Greetings, fellow Breakers Of Metal Headwear and other Miners of Virtual Wastelands!
This is me joining a challenge to suggest improvements in the game some of us have been preparing to rend crowns in for a couple of months now.
A month for me. A month in which I have spent some extra to get further up the ladder of relevant kingdoms and be able to fund further expansion. Upgrading stats, opening chests with random NFT items with varying rarities (they are actually structures and institutions in your in-game kingdom).
In this current post, in order to not get into the TLDR category, I shall not go on explaining the game. I shall from now on assume that you know your way around so I am getting straight to the task at hand — making suggestions about its future.
What am I talking about? Here is the link to the Crownrend Gameplay Ideas Contest post
So, here are the things I am throwing on the discussion table in the following order of categories: Introduce; Increase; Reduce.
Otherwise, no particular order. I just like brainstorming. Deep discussions could go in the comments section but here I'll try to keep it simple and as close to the already existing mechanics as I can imagine...
Also, my intention in general is to suggest solutions to (or rather throw ideas at) stuff that could lead to imbalance, discouragement, boredom, exponentially growing inflation ... or simply to fill some of the design space that I think I see ahead of us.
Introduce
Reward pools
A portion of the hive that goes into the game through starting costs and items selling taxes could go into such a fund. We have the rankings thing that sums up your Kingdom Power but there could be other metrics, too. Let's see if some will emerge from the other ideas.
A Tax on Withdrawals.
But not on deposits. A way to encourage in-game spending and also to provide funds for reward pools.
An Army Upkeep
War is costly. Them soldiers need to eat.
The energy you need to burn in order to make a raid. The larger your army, the greater the cost in Denar to make them move so that you need to make the move worth it or be at a loss if you steal too few Denar from an opponent not worth attacking.
An Early Claim Option
The option to claim after the first hour of your new production cycle but at the cost of burning let's say 60 % of what you would normally claim. Cost reduced to 40 % or so burnt after the second hour and further reduced to 20 % after the third hour.
Temporary Divine Protection
Pay in ORI to get invulnerability for a certain period (adjustable, depending on ORI spent), then lose the right to use that same option for an even longer period (a proportionate cooldown).
PvE elements
Waves of Threats
That you need to fill special funds against (could be common funds or the alliance or some centralized crownrend bank, etc.) or have them lower your stats similar to Unrest but there should also be some loot after pushing back the barbarians or spies away. Perhaps their chieftain / captain brought some magic runes with them and dropped them by accident during a hasty retreat...
Sickness, Wildfires, Drought and other calamities could be introduced as additional challenge growing ever bigger with the growth of your kingdom. Scaling centralization is hard.
Quests
Go look for trouble, and loot, whenever you feel like it (and are able to, of course). Relics could be found and they could increase the efficiency of other structures or even help boost your whole Alliance.
Perhaps those relics can be stolen by enemy alliances and need some protection that alliance members should strive to allocated there.
Characters
They could be trained while you burn excess items and then be sent on missions or give passive bonus.
Perhaps they can be offered for...
Hire
Which also means items could be ...
Rented
Some of the above or anything else could be arranged through ...
Staking Options
A way to stealthily steal something from the mighty
They are too big to notice you, after all. But in order to avoid stealing from whales and dumping on the market it could be that the Denar stolen is transformed into some kind of decaying in-game usable only currency/asset/energy.
Hard to not inflict their wrath upon yourself, though.
If you have a solution for that, write it in the comments under my post and I might award some rare items for answers that I like. Let's make that two items for the two best (yeah, my opinion or community's opinion depending on engagement) solutions.
Increase
First, the impact of the Unrest mechanics. I think it should require the allocation of resources directly into one of the six main Kingdom Stats and not be mitigated by spending on Vault, Mine Level, Tax Efficiency, or most importantly... Buying Chests.
The efficiency of defensive kingdom stats by making them decrease the damage based on percentages, not nominally. For instance 1000 Strength VS 750 Toughness is 33.33% above the targets defense but you need only 770 Strength to get the maximum impact that is 50 %. Or is that old/ inaccurate intel?
The impact bottom players have on top players. That would bring us back to the Introduce part, I guess. Perhaps the wealthy could still employ the service of the striving by announcing bounties with different kinds of benefits for both sides... The way an employer pays for your time and efforts. Or the way a politician tries to capture your support...
Reduce
The rate of Vault space gained
... after let's say Level 100. Or after any other logical critical point. Or make each level 10 points or something from the start.
The cost of joining the game to a specific Hive number.
It's currently more expensive to get into it than at the beginning when Hive sold for 0.60 USD or so... Low Hive price might be discouraging. So a entry fee pegged do Hive might be more inviting.
Perhaps I could go on but I think it's better now to finally post than postpone.
Well, before we say goodbye, this is my Ref link to the game. Looking forward to finding worthy alliance members and people I would gladly boost with some rare items that I would be quite sad to burn instead.
Yeah, insert a sad face here, I've come to a point where i sometimes burn even Epic stuff. I am pretty sure this is common for the players in top twenty.
So, do you feel worthy, Punk?
Peace and Crownrending, all at once!
Yours,
Manol