume if they had plans to develop an effective end game, then they'd at least mention it was on the cards. Why would they keep that a secret?

So the point I was making to the OP still stands. If you find the game interesting enough to keep playing indefinitely, then it doesn't really matter how long it takes your heir to come of age, because you're presumably having fun playing indefinitely. And if you're already bored waiting for your heir to come of age, then unfortunately, your heir coming of age isn't going to change much.

[LeBurns]

Well the villagers do grow old and die. As I understand it anyway. So those are the jobs the grown kids can take. Right now about a third of my population is children, so in another 10-15 years I'll be dealing with this issue. The adults I have now will be only 40+ at that time, and I don't think they die until 60+, so there will be a time I've got more workers than work to do.

Maybe if I could send them off so they could sit around campfires at other villagers.

[Angelus]

Originally posted by anglefroghammer:

In my current game I got a wife and had a baby with her as soon as possible the child was born fantastic. Now the problem is that I then go off and expand the village and obviously it takes a year for a child to age up this makes logical sense but in the game this means that I've unlocked everything, maxed out all my levels and all the work in the village is automated and my child is still a child, not even old enough to apprentice a job. At this point in the game I'm not really needed to do anything, I've done the main quest and loads of little side quests and there is nothing left to do except wait for my child to grow up. It seems to me there are 2 ways to fix this; 1) Add more in game content for end game so that I'm still interested late game 2) Make children grow up at a faster rate. Now I know there are settings you can set to make a season 1 day or something like that but the default settings are the experience most people will be having.

had the same problem. you have to adjust the setting. even difficult is relatively easy once you have understood the principle. so make it user-defined and increase everything.

[anglefroghammer]

Really kicked the hornets nest hear it seems.

[anglefroghammer]

Originally posted by Mowglia:

You've got it easy. Look at this:

Yes I've got much the same problem although maybe not to that extreme. Someone in the comments on a youtube video from Francis John mentioned if you make adults living together more than 10 years apart they don't breed so next play through that's exactly what I'll be doing. But yeah you are right basically once you get the villagers working you can either just do nothing or keep expanding and once you've built your 100th house it gets rather boring. I love this game but it is sort of lacking anything to do late game. I hear the next update is called armours or something like that so it sounds like there could be fighting something other than idiot bandits.

[Mowglia]

Yeah, I could have easily avoided the plague of children. I wasn't thinking ahead :)

Here is where I'd probably make a joke about it not being a problem since I've got a slave ship docked off the coast, but I won't - in the interests of common decency and good taste!

Regarding the end game issue; you could actually spin this in a positive way. If Medieval Dynasty wasn't popular then no one would care, so the fact that players are wishing there was a late game structure is a good thing from this perspective. It's an indication that they enjoy the game and want to keep playing longer.

[Morri]

Originally posted by anglefroghammer:

Someone in the comments on a youtube video from Francis John mentioned if you make adults living together more than 10 years apart they don't breed so next play through that's exactly what I'll be doing.

Keep in mind that it's 20 years age difference for villagers, not 10.

[anglefroghammer]

Originally posted by Mowglia:

Yeah, I could have easily avoided the plague of children. I wasn't thinking ahead :)

Here is where I'd probably make a joke about it not being a problem since I've got a slave ship docked off the coast, but I won't - in the interests of common decency and good taste!

Regarding the end game issue; you could actually spin this in a positive way. If Medieval Dynasty wasn't popular then no one would care, so the fact that players are wishing there was a late game structure is a good thing from this perspective. It's an indication that they enjoy the game and want to keep playing longer.

Exactly, I love the game I just can't be bothered AFTER I've got everything unlocked and I'm making loads of stuff and automatically selling that stuff. The game is fantastic and the amount of time it take to get to the point where you are fully maxed out is way more than a lot of games anyway.