0.0.7 Challenge and tag system


In this release 0.0.7 for my prototype, Infiltration, I've worked to add a new foundamental system, tagging, that interact with various elements in the game. This tagging system referes to a simple concept: actors in the game (npc, not playable characters) can have tags, like for example "strong" or "ignorant" and these tags will affect how npc can interact with game world throught quests and player actions, challenges.

Tags can be good, with an active bonus (+20% on physical challenges) for npc or really bad, with a malus (-50% on mental challenges) and are added randomly from a customizable pool of tags on actor creation and after a particular quests are solved or failed.

In this version you will find following tags:

- generous, +20% social challenges
- greedy -20% social challenges
-ignorant -20% mental challenges
-intelligent +20% mental challenges
-strong +20% physical challenges
-weak -20% physical challenges
-scarred -30% social challenges
-anathema -30% social challenges
-falseGod -30% mental challenges
-renowned +10% social challenges
-integrity +50% resist focus player action
-willpower +50% resist calling player action
-determination +50% resist manipulation player action

As you can see from the list there are two big types of tags: one related to challenges (related to quests and actor interaction with game world) and player action resist bonuses.

Thanks to awesome playtesters I've found a nice way to filter living cities simulation behind the scenes in the quest log and with a filter by city on the left of quest log, now the player can be informed on a very specific city and not all together!

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Comments

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Hey,

Sorry, been very busy recently, and will be for the rest of the month, so haven't had time to fully test everything.

The tag system is a good change, it definitely adds to the characters. It's nice that every NPC is somewhat unique, and different from the others. Perhaps this could expanded by allowing you to use different powers against different people? Possibly you'd have some powers which were useful against people who had weak wills, while others were physical challenges, so would do better against other NPCs, so the player had to pay attention to which tags an NPC had.

I'd also be interested in expanding the city-building-ownership system. I took control of an NPC, who then took over half the city buildings, but it didn't seem to advantage me. It would be nice to be able to spend power to increase the wealth and power of a particular NPC, then have that NPC's new success be a benefit to me later on. It would make the player invest themselves in particular characters, and perhaps then need to spend power to attack that NPC's enemies, to ensure that their preferred NPC wins any future conflicts.

One thing I noted, bug-wise or possibly UI-wise, was that the message log said that characters involved in a guild war were too busy to be attacked using my powers, but I was still able to. I assume this is just some text-message issue.

Those are my comments on this version, keep up the good work.

I was busy too, so I don't mind! And thanks for feedback!

I like the idea to work on top of tags, adding some sort of mechanics! I have a lot of ideas on this, also because tags can be a sort of path players can follow to unlock particular powers or other tags too! For example manipulate a particular npc with a strong tag, let them power up and have a more crazy, but physical powerful npc.

And again on city-building side you are absolutely right! I think that with some sort of city map player will have more control on what is going on in the city, where to expand a controlled npc influence and so on. If I can generalize this concept, I can see a possible pattern here: corrupt an npc, expand his influence in the city, or guild, or in another dimension (religion, economic, arcane, etc..) and get bonus for this powerful npc.

A downside of this approach is that player, as you said, should keep attention on a particular npc, where he invested time and resources: right now a crazy enough npc can die in a fight and player could potentially lose a log for this.. If I'm the player I will be a little pissed about this :(

For the ui report, thanks, I will investigate! I have a lot of bugs to work on it, but I need to focus on complete core mechanics first! I know you can perfectly understand me on this side!

Thanks again!