Blockland Forums > General Discussion
Thoughts on Shop Systems?
Platypi:
I've seen a bit of polarization on the concept of shop systems (buying items or power-ups with score points), and figured it'd be good to gauge the general consensus.
* Do you guys like shops?
* What are the right and wrong ways to implement a shop system?
* What are alternative ways to add longevity and a sense of progression to a gamemode?
Platypi:
Here are my thoughts.
* It really depends.
* Shop systems work really well Endless Zombies and even Deathrace cause you can compete with other players without any points. However other shop systems like Glass' Trench War devolve when a certain number of players have the good items, and new players simply can't beat them. There needs to be a way to have fun and get points without having to grind for X hours to get Y weapon just to be competitive. Furthermore, while I like a sense of progression, some gamemodes are simply more fun when you can just hop in and play.
* Map variety, secret locations, game mechanics that require more mastery (think grapple-knife or rocket-sniper), score ranks that have no actual effect on gameplay.
Swollow:
shop system for cosmetics: always good in every context
but now to get tricky, shop systems that affect gameplay:
round based gamemodes that can't be dragged out forever (ie capture based gamemodes like CTF or capture point)
this is the biggest failure point I've seen done in blockland over and over
+Tiered weapons
->points MUST reset at the end of each round or after a set of rounds
->purchases MUST reset at the end of each round or after a set of rounds
If you use a tiered weapon system and points do not reset or the game can last forever you've just made the game fun for only the people who have joined 3 hours ago and have all the best weapons versuses a bunch of a new players with the worst weapons
In general anytime you have tiered purchases, everything needs to reset at some point to set everyone back to the same level
the only acceptable way to maintain purchases between rounds is if you are purchasing equal tiered classes/weapons, thus you are rewarding your players for playing for longer by allowing them to play in different ways, and giving them clear secondary and long term goals to work towards that are separate from the actual gameplay, I don't think I've ever seen this actually implemented in blockland but I've seen it implemented in free to play games
YouKnowWhoAgain:
Love em, but also depends.
If I have to grind points like a full time job for something then it's not good
If it's a fair buy ex "400 for big rocket thing, each kill is 50 so you gatta kill 8 virtual humans" then it's balanced and good if you price it right
And if you can get a warehouse worth of items for a few pennies then you've probably have done something wrong
Hawt:
hate them if it's like deathrace's shop and stuff, I don't want to do 1000 rounds of grinding to get "le coolest item" or some stuff, if there are other ways instead of killing zombies endlessly then that's better