Nerf Building Quality Progression

[AnrDaemon]

You can't silence the internet. The harder you try to hide something, the more sites will pop up disclosing and explaining it.
It's easier to just show it outright, for you in first place. Especially if you are trying to create an open world, persistent MMO, not a short-lived session game.

Said that, I prettly please ask you to distinguish between patents, that actually cover important knowledge, and patents, that only block basic gameplay.

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Adding to all the discussion, it seems everybody missing the part, where more personal character progression is planned to add to the game.
Right now, there's literally zero character progression, it's all empire progression thing, which is only PART OF the planned game.

[Deantwo]

I disagree that a player should know that developing a patent for plastic today could lead to the discovery of warp drives down the road.

Sorry, I guess you haven't played Minecraft. The achievement view in Minecraft have the neat little feature of only showing the immediately next achievements. And looking at Minecraft news, maybe it has changed since last I played it.

The technology tree view could be made to hide far off technology, and only show the next level or two in the tree. For example it might show that after rocket-drive you can research the gravity-drive if you also research Eludium, but it won't say that after the gravity-drive you can research the warp-drive. It would however be nice if it showed that it isn't a dead-end branch, just show a "?" for all things after that are more than one level down the tree. Technology in a branch can be completely hidden until you have at least one prerequisite's prerequisite researched.

Of course there are a lot of patents that have no prerequisites right now.

Hiding far off technology on the view/list is just useful for some new players, so they a smaller list of things that are important and not be confused about a long list. But if everything is hidden they might be confused about why they can't research gravity-drives, because they don't know they need to research rocket-drive first.

[Deantwo]

Made a quick example picture.

[AnrDaemon]

Minecraft is a great example of a true open world MMO.
Their "achievement" tree is both a learning curve and amusement park.

What Deantwo had shown is a good approximation of it to Hazeron.
Patents that are immediately available, but not claimed yet, can be shown with a clear distinctive icon and a clearly suggestive description.
Like, for "Ore":
- If a player did not locate ore node yet, it would show a dimmed icon with loupe overlay and "???" in the tooltip. Suggesting that the player should observe something in the environment.
- Once player observe an Ore node, the icon would change into full bright and tooltip show its name with description suggesting to build a mine over it to harvest the resource.
Etc.

[Haxus]

That sounds like a great addition to SoH.

[phatboydw]

It also enables you to provide a tutorial of sorts to follow for new players to get their feet wet and provides future goals to shoot for all at the same time.

[nightslaysanta]

i thought a tech tree was what you people wanted to stay away from.....

[Deantwo]

i thought a tech tree was what you people wanted to stay away from.....

Patents aren't really a "tech tree" in that sense.

A tech tree in most other games are made so that you don't have time to research all branches of the tech tree. This often works in session-based games, where you play until someone wins and then start over from zero again.

Since Hazeron is a MMO with a persistent universe, you have all the time in the universe to research, so it doesn't make sense to design a tech tree where players/empires can't research all branches.

The patents are mostly just fluff, they hide some advanced stuff that a new player don't need to worry about, and give a sense of technological discovery. They are in no means a progression limiting system.

[Trusin]

Patents fill a valuable role in encapsulating technological knowledge in a concrete way, without having arbitrary technological differences like a TL1 rifle vs a TL10 rifle. If I develop the technology to make laser rifles, I can share that technology with others; the patent is the token of that knowledge. If someone does not develop laser rifle technology, then they cannot suddenly start mass producing laser rifles.

I disagree that a player should know that developing a patent for plastic today could lead to the discovery of warp drives down the road.

Then don't show that step, show them as they become available to research. I agree with Deantwo, the patent / tech system needs to look different from the mfg system and a tree seems to be the best route.