Goonhub
08-05-2013, 06:00 PM
Okay, i'll break it down a bit.
Researching the mutation is just one step of the process of activating it. Researching for the most part just lets you know what the mutation IS, as well as activates the ability to Reclaim or Scramble the mutation if you've unlocked the upgrades for that.
Bear in mind that there's not really much else to do once you begin researching - it's just waiting for a timer to tick down. While a wait time is good in measured doses, once you go over a certain threshold you're basically making the player endure tedium rather than actively engaging and challenging them as the means to get the reward. This is not a good idea! It's boring as hell and puts people off. A well-designed system will actively engage players in playing the game rather than hitting a button then going off to grab a sandwich or staring at the screen for a while.
In this instance, the tedium is twofold with your proposed change - you both have to wait MUCH longer for the mutation to complete researching, which currently you can't do anything about other than wait; but also you need to wait for materials to recharge. With a cap of 100, using 60 materials would leave you with 40, meaning you have to wait another 20 seconds to research a mutation again - assuming you do as soon as the materials have regenerated, you now have 0 materials and have to wait 60 seconds to research another mutation. These times do not factor in server lag, meaning you'll be waiting much longer than that! That isn't engaging at all, it's just boring.
You also have to bear in mind this would cripple the ability of players to do upgrade research while also researching mutations - encountering any genes that are very difficult to brute force (4 blocks, basically) means you're basically stuck waiting forever to do anything.
To address the other points here:
* Mutations are already auto-researched free of charge or wait if you unlock them. I normally adopt a strategy of looking for any 3 or 4 block genes, researching them if I have the materials, then brute forcing the 2 blocks while I wait for the research to finish. I'm usually researching upgrades while I do this too! This mitigates the tedium of the wait time a lot - i'm actively doing something other than waiting for a timer to tick down. Player engagement!
* I do agree things are perhaps a little easy at the moment - the only challenges present to activating a gene are you don't initially know what it is (countered by researching), having to cross-reference or brute force it, and occasionally decryption. I put decryption in specifically to shake things up a bit. I'm currently mostly trying to think of more challenges to present geneticists with.
* I'm not sure what you mean by having to stabilize other sequences to deactivate something. Deactivation is something that needs looking at currently, though again I would want it to be a challenge and i'm not sure how to go about doing that.
Why is pair modification bad, exactly? That's part of the puzzle! Sure, sometimes limitations on puzzles make them more fun, but what you're proposing here isn't the right way to go about it. It's excessively punishing the player for basically doing their job normally.
Irradiating the subject because you changed a G to a C while trying to figure out the puzzle is horrible. You'd basically need to stop every couple of modifications to administer anti-radiation drugs, increasing the wait time again and mandating the player do a chore if they don't want to kill the subject outright just by trying to figure out the puzzle. There's also this issue that Geneticists could very easily murder the hell out of someone by shoving them in the scanner, locking it and just modifying a pair over and over.
Modifying random pairs is also kind of a nasty trick to pull on the player. Imagine if you were playing Tetris, and the blocks that have landed were able to shift around on their own while you were trying to place a new falling piece in. Players would have to repeat work they've already done for no good reason other than the puzzle mechanics impose it on them, which is extremely irritating.
Crippling the subject with disabilities is another easy grief tool and doesn't really add anything, too. Besides, Radiation already does that pretty much!
Again, this is forcing players to wait. Besides, getting all the upgrades takes a lot of time as it is and some of them have requirements that must be fulfilled first.
The problem with these changes is that it punishes and limits the player too much rather than presenting them with a challenge. Sure, you could regard overcoming overwhelming boredom as a challenge, but considering we're playing a game here, if the players get bored in the first place we're doing something wrong!
Lombardo2 Wrote:1.Researching mutations: The ability to research mutations makes getting powers extremely simple, it's cheap and not very time consuming because you can research a lot of mutations simultaneously. So when the research is done the geneticist will only try to activate the powers and leave the disabilities alone, making it very safe and simple.
I like the ability to research them, but I propose to increase the materials cost to about 60 and the research time to about 400 seconds, that would discourage abusing this feature. To counter that, when you activate an unknown mutation that mutation is automatically researched. If it is a disability you would need to stabilize another sequence in order do deactivate it.
Researching the mutation is just one step of the process of activating it. Researching for the most part just lets you know what the mutation IS, as well as activates the ability to Reclaim or Scramble the mutation if you've unlocked the upgrades for that.
Bear in mind that there's not really much else to do once you begin researching - it's just waiting for a timer to tick down. While a wait time is good in measured doses, once you go over a certain threshold you're basically making the player endure tedium rather than actively engaging and challenging them as the means to get the reward. This is not a good idea! It's boring as hell and puts people off. A well-designed system will actively engage players in playing the game rather than hitting a button then going off to grab a sandwich or staring at the screen for a while.
In this instance, the tedium is twofold with your proposed change - you both have to wait MUCH longer for the mutation to complete researching, which currently you can't do anything about other than wait; but also you need to wait for materials to recharge. With a cap of 100, using 60 materials would leave you with 40, meaning you have to wait another 20 seconds to research a mutation again - assuming you do as soon as the materials have regenerated, you now have 0 materials and have to wait 60 seconds to research another mutation. These times do not factor in server lag, meaning you'll be waiting much longer than that! That isn't engaging at all, it's just boring.
You also have to bear in mind this would cripple the ability of players to do upgrade research while also researching mutations - encountering any genes that are very difficult to brute force (4 blocks, basically) means you're basically stuck waiting forever to do anything.
To address the other points here:
* Mutations are already auto-researched free of charge or wait if you unlock them. I normally adopt a strategy of looking for any 3 or 4 block genes, researching them if I have the materials, then brute forcing the 2 blocks while I wait for the research to finish. I'm usually researching upgrades while I do this too! This mitigates the tedium of the wait time a lot - i'm actively doing something other than waiting for a timer to tick down. Player engagement!
* I do agree things are perhaps a little easy at the moment - the only challenges present to activating a gene are you don't initially know what it is (countered by researching), having to cross-reference or brute force it, and occasionally decryption. I put decryption in specifically to shake things up a bit. I'm currently mostly trying to think of more challenges to present geneticists with.
* I'm not sure what you mean by having to stabilize other sequences to deactivate something. Deactivation is something that needs looking at currently, though again I would want it to be a challenge and i'm not sure how to go about doing that.
Lombardo2 Wrote:2.Messing with the DNA is harmless: You can modify as many pairs you want, the times you want without any cons. That makes very simple, you don't have the pressure of activating a disability or killing the subject by radiation.
I propose that when changing a single pair gen, the subject will get small radiation, the amount of radiation he will can be decreased by researching upgrades. Also, everytime you change it, you have a chance of modifying a random pairs in some potential, and a very small chance of activating a disability that then would need to be stabilized before deactivating it.
Why is pair modification bad, exactly? That's part of the puzzle! Sure, sometimes limitations on puzzles make them more fun, but what you're proposing here isn't the right way to go about it. It's excessively punishing the player for basically doing their job normally.
Irradiating the subject because you changed a G to a C while trying to figure out the puzzle is horrible. You'd basically need to stop every couple of modifications to administer anti-radiation drugs, increasing the wait time again and mandating the player do a chore if they don't want to kill the subject outright just by trying to figure out the puzzle. There's also this issue that Geneticists could very easily murder the hell out of someone by shoving them in the scanner, locking it and just modifying a pair over and over.
Modifying random pairs is also kind of a nasty trick to pull on the player. Imagine if you were playing Tetris, and the blocks that have landed were able to shift around on their own while you were trying to place a new falling piece in. Players would have to repeat work they've already done for no good reason other than the puzzle mechanics impose it on them, which is extremely irritating.
Crippling the subject with disabilities is another easy grief tool and doesn't really add anything, too. Besides, Radiation already does that pretty much!
Lombardo2 Wrote:3.You can research as many subjects a time: There's no limit on how many research can be running simultaneously, given with research budget, you can research everything at the same time. That makes very easy to get all the upgrades.
I propose a limit of 3 at the beginning of the round, that limit can be increased up to 8 with upgrades
Again, this is forcing players to wait. Besides, getting all the upgrades takes a lot of time as it is and some of them have requirements that must be fulfilled first.
The problem with these changes is that it punishes and limits the player too much rather than presenting them with a challenge. Sure, you could regard overcoming overwhelming boredom as a challenge, but considering we're playing a game here, if the players get bored in the first place we're doing something wrong!