[spoon-discuss] Future of the Grid

[Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, here are things the way I'd like to see them:

Once the Grid has become more developed, I think the victory condition 
should change from simply acquiring points to some grid-based goal. 
Once this is the case, doing a complete grid reset every win will make 
much more sense, as a win will signify that the grid has been tilted 
entirely in someone's favor, through whatever means the victory 
condition is.

I think that players in and of themselves should have some attributes, 
such as Stats and the Force, which aren't affected by said resets (the 
permanent values, I mean, like Jedi Level; all players' forces can be 
zeroed). This would mean that players who have invested a lot of time 
and effort in the grid don't lose *everything* when the field is wiped; 
but the usefulness of the attributes and abilities that carry though 
should not be high enough that someone can win solely based on said 
abilities; it should be necessary to train armies, build improvements, 
etc. Armies and whatnot would be wiped at the clear.

I think that abilities and attributes inherent to players shouldn't be 
wiped at the Apocalypse; this would include things like Force level, 
race, stats, etc. Thus, a player would be able to improve their own 
personal skills in an RPG-like fashion regardless of how often the grid 
blew up. The victory condition, however, should be such that while it 
might help me a bit to be able to pick up things from a distance and 
blow up big rocks, it would be impossible for me to win the game 
without rebuilding the parts that get destroyed every wipe. Sort of 
like the NPCs in WarCraft III, for those of you who've played that - 
they're tough and nasty, and very useful to have around, but they don't 
do you any good unless you've got a lot of troops to back them up.

I'm thinking that perhaps every player with fewer than 4 owned lands 
ought to be able to claim any unclaimed 2x2 block of the Grid for free, 
and immediately put a little 2x2 fortress on it, also for free. That 
would generally happen after each reset (so one's base location would 
change every reset), but it would also allow new players to jump 
straight into the game.

From said fortress, a player would be able to build armies, buy 
surrounding lands, enlarge the fortress, build other improvements, and 
conquer the lands of other players. The victory condition might be to, 
say, take over 95% of the Grid.

This would also make it harder for people to randomly win out of the 
blue; while points and charm get tossed around like candy, it'll be 
somewhat harder to find a loophole that lets you take all of the Grid.
[[ Side Note: Bridgeweaver mentioned that if we didn't like wins, we 
should try to avoid them; but with the current victory condition, 
that's hard to do - things like the Tequila hole, once they're in 
place, will result in wins as soon as anyone notices them.]]

Note that this wouldn't have to make the proposal half of the game 
entirely irrelevant - even now, getting lots of props through increases 
charm, and every point of charm is 10 extra BNS per nweek; thus, those 
who make a lot of good props would have a substantial monetary 
advantage over those who sit around doing nothing.

I think this would
	a) make the Grid 'matter', as Bridgeweaver says,
	b) provide an actual restart of the game every win, and
	c) enable players who have invested much time and effort in the game 
to keep some of what they've earned.

Anyone have any comments?

--
Wonko

_______________________________________________
spoon-discuss mailing list
spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/spoon-discuss