   The Adventurer's Guild: RPG/Simulator -- feedback?
  I've been thinking about reasonably "casual" RPG-meets-SimCity game that I'd like to make as an iPhone app.  I'd love feedback about whether you think this could be any fun, as well as any similar games already out there.The advertising pitch:You are the head of the Adventurer's Guild in a small town. You must hire a group of young heroes and send them off on quests in the surrounding countryside.  As your heroes complete their adventures, your guild gains prestige (and a small commission on the treasure they find), allowing you to recruit more adventurers and upgrade the guild's facilities.  Initially you start with only a small guild hall with a single bunk room that supports a party of 3 adventurers.  With the gold earned from their quests, you can upgrade their accommodations and build training facilities.  Will you build a dueling grounds to raise their weapons skills, or a library to help your mages learn new spells?  Or will you build a pub that will increase your fame as the townspeople gather round to hear about the heroes' latest exploits?Some details:The game would be structured in turns, where each turn represents a day or week.  Each turn the player can: - hire new adventurers (costs gold, uses up beds in the bunk room) - assign adventurers to perform a quest or a training activity (produces gold and experience) - build upgrades to the guild (allows for higher level heroes/improves their stats)So players need to manage how they use their heroes and how they spend their gold resources while upgrading their guild buildings.  I've not decided if there would be any real story arc to the game, or simply a never ending progression of more adventurers and bigger baddies to send them out against.My goal is for the game to be more interactive/challenging than a typical facebook game where you simply click for a reward, but to still keep it simple and playable in bursts of 5-10 minutes.  I envision the game as working similar to the deployment part of Dawn of War 2 -- you equip your heroes, group them together in a squad, and then hit deploy (except in this case you don't actually play the mission, you just get some reward).  I have yet to decide if that would be awesome or missing the entire point of the game ;)   
  I like your idea, sounds like this can be fun. I would suggest to keep it simple and dont let the player, play the mission. Instead just add some nice animations while the heroes are on a mission and let them return with a result. For some variation you could add some different animations depending on the result.For the hero-equipment I would suggest using a simple system too. i.E.: One or Two items per character maximum. (Leather Armor Set Level 5) + (Hammer +1)This way your game should be easy to understand & fast to play, but still be addicting for a longer playtime because the player gets rewards for every mission they play and it should be easy for you to generate enough content for a longer playtime.Btw.: I think for a release you should choose a different name. At least for me the "Adventurer's" sounded more like an adventure game. If I would be looking over 100 different games in a portal, I would have skipped yours just because of the name.   ;  I think this is a great idea.I'd like to see the game play out, watch the little people fight.I'd also like to be able to create disaster scenarios like in SimCity.Definitely would have to be able to customise the little people and watch them advance.And instead of directly manipulating the characters, let players manipulate the circumstances in which they find themselves in.As for the title, I'd probably call it Guildmaster.   ;  Sounds like EPW (Epic Pet Wars) for the iPhone & whatever else its on. With EPW you are in charge of one Pet and you do Jobs and fight Bosses to level up and get rewards. You equip a range of items like weapons, armour and spells that help during battle. The combat is done like Pok'e'mon basically but I understand that you won't watch the combat at all.I think if done right and present well your game would be a big hit. I'd be dissappointed if you didn't add some sort of story and depending how you manage your quests I'm sure you could think of some ways to make it more socially important.   ;  this is a very original idea. I like it alot.The suggestions I was about to say, have already been said. I can only add by saying, maybe a randomly generated story can come back describing there adventures. as well as the animations that someone else said.;  Isn't this almost exactly how the Majesty games work?   ;  Love this idea. I imagine it as sort of an interactive ProgressQuest where you watch your adventures advance vicariously. I think it would be fun to send your players on various quests and receive humorous messages/animations about their success/failure, appropriate to the quest.   ;  I like the idea. However, in how you have described it, there is an inherent positive feedback loop.Positive feedback loops aren't really good, especially in a game where you have an open goal system (sandbox type play) as you have with this (and in games like sim city).With a positive feedback loop, as one element in the loop gets stronger, then the loop amplifies this to make the emelent even stronger, but as it makes it stronger the loop make sit even stronger and you have a runaway feedback that is hard to control (it can only be controled by a negative feedback).This is the problem with most RPGs. As the characters get more experience or gear, they become stronger. This means that it is now easier for them to get more gear and experience and so they enter into a positive feedback loop.The solution (and a poor one from an open ended system's point of view) is to make the enemies progressivly harder. This is fine in a closed game with an end game (like one with a specific end boss), but not for open ended games (like the one you described here, and like MMOs too).The proper solution is to build a Negative Feedback Loop into the game that dynamically limits the Positive Feedback Loop.I'll use a simple example to show what I am talking aobut:Imagine rabbits in a field. The rabbits will eat the grass and produce more rabbits. The more grass there is the more rabbits they can produce. The more rabbits there are the fater they will produce rabbits. As space becomes an issue, the rabbit population will spread to more grassland and so the cycle will continue.This is an example of a positive feedback loop. The more rabbits there are the faster they produce more rabbits...However, if you put in some foxes, this creates a negaitve feedback loop that can limit the population of rabbits. This is because the more rabbits there are, the larger the population of foxes there can be, the more foxes there are, the fater the foxes increase tehir numbers.So as the number of rabbits increase, the more foxes there are. But, the more foxes there are, the more rabbits are eaten by them. This lowers the number of foxes that can be supported and the populations stabilise.Now, for your game, what you need to do is to provide a negative feedback loop to the power of the player.A simple one (but not the only one) might be that the player has to pay upkeep on their guild holdings. The more buildings they have, the more they have to pay in maintainance or taxes on it. But if you have this increase faster than the (average) amount of gold gaind from questing then you can limit how big the player gan grow (becasue eventually the amount of gold needed for upkeep will exceed the amount of gold coming in and the player will either have to down size or go bankrupt).The best way to do this is to make the amount og gold gained from questing increase in a linear manner, but the upkeep increase exponentially. Because the upkeep increases exponentially, you can make the increase at low power level small, but then as the player becomes more and more powerful the rate of increase on the upkeep costs become larger and larger until it eventually exceeds the increase rate of questing.You can also add mechancis that give some more power increase to the player, but if you keep these linear, then no matter what the player does, they can never exceed the eventual rate of increase of the upkeep.More efficiant players will be able to become more powerful than less efficient ones. It also gives a hook for desasters to effect the player in that a disaster might degrade the player's ability to pay the upkeep and so might have to down size and then build back up again.As an example, a tavern might give an increase in power (money, reputation, etc) to the player and the player might ahve reached an equilibrium where their power to upkeep is stable. But if a disaster occurs and the tavern is burnt to the ground, then this would reduce the ability of the player to maintain their upkeep and they might have to down size to reduce their upkeep.You could even have severl negative feedback loops and how the player juggles the effects of them would determin the power level they could get to. And, even the reletive influences of these different feedbacks could change over time, either randomly or through player actions.Analysing games with feedback loops and using them to create a balance can be a very powerful tool in the game designer's toolbox as they allow you to create a dynamic balance in the game system that adapts to what the player does, giving the player a sense of control/agency over the game world and still allowing you as the designer to maintain gameplay balance.   ;Quote:Original post by soft Light Industrythis is a very original idea. I like it alot.So original, I'd been planning to make it myself for the last 2 years. :(Quote:original post by MeshGearFoxIsn't this almost exactly how the Majesty games work?Quite similar, yes. Although the original poster is talking about a turn-based system rather than a real-time system.   ;  Thanks for all the positive comments... glad people agree this could be fun!  I have not played the Majesty games, but I'll have to investigate them a bit more to see what worked and didn't.  Also, "Guild Master" was indeed the title I've been using in my notes, but I didn't want to call it that in my post title in case it was mistaken for yet another MMORPG idea ;)The point about positive / negative feedback is something I've been worried about.  The two options I see are: - Story Based:  make the game story based so there is a progression of major quests the player must complete in order to advance the story and unlock certain new structures or characters.  The quests are hardcoded to become more difficult, forcing the player to make smarter choices as he or she advances. - Sandbox style: use procedurally generated quests and some kind of upkeep model like the one described by Edtharan to keep the player's power in check. Originally I had been thinking more of a sandbox style game, but I'm worried it will be difficult to keep the game both interesting and balanced.  Going story based provides an easier way to teach the player what is going on and how the game works. Plus I think it might be easier for development...Any thoughts on this?   