The Masterized Game / Evolutive mod concept

[Maltrease]

I'd definitely be interesting in playing in a game like this!

[Ironhawk]

It sounds like fun, but the pitfalls you list worry me. In particular, what if there is a flaw in a mod upgrade that accidentally boosts a unit far out of proportion of what it should be. And then a player invests thousands of gold in them thinking it is a good deal. But when placed in combat the other players complain, the bug is noticed, and then what? Do you undermine that players gold investment?

[Twan]

Ironhawk said:
It sounds like fun, but the pitfalls you list worry me. In particular, what if there is a flaw in a mod upgrade that accidentally boosts a unit far out of proportion of what it should be. And then a player invests thousands of gold in them thinking it is a good deal. But when placed in combat the other players complain, the bug is noticed, and then what? Do you undermine that players gold investment?

Logically, if it was an accident to boost an unit more than it should be, making lots of these units is to be seen as some kind of bug exploitation, and the player who has spend his gold trying to exploit a bug has no reason to be refunded.

The problem is more IMO, units profiting more from normal upgrades than others, as some combos of good stats and weapons may be devastating (ie : if you pay the same price for upgrading precision from x to y, no matter what kind of unit you upgrade, nations with arbalests or longbows may become overpowered if they spend most of their gold upgrading their archers ; units with many attacks may gain more benefit of more strength or attack skill, some cavalries may become too good with more defense etc...).

Some minor problems in balance between nations may become far worse with the optimization allowed by upgrades (a big part of the gm work would be to developp good rules and limitations for his upgrade system). But I think this optimization contest may be a very interesting element too.

Ps-Gandalf : as I said I'm not imagining this kind of game with the host being one of the competitors ; he has to be neutral and seen as a gm like in a roleplaying game.

(I also can't understand why Johan would nerf the incredible possibilities his own game has, but as he did this with the maximum number of players, it's of course a possibility. Anyway as evolutive mods work with the current dominions game, it would be possible to host this kind of games with the actual version at least (as it's possible to play with a 79 nations scenario if you avoid the last patch)

[Foodstamp]

Using ideas like this would make it interesting to link two different games together.

Imagine having an external program gather data from a Dominions 3 multiplayer game, and then using that data to affect say a Neverwinter Nights online module (IE changing troops in a zone to match the army that conquered a province in the dominions game etc)

The best part is, the NWN players would not even have to know what dominions is. Bogus the troll would come wtfpwn them in a certain area when that random event triggered in the dominions game. If you could affect the Dominions turns as well, you could have the players of the RPG affect the outcome of turns by capturing key points in the different areas.

[Agrajag]

Wow, Foodstamp, that actually sounds like a cool idea. I'm not that familiar with NWN developement and GMing tools, but I suspect such a project can currently be done manually (it is possible to mod in a nation as a spectator, and the spectator could change the server every time a new turn is hosted to reflect whatever it is that is up. [mind though that modding isn't the only way to do that])

[Gandalf Parker]

A game created from a game (NWN style) could be done by map easier than module. It would be very interesting to have map where the object is to knock out the well established empire of Ermor, and then in game two find yourself as a new nation whose goal it is to take out the one that won game one. So if you won with Ulm in game one you would enter game two facing Ul with the same god, units, setup, provinces, forts, etc.
Hmm well, not easy. But I think it would be esier to do it as map commands than as mod commands IMHO

[Foodstamp]

Aye, it wouldn't be terribly hard. Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 both have support for external databases and such. You could have the program receive information from the Dom3 game file each turn, then have that info written to the database and NWN can make a call to that database once a day (or whatever the quickhost for the dom3 game is set to) and update the world accordingly.

I imagine the main benefit on the NWN end would be a dynamic world that changes according to the players moves in the DOM3 game. Such changes would include changing the guards at certain cities to match who is controlling the "province", have random events that happen in game happen in the NWN module as well, possibly even making it rain or snow in certain areas according to if it was raining and snowing in the province during a battle.

If the program could write to the Dom3 turn file, you could have the players in NWN affect the server by their actions in game. Say a roleplayer completes a dungeon and finds a Thistle Mace amongst the loot. He takes the loot to the proper person in town and presto, next turn the owner of that province finds a thistle mace. This example may be a bit more than what turn file manipulation programs can do currently but you get the idea.

[Ironhawk]

Twan said:
Logically, if it was an accident to boost an unit more than it should be, making lots of these units is to be seen as some kind of bug exploitation, and the player who has spend his gold trying to exploit a bug has no reason to be refunded.

No, the problem comes not from exploitation, but from misunderstanding. What if the host accidentally boosts the value of a unit more than it should be. And then one or more players invest in it because they legitimately think its a good deal. But then when the unit is deployed against other players they object, perhaps with good cause. What then? How can you get out of that situation without screwing someone over?

It is a problem that doesnt exist in normal games because there is only one mod, ever and everyone agrees to it. But when you have a single person making changes to the mod on the fly you very much run the risk of unbalancing the game and producing hard feelings all around

[Twan]

Near all online games organized/animated by someone/a company having the power to change things (artisanal pbems of all kinds, MUDs, MMOs, NWN Shards, moddable FPS/RTS servers...) may have this occasionnal "problem" of debates about balance and situationnal nerfs and it has never made these games unpopular. If this kind of game is launched using the Dominions engine it should just be clear that the game will be "a masterized game using the dominions engine" (and rules/fixes decided by the gm to preserve the interest of this particular game) and not just "dominions". Then players may want or not to test a game of this genre.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah, fair enough