Hi guys,
We are continuing our developer diaries and in this post we want to talk about one of the major features in the upcoming expansion – Territory Wars. Some of you have had a chance to try it on Live Beta server, but to fully experience this feature one should be on a populated server (The Live Beta wasn't populated enough to fully experience the feature). . So now we want to share some more details about the Territory Wars and some thoughts behind the design of the feature.
The idea of Territory Wars appeared somewhere around January, 2011. It was as simple as that: players should fight to own Sunrise City. It sounds awesome so we started working on the feature design.
First of all, we had a strong feeling that the property should belong to a gang, not to a single player or some “team”. This gives a chance to even a low level player to experience the advantages of owning some property in Sunrise City. Also it provides another strong reason to join gangs and increasing value to the gangs – this is something we really need in CrimeCraft.
Secondly, we had a strong feeling that fights for different areas of Sunrise City should happens at the same time and this time should be known in advance. This will guarantee that no single gang will dominate the whole city due to the limited number of players in a gang and there will always be a competition between gangs. Also experienced players who want to grab and capture many territories will have to recruit more players, teach them how to play, teach them how to gather an effective build and how to get equipment and this is exactly what we need in the game.
Thirdly, we had to determine exactly what gangs will be able to own in Sunrise City. This had to be shown to players in some way and all we agreed that it should be shown on the city map. In the first iteration we designed the system where the city map was divided into a lot of small areas without any “empty” spaces so each such area were adjoined to some other. We were planning that gangs would be able to attack only the areas next to the spot their gang owns. We liked this feature, gangs spreading their power around the city step by step, planning their invasion in advance and protecting the borders of their territories. But there were some problems with it.
First of all, we estimated that we have to have at least a hundred of areas on the city map to add relevant meaning for the strategic planning of the invasion. One match requires at least about 4x4=8 players, so it meant that we would need about 800 online players who wanted to participate in the Territory Wars event. However we knew, that not all players would want to take a part in the event for sure, so we found that it’s almost impossible to provide the players with a fun and competitive experience with such a design. Secondly, owning some abstract tile on the city map isn’t that fun. We ll agreed that it’s much more exciting and meaningful to own something real, something that is relevant in the world of CrimeCraft.
So we tried an idea where gangs will own combat territories, like Mitsuki Tower, Isopach Oil, etc. This reduced the number of territories down to 20, so now it looks reasonable when taking into account our server population. Also all you guys will agree that owning a combat zone is something much more real compared to owning a tile on the city map. This required us to sacrifice the great feature of building the strategic plans of Sunrise City invasions, but we decided that it's worth it. Moreover, such strategic planning is a feature only for the leader who will plan the strategy, but we wanted Territory Wars to appeal to a much wider audience of players.
So approving the fact that gangs will capture and own combat zones we started thinking about the possible bonuses for owning them. First of all, we added some nice visual bonuses, like the gang symbols and gang colors on environment around the location and in the lobby next to that location entrance. Also we added the gang symbol and gang name above the territories on the city map, on the location loading screen and on the loot screen after fighting in that territory. Next, we added some non-combat bonuses to all those territories, like bonus yield of experience or cash, reduced craft time, vendor discount, etc. All these bonuses will work for all members of a gang which owns the territory. We like this idea –since it provides a lot of value for being a gang member even if you are low level player. Building on this idea, we also added combat bonuses for each territory. But there was an issue – we didn’t want some gang to accumulate too many combat bonuses and become overpowered by capturing too many zones. On the other hand we didn’t want to introduce any unnatural limitations like “gang can’t own more than 3 zones” either, so we decided that the combat bonus from owning a territory will apply only when fighting in that specific territory. This won’t allow gangs accumulating too much combat power and it will add even more to the feeling that this is “your” territory and you "own" it. The last bonus we added in the game is the territory tax – any player who plays a match will pay some % of his cash reward in the territory owner bank. This will happen automatically and it will be shown on the battle reward screen so any player will know the gang name which takes some of his rewards.
Also we wanted to add a value for defending one's own territories instead of randomly capturing other territories. To achieve this we implemented the feature that allows the territory bonus to increase if a gang keeps it for some period of time. Next, we wanted to separate the most experienced players and less experienced players in some way. To do this we introduced the territories ranks – the higher ranked territories reward higher bonuses so it is here where the best gangs will compete, leaving the low-ranked territories for less experienced players. We found that adding territory ranks is a good feature that will add a feeling of progress – so we implemented logic that forces a gang to own lower ranked territories before they can move on and capture higher ranked territories.. Once a gang is in control of highest ranked territories, the longer they control it, the better the bonus.
Next thing we had a lot of discussions about is how the players will subscribe to participate in Territory Wars. Initially we planned that only the gang leader will be able to subscribe gang members to fight in the Wars. The gang leader is the player who knows the plans and will make proper choices, arranging their gang mates correctly. But it raises a problem when there is no gang leader or gang officers online. So we thought about providing any gang member with the possibility to subscribe themselves. But again, there would be a problems when some members will occupy a slot where more experienced gang member should be, or even when some players won’t be able to figure out how to subscribe themselves. So finally we decided to implement the mix of both systems – any player will be able to subscribe themselves and a gang leader will be able to subscribe gang members in or kick them out. .
The last issue that remained unresolved was how we’ll manage the situation when three or more gangs will fight for the control over the same territory. We brainstormed a lot trying to invent something new and fun and we got a lot of creative ideas. But finally, when considering all the ins and outs of different possible suggestions, and we found that a standard well-know single elimination is a way to go. It’s easy to understand, well known and tested literally during hundreds of years.
So here is where the story ends. We welcome all you to try the new features after the GangWars expansion is released – Territory Wars is going to happen every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday between the 1st and 2nd tournaments. We are very excited to see how it will work and what your feedbacks will be. We made this for you all and hope you enjoy it!
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"Clepto"
"Clepto"
Hi guys,
We are continuing our developer diaries and in this post we want to talk about one of the major features in the upcoming expansion – Territory Wars. Some of you have had a chance to try it on Live Beta server, but to fully experience this feature one should be on a populated server (The Live Beta wasn't populated enough to fully experience the feature). . So now we want to share some more details about the Territory Wars and some thoughts behind the design of the feature.
The idea of Territory Wars appeared somewhere around January, 2011. It was as simple as that: players should fight to own Sunrise City. It sounds awesome so we started working on the feature design.
First of all, we had a strong feeling that the property should belong to a gang, not to a single player or some “team”. This gives a chance to even a low level player to experience the advantages of owning some property in Sunrise City. Also it provides another strong reason to join gangs and increasing value to the gangs – this is something we really need in CrimeCraft.
Secondly, we had a strong feeling that fights for different areas of Sunrise City should happens at the same time and this time should be known in advance. This will guarantee that no single gang will dominate the whole city due to the limited number of players in a gang and there will always be a competition between gangs. Also experienced players who want to grab and capture many territories will have to recruit more players, teach them how to play, teach them how to gather an effective build and how to get equipment and this is exactly what we need in the game.
Thirdly, we had to determine exactly what gangs will be able to own in Sunrise City. This had to be shown to players in some way and all we agreed that it should be shown on the city map. In the first iteration we designed the system where the city map was divided into a lot of small areas without any “empty” spaces so each such area were adjoined to some other. We were planning that gangs would be able to attack only the areas next to the spot their gang owns. We liked this feature, gangs spreading their power around the city step by step, planning their invasion in advance and protecting the borders of their territories. But there were some problems with it.
First of all, we estimated that we have to have at least a hundred of areas on the city map to add relevant meaning for the strategic planning of the invasion. One match requires at least about 4x4=8 players, so it meant that we would need about 800 online players who wanted to participate in the Territory Wars event. However we knew, that not all players would want to take a part in the event for sure, so we found that it’s almost impossible to provide the players with a fun and competitive experience with such a design. Secondly, owning some abstract tile on the city map isn’t that fun. We ll agreed that it’s much more exciting and meaningful to own something real, something that is relevant in the world of CrimeCraft.
So we tried an idea where gangs will own combat territories, like Mitsuki Tower, Isopach Oil, etc. This reduced the number of territories down to 20, so now it looks reasonable when taking into account our server population. Also all you guys will agree that owning a combat zone is something much more real compared to owning a tile on the city map. This required us to sacrifice the great feature of building the strategic plans of Sunrise City invasions, but we decided that it's worth it. Moreover, such strategic planning is a feature only for the leader who will plan the strategy, but we wanted Territory Wars to appeal to a much wider audience of players.
So approving the fact that gangs will capture and own combat zones we started thinking about the possible bonuses for owning them. First of all, we added some nice visual bonuses, like the gang symbols and gang colors on environment around the location and in the lobby next to that location entrance. Also we added the gang symbol and gang name above the territories on the city map, on the location loading screen and on the loot screen after fighting in that territory. Next, we added some non-combat bonuses to all those territories, like bonus yield of experience or cash, reduced craft time, vendor discount, etc. All these bonuses will work for all members of a gang which owns the territory. We like this idea –since it provides a lot of value for being a gang member even if you are low level player. Building on this idea, we also added combat bonuses for each territory. But there was an issue – we didn’t want some gang to accumulate too many combat bonuses and become overpowered by capturing too many zones. On the other hand we didn’t want to introduce any unnatural limitations like “gang can’t own more than 3 zones” either, so we decided that the combat bonus from owning a territory will apply only when fighting in that specific territory. This won’t allow gangs accumulating too much combat power and it will add even more to the feeling that this is “your” territory and you "own" it. The last bonus we added in the game is the territory tax – any player who plays a match will pay some % of his cash reward in the territory owner bank. This will happen automatically and it will be shown on the battle reward screen so any player will know the gang name which takes some of his rewards.
Also we wanted to add a value for defending one's own territories instead of randomly capturing other territories. To achieve this we implemented the feature that allows the territory bonus to increase if a gang keeps it for some period of time. Next, we wanted to separate the most experienced players and less experienced players in some way. To do this we introduced the territories ranks – the higher ranked territories reward higher bonuses so it is here where the best gangs will compete, leaving the low-ranked territories for less experienced players. We found that adding territory ranks is a good feature that will add a feeling of progress – so we implemented logic that forces a gang to own lower ranked territories before they can move on and capture higher ranked territories.. Once a gang is in control of highest ranked territories, the longer they control it, the better the bonus.
Next thing we had a lot of discussions about is how the players will subscribe to participate in Territory Wars. Initially we planned that only the gang leader will be able to subscribe gang members to fight in the Wars. The gang leader is the player who knows the plans and will make proper choices, arranging their gang mates correctly. But it raises a problem when there is no gang leader or gang officers online. So we thought about providing any gang member with the possibility to subscribe themselves. But again, there would be a problems when some members will occupy a slot where more experienced gang member should be, or even when some players won’t be able to figure out how to subscribe themselves. So finally we decided to implement the mix of both systems – any player will be able to subscribe themselves and a gang leader will be able to subscribe gang members in or kick them out. .
The last issue that remained unresolved was how we’ll manage the situation when three or more gangs will fight for the control over the same territory. We brainstormed a lot trying to invent something new and fun and we got a lot of creative ideas. But finally, when considering all the ins and outs of different possible suggestions, and we found that a standard well-know single elimination is a way to go. It’s easy to understand, well known and tested literally during hundreds of years.
So here is where the story ends. We welcome all you to try the new features after the GangWars expansion is released – Territory Wars is going to happen every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday between the 1st and 2nd tournaments. We are very excited to see how it will work and what your feedbacks will be. We made this for you all and hope you enjoy it!