Mod Design Brainstorm [RPG harvesting]

[rkynick]

Harvesting resources in Blockland RPGs has a long history of being tedious, flawed, and boring.
Basically since the times of AloRPG and I'm assuming long before that as well, the concept has been to hit a brick (usually a tree) with some item or another until it disappears, just to miraculously re-appear in a few seconds, for some sort of reward.

So the questions we want to attempt to answer with this discussion are such:
1. How can we make harvesting interesting?
 In mods that usually center entirely around grinding, this is usually the worst grind.

2. How can we curb AFK-collecting or make it less appealing?
 Preferably the latter, but failing all else in this topic, perhaps we can solve the former.

3. How should harvesting be structured?
 How many resource types do we need? What should they do? Where should they be?
 This is more about striking appropriate balances between the elements of your RPG rather than specifics. Should there be tiered resources, where after you master one type you move up to more valuable resources, or should there be a flat tree design? That sort of thing.

4. How can we inspire cooperation in harvesting? Should cooperation be necessary? Else, should there be more competition?
 Generally giving players a cooperative or competitive purpose increases interest levels. We should definitely look at this.

5. Any other points that may refine the area of resources and harvesting in Blockland RPGs.


Overall, it's a tough subject. The simplest method is easily the least interesting standard harvesting method, but moving beyond that is important for making good, solid RPGs.
Still then, we don't want to be lost in complexity, either.

Here are some of my concepts:

Harvest bricks are deleted on use.
- this way, AFK gathering is basically impossible. This is a little more complicated to put together, but is very effective. It also makes harvesting a little more interesting in that, the bricks aren't in the same place each time
- That is, assuming random generation as would probably be necessary to make this work. Alternatively, you can have resources be completely limited and thus the supply of bricks to harvest be constantly getting smaller. This is also more interesting, but it introduces some complex logistics issues.

Cooperative Purpose
- resource pools instead of or in addition to individual resource carrying can add cooperative purpose.
- when I ran Rock Raiders testing, the reinforcement of cooperation with the resource harvesting made the game a lot more interesting to players.
- on the flip side, the testing lacked danger or objective, which made the fun run dry after a while. These issues need to be addressed as well.
- in addition to the above resource depletion, inspiring cooperation in resource re-generation may be effective. One method would be to make it so regenerating resources in an area is a long task that many could help in.

Competitive Purpose
- player competition would help if we found stable, interesting ways to implement it.

etc


Feel free to post any ideas, concepts, criticism, what have you (as that is the purpose)

[Ad Bot]

[Gordo12699]

In my city RP, when you cut down a tree. it disappears and grows someeh

where else. this proves to be succesful

[Space Guy]

The 'cost' of materials should scale depending on how permanent and how useful the created items are. For 'cost' I mean in terms of other generic resources ("money"), time it takes to get them, risk it takes to get them, time it takes to use them, etc.

In Minecraft, to dig out a tiny hole in a hill for defending oneself in takes very little time and no resources apart from a single torch. To make an entire cabin takes several in-game days. Mining out stone for a small fortress takes even longer, with either time waiting overnight or risk from also mining at night. If you want to use special materials, you have to go mining underground.

Certain resources like Coal for the Torch are easy to find early on, but if the "burns out" feature is implemented it becomes harder and harder to defend a single place permanently unless you also equip yourself to fight at night, make other temporary residences/defences while searching or have less mining time by running back to the home fortress every night.

One thing to realise is that in terms of buildings people will usually make the cheapest possible structure rather making it fitting or good looking, if basic building resources are too limited. Most plots I have seen in the early games of Mr. Wallet's Rise of Blockland end up with the three necessary bricks on the ground (no actual buildings) and a gigantic sign like "MAT $5" if they're especially rich. This is when the stated intent of the mod ages back was to get people to make attractive builds...

When starting off, players should only be able to build with the smaller bricks - maximum about a 4x4 brick or 2x4x2 block. The ability to make larger bricks, special bricks (either round ones, ramps or interactive things like doors/turrets) or alternate colours (Minecraft's "Gold", "Diamond", etc.) should be restricted, so that not everyone can immediately build gigantic towers or glowing fortresses without spending some effort - but at the same time having them shows your wealth.

One interesting thing might be the ability to prepare builds that set themselves up quicker than you could make it usually. This encourages preparing before attacking well-defended places - set up a "bunker", "auto turret", "heal point" etc. Some restriction like having to use the Wrench to set it up means a team attack ("Defend me while I set up a forward spawn") is more effective than charging places solo, plus if it's server-set macros you get a slightly better design than three red 1x12x5 walls and a spawn point only.



Things like time and effort should be considered 'resources' for gameplay too.

[M]

1. Making harvesting interesting
Well, I'd personally suggest making resource bricks limited in individual use (respawning elsewhere - further away from civilization especially, so that as you harvest the nearby resources they will slowly expand outwards and be harder to find, to encourage genuine exploration) as well as having a single resource brick not only yielding one resource. Such as an exposed vein not only yielding the resource that is veined there but also the stone you mine out and possibly certain other resources, so that there isn't only one way to gather a given resource.

However to the average Blockland player the harvesting itself isn't really that interesting anyway; they want to get the resources basically to make a weapon and go hit things.

2. Curbing AFK collecting
Making veins absolutely finite or at least time-finite (very long respawn times, like ten minutes or even longer) would make AFK collecting impossible or ineffective, respectively. You could also implement a fatigue bar, so you can only harvest or do things for so long without a rest or using some sort of fatigue restoration item. Obviously in any system there will be people like Truce who will attempt to circumvent it and there is no perfect way to do this to stop bots 100% of the time, but not everyone is capable of making a bot that will take automatic breaks or move to other veins.

3. Harvesting structure
Harvesting should be a web of resources - rather than ore veins saying "I yield this resource" they should simply be weighted towards that resource. You could also involve prospecting in it if harvesting from a vein is time-consuming; so you must prospect to know what is there before you know whether or not you want to harvest from that area.

4. Co-operation
A lot of Blockland players (myself included) don't often like to collaborate with others. It usually means you have to split the profits. To encourage co-operation you could take an unrealistic route and (sticking with the ore vein example here) and have it so that when multiple people are mining a vein, if one person finds something in it, they each get a copy of that resource given to them. This means that either the vein will yield its materials faster, or, if you don't make it exhaust the vein faster it'll yield additional materials - thus making co-operative harvesting especially if resources are finite per brick very desirable even from an individual viewpoint.

5. Other?
Other interesting thoughts would be to associate some form of 'mini-game' or special event with each type of resource harvesting - things like trees actually falling (and being able to fall on you) so you might need some quick thinking to avoid being crushed there, having to actually cast your line with fishing via a ballistic hook and having the chance for fish based on schools within X distance from the landing point, or for mining... well, mining is boring and nobody wants ore veins to randomly explode, it's just annoying.

Also, if trees left stumps when cut, that would actually be a very poignant statement of our nature to look at the region around the 'spawn zone' after a few hours of activity. 100% guaranteed industrial wasteland.


And as Space Guy was saying about prebuilt structures - having prebuilt structures could be interesting, as when there is things other than building to be done almost nobody will want to really build. You could take the route of a ground-level RTS where buildings are placed and players then deliver resources to them, and see the bricks slowly being placed to form the structure with it becoming functional at its completion; I thought about doing this numerous times, the main issue is having some form of working delayed placement, since the Duplicator's code is such an ungodly horrid monstrosity to try to actually dissect.

This also allows you to have certain structures actually having an individual purpose on the whole rather than individual bricks - having individual bricks to do certain things is nice because it means that players can build their own structures, but as stated, they rarely want to. If the full structure must be complete it gives it some feeling of... well, completeness, that is rarely achievable by giving the players free reign to build things themselves. This isn't to say that structures would be 100% non-modular and static; furniture and doodads could be placeable by a similar system to allow customization, as well as certain furniture.

What sort of things could you have? If the 'fatigue' bar I mentioned under AFK collecting were implemented, fatigue could regenerate at an offline rate if you were in a bed - or even faster if it's in a house. Give bonuses for doing things right. Carpentry would be allowed in mass quantities in a lumber mill, a forge would allow for better blacksmithing, etc. etc.

[Menen]

All the the Above

[Kalphiter]

Giant walls of text

[Destiny/Zack0Wack0]

Giant walls of text

Exactly my thought lol

[M]

Giant walls of text

Genius! Obscure the RPG behind giant walls of text and nobody will play it! Therefore nobody will AFK harvest or complain about it being bad!

Well, at least nobody will AFK harvest.

[Bushido]

1. making harvesting interesting

what if, instead of harvesting being directly from the source, we introduced a form of "middleman": a mob that hangs around the general harvest area (but is not actually directly related to the object you're harvesting in question) that drops materials

for instance, let's say you want to find wood

a mob, let's call him a Fox, hangs around the general area and may or may not drop wood when you kill it. as you level up lumbering (or maybe just generic production mastery, probably by doing some form of quest) it is more and more likely to drop wood in addition to normal drops (gold, for instance)

[Chrono]

Genius! Obscure the RPG behind giant walls of text and nobody will play it! Therefore nobody will AFK harvest or complain about it being bad!

Well, at least nobody will AFK harvest.

It's not like they have to read this to figure out how to play.

Explaining the mechanics of any popular game would be walls of text. But they don't need to be explained.

[Doomonkey]

a mob, let's call him a Fox, hangs around the general area and may or may not drop wood when you kill it. as you level up lumbering (or maybe just generic production mastery, probably by doing some form of quest) it is more and more likely to drop wood in addition to normal drops (gold, for instance)

Now your entire RPG is based around combat.

[Chrono]

Here. Let's turn those RPGs completely upside down.

Gathering resources would be an intense, challenging, and fast-paced thing to do. You go into an area, and your character starts running at high speeds. You gotta smash on that left click, and time right click properly, while using WASD to stay on course and not run into anything. Lots of flashing particles everywhere to make it hard to see. This will be instanced.

Combat will turn your player into a bot and will automatically commence AI fighting.

Best RPG ever.

[Doomonkey]

-snip-

That's actually a pretty cool idea, make combat the boring skill.

[Doomonkey]

I just thought of something.

Make it a top-down, RTS style game. Except, all of the buildings you make are build by you, or chosen from a list. And all of the AI is programmed by you running a path. So all you do is harvest a resource once while recording it. Then the focus can be brought of of resource harvesting, and into interacting with other players.

You can advance sciences, perform espionage, trade sciences. The entirety would be built around interactions. During missions you could perform them yourself, or have AI do it.

So basically, my idea for harvesting is put it in the background.

[rkynick]

Cooperation:

Tree Cutting Example
1. Trees take many hits to fell and produce 25 wood

2. When a tree falls, everyone who has hit it gets a share of the wood profit.

3. If >3 people have worked on it, everyone gets +3 wood

4. If >5 people have worked on it, everyone gets an additional +2 wood to the 3. rule which would already be qualified for.

5. Players must make x number of hits to actually get a share of the profits, where x is the number of players who have hit the tree.

6. If >=3 people hit the tree, and you did 1/3 or more of the work, you get +3 wood


So cooperation is faster and gets everyone more wood.


Random ideas for making builds better:
- force players to make necessary parts be elevated a distance off the ground.
- then make it so that placing bricks requires support from the bricks under it; a brick of X volume must have something like 3/4th X volume total in the 3-5 bricks directly under it.
- then make the necessary parts have high volume.

So it is not only necessary to build, but it is also necessary to build something.

Alternatively, make building necessary for safety. Have enemy bots spawn a distance from the player, so walls and such keep them out. Or, gives bricks HP and have them serve as walls in player v player wars. Give the player points of vulnerability and they will be inclined to protect them.