Should we prioritize Career Mode?

[JoeStrout]

Some folks have been suggesting that the game will be a lot more fun once we have a basic career mode in place, where you have to worry about budgets and bootstrapping.

Right now, that isn't scheduled to appear until 0.25, when the game is getting close to done.  There's a bunch more simulation type stuff ahead of it.

But we could rearrange things to introduce career mode a lot sooner... what do you all think?

[Pops]

Any type of goal or challenge will increase the fun factor.
You do need the tools before you can build something though.
In the meantime perhaps you could add some basic milestones with in game recognition to drive the player towards achievement.

[JoeStrout]

Hmm, an achievement system is not a bad idea.  I've never really cared too much about these myself, but I've seen players that will work hard to unlock (achieve) every achievement defined in a game.  It's a good way to take a sandbox game (e.g. Minecraft) and make it playable as a more traditional, goal-driven game.

What we have now in High Frontier is a sandbox game as well, and even when we add career mode, you'll still be able to create a sandbox-mode game if you want.  So, an achievement system might be a nice addition to that.  You could always ignore it if you don't care (e.g., if you're a student or researcher just using High Frontier as a space colony CAD system).  But if you want to gamify your sandbox by pursuing the achievements, that'd be something else you can do.

Neat idea, Pops!

[KevinStrout]

One thing I think would be an interesting first step is a simple cost system, this allows someone to definitively say that colony a is better than colony b, this would promote players to design the most efficient design possible, and they would play longer.

[JoeStrout]

Hmm, I was going to say that a cost system without career mode wouldn't have much point, but as I think about it more, I'm not so sure.

You're right, if we just gave a build cost for the colony, that would allow players to challenge themselves and each other to accomplish certain design goals within self-selected limits. It could also tie into an achievement system — we could have achievements like "Build a colony supporting 10000 residents for less than $2B" or whatever.

And all this would still be easier than full-blown career mode.

[JoeStrout]

Incidentally, I've brought this question up in the Unity Forums as well, which is a community I highly respect and often try to help out.  Hopefully some of that karma will come back and give us some good input on this issue!

[JoeStrout]

OK, we've decided to adjust the roadmap a bit to make room for two big (but manageable) features in the next release:

• a per-colony financial model
• an achievement system
  

This will give you some specific goals you can work towards, and should make it a lot easier to engage with the game for an extended period of time.

We're pretty excited about it... stay tuned here for more developments, and if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, don't be afraid to post!

[JoeStrout]

(10-17-2019, 02:55 PM)RoseannFaf Wrote: hey i figured a topic like this should be added to help give you some ideas.
first off if the game could go into a save state while the PSP is turned off that would be awesome. any one else with helpful ideas?

That's an amazing idea!  Can you elaborate on this?  How would the game know when your PSP has been turned off?  Should it also go into a save state when you turn off your phone, or your washing machine?